Topics

1

[Max] Bug Reporting / Suggestion for noise evaluation to prevent premature renders

« on: 2018-08-29, 20:39:57 »

Hey guys,

I run Corona on our farm and some times it happens that a client uses just noise limit to stop a frame and we get some frames finishing faster than
they should be.

I've discussed with Thomas M. Grimes a few days ago at D2 in Vienna about this issue and he mentioned that he was able to reproduce and that's a known bug
which has not been addressed so far.

My suggestion is that instead of sampling every X passes (5 is default) is that you sample every pass for noise limit, and every X passes you do an average
of noise collected from the sampled data. In this way if there's a big difference between sample 4 and 5, it can be filtered out by doing math on curves, so it should give less false
stopping signals.

Not sure what is the cost of sampling every pass, but at least it will not stop frames unexpectedly and people can rely on using noise level in their animations
or still renders.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks!

Alex

2

[Max] Bug Reporting / Area to render set on Region crashes single frame distributed slaves

« on: 2017-11-29, 20:04:13 »

Hi,

I had a client today which has his 3ds max scene set on region and the slave nodes were constantly crashing 3ds max. In the corona logs I was receiving message about the region being received.

After setting area to render on view the single frame distributed worked fine with the slave nodes.

Alex

3

[Max] General Discussion / CGIFarm Render Farm - 3DS Max Automated Workflow - Plugin Updated to 1.0.0.0

« on: 2017-06-24, 21:17:22 »

Hello Everyone, Alex here from CGIFarm, I want to make this topic the official one for discussing about our renderfarm platform if you guys would agree with that as well.

Quick Features Breakdown:

• 3DS Max Plugin for Package Submissions (It's also useful to share the projects with your team mates, we have a cool ZIP feature which will gather all the assets)
• Quick Fix buttons on the plugin, to solve various warning and errors on your scene (saves the time from searching different parameters on your render settings)
• Web Dashboard - Gives the ability to create multiple jobs from the same uploaded package (It's a time saver when you have multiple cameras set on your 3ds max scene)
• Corona CXR and Denoise (It's default supported on the corona plugin, but I though mentioning, sience some farms are still not supporting these)
• Advanced Price Estimator (Has a cool feature which allows adding multiple scenes and gives the ability to add multiple frame times when calculating)

I have put together a few videos that will help you make an idea about how to get started and learn about who we are:

1. CGIFarm video intro:

2. Getting Started Video:

3. Create an account and get $20 worth of credits free.
https://www.cgifarm.com/customer/account/create/

4. Software download page
https://www.cgifarm.com/renderfarm-software-download

5. Cost Calculator Page:
https://www.cgifarm.com/renderfarm-cost-calculator

Contact options:

1. Reply to this topic if you already read this.
2. Use the Contact Us button on the website to open a support ticket
3. Use the chatbox on the website to leave a message or get in touch with me if I am online
4. Via Skype: CGIFarm

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to ask, we don't charge anything for answers :)

Good luck with your projects!

4

[Max] Resolved Bugs / [feedback] Failed DR nodes with low ram would make the workstation unresponsive

« on: 2017-03-25, 12:02:57 »

Hello everyone, Alexandru from CGIFarm here,

I want to share my experience rendering high Ram usage scenes.

If you have mixed ram configuration on your farm, some of the nodes might get into trouble parsing the scene and become unresponsive.
That's not a big issue if you still have some nodes that picked up the scene and it's processing, the problem is that the workstation become
unresponsive too and you cannot stop the render and it won't stop automatically anymore.

I solved this problem by making a group only with the high ram configured nodes, but you don't know how much ram the scene is going to use
until you actually submit it, so it would be great if the nodes could be removed from the DR if they become unresponsive and leave the others continue the work.

Thanks for your time!
Good luck!

5

[Max] General Discussion / What checks would you do for corona before rendering?

« on: 2017-03-25, 11:56:40 »

Hello Everyone, Alexandru from CGIFarm here,

We are curently working on our 3ds max plugin to integrate with our renderfarm API and I would be interested to hear
from experienced corona users what kind of things they check for before submitting the scene for render, I will share the list I have so far:

1. Check that I have same corona version and DR Server on workstation and render nodes.
2. Check if the LUT is custom and if it's on every node, if not, I place the LUT file on a shared folder so all nodes can access it.
3. Check if GI files exist when it's set to load from file
4. If the scene is set to render a sequence will see if UHD cache is iset to Animation to avoid flickering.

These are checks I do specific to corona, I am not listing all scene related checks (has animation, assets path, materials etc..)

We are implementing the checks and the fixes into our plugin and would be great to hear what's in the back of your mind before rendering a scene.


Happy rendering guys and let me know if you need help rendering any Corona scenes. We're still under development but we support manual submission,
I know it sounds booring, but the advantage of manual submission is that I can save those CEXR files.. :) ..

Good luck and thanks for your time to checkout this topic!

6

[Max] General Discussion / CGIFarm Render Farm - Supports daily builds

« on: 2017-03-18, 15:29:40 »

Hello everyone, my name is Alexandru, I am representing CGIFarm.com and I want to announce the support of corona render.

Our webplatform is currently under development but the jobs can be processed and submitted manually without any problems,
you just provide a link with your zipped package and the details about the frame range and camera name and we handle the rest.

The advantage of manual submission is that you can prepare your scene to use the batch render inside 3ds max and we will spawn
all the cameras, range and resolution to our nodes.

Distributed render is also available.

We have setup a cluster that have the daily build installed and it's ready for use.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reply to this post or contact me directly on skype with the id CGIFarm .

We plan on releasing our webplatform in a few months from now, having your support early on by providing jobs to render will help
us speed the development a bit. Features such as live preview of the frame buffer are to be expected in the near future.

We're open to suggestions if you have any features you would like to see in our brand new service.

I wish you the best!

Happy rendering!

7

[Max] General Discussion / Update2 - 20 Spots for alpha testers available on CGIFarm.com

« on: 2017-03-13, 13:07:54 »

Hello Everyone,
My name is Alexandru, I own a renderfarm in Romania called CGIFarm. We released our first version of the 3ds max plugin and made available
the new dashboard to all users. I have made a video explaining what it takes to get into our program here:
http://cgifarm.org/cgifarm-alpha-testers-corona-forum/

We are licensed for corona and installed the latest version 1.6 for 3ds max and also alpha 6 for cinema4d.
Our renderfarm is fully operational and I look forward in getting in touch with you guys.

We also provide support for other software and plugins, but from respect to corona community I won't be listing that here.

https://www.cgifarm.com is our website.
I encourage to checkout our brand new cost calculator here :
https://www.cgifarm.com/renderfarm-cost-calculator , it has support for multiple scenes
and I believe you will find it very useful.

All the best from CGIFarm!

Alex

skype:CGIFARM