New installer feedback

[Ondra]

The latest daily shipped with new installer that features:

•     Faster typical installation
•     Installs required MSVC redistributables and specific windows updates automatically
•     Can be uninstalled from program files
•     Uninstaller more reliably cleans up all files, directories, and registry entries
•     New pictures

Plese let us know if you find any problems or have any other comments about it!

[cecofuli]

Everything is ok, here =)

[romullus]

Me likes it too. I did choose custom installation rather than typical, because i don't need DR and i want standalone, but nonetheless installation went quicker than with older installer. And no installation of additional magic, which somehow annoyed me everytime :]

[Frood]

No more confusion about extracting and/or installing, very unambiguous now. However I would still default the extraction directory to the installers current directory and not to a new directory in the root of C.

[...] or have any other comments about it!

And the owl (German: "Eule") picture at the EULA page... :) Is this just a coincidence? Isn´t it "sova"?

Good Luck

[steyin]

I think it would be better to remove the C++ libraries or have it optional. The 1.4 installer resulted in me having to do the C++ fix for error 126 because the installer screwed up my already current libraries. WU is trickier, should be maybe a disclaimer instead and the installer fails/refuses to run if it detects your stuff isn't up to date. Always make it the user who has to update I feel rather than having the installer do it just in case.

[antanas]

@steyn - well I'm definitely not sure about that - in my case it fixed some crappy\not current\not corona compatible C++ installation which, before that, led to an increased ram consumption during rendering - 18gigs vs 27gigs which was a huge difference for my rendernodes and 3gigs more than they could handle.
 But as things go with windows - one thing fixed could probably lead to some other things broken - so maybe there's is some other solution for Corona to use those needed libraries and instead of using those installed in the system (which can differ a lot from those it expects) it could put the needed ones in some folder or some dll in some folder inside 3dsMax base folder and use only those, well, akin to what portable apps do, yet I'm no programmer and only partially understand what I'm babbling about + that surely need to be done on Corona's dev side, still if that would be possible that could be a good, easily controllable by the devs and quite foolproof solution )) 

[Frood]

led to an increased ram consumption during rendering - 18gigs vs 27gigs

Don´t want to spam this topic but: Interesting!

Is there any more detailed thread about this? Ram consumption is quite an issue here right now. Searched the last 3 pages of your posts but could not find something related to this.

Good Luck

[antanas]

 Well, nothing too specific about it or at least it's quite hard to pinpoint.

 The behavior is such: one day I render a scene with some daily - it chews as in that particular example 18gigs, next day nothing changed in the scene itself except for the new daily is out and installed - bam, ram consumption goes 30% or more percent up as in this example up to 27-28gigs. Sometimes it happens even without installing new corona's daily build but after installation of some other software or even some game which comes with some redistributable C++ package.

 Noticeable symptoms are such: when ram consumption is low (which is presumably the normal behavior) the amount of virtual ram used and shown in render window scene statistics is high - usually 2x and more times higher than the consumed ram and when ram hungriness occurs it can be +- the same and sometimes even lower than ram. As I said before it is quite hard to pinpoint and usually I detect it only when DR nodes suddenly go out of ram on the previously renderable scene, mainly cause my main workstation got 64gigs of it and it's rather hard to fill that up even when that happens ))

 Possible causes : well the only ones I can think of are such - Windows 10 with it's constant updates which changes something which Corona uses, abovementioned differences in installed C++ versions (not totally sure if it applies here but got some bad experiences with different versions of .net in the past so who knows maybe that's relevant for C++ versions too) , some other evil, supernatural crap )

 Good thing is the latest installer versions fixed that for me - maybe due to the "right" C++ version which comes with it or maybe due to those specific windows updates which are mentioned in the changelog too - not sure which helped, but I'm happy with the results and thus support the inclusion of those in the installers - as those can be used as go-back-to-normal solution in the future when that crap happens again.

 Sorry for plaguing the thread but this issue is somewhat related to the installer so I think it is not too inappropriate here.

[Frood]

Thanks for sharing your experience antanas, I have observed similar strangeness lately: 3dsmax process using 4GB less than installed according to detail view in task manager but permanent paging + Corona error window spam.

Never used the installer to actually install since errr... version 1.1.1 I think, but deployed everything by script to all nodes. While excessive ram usage may be possible in dailies because some experimental stuff is doing it´s magic I will definitely try to use the Installer on one slave to compare ram usage/behaviour.

Good Luck

[jjaz82]

Everything went smoothly :)

[Christa Noel]

it would be great if running 3dsmax is detected then the installer wait for user to close 3dsmax.exe and press ok, so installer ready to start doing its job.
imho it is better than keep the installer running and show failed delete/write status.
cheers!

[Ryuu]

However I would still default the extraction directory to the installers current directory and not to a new directory in the root of C.

That makes sense, I will change it for 1.6.

And the owl (German: "Eule") picture at the EULA page... :) Is this just a coincidence? Isn´t it "sova"?

The conspiracy goes even deeper. "Eule" is also the german name for my home town. But all of it is just a coincidence :)

[Ryuu]

And no installation of additional magic, which somehow annoyed me everytime :]

The additional magic (AKA Visual Studio redistributable libraries) is still installed, but now the installer does not brag about it that much :)

Me likes it too. I did choose custom installation rather than typical, because i don't need DR and i want standalone, but nonetheless installation went quicker than with older installer. And no installation of additional magic, which somehow annoyed me everytime :]

For future versions it will probably make sense to add some kind of "just upgrade" option which will update all installed components to the installer's version.

[romullus]

For future versions it will probably make sense to add some kind of "just upgrade" option which will update all installed components to the installer's version.

That would be nice, although installer isn't a program you run everyday, so it doesn't annoy me in its current form :]

[Christa Noel]

How about my opinion ryuu?
Or maybe you didnt understand about my bad english words ? haha :D