Reflector – Incompatible effect. Multiprocessing is off.

[Joe Moya]

I had similar problem with sepentine…I found out that zaxwerks doesn’t use multicores.. the work around I used was to render the serpentine application layer seperately. However, I am guessing using this work around with Reflector may be a bit more difficult.

Needless to say, I have not use Serpentine again because of this significant limitation of not being multicore capable.

[Rob Neal]

Well I am finding the same with Reflector, and I am also using Invigorator. Had I known this stuff was so slow I would never have used it, but I am two weeks into a three week project and I have a deadline of next week. I have faked the reflective floor for now, but the Invigorator, I really don’t know what to do.

http://www.robneal.co.uk

[Joe Moya]

I feel your pain… If my memory is correct, a 90 second or so clip render took about 22 hrs. on a “simple” serptine movement in a HD format. And… that while rendering with a Quad core i7 3.2Ghz chip (about the fastest chip made) in conjunction with a Raid 0 (stripped) dual 1500rpm Fujitsu e-sata drive with Adaptec controllers (fastest raid drive system available).

It was pretty depressing to say the least…

[Edward Wu]

Hi Rob,

To help your rendering speed, see if it is possible to make the floor layer a little bit smaller. If your floor layer is very big, it may slow down the rendering time. So by trimming the size of the floor down, it could help with your rendering time.

If you are not having issues rendering with Multiprocessing, you can try turning the setting back on. While some users reported issues with Multiprocessing, others are able to render just fine with Multiprocessing. So, you can try a test and see if you are able to render with Multiprocessing.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Joe,

If you are not working with shadows and bump maps in 3D Serpentine, you can try rendering with the High Quality OpenGL renderer instead of the Software renderer. This could help the rendering time significantly.

In addition, if you have Nucleo Pro, you can try using that to see if that helps with your rendering speed.

Best,
Edward

[Rob Neal]

Hi Edward,
Well, In one of your other tips you suggest to double up the size of the floor solid to eliminate the “jaggie” resolution problem, so if I reduce it, it will look rubbish.
I am caught between a rock and a hard place. In the end I rendered out a single animated background “studio set” and used it as a backdrop for all the other stuff. It did mean that not everything in the scene was reflected, so I had to resort to the old “flipped instance” trick, but it got me to hit my deadline. Needs must as the devil drives, as they say.

That said, I seriously suggest somebody should reassess that plugin and get it to work more efficiently; It’s a pretty unique and useful plugin, but in it’s current state I wouldn’t recommend it to any professional motion graphics designer.

Regards,
Rob

http://www.robneal.co.uk

[Edward Wu]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear about your struggles. I’ll forward your message to our developers.

Best,
Edward