First night working time of my free server from my company is over.
No miracle, but also no damage.
As I assumed, it's about half the speed of a Core i7.
The server needs about 3h, my i7 needs 1.5h for one frame.
But I will let it run. Here is Frame 001 and Frame 153. It will be a campath from the grass up to where you se a bit more of the village.
[attach=1]
[attach=2]
Nice!
Looking good Doc.
Your frame size is interesting. Scaling up by 106% is to soften things? I've used prime numbers before with getting a better scale in the past. I was wandering if you are using this technique.
Thanks Hetzen :)
I just like the view as the camera is rising from the grass. I knew I would like such a scene when I stopped the project with the viper rising from the mountain lake :)
I have already seen, that I did a mistake in the up-scaling size. I did it on the test-server with a fresh installed XNView - must check some settings.
Some months ago I decided to limit my rendering size to 1280x720 (720p HD) to get an affordable rendertime for my absolutely too big project of app. 23000-25000 frames.
I came to this decision after I watched (another hobby ;) ) "youtube let's plays" on my TV and felt the 720p resolution as absolutely OK. So now I render all my images in this smaller resolution and "batch-upscale" them to 1920x1080. That gives a smoother look and I have the feeling it anyway looks more natural than a 1920x1080 render of these images. Like the natural blur effect of a not perfectly focussed camera.
Meanwhile I have changed some settings on my test-server:
Increased the maximum threads to 256
Increased the subdiv cache from 2048 to 4256 MB (at home my core i7 / 8GB often crashes with this setting but the server with 12 MB should work.
Perhaps I can spare some minutes rendertime... anyway this machine will do nothing else then render render render render... untill it dies.
Next year I can get the same machine with 32GB - I'm curious how much influence that will have to the rendertime.
Nice images.
Quote from: DocCharly65 on July 14, 2015, 08:10:51 AM
...
Increased the subdiv cache from 2048 to 4256 MB (at home my core i7 / 8GB often crashes with this setting but the server with 12 MB should work.
...
Have you read this "
Managing the subdivison cache " part from the link below ?
http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Render_-_Advanced_Tab
Yepp - but it was some time ago... I repeated some minutes ago and understood that I missunderstood most of it :o
I think I will not get any visible speed enhancement on the server... :)
Quote from: DocCharly65 on July 14, 2015, 09:20:51 AM
Yepp - but it was some time ago... I repeated some minutes ago and understood that I missunderstood most of it :o
...
Happens me all the time you can be sure :)
;D
I think if my English was better and I would not have to google so much for most of the terminology, I would learn faster.
Also sometimes I just have to wait 1 or more hours to see in the rendered image, what mistakes I made.
But until then I've already forgotten, what I did :o ;D ;D ;D
:D
Oh my God! I had a small talk with our admin and he gets a kind of play impulse... He has started to investigate how to overclock that server!!!
Fortunately he didn't find anything until now... :o
Nicely done!
A good sys admin will tell you what you should not do.
A great sys admin will tell you what others should not do before doing it himself. ;D
So, are you 'creating' on your I7 and then rendering on your new server?
Wow...nuff said!
Almost as you say masonspappy :)
I had some changes in my machinery park.
Last year one Asus Core i7 with 8 GB Ram and one with 16 GB arrived.
The 16 GB machine was used for complicated scene development and rendering - the 8 GB for rendering.
My old Acer X3300 with AMD Phenom was for developing some small scenes with less populations or little work with Blender or Wings 3D. This one will go to sleep now. Forever! :-[ My good old friend :'(
For the Acer a new Asus i7 with 8 GB arrived last week. It will take its development job and the other 2 Core i7 will mostly do renderjobs.
The server is only for test at the moment and will do nothing but rendering.
But all that's a vague and flexible description. Sometimes I work on 2-3 scenes at the same time and jump from one to the next PC within some hours.
The good thing is that our sys admin is very intersted in my hobby and gives some advise. Also he has a different view on the images so he has sometimes suggestions that we "specialists" in the forum would not see.
It's great to have the sysadmin on your side! :D
Don't bother increasing the subdiv cache though. It doesn't make much of a difference in most cases, and generally you need the free memory more (for other parts of the scene and rendering process that are not controlled by that setting).
- Oshyan
Thanks for the tipp Oshyan.
Amazingly, after I restarted the server today it has a strange speed-behavior!
Calculating GI Cache it's more then 2 times faster than my Core i7
Also rendering is faster now: 2/3 of my i7's speed...
But it gets really, really hot - especially the RAM...
Someone intersted in some sausages? -- there should be finished 2 pairs grilled on the server ;D
Unfortunately I had to rearrange some details in the scene. After some changes in the terrain I forgot to check my populations (floating trees) and had to restart rendering... But now I'm happy with the meadow...
(at least I will not make any more changes)
[attach=1]
Very dark for what appears to be a full daylight scene, but otherwise looks nice.
- Oshyan
Echo Oshyan. Nice scene but what happened with the sunlight? There are no clouds around so some sunlight should be present.
You're both right. Here at home I see it too.
Seems I have really big trouble with working on differnt monitors!
Unfortunately my spider calibtation tool is only licensed for one monitor.
Brightended version:
[attach=1]
Oh yeah better. Are u gonna make a higher res version?
Thanks archonforest :)
For the moment I need a break and all PCs are rendering the animations. I have not even unpacked the new Core i7 since a week :o :)
But I have planned something special for these scenes. I want to make a 360 degree spherical panorama of the landscape, one of the pool and one of the livingroom. I want to make images in 30 degree steps and use the Microsoft Image Composite Editor for stitching the spheres.
Perhaps the spherical camera function of Terragen can make this easier but I would have to learn this feature first.
OKay cool. :)
You have an unpacked i7 since a week?? How can u not touch it??? hehehe... :P
...sitting too much time at the PC ;D
Nice scene...are those flowers Yarrow? If so where from?
Yes, bobbystahr, GC01_Achillea_millefolium_Common_Yarrow from Xfrog
Quote from: DocCharly65 on July 25, 2015, 06:11:43 AM
Yes, bobbystahr, GC01_Achillea_millefolium_Common_Yarrow from Xfrog
Cool, but not a free one...oh well. Nice plant...have em in my garden for herbal tea.
One of my actual business: Bringing things together...
Somewhere behind the village near the poolhouse the stargate will be activated in the night after something alien escaped from the enterprise.
It was a long way but that part of the story is almost finalized (the script - not the renders :P ;) )
The village lights are a bit too bright and to big but it is necessary in the animation.
[attach=1]
The single frame is not really impressive. It's best seen at full screen mode. Otherwise it's to dark depending on your monitor settings.
Quote from: DocCharly65 on September 22, 2016, 03:20:49 AM
The village lights are a bit too bright and to big but it is necessary in the animation.
The single frame is not really impressive. It's best seen at full screen mode. Otherwise it's to dark depending on your monitor settings.
I dunno, I think the lights and lighting of the town seem appropriate.
Looks good here.