multiple instances of TG2?

[shadowphile]

Can I run multiple instances of TG2?  I know my renders won't be any faster but it would allow me to set up some parallel batch renders while I'm on vacation for a week.  Instead of trying to use some kind of batch scheduler, I'm hoping that I can just run a bunch of command-line TG2 calls in parallel and let the Windows task scheduler work it out, hopefully without too much overhead.  I'm also wondering about resource sharing and how that might cause a lock up.
thanks

[Oshyan]

You can definitely run multiple instances in parallel, but if you're trying to do it to allow long-term rendering while away, you're going to lose a lot of efficiency. You could instead use a batch file with sequential rendering of several different TGDs. But again running multiple instances of TG2 in itself is not a problem.

- Oshyan

[Henry Blewer]

I usually have one long render going. This gets its task priority set back to below normal. Then I run a second T2 and design the next landscape, set up populations and do the clouds. Worked well with 2.0.    2.1 is giving me some difficulty with ram, but I may have found the solution to this.

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8340.0

[jaf]

I usually set the min/max threads to 1/1 when I want to run multiple instances of TG2 and this works fine for me.  And I use the  pause render when running other "heavy: cpu tasks (make sure to pause the preview too -- when you pause the regular render, the preview render will kick in until completed.)

I think the Planetside folks have done a great job of making a very stable product.  My experience with TG2 and crashes is minimal -- not enough to really see any pattern yet.  Once in a while I get a crash when loading objects (obj or tgo) but I can reload TG2 and follow the same procedure without a crash.

I can crash TG2 with a large obj.  I build the models in Lightwave and position/scale/rotate each there, so when imported into TG2 I'm working with one set of  position data.  Much easier -- import object 1 and position it in TG2.  Copy x/y/z positions, then import object 2 and paste positions, etc.  However, if I assemble these objects as one large obj in Lightwave, it crashes TG2, whether I run it through Poseray or not.  Might be the number of image maps -- don't know yet.

But this is getting away from the subject. Interesting thought though.... I wonder if two 1/1 threaded renders is faster or slower than one 2/2 (of the same tgd?)  I would guess the latter is faster, but will have to try that.