One of those experiences...
Jim_1831252
Posts: 728
I'd had a render cooking for about 7 hours when I noticed my system was getting a little squirrely. Uh-oh, I thought and decided to go cancel the render and save the image (because it would have been fine with a few mins in post). Alas DAZ Studio promptly crashed as I brought up the GUI.
I'm mostly calm now, but it has me wondering why DAZ still haven't got around to having studio save out render progress. Like a million things could happen to interrupt a render, and there are zero contingency options other than to start from scratch. Don't get me wrong, what I really want is for the scene and render progress to be saved so we can go back to rendering when we are ready, but let's not get carried away here.
Is there any solution here? Is there a nice plugin that makes nice shinny renders periodically?
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Comments
I do wish it could do that. Also an auto save feature would be nice. I have sadly just closed windows forgetting to save a complete render
Yes, I've thought that would be handy too. Sometimes I don't bother saving some renders, and then later discover I have a use for them. I was just poking around in the temp render album and noticed I have some images all the way back from 2013, some from earlier this year and some from today. I had always assumed this was flushed when Studio or Windows restarts, but apparently not always. Unfortunately the only version of my current image in there was from early stages, probably saved just after a cancel.
Don't hold your breath... :(
Yes, it would be really really nice, helpful and time saving.
And yes, there is this R.png file, which sometimes contains the current render, but often it does not, or is missing, or whatnot. It's not a solution, really.
Yeah an autosave would be nice, both for renders and for scenes. I try to make sure that I save before I do a render, just in case the low on memory thing pops up or the program otherwise crashes, but sometimes I forget, or the program crashes when I apply a shader sometimes...
As long as the autosave saves to it's own filename, and not to the filename you are currently working with, for those rare instances when the program crashes while saving.
Daz Studio doesn't crash that often for me, but it happens often enough to keep me on my toes.
Also, I worry that a render might finish while I'm out and about and the power might go or something like that and an auto save feature would have been really handy. I don't know what Windows 10 is like with auto updates and restarts, but I know Win 7 would occasionally restart my computer with mandatory updates, no matter what settings I use. Instead of waking up to a nice crisp render you wake up to a login screen, or a blank. The pain!
"And yes, there is this R.png file"
Where is this? I must find!
Try C:\Users\*User Name*\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp\render
It will be in the directory defined as being your DS temp folder.
I can strongly recommend Everything to search stuff on your disks on Windows. You never want to live without it. ;)
https://www.voidtools.com/
And if you cancel a render you can only resume it if you don't save the image. Surely it would be easy to let us save an image and keep the resume option, then if we were feeling insecure we could manually do what LuxRender does automatically.
"Try C:\Users\*User Name*\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp\render"
Ah, that's where I was poking around. No joy.
@Peter, I think you can use the last render to save what you currently have, but sure would be great if you didn't have to cancel first.
Do note that DS clears its temp directory on startup. If DS crashes in the middle of a render, close it, and go look for the render in the temp directory BEFORE restarting DS.
I am constantly forgetting to save.... Although, after a year and a half, I am slowly getting better at it lol. I have no problem saving my work when I am in photoshop, I save every five minutes or so. No idea why its so hard for me to remember in Studio. An autosave would be fantastic.
I agree that this would be great, I never understand why the render has to quit the pause when it is saved, I can't see a technical reason for it, and it would be very nice to save partly finished renders.
The directory Above is the default, if you have changed it in Preferences dialog box, then your temp render directory, won't be in that location.
I suggest moving the cache directory from the default location for several reasons:
These suggestions will also saved you from data loss, due to a Catastrophic System Drive Failure, as none of your data is on the C: drive. The in scheme of things Hard Drives are cheap, data loss is expensive. Unless you have a small Laptop you are doing everything on, then you most likely have space for additional internal drives.
If you are on a laptop or have multiple machines, I suggest a NAS (Network Attached Storage) and back up your system Regularly. (Don't put your Cache on the NAS, that woudl slowdown your rendering).
If you have a Laptop with a Optical Drive (CD/DVD), you can get a Carrier for a 2.5” drive and replace your CD Drive with it and give yourself what 4TB of storage, for less then the cost of Data Loss.
I agree, it's good and very fast. I've replaced it with Listary though which is just as fast but has a ton of other file and folder features as well.
http://www.listary.com/
Thanks Haslor, I'm not really worried about HD failures as I have a backup system.
I feel your pain Jim. Before I press the cancel button I do a print-screen capture. Granted it will only capture the image at screen size resolution, but it's better than losing everything. I've also experineced many crashes during cancel-render and keep my fingers crossed every time I press that button.
THIS isn't the best option...well it is the best option, but it's not how it should work...
If you're rendering you CAN save the render in progress this way:
Click cancel.
Say yes that you want to cancel the render.
DO NOT use the window with the save/continue options.
Go to File -> Save Last Render and chose that....save that file.
Click continue to re-start the render.
It's sad to see I'm not the only one that has had issues with Studio crashing during rendering, but I'm hardly surprised.
@Scavenger That's exactly what I was attempting. It is handy, but is a little counter intuitive, but like you said, that's the way it is.
@jim yeah. it just saves the r file from temp. This won't help after a crash...just after rendering for 5 hours with 5 to go...
I use this quite a bit when not 100 per cent sure the render is ready to my satisfaction..
If you know the render is gonna take a really long time, you could spot render half of it and then the other half later. Kind of like using a checkpoint. Unless you're using the bloom filter which doesn't seem to work with spot render properly.
Is spot rendering faster with Iray? As it is still making all the calculations for off frame elements I would think it's about the same?
It seems to be....don't know if doing 2 halfs it would be, but doing pickups of changes it is.