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Desperately in need of backburner alternative


Aaron2004
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Hello,

 

I have had it with coming back in the morning and seeing that my render didn't go through and that it timed out at 600 minutes...or that 'an unexpected error has occurred'. Backburner is seriously a thorn in my foot and I need an alternative. I don't want to render out animations...just individual files over night. The cheaper the better, obviously.

 

Thanks for any advice!

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I've tried 3D from remote servers and it's not fun...BUT that is a good idea. I would rather wait a while for a file to load than not have a rendering come out at all.

 

I also just discovered 'Deadline'. A couple people on the Chaos forums really like it and it's free if you only have 2 slaves.

 

By the way...the batch render feature in VIZ only works with cameras in the same files...not with other files, correct?

 

Aaron

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Unexpected errors and render time-outs are not the fault of BB. You need to look at your resource management in your files.....

 

You can change the time0out to above 600 minutes by the way. And unexpected errors are usually the render node running out of ram.

 

I think BB performs marvellously. The only gripe I have (and no-one seems to know the answer) is that a network render using geometry xref-ed into the main file can go totally spaz if you edit the xref whilst rendering. Now why the hell would it not cache the x-ref?

gripe over.

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I have never rendered to .VRIMG but I doubt the output has much to do with the on-the-fly rendering process. Excessive geometry probably wont overload the ram but complex light calculations, multiple opacity maps, excessively large bitmaps, will do so esspecially in combination with a high poly scene.

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I have a few questions that my clear things up about DR and backburner:

 

1) I'm still trying to plow forward with DR even though it alludes to the fact that I need a dongle. I keep on getting this error when I try to launch my vrayspawner60.exe file:

 

*** ALERT! Error opening file "

 

But vraydummy60.xml exists....along with vraydummy.max

 

2) What is up with strip rendering? I heard someone here talk about it and they say it's a viable option to prevent crashes in backburner. I"m trying it right now and it appears to be doing what it claims...does it really save on RAM?

 

Thanks for all the help...this has been kind of a nightmare to get through.

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Maybe we are getting confused over symantics here...when you say 'strips'...I thought you meant 'split scan lines' (which didn't work too well for me, by the way). I just use backburner as a que mananger for rendering out 5 files overnight between 2 computers. I don't ever split up one image over multiple computers.

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I don't use DR because I don't have a hardware lock. I requested one, but they haven't sent it...and I supposedly can only use DR with a hardware lock.

 

You can use DR with software license. I used DR for 2 years before I got my dongle....BUT DR isn't as easy to set up on VIZ as it is on max. You should check the Chaos forums for some info.

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I would second the nom for you to try Deadline if you only have a couple systems and don't plan on ever getting more.

Also, it sounds like just doing a commandline batch render would also help you out. It's under render->batchrender. add the cameras you want and run it from the command prompt by going to the windows Start menu, selecting Run... and type cmd. need to brush up on your Dos navigation skills a bit but it saves a lot of memory.

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Thanks for all the help guys..I'm outa here for the weekend...but that command line renderer sounds very intriguing...and I found an excellent tutorial on vizdepot about setting up VIZ 2007 and VRAY DR. There are A LOT of work arounds!

 

Thanks

 

Aaron

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