Messages

61

Hardware / Re: render node setups

« on: 2016-11-11, 18:20:37 »

Personal opinion only - I find dual Xeons best for nodes. Not sure of your location, so pricing may vary - lots of threads on cost-effective dual Xeon builds, worth checking! I didn't want to build one, and found that 2x E5-2690 v0 seemed to be a good spot on price / performance curve, around $1,400 for 1m 37s or so on the Benchmark, with price climbing faster than performance gain after that. But as I say, personal opinion only :)

Thanks for the response. I'll search through the xeon threads n see what i can find for best pricing and power. I was browsing the benchmark table earlier, this machine does it at about 3:50 so it would be good to shave time off that with the nodes power. around 1:30 seemed pretty good.

Just wasnt sure if 3 or 4 i7s might result in a faster render over say 1 or 2 machines using xeon when using DR. If that even is a logical way of thinking about it.

62

Hardware / render node setups

« on: 2016-11-11, 17:00:39 »

We are looking at getting a collection of nodes for the office to speed up project render times rather than relying on paying for services like Rebus every time our machines cant get it done fast enough.

what would be the most cost effective setup to boost our office render times with corona DR and possibly a later setup of Backburner to queue projects. dual xeons seem to rapidly increase in price but im not sure which is the best bang for buck at the moment and whether its worth going rack or just smaller form tower cases.

or with the price of xeons can multiple i7s sometimes better help via DR when they arent the main workstation?

63

General CG Discussion / Re: surface scattering and axis

« on: 2016-10-12, 15:44:49 »

CoronaScatter does that. Why do you need to look somewhere else? ;]

I knew there would be something I had XD i always forget about Corona scatter. The script I found scattered by vertices which was quite handy, not sure if corona scatter does that but i'll try CS if anything goes wrong with what I currently have now.

64

General CG Discussion / Re: surface scattering and axis

« on: 2016-10-12, 14:37:56 »

maybe there is a simpler way but I found a script called fastput which did what I needed.

65

General CG Discussion / surface scattering and axis

« on: 2016-10-12, 13:41:28 »

Anyone know an easy way to scatter objects over a surface while retaining their local axis?

Feel like there should be a really easy way that i'm just forgetting about or not seeing.

I want to scatter some cubes over the surface of a dome but not have them become one object through scatter tools like 3ds max default scatter compound. I need them all as separate objects that keep their local axis pivots. so effectively its a dome of cubes with all the Z's facing the center of the dome.

66

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-28, 14:53:02 »

Hi. The MBE modifier doesn't work with instances, and if I understood your writing correct, the MBE modifier "breaks" the RC instances into unique objects. Therefore the Corona multi map set to "instances" won't work, since it needs instances in this mode.

If RC instances doesn't work with the Corona multi map directly, then maybe you could convert the RC object into intanciated polys/meshes - then the Corona multi map will work in instance mode.

Hope it helps

sorry i didnt type that very well. I took off the MBE to try RC with instance multi map and it didnt work but changing it to IDs and using MBE did work, but it only works because it breaks the instancing. i cant seem to get instancing and multi maps to work together.

with what Romullus said earlier and the link that Maru posted, it seems itoo only supports VRay with this magic at the moment. Which is a massive pain for me because of how unstable my machines are being :(

now im just wondering how to collapse it all to be best optimised for Corona to render it without overloading it like i already am.

its a largish site of houses but only for the aerial will everything be seen. so i wonder what the best way to render the smaller shots is? i obviously want everything around to be in window reflections etc but not everything is seen. do i need to start hiding as much as i can?

67

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-28, 14:30:48 »

Hi. I don't use RC, but I was wondering if you have tried using a Corona multi map set to instances?

This would give you the variation + the "instance" speed (if it works with RC).

Regards

I did try setting it to instance but it didn't seem to do anything. I am using corona multi map in the material but it required the MBE modifier to work with the RC object.

68

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-28, 14:21:35 »

so because RC doesnt support the random material in Corona would it be better to collapse the tiles into editable polys and attach them together per roof as such. would that be faster than it rendering each tile as unique? or at this point does it make no difference if they are attached in groups or not?

we need the variation but also need speed and stability

69

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-28, 13:19:23 »

ok, so it seems RC decides not to instance it in the first case, that is the cause of the problem

without materialbyelement the unique dropped and instanced stayed up, which means it is correctly instancing? but my problem is, without that materialbyelement im not getting randomised maps to add variation.

so if i remove the materialbyelement then i should get faster parsing times because it will be working correctly but without that modifier i lose my variation. fix one problem, end up with a different problem :D

70

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-28, 12:18:26 »

I dont know details how RC works, but you can determine it from the number of unique/instanced primitives - unique should be fairly low and isntanced high, if both are +- same, then there is no instancing going on

a quick test with material by element on gives me 545k unique and instanced. remove the modifier and the unique drops down. but when i add the material node to my segments and tell it to randomise my IDs like the modifier was doing, nothing gets randomised. they all use the same material maps. this is where i think i got stuck last time.

maybe im using RC wrong? anyone else use multiple IDs and RC with Corona?

71

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-28, 11:47:37 »

randomizing UVW mapping in RC does not work with Corona. It is also possible to disable instancing in RC, maybe that is the issue?

Instancing engine is turned on but on top of the RC there is a material by element. Does this stop the instancing? I'm pretty sure I can just use a random element within the RC editor rather than the max modifier but this is where i believe i ran into problems with Corona a long time ago, which might be why theres a material by element modifier instead of the RC material node.

maybe im talking nonsense and i can just use the material node to get random IDs without the modifier?

72

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-28, 09:40:32 »

I've had this happen before to some of my scenes too; I solved it by merging my scene into a fresh new file.

Since you are using xref's this might not apply, but might worth a try.

Also I would try a few things:

1. binding your xref's  into your scene and see how that works out (obviously not a solution, but could potentially help you figure out the problem.).
2. remove your xref's one by one and try to render to see if that changes anything.

i'll try the xrefs one by one n see if i can pinpoint a culprit thats slowing down the scene.

I realised there is also railclone objects within the xrefs, does railclone have any issues with corona? i think i remember a while ago there was a particular material feature that didnt work because of the way corona and RC worked together, i dont remember the specific problem but it was to do with using multiple material IDs within the RC object and corona rendering the geometry differently.

73

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-27, 19:07:05 »

corona 1.4

and its mostly "not responding" errors on max and render window during parsing times. just trying to find a way to optimise this part. can be frustrating when trying to check stuff if i cant even get a low res render off quickly.

74

[Max] I need help! / Re: long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-27, 14:43:42 »

if my RAM is only 50% used and my cpu is going from 40-90% ish during the process of parsing. is the bottleneck because its loading files from a network drive?

75

[Max] I need help! / long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-27, 12:25:11 »

I did a search for 'long parsing times' the corona forum gave me 1 topic and it was said to be solved with more RAM. im running 32gb DDR4 but its only using 16gb at the moment and my parsing times are taking about 10 minutes. problem is they are really unstable and can cause crashes or moments of not responding where it sometimes recovers.

the scene is using forest pack and xrefs for housing types. is there much i can do to optimise this?