Feature Request (if possible )Stop and start render in different sessions

Hi Al/Rich

I know we have touched on this before but with my models getting more complex and wanting to create higher resolution images I am finding a single render session (a full day at the office or evening at home)not long enough to complete the required number of passes. I do not like to leave tbe higher computers running unattended either at home or at work.

It would be therefore so useful to be able to stop the render a given point and pickup later,possibly on another machine or resume the next day. The basic technology must be there in the same way has the render farm splits the workflow up into separate chunks. It would be really useful to split batch render into chunks and render each chunk separately.I would be very happy for this to be any derivative ,even just splitting into 2 chunks would be a great help, a choice of number of chunks would be brilliant.

With some of my larger panoramas (large interior models ) I am usually rendering @ 6000x3000 to achive a quality resolution for long distance detail/zooming in.With a detailed model with a lot of interior lighting this can sometimes mean at least an hour per pass.

If I could split up workload similar to render farm but in individual sessions I could spread render over anumber of days rather than at present waiting to the weekend to render 30-40 passes.

Thanks

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on January 26, 2013 at 7:44am

HI Al

Thanks for your reply but the whole point to this topic was discussing stop and starting renders, I was using sample with a single machine - It did work with single machine but much slower than standard batch which defeats the object of the original request. I would like to ideally simply stop render at office and then take home to complete or visa versa, I only have one fast enough machine at home and therefore the renderfarm option is probably not the correct solution. The renderfarm is far to complex a process (and with the amount of failures I have had setting up - I am not totally confident with). A simplified renderfarm process which splits up render into segments on single machine which I can rebuild in editor later would be great.

Thanks Boothy

PS I do now have a new i7 machine at work which has been professionally overclocked to 4.4ghz,32gb of ram, 2gb nvidia quadro 4000 and SSD drive which is now rendering twice has fast has previous which helps. Splitting the render would allow me to produce much higher res images with complex models. It would also be really useful to `patch` previous renders which may have errors or mistakes.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on January 26, 2013 at 8:02am

We could do that by creating multiple .bat files and parameter files in the nXtBatch folder.

But it may be a while before we get to it.

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Permalink Reply by Alain Bonnefoy on January 26, 2013 at 8:18am

I just want to add my stone on this subject because I already discussed about it and maybe I started it in the past.

Al and/or Rich aswered the solution was to use path tracer or engine 4 and stop and save the image in nxtimage format. Then restart the rendering from scratch later and merge both rendering scene in nxtimage editor. That's said and if I well understood, 2 renderings of 200 passes is supposed to result after merging in same way as 1 rendering of 400 passes.

It looks to be interedsting but I just expose an example to say that, in reality, it's not really useable:

This first litle interior (2000x1000) has been rendered in packet mode, in 100 passes, about 2hours.

This same scene has been rendered in path tracer, in 476 passes which took more than 25 hours. As you can see we are very very far from a satisfying result.

My conclusion is that rendering in path tracer mode will give in few weeks what we could get in few hours in packet mode. So ok, we can do it in several times but in the reality in won't help.

As I'm not a render farm user, I don't know if it could help us with packet mode rendering but according to Boothy, it's not won. So, I dont how but I think we are several peoples to expect to be able to render a scene in packet mode in several times or at least several batches as Boothy suggested.

Regards,

Alain

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on January 26, 2013 at 8:29am

Now your talking! - to quote my son `that would be awesome` Multiple batch segments would provide a whole load of possibilities in terms of render management. Pretty pretty please put it on the to do list (at the top somewhere!).

Thanks again

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on January 26, 2013 at 8:29am

There are some subtleties and improvements in the Path Tracer, (or the new Engine 4) which seem to make it worthwhile when you need better quality renderings. "Several Weeks" would probably be extreme. But for some requirements Engine 4 - and a longer rendering time may be worth it.

But I don't think that helps with what Boothy really wants.

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on January 26, 2013 at 8:32am

No Multiple batch files would be the simple, flexible and probably most robust way to go.

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by Alain Bonnefoy on January 26, 2013 at 10:20am

Yes, I just wanted to point out that actual solution i.e. using path tracer or engine 4, just because they actually allow to render a scene, stop it and continue it later, is, for me, not a solution because they are mostly too slow to be considered.