Split Scanline & Final Render

[Devin Johnston]

Has anyone out there had problems using split scanline & final render together? Every time I try it I usually get errors that say 'An unexpected exception has occurred in the network renderer and it is terminating'. I will usually get this on random strips and it will happen several times on those strips before the computer assigned will actually render it out. I think this is related to memory but I'm not sure, anyone have any ideas?

[jucaro]

either its a bad memory module or a disc error(bad sectors and the like). Max Plugins might be at fault, but i'd bet on the memory leaks.

 

Try reducing the height of the strips and see if the workstation can handle it.

 

[Devin Johnston]

This doesen't just happen on one or two machines, it happens on pretty much every computer I've got, over and over. I'll try making the strips smaller, but isn't there a point where making the strips to small is a bad thing?

[mbr]

Why not just use the distributed rendering in fR? It's works really well and watching the multi colored buckets can be quite fun (ok, not 'fun', but entertaining for a second or two).

 

I've never used the split scanline, but as I understand it, it's sending portions to different machines, correct? That's not a good idea for GI, as every solution will be slightly different. This would mean that the lines would be slightly different (this is with all GI, as far as I know).

What DR does is render one scene, utlizing each processor for a bucket. This means you could have up to 10 (they are working on more) machines rendering one image.

[Devin Johnston]

Why not just use the distributed rendering in fR? It's works really well and watching the multi colored buckets can be quite fun (ok, not 'fun', but entertaining for a second or two).

 

I've never used the split scanline, but as I understand it, it's sending portions to different machines, correct? That's not a good idea for GI, as every solution will be slightly different. This would mean that the lines would be slightly different (this is with all GI, as far as I know).

What DR does is render one scene, utlizing each processor for a bucket. This means you could have up to 10 (they are working on more) machines rendering one image.

 

Beleave me I would use DR if I could but my image has 350 lights in it an the resolution is 7800x6800. Every time I try DR my render nodes will abort and Max crashes.

[jucaro]

I'm assuming you saved the GI solution. How many machines are helping out on the render?

[Devin Johnston]

I can have about 100 work on it during the night, but from the way my tests have been going the split scan line setup seems very inefficient. I've done some small tests at 800x600 using about 15 machines and some of the strips take up to 15 hours to render. I think my only hope now is to render out portions of the image with only lights turned on in those sections. I think Final Render is just not capable of doing images that are this large and complicated.

[mbr]

That's odd. I've had files that crashed on my computer work fine with DR. It should be the opposite of what you are describing. Many machines should help you render large images.

 

One thing you need to remember is that fR will send the file to all the machines and this can take time. From my experience, if your local machine takes less than 10 mins to test, then it's not worth DR. Above 10 minutes, though and it will exponentially lower the time.

 

I'd go post on their forum and email Edwin or someoen else about it.

 

7800? What are you planning on doing with that?? Just curious, I am going to be doing a 6' or so board and figured 6000 would be mroe than a enough.

[Devin Johnston]

I've posted on the fR forum but haven't gotten an answer, I don't think those guy's use split scanline very much. As for the resolution I wanted to give them an 11x17@600dpi but I think I'm shooting to high so I'm going to lower it to 300dpi. This image is for promotional use and I want to make sure it's a the highest quality possible.

[jucaro]

200 dpi is usually enough if you are just going to hand them a print out. 600 is an over kill and gains you nothing. 300 is enough even for pre press work. 150 to 75dpi for billboards.

[Devin Johnston]

Ok I think I've learned something about split scanline and fR, apparently it matters how many slices you tell the computers to render out. I've been putting in about 200 slices for my 100+ computers to work on over night and in the morning most of the work isn't complete. Last night I told the machines to work on 60 slices at a resolution of 5100x3953 and instead of doing just one image I sent out 4. This morning two of them are complete and the other two are around 50% complete, I had almost no errors last night which is a first. I did adjust the AA setting to be about half of what I was using, and I changed the bucket size from 256 to 128 which could have made a difference.