Network architecture

Iray Bridge is designed to use a client-server architecture. On the client side is an application with Iray integrated, for instance a CAD tool. The client can render locally as normal but can at any time switch to an Iray Bridge render context, which will automatically connect to the configured Iray Bridge server and use the resources of the server to render the scene. Any required data upload and download of rendered images will automatically be taken care of by Iray Bridge.

The server runs the Iray Bridge application and can be a single host or part of a cluster. Use cases range from connecting to the work station at the office when working remotely, a company owned cluster in a remote location, or to a virtual cluster rented by the hour. The Iray Bridge client only connects to a single server that needs to run the Iray Bridge application. The client will automatically get all the resources of any cluster that the Iray Bridge server is a part of. Note that the other hosts form an Iray cluster with the Iray Bridge server and these hosts doesn't need to run the Iray Bridge application. Also note that the Iray Bridge client doesn't form a cluster with the remote server, and also that the Iray Bridge client never participates in rendering when an Iray Bridge render mode is used.

The Iray Bridge client and Iray Bridge server use standard web sockets to communicate which gives the same performance as plain TCP but is accepted by many firewalls, making connections through corporate networks easier. The Iray Bridge application running on the server will listen on a web socket URL such as ws://some.host.com/my_bridge_application where some.host.com is the host name of the server and my_bridge_application is the name of the Iray Bridge application running on the server.

The Iray Bridge server can service multiple clients at the same time. The performance considerations are the same as starting multiple renderings on a local Iray host without using Iray Bridge.