21 replies to this topic

[vozzz]

Would it be possible to force cinema to render say every 10th frame, or every 25th frame (manually set). and then after its got to the end it starts rendering the rest, but now it can give you a pretty accurate prediction of how long the render will take?

[Mylenium]

Probably not. Like any such stuff, it will still be way off since depending on what happens in all the other frames, it may take much longer. Even programs that have this feature and calculate the estimated remaining time based on all previously rendered frames are usually way off. too many variables to figure in and if there's a lot of changes during animation almost impossible to predict.

Mylenium

[vozzz]

but thats why you render every 5th frame if you want it to be more accurate. And then a 5th of the way into the render you should have a pretty decent estimate unless you are doing something totally crazy.

[Mylenium]

You can easily test this yourself - create a sphere, put it into a scene with environment geometry, make the sphere highly reflective, dolly in on the sphere. The closer you get to the sphere, the longer it takes to calculate a frame, because more ray evaluations happen. In simple scenes this is minor, but with lots of reflection bounces this can become significant. Furthermore, if something moves and is only reflected in one frame, but not in another, it already skews the result. Same for any other fancies you can think of. The point is: You don't know exactly until you render it. I've had renders reported to take another day in Lightwave, only to find out the next day that it actualyl finished 2 hours after I left the building and just in reverse, predicted 5 minute renders sometimes turn out as taking forever. Sure, the more statistical info the renderer gathers, the more precise it might be in its predictions, but in my experience a 20-30% deviation is as good as it gets and since the relation is not at all linear, just rendering arbitrary frames doesn't help, either. Unless someoen comes up with alternate rendering algorithms, it will probably be this way until the end of time.

Mylenium

[vozzz]

GRRR!!

maybe render a really low res version first? and then use that to extrapolate render times? But then its a bit of a waste as the frames wont be used.

[Srek]

Low Res stands a better chance of beeing half way decent. Rendertimes per frame can vary quite a lot. If you remember the beatboxing squid animation, Full HD frames from that animation took between a couple of minutes and over half an hour on a 40 core system.

[edrhine]

This would be pretty sweet as a concept. What I usually do for HD is work at 960x540 for Cinema renders in a 1080p comp and post for the client at 960x540. That way things look great for the client but render time and revisions are fast. Then I finally render out in 1080p at the end and have a decent idea of what its going to take

[C.Smith]

GRRR!!

maybe render a really low res version first? and then use that to extrapolate render times? But then its a bit of a waste as the frames wont be used.

I think it's a great idea Vozzz. Don't mind Mylenium, it's his job to be a negative Nancy at all times That being said, he's not wrong. But I see your point, more information is better than no information and let's be honest we're all not idiots. We can take a guess at what may be a misleading result due to complexity in a scene. Personally it's always annoyed me that C4D has never had a render estimator. AE does it, some other 3D apps do it. Are they wrong sometimes? Of course. Do I still want for it to take a wild stab at it? You bet I do. And these apps don't even do what you suggest which is get a sample at different points, which no doubt would refine the result. If the SDK supports the possibility to, I may give it a stab at some point and Mylenium can choose not to use it

Edited by C.Smith, 06 April 2012 - 02:37 AM.

[Mylenium]

Why don't you have a little fun and shove a cactus up your ass? Or are you too busy doing crappy stuff for GSG?

Mylenium

Edited by Mylenium, 06 April 2012 - 05:53 AM.

[C.Smith]

Why don't you have a little fun and shove a cactus up your ass? Or are you too busy doing crappy stuff for GSG?

Mylenium

I liked the simpler 'idiot' before editing Also I think you have me confused with Chris Schmidt who does work for GSG. His name is like mine with more of a German twist.

[Mylenium]

Whuteva.

Mylenium

[C.Smith]

Whuteva.

Mylenium

Are you still mad at me for recommending you as my replacement at Creative Cow some years ago? I can see where there would be some resentment

[Mylenium]

Huh? How many eons have I not been at the COW anymore? Just for fun I even tried to log-in to them last week and they are still blocking my account after all those years. So much for that... Seriously, there's no need to call me a "negative Nancy". I do not get along with many people too well and I recognize that - it is, after all, part of my slightly Aspergian condition - but I'm trying and in this particular case I think I provided some rational arguments why I think that render time estimates do not make much sense. No need to piss on me for that. Yeah, I was enraged and it wasn't right to call you that and I apologize, but perhaps you might consider that even people like me do have feelings...

Mylenium

[C.Smith]

Huh? How many eons have I not been at the COW anymore? Just for fun I even tried to log-in to them last week and they are still blocking my account after all those years. So much for that... Seriously, there's no need to call me a "negative Nancy". I do not get along with many people too well and I recognize that - it is, after all, part of my slightly Aspergian condition - but I'm trying and in this particular case I think I provided some rational arguments why I think that render time estimates do not make much sense. No need to piss on me for that. Yeah, I was enraged and it wasn't right to call you that and I apologize, but perhaps you might consider that even people like me do have feelings...

Mylenium

Maybe it's a cultural thing because in the US a negative Nancy is really a very light term just meaning someone who tries to point out the negative parts of something. Not remotely an insult. I would even call my son that if he's being a downer about something. You did point out where the idea may fail and if you you look I said you were correct. That being said, I countered with the positive side of Vozzz's proposal in that more information is better than pissing away the entire idea because it will give false readings on occasion. I certainly didn't think I was insulting you. A tease at most like Monkey and I do to each other on this board quite often.

[Mylenium]

Fair enough. Anyway, let's stop here, now that we have ruined the topic by digressing...

Mylenium

[vozzz]

hm... off topic much?

cactus up ass? rofling..

Sweet stuff Chris. if it works will be great. Because i do have projects, which have very consistant frame rates for the most part. My last project didnt really have any fancy shaders. It was just a 2 minute animation of paper planes doing various things in various numbers. and a prediction in that scene i think would work very sweet. Just taking the amount of frames already rendered and multiplying them gave a pretty decent result

lol... cactus...

[C.Smith]

cactus up ass? rofling..

lol... cactus...

Yeah, I know he was trying to be mean, but it made me smile. That image is hilarious to me. I'll have to use that one but with a "Sir" after it for formality . Next time I'll use eve more to show I'm only teasing.

On the original topic. As me and my family are driving lazily up Hwy 1 this week, I think about the nav in the car. Nav systems all guess when your ETA is even thugh the engineers know they can't predict accidents and such. The consumer accepts this but still finds it helpful when everything is predictable. Then your idea is somewhat like the Nav system in my wife's Rover where it doesn't just make prediction on current speed but estimations based on all it knows about the path ahead. And it's pretty damn close most of the time.

[rovino]

ahem.. living in Arizona, I can totally attest to not sticking a cactus up ones ass.. Oh I'm sure some noob is gonna debate the idea just cuz it was on this forum... but I REPEAT!! do not do it.. leave that to the professionals. that is all...

[C.Smith]

ahem.. living in Arizona, I can totally attest to not sticking a cactus up ones ass.. Oh I'm sure some noob is gonna debate the idea just cuz it was on this forum... but I REPEAT!! do not do it.. leave that to the professionals. that is all...

Actually this "Totem Pole" species of smooth cactus looks like fun if you're lonely:

[rovino]

I, never "cactus" & tell on the first date...

Edited by rovino, 09 April 2012 - 09:35 PM.