Deadline 10.3 / 3ds Max 2020.2 / Redshift v3.5.17 - TyFlow VM licenses?

[cjwidd]

We have a workstation in TX ith a TyFlow Pro license that has rendered some simulations and exported a TyCache (splines) for rendering an image sequence.

We have a server and 6 VMs (3 machines, 2 GPU ea.) in CA with Deadline installed to process render jobs from the TX machine, and others. 

Does a Pro license of TyFlow need to be installed on all worker VMs (i.e. 6 VMs, 6 TyFlow Pro licenses) for TyFlow objects (e.g. TySplineMesher) to render correctly with Redshift over Deadline? Would it be possible to achieve a correct render result with TyFlow Beta installed on the worker VMs, since they are only processing jobs, not actually exporting particles / splines, etc.?

Also, does the solution to that configuration differ from a actually calculating simulations, e.g. exporting 200 frames of TyCollection, etc.

[tyFlow]

PRO is not required for rendering or reading caches.

If you install regular tyFlow on those machines, with tyFlow_RENDER in the same folder, you'll be all set.

https://docs.tyflow.com/license/render/

[cjwidd]

PRO is not required for rendering or reading caches.

If you install regular tyFlow on those machines, with tyFlow_RENDER in the same folder, you'll be all set.

https://docs.tyflow.com/license/render/

Ok, so TyFlow Render is intended to render caches but not create them, basically; and TyFlowRender is agnostic with respect to whether the cache is rendered with GPU or CPU, correct?

So, if we wanted those workers (VMs) to assist in caching a large simulation on the GPU, we would need TyFlow Pro installed to those devices?

I apologize for my ignorance, I have not used TyFlow in a networked environment before.

[tyFlow]

Any machine exporting a tyCache needs a PRO license, yes. Whether it's a node-locked license on the machine, or a floating seat it picks up during Deadline export.

In the case of floating licenses, with the latest version of tyFlow you can configure render farm machines to forgo licenses during normal rendering so that they don't hog license seats (and defer to tyFlow_RENDER for full multithreading), while also picking up seats when a tyCache export job is detected.

[cjwidd]

That's pretty wild - a kind of flexible "hybrid" license, that's a very thoughtful implementation.

However, it sounds like if we want to fully leverage every GPU on our cluster, and because we have the hardware config split into 6 VMs, we would need 6 licenses for GPU-accelerated sim work.

Since we are basically splitting GPUs into VMs, we could reformat to 3 machines, 2 cards each, and only require 3 licenses - something to think about, I guess.