Page 1 of 1

Max V-Ray: better to use 1 frame by task

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:22 pm
by Strob
I had a lot of problems with task with multiple frames where some slaves will render the first frame ok and then they were missing cache and texture for the subsequent frames. But since I set my tasks at 1 frame by task, everything slave render fine!

I use 3ds max 2018, V-Ray 3.60.04 and windows 10, 1709

Yes the scene is reloaded at each frame but it loads faster when farm rendering that when I open it on my workstation it seems. Anyway it doesn't seem to take much time by setting 1 frame by task.

Re: Max V-Ray: better to use 1 frame by task

Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2017 1:46 am
by Strob
I wonder if it has something to do with V-Ray. For example deadline has a feature to restart only the renderer between frames:
(from deadline doc:)
Restart Renderer Between Frames: This option can be used to force Deadline to restart the renderer after each frame to avoid some potential problems with specific renderers. Enabling this option has little to no impact on the actual render times. This feature should be ENABLED to resolve V-Ray renders where typically the beauty pass renders correctly but the Render Element’s are all black or perhaps seem to be swapped around. When enabled, the c++ Lightning plugin (unique to Deadline), will unload the renderer plugins and then reload them instantly. This has the effect of forcing a memory purge and helps to improve renderer stability, as well as ensure the lowest possible memory footprint. This can be helpful, when rendering close to the physical memory limit of a machine. Ensure this feature is DISABLED if you are sending FG/LC/IM caching map type jobs to the farm, as the renderer will get reset for each frame and the FG/LC/IM file(s) won’t get incrementally increased with the additional data per frame. This option should be disabled for FumeFX simulation jobs as well.

Re: Max V-Ray: better to use 1 frame by task

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:17 pm
by timurhai
Hi.
You want to restart machine after each task rendered?
Try to do it via command wrapper first.
You can write a simple vray.cmd that will run vray first, than run a command to restart machine.

Re: Max V-Ray: better to use 1 frame by task

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:56 pm
by Strob
Now it seems to work very well by just putting 1 frame by task in each of my jobs. That way the scene is reloaded every frame. But I would like to try to restart only V-Ray to see if I can gain performance (and not the entire machine).

Re: Max V-Ray: better to use 1 frame by task

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 3:20 pm
by timurhai
afrender (submission script) uses 3dsmaxcmd to render via command line.
Can 3dsmaxcmd ask vray plugin to reload each frame?
Can we use some other command that can restart some plugin?
This questions are for 3dsmax users.

Re: Max V-Ray: better to use 1 frame by task

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 3:28 pm
by Strob
Yes that is the question, I will ask on the vray forum.