Thank you all for your input. I finally found a reason to use my hex editor after reading up on PICT header formats and attempting bit operations in code. No luck though, but interesting enough as a hobby project :)

Still rsr conversion is a minor item being the extreme exception and not the rule; I'm going to log the archives that have RSR thumbnails with no matching PNG's and then use my original GUI RSR program to convert them as a manual step then reprocess the extracted archives.

I did send Dizzi an IM so I'll wait to see if I get a response.

My first go at the null header block didn't work, so from a programatic point of view that's the direction I'll keep experimenting with for now. I just need a better understanding of the PICT header at the byte level.

Just as an FYI for all those who also helped with my last thread, this is a tangential project  to the Cloud Rendering thread I posted a while back (I'm still working on it! lol).

~ R

Some really good information here. These two posts actually relate to eachother as it looks like the perl script (bagginsbill) is getting image magick to interpret the RSR files as pict files, just as Artelis alluded to.

Thanks so much. At the very least I can do some bitwise operations on the file if need be, instead of requiring the entire imagemagick package.

As always the Renderosity forum comes through for me again :)

~ R

@bagginsbill: So Poser specific actions requested via Python scripting like "Render in Queue" would have to be executed while Poser is open I take it.

That's not a huge deal seeing as the Poer installation on the Master Queue Manager would be dedicated solely to the purpose ofr posting jobs to a queue, not actual scene compositions. I could setup the Python script to execute every time poser starts and then start poser up when I launch the Machine instance.

I suppose Poser would have to open up every file and compile all of the lighting and object pre-processing information for the Queue anyway.

One addition to my previous post would be that RSync would alco have to monitor any content directories I have since the Master Queue Manager instance would need those files to compile render data. 

I could always host my content in the cloud to begin with as an option, we'll see.

@hborre: Thanks for the reply, I'll look into the manual and experiment with it tonight.

I'm pretty sure render settings are saved per scene file, I get different render dimmensions and settings when I open up different files. That said, however, being able to programtically set render settings would be a nice nod to the whole DEV -> Test - > Production work flow.

Suppose you just want a small render on your local machine just to test what the final output might look like before you spin up your Cloud Machines, I could see merrit in that. Then the Cloud machines would render at your "Production" level render settings.

Is there any documentation on Python scripting for Poser? Can I excute a python script outside of poser itself? Python scripting is also a new area for me.

Greetings all again.

I've been thinking about how to resolve this bandwidth issue and I've decided to try coming at it from a different perspective:

1. Create/compose scenes on a local workstation, put all save files in a standard directory or subfolders of a standard directory

2. Use RSync to monitor said standard directory and post updates to a mirror in the Cloud

3. Spin up a low cost AWS Micro instance as a master Queue Manager and use a Poser or QM API to automatically post Poser renderjobs to the Queue.

4. Have the Master Queue Manager Instance spin up one or more AWS Cluster GPU Cloud Machines to render the jobs in the Queue.

5. Have the Master Queuer Manager Instance shut down said Cluster GPU instances when render jobs are done.

6. Have the Master Queue Manager shut itself down once all jobs have been processed.

In Step 3 you could automatically do this every night or on demand.

In Step 4 you could spin up 1 to n instances depending on how much you're willing to spend.

Step 3&4 are the big questions: Does anyone know if there is such a thing as a Poser or QM API that will allow me to programtically post/monitor or generally manage render jobs in QM's Queue?

I'm going to ask Smith Mirco this question as well but I thought I post my thoughts here as well for community interest.

~ Ryan

Correction to my above post: my upload is 2.5Mbps (up from my previous 1.5Mbps). Should have caught on to it when I calculated 20Mbps.

Sorry!

@monkeycloud: That's a neat idea about using the Poser API (another interesting project to get into), but we're still bottle necked by the sheer size of the actual poser files. Most of mine are moderate single frame scenes in the 200's (MB).

However... having said that we could setup a low grade Poser Request Server, as it were, to handle the transfer of the save file, then automatically kick off another Cloud Cluster GPU instance once the file is uploaded using the Request Server Poser interface to post to the Cloud LAN QM and have the Cluster GPU QM pick it up for processing (and of course shut it down once done processing its queue). That would optmize the time/cost of the machines that are actually running.

It still doesn't address the data transfer issue but it's a start :)

@monkeycloud: Agreed on the visual presentation of the View Ports. I generally find RDP, VNC or just any remote destop software painful when it comes to refreshing complex graphics.

Real-time rendering has come a long way with regards to View Port manipulation; when I started out with 3D rendering I always found that inputting parameters directly into a command line (Auto CAD still uses this as a central feature) was more efficient than using the mouse to visually analyze and manipulate the scene.

A workstation up in the cloud would force me back just about 20 years with regards to that (wow I'm old...lol).

But I'll try it out just to see if it's at all workable, I'll just have to use old tricks like using the lit wire frame view instead of loading all of the textures.

@monkeycloud: I'm in Canada and to be honest I'm not sure what the lines are made of, though I'm on Cable internet (which is a COAX cable into my house, so I guess that's copper based). 

@millighost: Looks like you and I got to the same point now :) though for my part I didn't need to add the inbound rule on the ec2 instance, probably because I'm using my local workstation as the VPN server not the EC2 instance.

I just had a chat with a colleague here and he suggested that my problem with upload speed might be side stepped if my workstation itself was in the cloud, then all I'd be dealing with is latency between cloud instances. The problem is I'd have to pay to rent storage space in the cloud for all my Poser content

I'll keep at it from different angles to see what the most cost/performance efficient setup would be.

Update: Moderate success.

I've got the EC2 instance connected to my local network via OpenVPN. I can ping the EC2 instance via the VPN and the EC2 instance can ping my Poser Workstation.

By the way I owe you all a huge thanks for your support and contributions, millighost in particular gave me a key piece of information about making sure the VPN IP's were on the same IP range (subnet?) as my LAN addresses and to look at ethernet bridging.

Now here's the "moderate" part of my success thus far: The EC2 Queue Manager picks up the job posted by the workstation (great!) but the objects it has to transport up to the EC2 instance seem to be taking quite a while and this is not a complex scene. 

I looked at the connection on the EC2 instance and it says it's a 10Mbps VPN connection, and in reality my upload rate with my ISP is only ~2.5MBps (which I guess equates to 20Mbps).

However it's only reporting ~5% usage of the 10Mbps link so that's a little suspicious to me. Maybe it's just because I'm running the Free Tier and Amazon is throttling even that bandwidth. I'll look into that.

Complaints about upload speed, however, are a familiar line from the people I talk to about the Cloud. The ISP upload speed is now the bottle neck for this project. I'm gonna talk to my ISP about this to see what options I have available to me, but at this point this has more to do with AWS/ISP file transfer efficiency than with Poser/QM.

Queue Manager is up in the cloud and taking jobs. The next step is to find out how efficient one of the Cluster GPU instances at rendering scenes, but that'll have to wait until I resolve the data transfer issue because I'm not gonna spin up an hour of time on a Cluster GPU AMI for 59 minutes of file transfer and 1 minute of rendering :)

I'll post again with more updates (and possibly a guide to this point when I get a chance to write one out).

Thanks again for the suggestions everyone, I've decided to try another VPN solution since Windows 7 VPN doesn't seem to offer me enough control over its connection.

@lmckenzie: thanks for posting the MAX tutorial, it's all videos so I'll have to go through it when I get back home.

@timarender: interesting tidbits about both TCP and UDP ports being used, good information to know if I end up having to forward those ports though whatever solution I get working; and of course more knowledge about the QM communication workings on the whole is a good thing.

I did find some posts on SSH tunneling but all they do is turn UDP packets into TCP packets and back again; this would only route render jobs to a single destination rather than broadcasting to what could potentially be a farm of EC2 instances.

I'm gonna try using OpenVPN, it looks promising because it has a config file I can modify that has a lot of granularity as to how the connection is setup, including subnets to broadcast to and bridging capability to allow those broadcasts through the VPN.

More to come...

Thanks for the responses everyone!

As for the Gamer's Internet Tunnel it doesn't seem to be supported in Windows 7, and when I run it I don't get any options under the "Look at frames on which device?" I'm continuing to look for other software that provide a similar service.

I've seen some posts around UDP broadcasts, one in particular mentions adding a "rule" to allow broadcast traffic through. I'll see if I can pick the brain of my network guy here at work as well (cursed day time job getting in the way of my hobbies).

Taking the use of work resources for personal use to a whole new level :)

@millighost

Some good information there, though I'm not sure I fully understand all of it :) 

The VPN I've got setup is through the basic Windows 7 RAS (Dial In) Interface. All I did to do that was go to "Network Sharing Center" and setup a new incoming connection with a user.

On the EC2 server I setup the connection to VPN into my home router.

The router is setup to forward TCP port 1723 and protocol 47 (GRE) to my host Poser workstation, apparently this is required for VPN connectivity.

After reading your post I changed the range of addresses that the Poser workstation assigns incoming addresses to be within a dedicated range of the IP's the router assigns. 

So... to summarize:

• Poser workstation has a local network IP of 192.168.0.102 (subnet mask 255.255.255.0)
• Poser workstation RAS interface has an IP of 192.168.0.200 (subnet mask 255.255.255.255)
• EC2 Render Node has a VPN assigned IP of 192.168.0.201 (subnet mask 255.255.255.255)

I then changed a setting on my router to Broadcast NetBIOS which I think is supposed to allow computers to discover each other but I really don't know I'm still so new to this. It didn't allow the two commputers to find each other anyway.

I think I've got part one of your post right, where the IP addresses are in a similar address range. The VPN assigns addresses from 200 - 209 so as to ensure no duplication with actual IP's on the router 100- 199... but I'm not sure if that's kosher or even right.

Part two however I'm not sure of. To create a path from my local network to amazon I was thinking of using the "Routing" section on my router setup. It offers the following options for specifying routes:

• Name
• Destination IP
• Netmask
• Gateway 
• Metric

Name and Metric I'm pretty sure are immaterial. Would I be able to setup a path to the Amazon EC2 server using this type of routing? Would it be more proper just to get a VPN NIC for my workstation or am I fine going through Windows 7? Would I be able to consider an SSH Tunnel (say via putty) or is that not the type of tunneling I need/can use?

This is looking more and more like a VPN for dummies thread than a Poser thread; still if the interest is there I'd like to keep at this.

Thanks for all your replies!