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Beginner Rendering GI / Multi-pass Question
So I setup GI and multi-pass and obviously I went way overboard on some settings – 17 hours for 12 passes of multi-pass, frames are taking 4 hours to render. I have a good idea what they are so my question isn’t about fixing the render – it’s about saving the render, the multi-passes. Is that possible?
It’s 11.5 on a Win7 machine. It’s not pertinent to my question but FYI, it’s a 180-frame animation of 30 cones (one cone inside a cloner object) revolving over a plane – materials on the cones and the plane. Frame size is 1024×768 @ 29.97fps. I animated some settings in the plane material as well.
I saved the IR cache, cached shadows and I rendered to an 8-bit .png sequence. Now that C4D is rendering the frames I am seeing files created in my directory – before that it was empty. Is that normal? The other MP renders I’ve done I think the MP files were created in the folder as they were being rendered.
Anyway, I’m wondering if there’s a way i can avoid re-rendering all the multi-pass stuff. I realize after I change some settings in GI the scene won’t match perfectly to the MP files but that’s okay. I’m mostly trying to learn how to stop and start a render and save MP files – if I can. Also, how to avoid rendering the shadows again – reading the Help file I think I understand that.
Thanks for any thoughts or advice you can share with me. I appreciate your help very much.
-Richard -
9 Replies
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Skip the above post – please. (sorry, didn’t see a way to delete it)
Let me ask this much simpler question:
(11.5 Studio on Win7 64-bit, Intel 6-core processor)
Rendering this scene – it started out each frame was taking ~4 hours (I said I went “way overboard” on the GI settings!). After 6 frames I’m down to ~3 hours.
Can I expect this to continue so that eventually a frame will take a reasonable amount of time to render – a few minutes maybe? I’ve got 174 more frames to go…
I’m sure the answer is “it depends on the scene and the render settings” but I am seeing a steady decrease in the frame-render time… already a 25% difference in the first 6 frames. This has to be a good sign…yes?
or am I completely insane trying to render something that’s taking 3 hours/frame? I’m really doing 2 things – experimenting with C4D and also pushing my new machine to gauge the core temperatures.
Thanks folks for any thoughts you can share. I don’t mind being called ‘insane’ as long as I learn something!
-Richard
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with no deadlines it’s only kind of nuts if you can’t get the same results (or something really close) in way less time. It truly is the settings and the scene. The help has some hints about speeding things up.
I’d have to see the scene to say anything more specific. -
Actually all I want to ask is – is there any way to pause a render?
Thanks!
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I think you can only stop it
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One reason to render to individual frames instead of movie files….
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right, which is what I’m doing. So I know I can stop the render, pick up where I left off – on the frames. But the multi-pass files – only thing in the folder now is the files for the first 7 frames – nothing else.
Normally the MP files are there right after the passes are done – aren’t they? This time I don’t see them.
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The MP files should be there if you also specified individual frames for multipass.
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Thanks for your reply Adam.
“The MP files should be there if you also specified individual frames for multipass.”
That’s what I thought – I’m a beginner but I do know the basics and I’ve rendered with MP many times before this. I always see the MP files once the passes are finished. This time they’re not showing up – not until the frame renders, then I see all 9 files for each frame.
Besides the “overboard” GI settings there’s nothing unusual going on. The scene is simple – a floor with a cloner object above it. The Cloner (64 cones in a grid) slowly revolves once over the floor. 180 frames. Standard 3 Lights, stationary, and a skycam slowly dollys in.
I’ve got save paths for the regular image and for the MP files. I specified different file names for each and in both cases they’re being saved as 8-bit .PNGs.
But they don’t show up until the frame renders. I am getting all the files and they look correct, I’m just not getting them when I expect.
If you have any idea why this is happening I’d love to hear it. In any case thanks for your replies.
-Richard
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Doing another render now – much shorter – and the same thing is happening, the multi-pass files don’t appear in the folder until the rgb frames begin rendering.
not sure if this is a result of the GI settings or what – but I guess it doesn’t matter as long as they all end up in the folder at the end…
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