Network rendering, any help?

[jure]

Hmm add the command i mentioned above and try again
savegimode 1;

[Jahun]

I'd want to try that.. but this is the final go. And I"m pretty sure thenodes will get into a GI file fight..


ok will try a quick test to check that..

[Jahun]

Where do I add it, in which cmds line?

[jure]

Doesn't matter. It should work in either header or tailer...

[Jahun]

Ok this is all extremely preliminary but it seems to work to add savegimode 1;

Ran a test with 3 nodes and the result is a very stable (for me inevitable now) error pattern (bit splotches) which is perfect

Got them all crunching away at the anim now, so I'll know for certain only tomorrow.

Thanks!

[Jahun]

Ok, it didn't work.

When rendering the full animation using Gisavemode 1; there is still the same issue for me.

For some reason it did work with 3 nodes when only rendering the 20 worst frames.. so perhaps it only goes wrong when the cameras go to a previously unseen area?

[NiGMa]

If it is not flickering when you render it on only one machine than your Gi save settings are wrong. When it is done correctly all nodes use the same photon map as the first one, provided you click render sequence and not render frame. =)

[Jahun]

I did do that, exactly. And did it twice (stereosopic animation, 2 renders one for each eye)

I don't think you are right about that. First of all they don't share the GI file at all. They only save it, and don't look into what the other ones did. They save and do that all together at times.. and I am quite sure that does nothing except take time. They do load it at start yes, and never again after I am very sure of that.

On the errors: I do not believe that a 10 second run over the 900 frames I have has any correlation to the animated splotches I see. There is no way that it can evaluate a heavy 900 frame anim in that amount of time and guess where to shoot it's rays.

I think my test went ok because I took the worst part of the anim say frame 400 to 425 and rerendered those. But by doing that, they all at least load the starting GI file and thus have the correct info for the first few frames, they add to that but only in previously unseen places so after more than 25 frames for my slow moving cam.

It makes sense to me, but I don't know of a solution. Well, making sure to have no splotches would work.. but they only get very noticable when flickering.

[erwin zwart]

There is no way that it can evaluate a heavy 900 frame anim in that amount of time and guess where to shoot it's rays.

how can I change your opinion?
In lightmap mode kray just moves the camera over the path of the whole sequence to determine the area where it has to shoot photons for one GI cache. The real computing work happens after that short "scan" You have to Save GI to a file beforehand to feed to every node for rendering from the same irradiance cache to prevent noisy cache (as in independent mode per frame).
In photonmap mode it shoots all photons from the lightsources, so there you have no influence of any camera path, it just has to divide all photons over the whole scene (inclusive the parts where your camera is not going)

[Jahun]

Ok I am unsure what part I meant.. but I did do exactly what you describe and it did give me flickering splotches.

Let me rephrase. I have no clue what Kray does at what point of time or how. But I am seeing animated splotches where a single node's solution does not. This is for areas the original 1st frame solution + GI file didn't see.

So, yes perhaps it does do some 900 frame photon shooting or whatever, but the issues I have are mainly at the corners etc. It takes an estimated 1/10 of a second per frame or so when it does that quick scan. Perhaps it does shoot photon from lightsources, but I have next to a area light, a couple of very long elongated lumi poly's. It didn't fire photons from those poly's? or the scattering or whathave you.


Just saying, that the different nodes run different GI solutions in my case. And the are configured as discusses before.

Maybe it is my lack of experience, sleep or skill.. but they do!

You must admit it can't calculate a 900 frame errorless GI solution in a few seconds right? After the first frame, all my nodes keep their own added GI info and their own (important) errors of it. These errors are the ones that I see flickering. Not the correct lighting or so.. that's correct.


Ow wait I was gonna post an animation.. tomorrow.. tomorrow.. gonna be a long night

[NiGMa]

I agree with Erwin, but today I noticed an animation of min flickering that was running on two machines which were sharing the same Gi file. But it worked fine the other day with several shots, it could be a bug that somehow is engaged when a certain element is in the scene.

That might explain why Jahun is having so much trouble. I will retest that scene I had trouble with tomorrow, when it happened i rushed the settings, i might have switched something on accidently or whatever.

[erwin zwart]

I think it is time to show something now

btw kray is really that fast that it shoots the photons from the camera (lightmap animation mode when you press render sequence) in a very short time. After that you get your precompute already for the first frame while it takes all areas into account where the camera is going to be in the shot.
When you do this for 2 "nodes" they both have 2 different precomputes and every frame rendered by the other will look different in GI solution. So maybe the flickering comes from that you have 2 computers generating frames into the same directory but not using the same initial photon distribution.
I will try myself if something is weird here.

[Jahun]

I had the showing yesterday and slept straight after. At work now.. so a shot later.

What you say Erwin makes sense, but NiGMa and I did just that. Make sure the nodes have the same GI file. I am very sure I didn't make a mistake there. Please make a test and check, in that test however, make sure the camera ends in a completely different room than it started on frame 1.


And NiGMa, for the anim's you have for which it did work, were those all in +- the same area, and the ones where it failed in a an animation where the camera switches room or so?

I will check lightmap mode in detail in a few days.. when I have recovered from too much work. Just want to say, that if you put them all on the same GI file, and on BOTH and on gisavemode 1; etc etc. The nodes will only load the GI file 1x and never again during the rendering. If the camera stays in the same room or area, all errors are already fully in the GI initial GI file and the nodes don't have to shoot additional photons which may generate them. If my camera stays in one area, I never have flickering splotches since the few errors (splotches) I see, where all already determined in the first frame render and thus in the shared GI file.

So my feeling is that if you have an animation that goes from room to room for instance and run it on multiple nodes, there is a difference in the error in their lighting which shows up as flickering.

Ofcourse, if you are right and they should produce the exact same errors as long as they have the same initial GI info.. something else is wrong. But I am betting on the fact that there can be a variation in errors, even though they have a similar initial light map.


ps: I am talking flickering of splotches here, perhaps if I had the skill and time to eliminate them from my scene, there would be no errors to flicker at all. So if you test, this is a factor. In a perfect render result, I am with you that it should be the same for all nodes. But in my "omg I have 3 days to learn kray and setup a scene and render" slight splotches were unavoidable

I made 3 weeks of 80 hours work, so forgive me for not putting up the animation yet.. perhaps I can take the look of a 3D program again this weekend

[direwolf]

It happened to me too a time ago, but i figured it was because of all the different cpu's and os's. Didn't have it all the time though.

So i tried to create the error. And i did a bit:
See the small flicker on the right side of the screen at the beginning of the animation.

I used the 2-pass mode on 1 node only.
Running XpPro-64 bit / LW 9.3 32bit / Kray OB5
Classic camera. No DOF and no motionblur on purpose !!!

Simple scenes. Default surface. Just 1 Segmented box with holes. Only quads, no non-planer polys.

[direwolf]

If the dev-teams need the scene for errorchecking: