System Requirements

• A computer with 3ds Max (Design) 6/7/8/9/2008/2009 or Autodesk VIZ 2005/2006/2007/2008, 32- or 64-bit versions.

• Windows XP or Windows Vista, Windows 7, 32- or 64-bit versions (64-bit is recommended);

• Intel Penium IV or compatible processor with SSE2 support (dual Pentium IV or AMD Opteron or later recommended);

• 128 MB RAM and 350 MB swap minimum - recommended 4 GB or more RAM, 4 GB or more swap file.

Running the Installation

Double-click on the installation file and follow the instructions. Note that the 64-bit installation of V-Ray will run only under a 64-bit operating system. The 32-bit installation will run under both 32- and 64-bit OSes. During the installation process, you will be prompted to set up the root directory for 3ds Max. This is a directory which will be used for installing the V-Ray plugin files, as well as any additional files required by V-Ray.

Refer to the Licensing System section for information on how to set up your license once the installation is complete.

Please check the Installation PDF Guide for detailed installation instructions and troubleshooting.

Installing Distributed Rendering

You don't need to set up the render client, since it automatically takes part in the DR. For the render servers, follow the steps below. For more detailed instructions and trouble-shooting, please check the Installation PDF Guide.

1. If you have created a fresh install of 3ds Max on some of the machines that you want to use as DR servers, you will need run at least one Backburner job with these machines as a server, before you can use them for distributed rendering with V-Ray.

2. Install V-Ray on all the render servers you want to use for DR.

3. While render slaves do not require a separate license in order to render, you must tell V-Ray where to look for the V-Ray license server. You can do this either from the 3ds Max interface, or with the small external programsetvrlserviceXX.exe, which can be accessed from the Start menu (Start menu > Programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for 3dsmax > Licensing > Administration > Change V-Ray client license settings). See the Licensing section for more information on how to set up the license for render slaves.

4. If you are using Autodesk VIZ for rendering, you need to create a file vrayspawner.ini in the root folder of Viz on each render server and add the following text in it:

[Directories]
AppName=<path to the 3dsviz.exe file>

Replace the text in brackets <> with the full path to the file 3dsviz.exe, for example C:\Program files\Autodesk\Viz2006\3dsviz.exe

5. On each render server, start the file vrayspawnerXX.exe (where XX is 60). The V-Ray installer creates a shortcut to this file in the Start menu (Start menu > Programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for 3dsmax > Distributed rendering > Launch V-Ray DR spawner.

That concludes the installation of V-Ray DR on the render slaves. You don't need to start the vrayspawnerXX.exe file on the client machine, since it automatically takes part in the distributed rendering.

See the Distributed Rendering section for more information.