Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted May 27, 2002 Administrators Share Posted May 27, 2002 Hey Guys, As crazy as this probably sounds I have a file with 700 RPCs. All trees and vegetation. My problem is the time it takes to process the file before the render starts. Surprise. Does anybody have any secrets or tips on doing this to cut down on rendertime? I'm getting about 10min per frame. We have to use RPCs as they are the only ones with the selcection and the client wants specific trees. I'd billboard everything but I'm in close proximity to all of the RPC almost all of the time. Basically I have a week to render this out (30 sec), which leaves absolutely no time for error. Yikes! To add to the problem I have to render this out twice so that it can be comp'ed with a Lightscape plate with a reflection pass. [ May 27, 2002, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: Jeff Mottle ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexandre Posted May 27, 2002 Share Posted May 27, 2002 hi jeff, have you copied the rpcs onto your hard disk or are you giving a path to the cd ? have you tried making a copy of your file with just the necessary geometry for the rpc mask ? have you instanced your rpcs ? they say it won't work that way. have you thought of begging third parties to allow rpc technology into their software so as to get rid of that g…ed max renderer ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted May 27, 2002 Author Administrators Share Posted May 27, 2002 Hey Alexander, have you copied the rpcs onto your hard disk or are you giving a path to the cd ? Yes all of the RPC's are on my HD have you tried making a copy of your file with just the necessary geometry for the rpc mask ? No, but I'm not sure this will work as the purpose if the RPCS in MAX is just to get the RPCS and their shadows into Combustion to be compe'ed over a Lightscape background plate. The geometry is almost all Matte/Shadow. have you instanced your rpcs ? they say it won't work that way. Made that mistake last go round and had to re-place everything. This time though they are unique interstions. The RPC mass editor amoung other things screws up if you instance them. have you thought of begging third parties to allow rpc technology into their software so as to get rid of that g…ed max renderer ? Not yet, but I may. Unfourtunately this won't help me this week. Thanks, Jeff [ May 27, 2002, 10:10 AM: Message edited by: Jeff Mottle ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nisus Posted May 27, 2002 Share Posted May 27, 2002 Hi Jeff, A very simple solution is to rent a few machines You'll half the render time with only one other machine! Another technique might be to render a lot of views of the trees seperatly and map them on a plane facing the camera. It's a sloggy way, but faster if you instance your planes rgds nisus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexandre Posted May 27, 2002 Share Posted May 27, 2002 how much memory do you have ? rpcs tend to eat up alot of ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted May 27, 2002 Author Administrators Share Posted May 27, 2002 Between my partner and I RAM and proccessing power shouldn't be a prob, but it's still cutting it very close. We've got 2 Dual AMD 1900+, Mine has 2GB RAM and and my partners has 1GB. Having never done a big render with RPCs, do you know if the RAM consumption goes up over time or will it stay where it is after the first frame? Just rendering one frame I was at 780MB, so far from peaking my RAM out. If the RAM does keep climbing, I'm going to be really screwed. Jeff [ May 27, 2002, 10:23 AM: Message edited by: Jeff Mottle ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexandre Posted May 27, 2002 Share Posted May 27, 2002 i'm not positive but if in that first frame you saw all of your rpcs then ram usage should stay put; why don't you try asking archvision directly, they seemed like a nice bunch of fellas to me when i had some trouble. sorry, but i have to go, see you all tomorrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted May 27, 2002 Share Posted May 27, 2002 try splitting the rpc's up into xrefs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted May 27, 2002 Author Administrators Share Posted May 27, 2002 Hey STRAT, How will that help and what will that do? I've never used XREF in MAX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted May 27, 2002 Share Posted May 27, 2002 XReffing in max works basically the same principles of autocad. I dont know if it will make a difference to rendering times, but it may well do. try it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclops Posted May 27, 2002 Share Posted May 27, 2002 RAM consumption shouldn't go up as an animation is rendered. What is max saying: transforming vertices or rendering image, on most of those 10 min? I think you should try and speak to Archvision as well, 700 sounds A LOT of RPC's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted May 27, 2002 Author Administrators Share Posted May 27, 2002 Hey Guys, Spoke to the guys over at ArchVision and found out the following. 1. RAM consumption shouldn't exceed whatever is used up when all the RPC's are in view. 2. The RPC content purges from RAM whatever images are not in view. 3. Because each RPC, even tough it may be the same tree or bush, is unique it must load itself for each copy. 3. The RPC image that loads is based on LOD (distance), so it only loads as high a resolution as it needs. 4. Addding the ability to reflect adds twice the load time as it must double side the material, thus loads twice the number of maps. So, it looks like I will just have to throw horsepower at it. I will also be selectively adding reflecting casting to my vegetation, rather than on everything. Also found out that they (ArchVision) have renderered out ~1500 trees and had similar or lesser load times. Cyclops, MAX says it's processing. So loading all of the RPC's into RAM. Without the RPC's the same file renders/processes in about 30sec. It's definetly the RPC's that are kiling me. Wish me luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quizzy Posted May 28, 2002 Share Posted May 28, 2002 okay, i HAD the same problem rendering about 1000 RPC's they were all trees!! You might want to try this, it worked for me. Each rpc has its own material, even if you check the billboard option. Make a selection of all the same trees that needs to be billboarded, and go to the material editor, just get one material form the selection, and add it to the selection, now you only have one material assigned to the selection. Do this trick for as much rpc that need to be billboarded, and enjoy your render times!! My render times where around 16 minutes on single Pentiums 4 with 256MB RAM and a swap file of 2GB~3GB. But I needed a little bit more frames, about 5000.... But with 25 PC's it's done within a weekend.. Another tip: Don't copy RPC's at the end you might get a lot of application errors... Another tip: Check if the jitter option is really nescesary. (The RPC is then blended from two RPC pictures, so render times times 2) Check out the scenes at my web page check architecture.. [ May 28, 2002, 07:47 AM: Message edited by: quizzy michiel quist ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted May 28, 2002 Author Administrators Share Posted May 28, 2002 Thanks Quizzy, Glad to hear I'm not the only one who is crazy I messed around with the reflection settings last night and was able to get it down to 4 min/frame MAX, but I will give the billbaording trick a go. I'm not sure it will work in my case thorugh as I nerv more than about 100 ft from them. Thanks again, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quizzy Posted May 28, 2002 Share Posted May 28, 2002 no thanks dude, btw, check my maxscript section on my homepage, i think you'll find the rpc script that i wrote very usefull... michiel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted May 28, 2002 Author Administrators Share Posted May 28, 2002 Nice! Will definetly use that one. Was trying to use the Mass Edit self-illumination, but was having limited sucess. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quizzy Posted May 28, 2002 Share Posted May 28, 2002 i think this script is very usefull to all the rpc users out there, maybe you should advertise it on your page or something... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now