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  • FusionLAFusionLA Posts: 249
    edited December 1969

    stumpc said:
    SphericLabs said:
    Michael_G said:
    @SphericLabs any chance LUXUS can save the settings, its getting to be a pain to keep re-doing every thing each time I start a new project.

    I finally figured out why mine save, and others people are saying their Luxus RenderSettings are getting reset. In the DAZ preferences there is an option to read/ignore the render settings in a scene file:. I need to make it so Luxus handles this properly so that it works as expected both ways. It important for render to render scenes to read the settings from the file.

    I'm impressed by the way you are taking the developement of this App so seriously. It's a good way of ironing out the issues by participating in this thread.

    To anyone who uses this App to it's full potential it help's to have dynamic and responsive interaction to hammer out a better solution. So often the aloofness displayed by some developers(not here of course but in other areas or Paolo for that matter who does a decent job) tends to never address some of their ongoing issues.

    Thank's.;-P

    I have to echo this!!!
    Awhile back in this tread (and it is growing fast), I said it was great having the actual developer here, helping and supporting the users.
    Being a new user, this has been very helpful.

  • KickAir 8PKickAir 8P Posts: 1,865
    edited December 1969

    fusionla said:
    stumpc said:
    To anyone who uses this App to it's full potential it help's to have dynamic and responsive interaction to hammer out a better solution. So often the aloofness displayed by some developers(not here of course but in other areas or Paolo for that matter who does a decent job) tends to never address some of their ongoing issues.

    Thank's.;-P


    I have to echo this!!!
    Awhile back in this tread (and it is growing fast), I said it was great having the actual developer here, helping and supporting the users. Being a new user, this has been very helpful.
    I've been rendering for years, and I'd say a supportive developer and helpful community of users are essential to getting the most out of anything like this; I wouldn't've gotten anywhere near as far without them -- thanks, people! Without you guys, where would I ask questions like:

    This has one distant light set on sun-sky2 and an upended cube as a light bulb, so there are effectively seven lights. It's 2000x1600px, and at 13:37:44 hours on 4 threads the stats read 16.89 S/p 190.52 S/s 619.61 C/s 325% Eff, but it still seems somewhat grainy. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?

    Screenshot and render attached, click to embiggen:

    PCI20130319-Scene05-Lux01b.jpg
    2000 x 1600 - 5M
    screenshot.23-03-2013_12_.10_.58_.png
    1682 x 1018 - 1M
  • SphericLabsSphericLabs Posts: 598
    edited December 1969

    Very cool scene that will look great when done, but have you stopped/resumed it at all?. I ask because 16.89 s/p isn't much and if you resume you will get a Total s/p off to the side.

  • IppotamusIppotamus Posts: 1,578
    edited December 1969

    Bluebird 3D said:
    Mari-Anne said:
    Bluebird 3D said:
    Hi Everyone!

    Just wanted to let you know I've submitted the Luxus training. It is in testing. It's out of my hands for a while now so when I know more you will. :)

    ~Bluebird

    I don't know if you've already mentioned this, but are you permitted to give us a sneak peak on what's covered? Is the training in the form of videos, PDFs, or some other format? Step-by-step instructions? How long?

    Oh sure!

    It is a video training series that goes step by step through the process I use to get my stuff over to LuxRender via the Luxus plugin.

    I am a straight forward thinker so there isn't technical jargon and a bunch of theory. This is exactly how I do it from A to B. I started the series with how I create my own lighting rigs in Studio and then what I do to prepare my scene for render via the Luxus plugin. I cover how to apply Luxus materials and lights and explain why I start with Studio first.

    I tried to keep this as basic and up front as possible because I don't enjoy getting confused when I am given too much information about a technical side when all I -really- want to do is make a nice render. The technical minded and deeper "how exactly does that math calculate" kind of thinkers will be better off diving into the dev side of things over at the LuxRender wiki.

    This is a video series geared towards creative minded, visual learners.

    Right now the series is 2 hours and 5 minutes in length but it is subject to editing.

    ~Bluebird

    This is exactly what I need.
    Thanks for giving us an update. :)

  • Michael GMichael G Posts: 0
    edited March 2013

    KickAir 8P said:
    fusionla said:
    stumpc said:
    To anyone who uses this App to it's full potential it help's to have dynamic and responsive interaction to hammer out a better solution. So often the aloofness displayed by some developers(not here of course but in other areas or Paolo for that matter who does a decent job) tends to never address some of their ongoing issues.

    Thank's.;-P


    I have to echo this!!!
    Awhile back in this tread (and it is growing fast), I said it was great having the actual developer here, helping and supporting the users. Being a new user, this has been very helpful.

    I've been rendering for years, and I'd say a supportive developer and helpful community of users are essential to getting the most out of anything like this; I wouldn't've gotten anywhere near as far without them -- thanks, people! Without you guys, where would I ask questions like:

    This has one distant light set on sun-sky2 and an upended cube as a light bulb, so there are effectively seven lights. It's 2000x1600px, and at 13:37:44 hours on 4 threads the stats read 16.89 S/p 190.52 S/s 619.61 C/s 325% Eff, but it still seems somewhat grainy. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?

    Screenshot and render attached, click to embiggen:

    What CPU is that? 13:37 hours and only 16.89 samples is odd even for LUX, your screen res is pretty high though and seven lights is an awful lot of light calculations. 325% is a very good render efficiency which means the light rays are finding targets and there's not many being wasted. I hardly ever use more than 2 lights or 1 sun light. Also always set the kernal to "linear" and adjust the settings yourself, its also better to use bi-drectional for interior scenes instead of path tracing.

    Post edited by Michael G on
  • KickAir 8PKickAir 8P Posts: 1,865
    edited March 2013

    Michael_G said:
    KickAir 8P said:
    . . . I'd say a supportive developer and helpful community of users are essential to getting the most out of anything like this; I wouldn't've gotten anywhere near as far without them -- thanks, people! Without you guys, where would I ask questions like:

    This has one distant light set on sun-sky2 and an upended cube as a light bulb, so there are effectively seven lights. It's 2000x1600px, and at 13:37:44 hours on 4 threads the stats read 16.89 S/p 190.52 S/s 619.61 C/s 325% Eff, but it still seems somewhat grainy. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?
    What CPU is that? 13:37 hours and only 16.89 samples is odd even for LUX, your screen res is pretty high though and seven lights is an awful lot of light calculations. 325% is a very good render efficiency which means the light rays are finding targets and there's not many being wasted. I hardly ever use more than 2 lights or 1 sun light. Also always set the kernal to "linear" and adjust the settings yourself, its also better to use bi-drectional for interior scenes instead of path tracing.


    The CPU's an AMD Athlon II X4 645, 3.10 GHz, quad-core. There's 6 gig of RAM. I rebooted, then only used DAZ Studio to load and start rendering the scene before closing it, so aside from the usual background LuxRender's the only thing running. From the screenshots below you can see that the CPU's barely touched, but its memory usage is almost total.

    2000x1600px is low for me, I usually render at about 5000px (on the long side) because I sometimes sell prints. I don't think I could get lower than seven lights since a cube (6 faces) is the simplest shape that can be used for a light bulb, and then I've got sunlight coming through the "window", that's seven. Speaking of the sunlight, with that is this still enough of an interior scene for you to recommend bi-drectional instead of path tracing?

    .
    Very cool scene that will look great when done, but have you stopped/resumed it at all?. I ask because 16.89 s/p isn't much and if you resume you will get a Total s/p off to the side.
    Nope, didn't stop or pause, sorry. And the computer's power settings have been set to never turn off the computer or the screen (I kill the screen manually when I leave the 'puter).

    screenshot.23-03-2013_12_.23_.42_.jpg
    995 x 1016 - 227K
    screenshot.23-03-2013_12_.24_.25_.jpg
    1184 x 691 - 303K
    Post edited by KickAir 8P on
  • SphericLabsSphericLabs Posts: 598
    edited December 1969

    So this looks like an interior scene, but a sunsky2 shining through a windows? Or do you have multiple windows?

    I would try it with just the light bulb cube and see if you get things clearing up alot faster. If it looks like it is clearing up alot faster and you only have one window, I would replace your sunsky2 with an area light right outside the windows. You can adjust the blackbody temperature in the light groups of LuxRender as it renders to get the color you want.

  • KickAir 8PKickAir 8P Posts: 1,865
    edited March 2013

    SphericLabs said:
    So this looks like an interior scene, but a sunsky2 shining through a windows? Or do you have multiple windows?

    I would try it with just the light bulb cube and see if you get things clearing up alot faster. If it looks like it is clearing up alot faster and you only have one window, I would replace your sunsky2 with an area light right outside the windows. You can adjust the blackbody temperature in the light groups of LuxRender as it renders to get the color you want.


    One window, and it's really a single rectangular hole in a plane set between the sunsky2 light and the room -- I need to direct the sunlight pretty precisely for the composition I'm trying for.

    It may be that a cube-light was too cute for the room -- technically, a lightbulb is a point light, but I've never been happy with DAZStudio's point lights. I replaced the cube with two point lights (for a total of three lights), and half an hour in it's looking pretty good. I'll let it run overnight, if it's still too grainy I'll try what you've said. Thanks again for your help!

    Post edited by KickAir 8P on
  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,945
    edited December 1969

    KickAir 8P said:
    Michael_G said:
    KickAir 8P said:
    . . . I'd say a supportive developer and helpful community of users are essential to getting the most out of anything like this; I wouldn't've gotten anywhere near as far without them -- thanks, people! Without you guys, where would I ask questions like:

    This has one distant light set on sun-sky2 and an upended cube as a light bulb, so there are effectively seven lights. It's 2000x1600px, and at 13:37:44 hours on 4 threads the stats read 16.89 S/p 190.52 S/s 619.61 C/s 325% Eff, but it still seems somewhat grainy. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?
    What CPU is that? 13:37 hours and only 16.89 samples is odd even for LUX, your screen res is pretty high though and seven lights is an awful lot of light calculations. 325% is a very good render efficiency which means the light rays are finding targets and there's not many being wasted. I hardly ever use more than 2 lights or 1 sun light. Also always set the kernal to "linear" and adjust the settings yourself, its also better to use bi-drectional for interior scenes instead of path tracing.


    The CPU's an AMD Athlon II X4 645, 3.10 GHz, quad-core. There's 6 gig of RAM. I rebooted, then only used DAZ Studio to load and start rendering the scene before closing it, so aside from the usual background LuxRender's the only thing running. From the screenshots below you can see that the CPU's barely touched, but its memory usage is almost total.

    2000x1600px is low for me, I usually render at about 5000px (on the long side) because I sometimes sell prints. I don't think I could get lower than seven lights since a cube (6 faces) is the simplest shape that can be used for a light bulb, and then I've got sunlight coming through the "window", that's seven. Speaking of the sunlight, with that is this still enough of an interior scene for you to recommend bi-drectional instead of path tracing?

    .
    Very cool scene that will look great when done, but have you stopped/resumed it at all?. I ask because 16.89 s/p isn't much and if you resume you will get a Total s/p off to the side.


    Nope, didn't stop or pause, sorry. And the computer's power settings have been set to never turn off the computer or the screen (I kill the screen manually when I leave the 'puter).

    By any chance do you have a lot of disk activity? It looks a little like you have maxed out physical RAM and you may well be getting page thrashing which would give symptoms like that - low CPU whilst disk sub-system is busy being driven to read and write to page file.

  • KickAir 8PKickAir 8P Posts: 1,865
    edited December 1969

    SimonJM said:
    KickAir 8P said:
    Michael_G said:
    KickAir 8P said:
    This has one distant light set on sun-sky2 and an upended cube as a light bulb, so there are effectively seven lights. It's 2000x1600px, and at 13:37:44 hours on 4 threads the stats read 16.89 S/p 190.52 S/s 619.61 C/s 325% Eff, but it still seems somewhat grainy. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?

    What CPU is that? 13:37 hours and only 16.89 samples is odd even for LUX, your screen res is pretty high though and seven lights is an awful lot of light calculations . . .

    The CPU's an AMD Athlon II X4 645, 3.10 GHz, quad-core. There's 6 gig of RAM. I rebooted, then only used DAZ Studio to load and start rendering the scene before closing it, so aside from the usual background LuxRender's the only thing running. From the screenshots below you can see that the CPU's barely touched, but its memory usage is almost total.
    By any chance do you have a lot of disk activity? It looks a little like you have maxed out physical RAM and you may well be getting page thrashing which would give symptoms like that - low CPU whilst disk sub-system is busy being driven to read and write to page file.
    The hard drive doesn't sound like it, no. Where can I check for that?
  • cwichuracwichura Posts: 1,042
    edited December 1969

    SimonJM said:
    By any chance do you have a lot of disk activity? It looks a little like you have maxed out physical RAM and you may well be getting page thrashing which would give symptoms like that - low CPU whilst disk sub-system is busy being driven to read and write to page file.

    I have to agree with this assessment. Lux should be pegging all cores on the machine (unless you specifically tell it not to use all cores). The screenshot shows RAM is capped out, and next to no CPU usage. This suggests that Lux is thrashing on swap. How big is the luxrender process? LuxRender pretty much touches all of its memory space all the time, so unlike some apps that are using more memory than physically available, it will never "settle" with some less-used parts of memory swapped out. It will constantly hammer the swap if you don't have enough RAM.

    Also, 6GB is really not a lot for LuxRender. My average render done with Lux usually takes 6-8GB of RAM, 12GB is not all that uncommon, and I've had a couple that were up around 20GB when rendering at high (5kx3k) resolution with multiple light groups. (My usual render resolution is 2560x1440, for point of reference as resolution is a big determinant of memory usage.)

    If you are on the border of running out of RAM, you could try reducing the outlier rejection level. That setting can result in considerable memory usage, especially as you increase render resolution. Each light group also stores its own copy of the scene framebuffer, so collapsing all lights into a single light group for the final render will also help reduce memory usage (and also speed up rendering time). Using hybrid mode (GPU acceleration) will also result in a considerable increase in RAM usage for the ray state buffers.

    But the real solution is to add more memory.

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,945
    edited December 1969

    KickAir 8P said:

    The hard drive doesn't sound like it, no. Where can I check for that?

    Various ways of checking, from listening, to feeling, to looking at the disk activity light. One hint is how otherwise responsive the pc is. With that amount of unused CPU it should be quite swift in responding to things like Alt-Tabbing to other windows, etc.

    One way to help would be to perform the following when doing the render:
    DS: Save scene file
    DS: Start Luxus UI and initiate render, making sure the 'use LuxRender GUI' option is set to on.
    LuxRender: When the status line states 'Rendering' (i.e., chnages form 'parsing scenefile), swicth back to DS, and ...
    DS: shut application (hence the save as first step!).

    That will free up at least some memory which may be just enough to help. Failing that make sure that any unrequired application/program is shut down.

    The suggestions by cwichura are also very much useful to try out. Hopefully some combination of all of these will work for you.

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,879
    edited December 1969

    KickAir 8P,

    It would be two main issues.

    Render size and render settings.

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,845
    edited December 1969

    KickAir 8P said:

    It's 2000x1600px, and at 13:37:44 hours on 4 threads the stats read 16.89 S/p 190.52 S/s 619.61 C/s 325% Eff, but it still seems somewhat grainy. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong?

    Your render is too large for your amount of memory. I have 8 GBs and I will never render a scene at 2000x1600 with that amount of models in it. The most I have rendered is 1920x1080 and for very sparse scenes without too many models in it.

    The larger your dimensions for the render the more memory LuxRender will use and it will take a lot longer to render as well. Try rendering that scene at say 900x900 and you will see what I mean. A lot less memory will be used.

  • Michael GMichael G Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    First time using the volume settings so I had a go at making god rays, im aware there's no bump mapping but this was just a test. Added a little bloom to the light but im unsure as to why the window looks solid, I put the texture map in the glass transmission and set it to pure white and used an infinite light maybe that had some thing to do with it. No portal as this plugin don`t seam to support portals yet, unless im missing some thing really simple in making them anyway hope the render looks good. Rendered with LUX v1.2.1 to 4.21k samples, 10 hours using the DAZ plugin LUXUS

    rays.jpg
    1600 x 1200 - 430K
  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    SphericLabs said:
    The next build, which you should get soon, will properly linearize the colors. The experts had to beat me over the head a few times, but now I understand it.

    Thanks for being so active! And thanks for the phrasing of the second sentence - it made me grin. :lol:

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,945
    edited December 1969

    Kerya said:
    SphericLabs said:
    The next build, which you should get soon, will properly linearize the colors. The experts had to beat me over the head a few times, but now I understand it.

    Thanks for being so active! And thanks for the phrasing of the second sentence - it made me grin. :lol:

    It made me chuckle too! It's also a feeling I know only too well ;) Been on so many IT courses I have lost count and like school I often just sat there and stayed quiet if something was not clear. After a while I started interrupting and asking for clarification, often several time (there are times when a concept just does not stick until explained in a certain way!). It was amazing the number of times people would come up to me in a break and say, "wow, thanks for asking about that, I did not understand what the instructor meant ..."

    So yes, even if I had to gve the experts the stick and lean forward to give them a better aim, I know the feeling! :)

  • KickAir 8PKickAir 8P Posts: 1,865
    edited December 1969

    nDelphi said:
    KickAir 8P said:

    It's 2000x1600px, and at 13:37:44 hours on 4 threads the stats read 16.89 S/p 190.52 S/s 619.61 C/s 325% Eff, but it still seems somewhat grainy . . .

    Your render is too large for your amount of memory. I have 8 GBs and I will never render a scene at 2000x1600 with that amount of models in it. The most I have rendered is 1920x1080 and for very sparse scenes without too many models in it. The larger your dimensions for the render the more memory LuxRender will use and it will take a lot longer to render as well. Try rendering that scene at say 900x900 and you will see what I mean. A lot less memory will be used.
    Yeah, my 500x400px test renders came out fine. From what all of you have said it sounds like it's time to upgrade my RAM. Before I go spending money on that, is it gonna be worth it with the CPU I have? When I bought this machine an AMD Athlon II X4 645 3.10 GHz quad-core was reasonably powerful -- now I'm not so sure.

    (Sorry if this is getting off-topic -- I promise I'll post a lux'd render with my new RAM, does that help? :red: )

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,845
    edited December 1969

    KickAir 8P said:

    (Sorry if this is getting off-topic -- I promise I'll post a lux'd render with my new RAM, does that help? :red: )

    This is not off-topic considering the new people being introduce to LuxRender. It saves people from so much wasted time and hassle to know these things.

    Adding more memory will allow you to get more creative; as in allowing you to add more to a scene. It isn't going to make it faster. For that going with a new system say with DDR3 memory and a more modern CPU will. It's up to you and what your budget is like.

    I use a quad-core myself, it works for me for the moment, but who wouldn't want a faster machine than the one they currently have? ;)

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited March 2013

    nDelphi said:

    I use a quad-core myself, it works for me for the moment, but who wouldn't want a faster machine than the one they currently have? ;)

    Meeeeee would like a new faster machine please but I have learnt to be very patient with the rigs I have been using.
    Post edited by Szark on
  • cwichuracwichura Posts: 1,042
    edited December 1969

    Keep in mind that LuxRender has native support for network rendering. So you don't have to replace a machine to get additional rendering compute power. The only requirement is that every machine have enough physical RAM to entirely load the scene you are trying to render, as already discussed in this thread. So you can always upgrade just the RAM for now, and then when you eventually upgrade to a new machine, keep the current machine as a render slave.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Yeah good point but I don't think this 2GB Ram Vista Dual core will be any good as a slave? Besides I am only borrowing it as my machine died. Now I am frantically saving up for a new workstation. But good advice nonetheless. :)

  • StormlyghtStormlyght Posts: 666
    edited December 1969

    cwichura said:
    So you can always upgrade just the RAM for now, and then when you eventually upgrade to a new machine, keep the current machine as a render slave.

    Hi,

    Hopefully this isn't to off-topic... @cwichura how would one go about creating an effective network to utilize the resources on their machines? Right now, I create my scenes in DS on my laptop then via the Luxus plugin send it to the LuxRender installation on my faster machine but what happens is not only does my laptop stop functioning when I do this but the machine I send the file to doesn't seem to work very well either. The laptop is MacBook Pro (circa late 2008) and the rendering machine is a MacPro (2009). After reading the posts, it maybe I'm just running out of RAM--collectively the two machines only have 10GB.

  • kittenwyldekittenwylde Posts: 151
    edited March 2013

    Whew, finally made it through this entire thread! I started reading it on the day it was born, but it grew way too fast for my limited time. :ohh:
    Anyway, thanks to everyone who has posted questions, answers, tips, and renders. I've been taking notes. :) I absolutely LOVE the chance to finally use LuxRender, which has been sitting hopefully on my desktop for a while, waiting for me to find some way of getting it to work with Studio that didn't cost a fortune. Now It works! I've been playing like crazy with it and I love the way it handles light. And finally, finally, finally the materials are behaving properly. I kept getting issues where one material would show up, but another wouldn't... grr. Still having hair issues, but I know that'll get fixed.
    So thanks again to everyone for answering all of my questions to date. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll have more. And soon I'll even have a render to post, one with all its materials in the proper places, and lights, too! Been tossing out most of the test renders, although I did keep one because I love the overall look, even though the textures came out funky because I hadn't gotten the hang of 'em yet. I'll even share. Just don't look too close at the hair or textures! :red:
    EDIT: Er, no I won't share. Just realized I'm not positive a blurred reflection of not-entirely-dressed works in the forums. Bad me.

    Post edited by kittenwylde on
  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,879
    edited December 1969

    I am not sure what others are using for render settings and I am seeing some mixed results in here so let me share what I have been using for all my tests.

    Renderer - Sampler
    Sampler - Metropolis
    Pixel Sampler - Linear
    Tone Mapping Kernel - Linear
    Pixel Filter - Gaussian
    Surface Integrator - Path

    I have not altered any other settings and the above are not perfect for all renders so you may want to read up on render settings in the Lux wiki as to why something should be changed.

  • FusionLAFusionLA Posts: 249
    edited December 1969

    Just to let others know, LuxRender v1.2.1 released.
    Release notes:
    In order to fix last minute issues with bidirectional rendering and Blender 2.66 integration, a new v1.2.1 version has been made available.

    Also is it OK to use Luxus weekly builds or stick to the official releases?

  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,152
    edited December 1969

    cwichura said:
    Keep in mind that LuxRender has native support for network rendering. So you don't have to replace a machine to get additional rendering compute power. The only requirement is that every machine have enough physical RAM to entirely load the scene you are trying to render, as already discussed in this thread. So you can always upgrade just the RAM for now, and then when you eventually upgrade to a new machine, keep the current machine as a render slave.
    I have a few to be tossed machines from work for this very purpose. I Frankenstein a few to get more RAM, put Linux in character mode, install LuxRender and poof. Network node.
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    ropeman said:
    cwichura said:
    Keep in mind that LuxRender has native support for network rendering. So you don't have to replace a machine to get additional rendering compute power. The only requirement is that every machine have enough physical RAM to entirely load the scene you are trying to render, as already discussed in this thread. So you can always upgrade just the RAM for now, and then when you eventually upgrade to a new machine, keep the current machine as a render slave.
    I have a few to be tossed machines from work for this very purpose. I Frankenstein a few to get more RAM, put Linux in character mode, install LuxRender and poof. Network node.Yeah it's alright for you cleaver folks that know about comptuers etc but for us mear mortals it is all dark magic. I have seen it, the Linux book of spells. ;)
  • KickAir 8PKickAir 8P Posts: 1,865
    edited December 1969

    nDelphi said:
    Adding more memory will allow you to get more creative; as in allowing you to add more to a scene. It isn't going to make it faster. For that going with a new system say with DDR3 memory and a more modern CPU will. It's up to you and what your budget is like.

    I use a quad-core myself, it works for me for the moment, but who wouldn't want a faster machine than the one they currently have? ;)


    My computer guy took a look, and he says the max my motherboard will support is 16 gig, so that's what we ordered -- by Wednesday night at the latest it should be installed. We also went over the options re buying a new machine, but a 3.10 GHz quad-core CPU isn't bad, and to get a significant improvement I'd have to spend way too much money. And since the CPU was barely utilized due to the RAM issue I have hopes. We'll see how it goes.

    SphericLabs, Michael_G, SimonJM, cwichura, Mattymanx, nDelphi -- thanks for all your help, really appreciate it!

  • cwichuracwichura Posts: 1,042
    edited December 1969

    stormlyght said:

    Hopefully this isn't to off-topic... @cwichura how would one go about creating an effective network to utilize the resources on their machines? Right now, I create my scenes in DS on my laptop then via the Luxus plugin send it to the LuxRender installation on my faster machine but what happens is not only does my laptop stop functioning when I do this but the machine I send the file to doesn't seem to work very well either. The laptop is MacBook Pro (circa late 2008) and the rendering machine is a MacPro (2009). After reading the posts, it maybe I'm just running out of RAM--collectively the two machines only have 10GB.

    Keep in mind, with LuxRender, there is no "collectively" when it comes to RAM. Each node must have enough RAM to load the scene in full. So if your scene requires 8GB of RAM to render, every node must have at least 12GB (because the OS needs a GB or two for itself in addition to the 8GB used by Lux). Lux does not slice the scene up between nodes such that each node is rendering a smaller section, using less memory.

    So I'm not really sure how to answer your question about "creating an effective network" other than to say that each machine must have enough RAM. Then just run "luxconsole -s -W -P " on each of the slave machines. On the master machine, assuming all the machines are on the same network, you can add the slaves in with "machinename.local". The master will also render as well; there is no way to tell it not to. (You can drop its thread count down to 1 to relax its CPU load, but it will still consume all the memory LuxRender would normally consume for the scene.)

    Also, the default network fetch time in Lux is crazy stupid fast. Network fetch is actually a fairly expensive process, as it locks the film buffers for long periods while the film is exported/merged to/from the .flm file. And when the film buffers are locked, the rendering threads are stalled. I wouldn't use anything less than 15 minutes (900 seconds) and I only use 900 when I'm doing quick material tests. During final render, I set it to one hour (3600 seconds).

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