Pause Render

[palibebeh]

thanks Vlado, this clears things up.

but how about being able to assign/unassign render nodes on the fly?
for example I want to unassign/disconnect one node from job A and assign it to job B (both being rendered/managed simultaneously by the workstation) without the need to stop job A and unselecting the node in vray's DR settings. I'm sure this would create lot's of problems (e.g. loading/unloading the scene each time the node is assigned/unassigned and so on), but is it possible? or are there other render managers that can do such a task?

[RErender]

hmmm, buy some farm boxes and work professionally or make your software jump through hoops to accomadate some funky workflow.. heh

[Dschaga]

The main issue here is that we don't have direct access to the Pause button to check its state; instead, the Pause is implemented as part of the render progress bar - whenever the renderer updates the progress bar, 3ds Max checks the Pause button, and if pressed, does not return control to the renderer until the Resume button is pressed. In that way, the renderer itself is not aware of when the pausing happens. This is the main issue. V-Ray has one main thread, which does not perform rendering, but only updates the progress bar, while the actual rendering is done by other worker threads. When 3ds Max pauses the main thread, this does not in fact stop the rendering done by the worker threads - and since the main thread itself cannot detect when the pausing happens, we can't really do anything about it.

Best regards,
Vlado

Even if some say "buy some farm boxes and work professionally" i think it should be possible. ..it's also a usefull feature if you are working "professionally" on only ONE machine. (...just to reply to an absolutle arrogant statement)

back to possible workarounds, because i don't want to accept that there is no way.

If the pause button inside max doesn't work (like with nearly all other renderers), it should be possible to have a pause button in the vrayframebuffer or in the render pipeline outside of max.
Is is correct,that vray only have to send the state of progress to max ,which updates the progress bar?
What i still don't understand is how the broadcasting of which bucket have to be rendered next works. If there is something like a thead, which organise this process of ... "next bucket is id 26 ..which core/renderslave wants to render this one?" .. - why can't i broadcast to wait for a while?

[RErender]

Even if some say "buy some farm boxes and work professionally" i think it should be possible. ..it's also a usefull feature if you are working "professionally" on only ONE machine. (...just to reply to an absolutle arrogant statement)

All the more arrogant to keep pushing for this trivial convenience when you know it would take a lot of dev time away from more useful functions... As stated before just set priority to low and you can keep working unless you are just some hobbyist on some sorry hardware. VRay is not just some toy it is how most of here make a living...

[Dschaga]

This thread was opened in the vray wishlist forum - not in the vray problems forum.

btw.. low priority doesn't solve the problem of an occupied DR network.

[RErender]

This thread was opened in the vray wishlist forum - not in the vray problems forum.

btw.. low priority doesn't solve the problem of an occupied DR network.

Right, and this wish has been explained to be impractical time and time again, the search function is one's friend, more DR control is another wish and should be analyzed separately on it's own merits...

[Dschaga]

For every Problem there is a solution .. most likely not a direct solution, but at least a workaround.

RErender ..read my replies again and then try the first time to understand what i was talking about. It never had to do with the 3dsmax render tool, but always with the way vray works in bucket mode.

[palibebeh]

hmmm, buy some farm boxes and work professionally or make your software jump through hoops to accomadate some funky workflow.. heh

that wasn't necessary.
believe me - you don't have to own dozens of render nodes and specialized network management software to work professionaly

I understand, that this issue may be irritating or totally nonsensical to some of you (probably even to most of you).
And as I said - I also understand why it's impossible to implement a standard pause for vray.

But that's not the issue here - what we need (and by 'we' I mean all of us little offices/freelancers, who apart from using vray for fun also make a living with it) is some sort of a tool/option i vray that will allow interactive management of the DR nodes on the fly, during rendering. ATM I'm in a middle of rendering an animation, which is occupying all my render nodes. But guess what? I need to do something else, and because I don't have additional DR nodes I either have to render the second job using only the 3 cores of my workstation OR cancel the animation and use the now occupied DR nodes. So in essence what I need is a possibility to unassign/pause one of the DR nodes on the fly, and use it for the second job - what's so funky about that?

I understand that this may be a serious thing to implement. I'm just asking - is it possible?


And RErender - don't be so nervous. We little companies pose no danger to You, so even if we'll get some new tool that'll help us with our everyday struggle to be more professional, I'm sure we'll still be way behind


and to the OP - sorry if I'm being a bit off-topic here...

[vlado]

ATM I'm in a middle of rendering an animation, which is occupying all my render nodes. But guess what? I need to do something else, and because I don't have additional DR nodes I either have to render the second job using only the 3 cores of my workstation OR cancel the animation and use the now occupied DR nodes. So in essence what I need is a possibility to unassign/pause one of the DR nodes on the fly, and use it for the second job - what's so funky about that?

You can just kill the V-Ray spawner on the nodes that you need (V-Ray will reassign their buckets to other nodes), and then restart it when you have finished using them (they will be able to join the rendering from the middle). Of course, this only works if the nodes have been specified when the DR was started initially.

Best regards,
Vlado

[tricky]

This is the first thread on this forum with harsh remarks that I've seen in a long, long while...

[RErender]

hmmm, buy some farm boxes and work professionally or make your software jump through hoops to accomadate some funky workflow.. heh

I was trying to show the irony of the discussion, notice the smiley?

I was never arguing anything other than that a pause button is a bad idea, I agree that more DR control would be great!

palibebeh, my post was not aimed at you, if you notice our posts are only minutes apart, you posted between the time that I started my post and the time I finished it... again I was always just arguing against a pause button.

Dschaga, again I was only ever addressing the initial topic of this thread, a pause button, I see now where we split at post #13.

tricky, I'm just glad you finally put some clothes on for your avatar...

[Mats_O]

that wasn't necessary.
believe me - you don't have to own dozens of render nodes and specialized network management software to work professionaly

I understand, that this issue may be irritating or totally nonsensical to some of you (probably even to most of you).
And as I said - I also understand why it's impossible to implement a standard pause for vray.

But that's not the issue here - what we need (and by 'we' I mean all of us little offices/freelancers, who apart from using vray for fun also make a living with it) is some sort of a tool/option i vray that will allow interactive management of the DR nodes on the fly, during rendering. ATM I'm in a middle of rendering an animation, which is occupying all my render nodes. But guess what? I need to do something else, and because I don't have additional DR nodes I either have to render the second job using only the 3 cores of my workstation OR cancel the animation and use the now occupied DR nodes. So in essence what I need is a possibility to unassign/pause one of the DR nodes on the fly, and use it for the second job - what's so funky about that?

I understand that this may be a serious thing to implement. I'm just asking - is it possible?


And RErender - don't be so nervous. We little companies pose no danger to You, so even if we'll get some new tool that'll help us with our everyday struggle to be more professional, I'm sure we'll still be way behind


and to the OP - sorry if I'm being a bit off-topic here...

WORD!

Ok, since I started the thread, I still think it would be great for me to have a pause button. And yes, I am working professionally, have been working in 3DS since release 1 for dos and have made my living from it since 1995. And since I am so very very professional I travel a bit with my mobile workstation and when hours away from any renderfarm it would be great for me to be able to pause a render to fix something in PS for example. But that is just my five cents to the wish list forum...Sorry for upsetting some users...

[tricky]

tricky, I'm just glad you finally put some clothes on for your avatar...

C'mon...you know you liked it before!....

[plastic_]

it's very easy to remote control DR servers with batch files. for example:

---
:restart remote spawner service
psservice \\render1 -u User -p password restart VraySpawner
---


you can easily create batch files to

-) stop all DR spawners, start backburner servers

-) stop backburner servers, start DR spawners

-) restart all DR spawners

-) shut down all render nodes

-) power on all render nodes (WOL)

etc...

[tricky]

I have had very mixed success with these type of batch files. It seems to work with some machines and not others, and I end up RDP'ing into them to manually stop and restart the DR service.