Corona DR and admin privilegies

[olejka2k]

Hello
I wanted to ask if there is possibility to change folder , where DRserver.exe stores all it's files logs and retained EXR's
Thing is that now it stores them in Program Files , and that can be issues not only for us but for some companies as well , because thus it requires administrator privileges to run. But being able to change it - i can point it to use a LAN resource for example for fast monitoring the process and issues resolve.

And actually one more thing, it would be really nice to have a separate CFG or INI file for distributed rendering slaves list , to sit somewhere , or with ability to point where it should be. It may be needed when you want to make a separate server with fixed distributed slaves being associated with it. Do not want to compare with VRay , but it is done like that there and it is really convinient , also changing this CFG files gives ability to remove / add distributed slaves on the fly , which gives quite of possibilities for render farm management.

Also i've run to a quite weird thing - distributed rendering process is going well , one slave is connected and rendering fine with constant updates , though it is missing from DR list in Corona viewport. When i stop render on master machine - it updates and showing connection and amount of passes. Any reason for that ?

UP : found out solution and reason for the last one - it is because of the Lock 3Dsmax during rendering option turned on. If it is turned off - slave list is being updated , but at some point 3dsmax starts to be completely unresponsible and i cannot see framebuffer at all - it is white. Though rendering process is going - i can see that by autosaves it does. Of course in both cases Corona VFB is turned on.

Also would be really nice to have 3 more features for bucket rendering
First one is to have a frame on currently rendering bucket , to see where process is now , as when you have 2 or more passes - it is almost impossible to track where buckets are now.
The second is to have possibility to point with mouse where next bucket should be - really good to have this feature.
And the third is possibility to adjust size of the buckets , that is quite handy when you need to check small details fast , instead of rendering are around you point with mouse exactly on those details.

Thanks !

Regards

[maru]

I wanted to ask if there is possibility to change folder , where DRserver.exe stores all it's files logs and retained EXR's

I don't know if it's possible. Checked registry and config files but did not find that folder anywhere. Ondra would have to take a look here. I will notify him.

Thing is that now it stores them in Program Files , and that can be issues not only for us but for some companies as well , because thus it requires administrator privileges to run. But being able to change it - i can point it to use a LAN resource for example for fast monitoring the process and issues resolve.

But isn't EXR dump stored in %localappdata% for the user currently using Corona?

And actually one more thing, it would be really nice to have a separate CFG or INI file for distributed rendering slaves list , to sit somewhere , or with ability to point where it should be. It may be needed when you want to make a separate server with fixed distributed slaves being associated with it. Do not want to compare with VRay , but it is done like that there and it is really convinient , also changing this CFG files gives ability to remove / add distributed slaves on the fly , which gives quite of possibilities for render farm management.

You can use "from file" option for this, but it will not update dynamically, which I understand is your request.

Also i've run to a quite weird thing - distributed rendering process is going well , one slave is connected and rendering fine with constant updates , though it is missing from DR list in Corona viewport. When i stop render on master machine - it updates and showing connection and amount of passes. Any reason for that ?

UP : found out solution and reason for the last one - it is because of the Lock 3Dsmax during rendering option turned on. If it is turned off - slave list is being updated , but at some point 3dsmax starts to be completely unresponsible and i cannot see framebuffer at all - it is white. Though rendering process is going - i can see that by autosaves it does. Of course in both cases Corona VFB is turned on.

This sounds like a bug. I will log this on Mantis.

Also would be really nice to have 3 more features for bucket rendering
First one is to have a frame on currently rendering bucket , to see where process is now , as when you have 2 or more passes - it is almost impossible to track where buckets are now.
The second is to have possibility to point with mouse where next bucket should be - really good to have this feature.
And the third is possibility to adjust size of the buckets , that is quite handy when you need to check small details fast , instead of rendering are around you point with mouse exactly on those details.

All of these are already reported, pretty obvious, and definitely planned. :)

update: the place where DrServer stores logs in picked during installation process as it is inside its installation location

[olejka2k]

About distributed CFG file - yeah i've seen that you can take those from file , but it is not by default - you should use that in every scene. Default vaule will be nice to have here , in local appdata for example , with possibility to change that somehow.

Thanks for the answers !

[Ondra]

DR server will run from any location - I suggest simply copying it to wherever, or changing access rights to the drdata folder as  a workaround.

The "list is not updating when lock 3dsmax is on" bug is already fixed in daily builds ;)

[olejka2k]

That's cool , though we do not risk to use daily builds in production , only stable ones , so we'll wait for next release.
What about CFG file , any thoughts on that ?

[Ondra]

AFAIK it is logged in mantis and we will visit it sometimes in the future

[olejka2k]

Well hopefully that will be done sooner than later :)
Also i wanted to ask maybe you can give a hint on how to make VFB more responsive ? For example i was rendering an image and i wanted to "save all" before it finished , it took me about 2 minutes to press and hold Save button to get to "Save All" and another 2-3 minutes to save dialog to appear , and couple more minutes to actually save the EXR.
Lock 3dsmax is checked on , that helps a bit , with it being turned off as i said VFB starts to be completely hanged at some time.

[maru]

If you are rendering that hi-res image, I think it might be because you have "low thread priority" unchecked. Not sure, though. I think it's worth trying. You also have vfb update interval set to 500ms while the default value is 1000. I would suggest even increasing it. to 5 or 10 seconds if you are experiencing performance problems. I will later pack all of the notes and send to you over helpdesk as before.