pause rendering

[teabag]

hello, i was just wondering how hard it would be to implement a "pause rendering" button for the vray renderer?

Martin

[Aldaryn]

As far as I know, this would be a bit tricky to implement. Why would you need a pause button? If you need the computing power elsewhere during a render, you can always set the vray thread to a very low priority. Won't free up mem though, but useful, imo.

best regards,

A.

[teabag]

i get u ...in this case it would be nice to control the amount of allowed cores in realtime during the render...can this be done somehow? in windows?

[dlparisi]

In the task manager select the process (or maybe the program, I can't remember) and set the "affinity" to the cores you want working on it.

[teabag]

thanks will have to give it a go to see if it can be done on the go

[andrewjohn81]

does anyone know how to do this in script form?

During a render it takes Forever to even move the mouse sometimes. If I just assign a script to a hotkey I could hit the hotkey, then go get a coffee or something. Right now I have to hit ctrl+Shift+Esc. Then wait a few minutes. Then sometimes I have to sort to get max at the top so it's on screen. Then right click and wait. Then move the mouse over set affinity and wait for it to highlight. Then click and wait for it to come up.
You can see the dilemma. It takes forever.

Anyone know how to do this with bat or vbs?

[dlparisi]

You can use ProcessSwitch to change the default priority for any application but you can't change the affinity unfortunately.
I've used it for years to put Viz and Max in low priority as well as a few other programs that should (but don't) run in the background.

[jonnybefree]

i always set max manually to low priority before hitting the render button.

[andrewjohn81]

Is there a way to always have any process named 3dsmax.exe be a low priority?

I'd like to set up one machine we occasionally use in the renderfarm, but we'd need to be able to use it a little while rendering on occasion so I'd like it to always be a low priority.

the problem is every time a new render starts it creates a new process and it resets to a new priority.

[dlparisi]

Yes, ProcessSwitch will automatically do exactly that.

[andrewjohn81]

sweet. I guess I should have gone there and read the description first. My bad.
I'll definitely be installing that bad boy on that machine.

Running at low priority shouldn't effect the rendertime unless another program is trying to access the processor right?

[dlparisi]

Not that I'm aware of. I've used it for years and during rendering the process is always pretty close to 100%. Of course it drops when I try to do something else but that's kind of the point.

[andrewjohn81]

I've had problems changing the priority on my own machine. I usually just change the affinity if I need to do multiple things at once. I know that slows it down by stealing one thread away, although, it really doesn't cut my time down by 25% like i would think. It is rarely noticeable at all actually. Makes me think that most processes are still done using only one thread.