Biggest Size for IR Maps

[zloner]

Hey,

I have to render a medium scene animation about 1000 Frames. For the best result I precalculated the IR Map with high values every 10th frame. The Saved Map takes 50 MB. I have 10 Servers to render so I copied the map on every node, to save network traffic.

When the servers start to render they need 15 mins to compute the IR Map and only 5 mins to render. The renderings are pretty perfect. But the saved Map Method seems not to save time.

In a testrun I calculated the map every frame and the rendertime was about 18 mins.

Long text short questions: What is the big advantage of precalc'd IR maps? What do I wrong?

Here are some information about farm and scene:
6x P4 2,6 1,5GB 80GB
4x P4 3,0 HT 1,5GB 80GB
1x Dual XEON 2,0 1GB 160GB -> managing server

WinXP, Max6, latest official Vray version

scene has 2.000.000 Polygons, Pagefile while rendering takes not more than 1,05GB, not that much

greetz zl

[RErender]

It should take a lot less time to load the saved imap, a 50 MB imap is pretty standard here, you have made certain to check "use saved map"? in the advanceded GI roll-out?

[Viscacha]

We have just started using this method, but it seems to worked great for us. (saved tons of time) Can you watch the screen on your rendering machines and make sure it is not recalculating the IR map? I always toggle on the show calc. phase to see what it is doing until the final. It should go straight to bucket rendering after it is loaded. We have not yet had as large of a IR Map file though, I think the project we are working on now will, just our tests did not. Good Luck

[zloner]

All settings are ok. We have VNC installed on our servers, so we can watch the computers render and troubleshoot while rendering.

When I watch one frame render I see the "computing IR Map" text 15 mins in the render dialog. After that long time the render starts and the rendering is done in 5 mins. Quiet fast.

I thought I had some bad settings or there is a restriction in VRAY. Would not make sense I know.

I will post the finished animtion with my settings. Maybe we find a way to speed up the computing phase.

For the future: Would faster HDs e.g. RAID Systems or 10.000RPM, speed up this computing a lot?

[egz]

If your settings are correct, you shouldn't see the "computing IR map" text. Could you post a screenshot of the irradiance map rollout the way it is set up now?

[zloner]

MY FAULT

I'm very sorry. The computing GI Map Text comes at the first frame after that the GI map seems to be cached or loaded completly. After the first frame I got rendertimes round about 7 mins.

I hate that poster that ask questions before trying out to help themselves. Today I have to hate myself.

Again I'm sorry and thanks for the replies.

@egz I think my settings are correct. But here is my rend.dialog -->

[Sushidelic]

last time i used a 75mb saved irradiancemap, it took some (5?) minutes to load it as well (displaying "calculating irradiance map"), but only for the first frame the render started. for the subsequent frames it was in memory on each renderslave and things went much faster.

greetings,
michael