Baffled

[Jack D]

So I have been putting together and animation in layout that uses some volumetric lighting. On my computer the renders look just right, but when I send it out to the renderfarm (I'm using Squidnet) the light is all wrong. It’s like the renderfarm can’t find the config files that are needed. I have been trying to find or create the needed files and have gotten nowhere. I could use some help…

[Phil]

Your question leaves a lot of things undefined, so here's a quick list of things that come to mind :

- is there any interesting output from LWSN on the nodes (e.g. could not be loaded, could not be found; warning messages or errors)?
- are you trying to run from a central network install, or is LW installed on each node?
- are you trying to load plugins from the local install or from a central location? Is it reachable?
- are there any 3rd party plugins in use? Are they accessible? Usually LWSN will complain about missing plugins, but won't fail the render (I'm not familiar with Squidnet, but Deadline watches for errors and will offline tasks/jobs/nodes that fail in this kind of way)

One way of finding out if plugins are missing would be to ZIP up your workstation copy and extract it over the top of the local installs on the nodes (or the central copy). That should leave you with an identical LW setup for every node.

The installation path for LW should be identical on/for each node, and it's usually not a bad idea to keep it identical with your workstation. This then means you can use a copy of your workstation config files and point your nodes at those (allowing you to update plugins on your workstation for testing without affecting your renderfarm).

Random thoughts up to now, but maybe something there is useful....

[Jack D]

Thanks Phil,
I found out that it isn't a problem with SN not seeing the lights but SN isn't able to locate any of the pluggin's I have added. So, all the dp lights and grit node can't be used until I find out why? which is a bummer since I depend on them a lot... Any ideas.

[JonW]

Some time back with a job SN couldn't find the IES lights, so in the end I put a copy of the folder on each node which solved the problem. Another task to iron out when I get the time/in the mood!