Realflow 2.5 Team Render

[STownsend 1]

Does anyone know what I need to do to get the RealFlow plugin working on Team Render?

 

I've installed it in the Team Render Client directory for each of the render nodes but it's not rendering the mesh. Is this a cache file problem?

 

Is there a way to bake out the RealFlow mesh to geometry for every frame?

 

Thanks

Steve

[STownsend 1]

I appear to have got this working now.

I noticed in the Scene Cache settings it tells you where it's putting the cache files. It was particularly useful that is shows the locations for both Mac (that I'm working on) and PC (that I'm rendering to).

 

So for me I copied the cache files on the my Mac to the c:\tmp folder (that I had to create) on each of the Render Nodes. 

[STownsend 1]

I seem to be having a lot of problem getting scenes to render without crashing still. It only seems to be certain frames and varies dependant on my cache simulation so it would still be handy if anyone knows how to bake out the mesh to geometry?

[ZChristian 17]

This (rendering RFC4D between Mac and PC) is something that I would like to do soon. In Principle you need a folder that can be seen by all TeamRender Instances. The meshes are already baked as such, but only the alembic format is used for the cache. Maybe I find time over the weekend to try this with RFC4D2.5 and C4DR19 here. 

 

[ZChristian 17]

Ok, I am now at this stage: I have installed Cinema4D on an older MacPro as my main workstation and I have a new PC with Windows10 that runs the team render client. Client is started and connected to the Mac via local network. Most importantly: standard Cinema4D scenes without use of any plugins run well as team render job. 

Now, I have simulated and cached particles and meshes on the Mac and saved the files together with the scene file in a dropbox folder. 

When rendering on the Mac only, everything is loaded and rendered, scene and meshes. 

PC MAXON folder has the RFC4D plugin installed (shown in the console at startup and appears in the preferences of the client).

I have instructed the team render client in the preferences to use the dropbox folder on the pc side for cached files. Cache files are present. 

Then I start "team render to picture viewer" on the mac. Pictures are produced, but... I get only the other elements of the scene from the client on the PC, without the meshes. 

 

[ZChristian 17]

Ah, progress! Now I have opened the C4D scene on the PC side with R19 with the RFC4D plugin. At first, the cache was not played. Then I entered again the path (which was in principle already correct) to point to the cache files on the PC dropbox folder, then the cached meshes appeared, saved the scene on the PC side. Then I went back to the Mac and opened the scene and render to team render.... and voila, now it renders the meshes on both sides. A mystery? No crashes by the way. 

 

[STownsend 1]

10 hours ago, ZChristian said:

Ah, progress! Now I have opened the C4D scene on the PC side with R19 with the RFC4D plugin. At first, the cache was not played. Then I entered again the path (which was in principle already correct) to point to the cache files on the PC dropbox folder, then the cached meshes appeared, saved the scene on the PC side. Then I went back to the Mac and opened the scene and render to team render.... and voila, now it renders the meshes on both sides. A mystery? No crashes by the way. 

 

I've discovered my crashes are being caused when using the vertex maps. I ticked the 'speed' map so I could have different refraction colours for different areas of the mesh, which looked great as a still but would crash on random frames through picture viewer/render queue on both the Mac and PCs.

 

Hard to know if this would still occur if the meshes were made editable without somehow baking every frame, so it would still be useful if someone know's how to do that?