[Richard Canino]

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…

[Richard Canino]

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

[Richard Canino]

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.

[Richard Canino]

Actually all I want to ask is – is there any way to pause a render?

Thanks!

[Richard Canino]

hi Darren –

I’m a beginner so I pray I don’t confuse you or make it worse but… you’re trying to shatter a polygon object right? If so try choosing Disconnect first – and then don’t re-group. Once you do that it should work…

I know I made it happen that way with an extruded text object awhile back – make editable, used the knife to cut it into pieces, chose all, disconnect – and had a sphere fly down and smash it to bits. Very cool effect when you get it right 🙂

Please post back if/when you find the solution – it’ll help me as well.

Thanks! and good luck with it!
-Richard

[Richard Canino]

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

[Richard Canino]

Cineversity is a great site – not free but it’s sponsored by Maxon. https://www.cineversity.com/about/index.asp

The first place I go to is always the Help file. C4D’s Help is excellent – it really goes into depth explaining the overall process, especially rendering and compositing. After that it’s just “try and try again.” No matter where you find help there’s no substitute, and no better teacher than your own experience.

Good luck with it!

[Richard Canino]

hey Steve – thanks – I’m afraid my remark came across somewhat condescending to you and I didn’t mean to be at all. I know that even a tiny percentage of substandard lenses that make their way into the market represents thousands of users. I’m sorry you were one of them this time around. I’m sure Canon will do its best to fix your lens for free, though of course nothing compensates you for the aggravation of buying a lemon.

I hadn’t heard anything about this before I read your post. I visit the-digital-picture.com frequently but that’s the only photography forum I read regularly. The gentleman who runs it, together with the forum members are a pretty astute bunch, but of course I may have missed it, or they may have.

In any case I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience with one of my favorite lenses. I hope Canon takes care of you and provides an expedient solution.

-Richard

[Richard Canino]

I don’t know what’s “common for Canon” but I’ve had a 50 1.4 for years and it’s a workhorse. It takes all kinds of abuse and never misses a beat. Nothing personal to the OP but to me this sounds like a case of “I had a problem with one ____ (whatever) therefore all of them are no good.”

[Richard Canino]

thank you Kevin, thank you Walter – I appreciate you guys taking the time to reply.

I will certainly add another 12G kit of RAM; I’ve got 3 slots just sitting there unpopulated right now, so thanks for the reminder – adding that RAM is one of my top priorities so I will order it today.

re: the SSD and scratch disk space – I’m kind of locked in to how I have the SSD now, with the OS and my apps installed on it already. I can certainly buy an inexpensive 40G SSD for scratch space.

I’m sure the AE CS4 Help won’t be amended to include the use of SSDs but I wonder how much would change if it were. I’ve tried searching the CS5 Help but AE CS5 being a 64-bit app is a game-changer and many of the 32-bit rules don’t apply.

btw, the reason I asked about the source files was because of something I read in AE Help:
Before rendering, put all of your source footage files on a local disk—not the one that the application runs from. A good way to do this is with the Collect Files command.

I’m just wondering how to incorporate an SSD into the workflow, whether shortening its life is worth the speed advantage of using it as a scratch disk as well as a boot disk/OS disk. How much speed advantage is there really?

I guess all I can do is find out – how quickly the drive dies when it’s constantly being accessed, compare that to an SSD that isn’t a scratch drive. Although to complicate matters further, I’ve been told AE doesn’t us scratch space very often, and that scratch space in Premier is far more important.

Thanks you guys!