Estimate time remaining for bucket mode?

[cecofuli]

Hi Ondra,
is it possible to add the "Estimate time remaining" info for the current pass with bucket mode?
It will be useful to know, more or less, how the current pass will be finish.
also, it's very difficult to understand where is the bucket after the second pass.
And, why not add the possibility to move the bucket under the mouse, like in VRay?

BTW, I found Bucket mode more efficient with DOF. I'll post my test tomorrow!



Thanks

F

[cecofuli]

Or, as we talked, put the bucket progressivity into progressive rendering ;-)

[Ludvik Koutny]

Or, as we talked, put the bucket progressivity into progressive rendering ;-)

It was that way before and it totally ruined the usability of bucket rendering;

[cecofuli]

In the progessive, the flat area are very clean, but the complex part are very grain an noisy (glossy, DOF, Mblur). With bucket, I had more noise, but it's uniform. This is why I prefer Bucket. But, with bucket, is very difficult to know the times we need for complete  for example, a 2K or 3K render.
With progressive, I can set 3 hours for every shot. And, in one night (9 hours), I can obtain 3 renders. This flexibility is great! But with bucket, now, isn't possible.

[Ludvik Koutny]

In the progessive, the flat area are very clean, but the complex part are very grain an noisy (glossy, DOF, Mblur). With bucket, I had more noise, but it's uniform. This is why I prefer Bucket. But, with bucket, is very difficult to know the times we need for complete  for example, a 2K or 3K render.
With progressive, I can set 3 hours for every shot. And, in one night (9 hours), I can obtain 3 renders. This flexibility is great! But with bucket, now, isn't possible.

Well, both methods have their ups and downs, but Keymaster tried to combine it, and it turned out even worse. So simply:

With buckets, you can tweak quality on small region, and when you render final, you are sure your final will be clean, but you will not know precisely how much time will it take.

With progressive, you can set the amount of time you have to finish the rendering, and when you render final, you are sure your final will be rendered in the time you have set, but you will not know precisely how noisy will the result be.

[cecofuli]

Ok Rawalanche, I know this, but, for example, I set always 10 passes, and when I'm satisfied, I turn off the render. But, when I sleep or I'm not in front of the monitor, I cannot.

So, for example, it would be nice to say: "Ok Corona, I have 3 hours for every frame.  I set 10 passes, but, when you reach 3 hours, please, finish your pass (3, 4 or 5, where you are) and start with the next frame."

So, why not add this "simple" and intelligent option =)

[Ludvik Koutny]

Ok Rawalanche, I know this, but, for example, I set always 10 passes, and when I'm satisfied, I turn off the render. But, when I sleep or I'm not in front of the monitor, I cannot.

So, for example, it would be nice to say: "Ok Corona, I have 3 hours for every frame.  I set 10 passes, but, when you reach 3 hours, please, finish your pass (3, 4 or 5, where you are) and start with the next frame."

So, why not add this "simple" and intelligent option =)

Ok, this actually makes sense... good point.

[cecofuli]

Yesss. It's a mix between Progressive and Bucket ;-)

[Ludvik Koutny]

Yesss. It's a mix between Progressive and Bucket ;-)

Nope, it is just a time limit for bucket mode.... i hope. Mix between progressive and buckets was already there, as i mentioned, and it was a really bad solution, that made bucket rendering very counter-intuitive. Removing link between progressive and bucket rendering made bucket rendering actually usable.

I think best solution will be finally introducing adaptivity for progressive mode. So while you got a point, i would not count on this being implemented, as Keymaster probably prefers to finally make progressive rendering adaptive.

[cecofuli]

When I wrote "mix" I means that we could have nice quality (bucket mode with better adaptive sampling) and, in the same time, the  "time limit", like Progressive.  =)
Not a REAL mix between bucket and progressive.

[Ondra]

The bucket mode changed since than and now it is not possible to estimate remaining time so easily because it also works kinda progressively

[Captain Obvious]

Estimating the current bucket pass based on samples/second and the number of pixels which are refined further should be pretty simple. If a frame is 2 megapixel and it's rendering (for example) 3000 pixels per second, and roughly 25 % of the pixels looked at so far in this pass need additional sampling, you can guess that the pass will take about 2 minutes 50 seconds. Seems like it'd be simple enough. Though I can see how it would be difficult (impossible?) to estimate how long all passes would take. Perhaps by looking at the fraction of the pixels which are refined changes from pass to pass? But that would probably only turn useful after about 10 passes, which would take a long time...

Render bucket passes for a set time and then finish the current one seems like a very useful feature. It wouldn't be a guarantee that it's finished after a certain amount of time, but it would probably work well enough for most cases.