Net/Distributed Rendering Info

It seems like a lot of users have difficulty getting distributed rendering or net rendering to work properly. The promise of either is terrific, take advantage of unused CPUs to get your rendering done faster or offload the task to another machine altogether ( freeing up your workstation for other tasks). However, the setup can be a little tricky. In most cases this is because of user rights as they apply to services on your slave machines.

Let's talk about services. Services are applications which run in the background of your machine. The startup of services can be configured so that they run automatically. Windows runs a ton of services by default and programs like your antivirus software will install a few too. Mental Ray Raysat and V-Ray Spawner will both also install as services. Backburner does not but you can install it as one.

Now I think that I should explain user accounts. When you login to your computer you have a user account. If it's your personal PC its probably just something like "Matt" if you are in an office environment in might be something like "Matt@domain_name.com". Either way, when you have logged in the computer says "hey, I know you, and I know what you are allowed to do on this computer" so you get to work and everything is fine.

Let's say you connect to a file server. In your office, I guarantee the file server is setup to only allow connections from users it knows. So when "Matt" tries to access a network drive the file server says "welcome aboard buddy! I've been told to let you access, read & write these files" and you go about your merry way. At home, you may have setup sharing permissions or you may have allowed anyone and everyone full access to the drive. Personally, my file server only allows people it knows to access.

Either way, you can access all the files you need. But when you try to use distributed rendering or you render to a machine via Backburner you get all kinds of errors. This is because the services are not running as "Matt" or "Matt@domain_name.com", they run as "Local System". Your file server gets a request from "Local System" and says "I don't know you so bugger off!"

Basically, what we need to do is to get the service to run as "Matt", "Matt@domain_name.com" or some other account with privileges to access the file server. You'll want to talk to your IT staff about that last one, they may just have you use your account or they may want to create one specifically for this task.

Access the services by right clicking on My Computer and select "manage"
From the Computer Management Console, expand "Services and Applications"
Select "Services" you should see something that looks like this:



In this case, you'll see that I've already located "mental ray 3.6 Satellite..."

Double click the service name and the properties will display.



You can see that the service startup type is set to "Automatic" and that it is currently running. Click on the "Log On" tab.



By default you will find "Local System account" checked.
Change this to "This account"
Enter a username with admin rights and access to the file server (in this case "Matt" has those rights).
Enter the password information
Hit "OK" - windows will then tell you that the account "has been granted the Log On As A Service right" and then tell you to stop and restart the service (hit "ok")
Double click on the service name again.
In the general properties tab, hit "stop" - windows will tell you that it is stopping the service
Now hit "start" - windows will tell you that it is starting the service

If all of the user information you entered was correct you should be all set. The information provided here is directed towards Mental Ray Raysat but it works exactly the same way for V-Ray Spawner and Backburner Manager/Server.