I’ve just applied Swarm Multiple Machine Rendering to my workflow to decrease lightmap baking time. I set up the rendering network to work. With the same scene that I’m working.
Test #1 :
Scene Stats: 700 meshes; 6,000,000 tris
Build Time just for my main working computer is: 844 seconds
So network rendering is 2,5 times faster. Nice!!! … However,…
Test #2 :
Scene Stats: 67 meshes; 325,000 tris.
Build Time just for my main working computer is: 1202 seconds
Build Time using multiple Machine is: 1212 seconds
There was no difference at all!!!
Here are the Rendering Distribution:
As you can see, the first 2 PCs stop rendering really fast. Then they let the other computer to compute the rest.
Looks like this network rendering works better for complicated scene. Is there any way to make all there computer render through the end or at least to choose my main working computer (VU-PC) to be the one which render last, since it has more cores than the others.
I’m just guessing here but the test #2 has probably a couple of huge light maps in it that need most of the time. If you have a large mesh for an entire building for example almost everything in the scene needs to be considered for this one mesh. And this can’t be spread over multiple computers. But I might be wrong.
That’s my guess too. I recently made a small test scene with 30 objects, similar lightmap for each mesh and with a 2nd computer, the build took approx 50% less time to complete. With 1 pc, it took 45 mins and with 2 pc it took 25 mins.
Unfortunately core distribution method is not beneficial. Every core has one job and another cores are waiting one core’s job. They don’t help each other. This is Unreal’s light building method.