RenderMan & RISpec, [Job] Rendering Supervisor

1. Mental Ray - network rendering - uneven job distribution

Hi, all,

I have been tasked with rendering a scene with Mental Ray on a small
renderfarm of 5 computers, all x86, mostly AMD Athlon XP with various memory
configurations, ranging from 256MB to 1 GB. Computers are connected via fast
ethernet, 100Mbps, through a switch (I believe it to be a high quality one,
if it makes a difference).

Maya 5.0.1 is used as a master and Mental Ray 3.2.6 is used on the rendering
slaves.
I ran a few tests and found that job distribution is very uneven. Most of
the work is done by the Maya integration of Mental Ray on the master
machine, with tiles from other computers coming in quite rarely, eventhough
some of the rendering slaves easily outperform the master machine. More so
for GI or final gather calculations. This is making the entire renderfarm
rather inefficient (and at times even pointless).

Can anyone provide some insight as to why such a behavior is occuring?
If we hypothetically assume that all computers have identical
configurations, how likely is it that this is purely a network issue? Things
like roundtrip time, ethernet collisions, etc ...?

I haven't yet tried variations using texture-intensive scenes as opposed to
more heavily lit (final gather, GI) scenes. If anyone has moderate
experience with network rendering with Mental Ray, I wouldn't mind any tips
and tricks.

The only workaround I can think of is making tiles that the frame is broken
into a bit larger, but I'm not sure if that is a user-definable option or if
it's at all a viable solution.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Regards,

Tonci

2. Snow Job (was Photoshop Job)

3. Render Target or Render to Surface

Trying to perform render to texture I had found two nice ways. 
using RenderTargets and calling SetRenderTarget, the other is using 
ID3DXRenderToSurface and BeginScene(...)-EndScene(...).

Which you consider to be faster? 
I heard that RenderTarger is not supported in old cards but 
D3DXRenderToSurface is widely supported; is that right?


Searching a bit deeper both methods seems to work the same, both need a 
surface(texture) and using different interfaces allow to rendering to the 
texture.

However, now I have a doubt: When SetRenderTarget or 
RenderToSurface->BeginScene(...) what is setted is the back buffer (the color 
buffer), but what about the depth buffer. In my aplication I need to render 
to a texture but using a different zbuffer so the actual zbuffer doesn't be 
modified. How that can be accomplish?

4. Rendering to obtain depth values for further rendering

5. Multiple rendering in a render target

Dear all,


I am working on a image processing using DirectX.
I render quad-vertices in a render target, using pixel shaders.
The render target is A8R8B8G8.

I have to render 2 different quads, that cover the whole render
target.
The first render should affect only the A-component of the render
target.
The second render should affect only the R-component.

I don't know how to do this...
Because the 2e render will erase the result of the first render.

Questions :
1/ In a pixel shader, is it possible to get the pixel of the
destination target?
If yes, in my 2e render, I could retreive the A-component and re-
inject it in the output color.
But I guess it is not possible!

2/ More generally, is there a way to write in the render target only
one pixel's compenent, and leave the others unchanged?

-Mathieu

6. Rendering after a library has rendered

7. VS 7 keeps rendering and rendering again

What should I do?
I'm making a 17 minutes video-file. I changed the project for several times.
But when I want to burn it onto a DVD+RW the program will always render the
complete video again. For just 17 minutes of (DV)-video, it'll cost me 5
hours of rendering, even when I only a text-file had adjusted.

I really think that I'm doing something wrong; but what?

Jacques de Groen

(the Netherlands)

8. anybody want a 3d model -Audi tt - post a job, 3d tuts, jobs. - RenderMan & RISpec