welcome to this quick start tutorial for
v-ray for Revit in this video we'll show
you how to use very swarm a distributed
rendering system that allows you to
render on multiple machines at once
using a simple web interface swarm may
be installed alongside v-ray for Revit
but also may be installed on its own now
you do not need to install Revit or
v-ray for Revit on a machine that you
just want to use as a rendered node if
you already have installed theory for
Revit with its license you won't need to
install the license server for swarm
however on machines that you do not have
the array for Revit already installed
and licensed you will need to install
the license server and set that up with
your proper license for that machine to
be able to render in the swarm I'm going
to go ahead and just install swarm you
likely don't need to change any of these
settings just make sure to uninstall any
previous installations if you have any
and make sure add firewall exceptions is
checked on and will also leave the
address and port options as is and click
install now and that's it you'll want to
install swarm on all the machines you
wish to distribute renders - now that
we're installed we get into the
configuration for the interface for the
node open up a web browser to access the
interface you'll need to type in the
browser localhost colon - 4 - 6 7 where
that number - 4 - 67 is the port you
used in the installer now of course if
you change the port during installation
enter that port number instead otherwise
- 4 - 6 7 is the default the first view
we see here is the log of view this is
where you would see any messages for the
node as it is rendering click in the
upper right corner to open options for
the view next to that is the ability to
enable or disable the node for rendering
clicking this icon
we'll access the different pages of the
interface start with configuration
making any changes to configuration here
requires that the node first be disabled
for rendering go ahead and disable the
node and the options are available tags
allow you to tag this node with a
descriptor that define something about
the machine so let's tag this machine as
render farm and click Add all of these
nodes will come already with the default
tag up at the top we'll click Save to
commit the change and re-enable the node
now let's click on the network page this
shows all the available swarm machines
on the network through this page you can
select a machine and remotely enable or
disable it like this we can select
multiple machines using the shift key
while selecting additional nodes here
we'll copy our local machine settings to
the two machines I've got selected first
I'll disable them then click over here
on copy configuration you can see the
tags carried over to the two machines so
let's rename them now let's change to
the resource usage page this shows the
current usage of the machines from CPU
to GPU to memory and network traffic and
even storage space available for that
node now let's see swarm used on a Revit
project let's open up the file swarm dot
RVT which you can download from the
tutorial page now we have some settings
you can load to put us on the same setup
here so let's go load our settings by
going to the v-ray tab and click
settings in the very ribbon and then
click on sharing click on load settings
in the bottom corner and navigate to the
swarm dot XML file provided with this
tutorial this brings up a number of
options just go ahead and leave them all
checked on and click import selected
this just makes sure we're on the same
settings but this is also a great way to
be sharing setups for multiple projects
let's go over the settings for swarm go
to the Settings icon in the ribbon click
swarm and you'll see the same settings
you had in the Installer click on
refresh to see the tags for the machines
that are currently running you can click
on the tags to enable or disable them so
that your swarm rendered distributes
only to the machines with that tag
selecting both will distribute to
machines that have one or the other I'll
just leave it on default now click on
engine here we can set up how v-ray
renders depending on the quality
settings well change the high settings
from progressive to buckets with buckets
you can really see how the other
machines on your swarm are helping
render it's also just a little faster to
render buckets when using swarm over
progressive close out of this window
click on the current view and select
render for your view next click on
quality and select high for the
resolution let's use the crop region set
at 96 dpi go ahead turn on artificial
lights and the rendering is now ready to
go now click on the render button here
to enable swarm as it will be disabled
at first now I'll click on render with
v-ray icon to start this rendering now
you won't be able to see the other
machines jumping in to help this render
until v-ray gets to rendering some
buckets so will elapsed a little time
here when the render is finished with
passes like the light cache which
calculates global illumination we can
see the buckets up here and see that
this local machine is working on the
image and you can see that the
computer's name is actually in the
bucket in the v-ray rendering progress
dialog click on the distributed
rendering arrow to expand it and a bar
that shows how many machines are being
used if
you slide the goal slider to the right
you will be adding more machines to this
render you can see a slew of new buckets
appear on the image that are being
processed by the other swarm machines
sliding the slider to use a higher
percentage of the available render notes
will kick more nodes on to the render as
you need let's go back to the web
browser by just clicking the launch vray
swarm icon here in the rendering
progress dialog this will connect to a
random node that is currently rendering
and you can take a look at whatever
information you need to know such as the
log where you can see detailed
information on the active render or even
the resources for that node now I can
disable a node to take it out of the
available machine pool at any time and
it removes that machine from the render
and if I reenable it it will be placed
back into the rendering pool so you can
dynamically add or remove nodes in a
swarm render as needed and it'll just
work and here we can see the image being
finished up with a distributed rendering
using v-ray swarm saving me a lot of
time over rendering just on one machine
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