OTOY Forums

Hi all.

Just wanted to try to get some momentum behind the Resume Render thing.

Case in point...I have a render that could really use 10-12 days of render time. At about 6 days, my system needed to be rebooted for another reason. So I started a second render which had to be stopped at 70 hours for system maintenance. Am now restarting for third try. I know that you can combine images in Photoshop, but that is a biased kludge. And combining renders of vastly different render times is unpredictable. So I can combine a 150 hr render with a 70 hour render with reduced quality, and who knows how long I will be able to keep the third rendering going before it needs to be stopped for one reason or another. This is also a pain to have to keep thinking in terms of trying to match save times for each new render and how best to composite them later.

So, please vote for Resume Render. The future sanity of the human race depends on it! (OK...So that's an exaggeration...But even if one person loses their sanity that is one too many. ))

yes this would be nice. I have it in Maxwell render and its very handy to stop and resume files.

Considering your non-amateur rendering needs, you should sell your current graphic cards and buy a 590 or two. This will reduce your render times to a day instead a week.

It will be much much faster, than waiting for this feature to be implemented, which could take years or not happen at all...

Good luck getting feedback from the people in charge.

I was definitely looking at a 580 but with economic downturn had to settle on a single 560. But even then, a 580 will only increase the render time over the 560 by roughly 1.5x, so twin 580s about 3x. So a render time on a 560 of 16 days equates to roughly 5 days with twin 580s. That is still asking for trouble if your system goes down for any reason.

I checked out the 590, but it is really two 580s onboard with one major restriction...you can't get 3Gb of memory for each core like you can for a single 580. My short-term goal is to have three 580s on the motherboard with a cheap 260 or so dedicated to Windows. Of course, having a side box with even more would be totally cool. But the cost of running three 580s with a 260 means the additional extra cost of a new motherboard and 1500W power supply. Plus, Octane still needs some RAM overhead of about 4-5 Gb for a hi-poly mesh .ocx, so even now, I really need more RAM. For now and my business, none of that is an option.

So for me, I'm back to square one...Resume Render is REALLY important. It is also a feature provided by Maxwell Render and I believe by at least one GPU renderer out there, so it's not like it isn't considered really important by RS's competitors. It also gives the flexibility of playing with the light sources even after the render is finished. THAT is a MAJOR plus when dealing with clients who want to tweak an image after you have already finished it. Back when I used to do old school illustration (acrylics, airbrush, etc.) that was always the worst scenario. They had to pay you for any changes or redos, but I don't know of anyone who likes redoing anything even when you get paid good money for it.

Resume Render is definitely a cool option!!!

BUT: Excuse me, what are you rendering that takes 10-12 days?
Did i get it right, it´s ONE single image and not an animation?

No animation, just some really complex scenes. Everybody has something in their workflow that they just absolutely hate. For me, it is having to worry about creating both low and high poly meshes for some setup. If I have tons of modeled detail, that can add up to a ton of duplicated parts where I would use hi poly for closeups and low poly for far away stuff. The problem is that I cannot create cages for my models since I work in a solid modeler. So whatever amount of polys I get when I convert to mesh is what I get and no more or less. It really gets to be a hassle if parts have UV maps that were detailed in a program like BodyPaint or 3DCoat. Since those require regeneration of new UV maps for low and high poly meshes. Dropping the resolution AFTER the mesh has already been made always results in problems in the mesh that are a pain to look for and fix. I might not see them until render time when it is too late.

So I really would rather let my model complexity be what it is, so that I can choose any view I want, and focus on any part at any distance without having to worry about exchanging a low poly part with a high poly one. And since I use rounds a LOT, I can't have, say, a cube with six sides and a total of 12 triangles without realizing that the twelve rounded edges of the cube will have a lot more polys in them to do them justice. I'm a ridiculous idealistic purist, looking for the Holy Grail renderer that will give me what I want in the least amount of time for the least amount of hassle. GPU is the only way. By comparison, a non-client Maxwell Render scene that I did some years ago took about 90 days to completely clear up the noise (dual core 2.3 GHz). In Octane on a 560, it would take about 12 days at twice the resolution. That is perfect for large format printing where you can stick your nose right up to it and even in the finest detail areas, not see any tesselation.

I think that this feature will come when Otoy will add distribute render feature (collaborative render)

the PT kernel paints the framebuffer with a "pixels spray can" then the render can be mixed or resumed.

I think that this feature will come when Otoy will add distribute render feature (collaborative render)

the PT kernel paints the framebuffer with a "pixels spray can" then the render can be mixed or resumed.

gabrielefx > Do you have a link where I can check that out? I am very interested in understanding how they would do it.

I really would like to see a image you did with such a long time.
If the scene is just too complex it wont fit into the GPU memory. Maybe your materials are also just to complicated so the eat up all the compute power.

Heheh...Both! As much as I want to have hi poly this and that, I am sometimes forced to relent and exchange low poly substitutes. Gawd I hate that!

Here are two renders that were maxing out my 2Gb memory on my 560. These are from my revisionist, Lost In Space, Jupiter-2 project. The airlock closeup (about 4.5 days) not as bad as the overall shot (8 days), but the airlock shot had numerous decal textures applied. The overall shot had no decal textures and it would have been a real challenge to get them into the memory space. For the way I like to work, I really need a MINIMUM of 3Gb. 580s would allow me to do that.

I still had to do a little bit of NeatImage noise removal for both, so I estimated roughly 12-20 days for complete noise removal through rendering alone.

All of those glossy black panels are touchscreen control panels that don't have emitter graphics applied yet. A couple of fire extinguishers are not present yet and there are supposed to be zillions of decals everywhere. So these are unfinished.