Forum: Vue


Subject: External renderer, how does it work??

vincebagna opened this issue on Feb 10, 2007 · 16 posts


vincebagna posted Sat, 10 February 2007 at 3:47 AM

Hi all,
How does the external renderer work? I want to render my scene bu Vue tells me it's not possible cause of too much memory. And i don't want to minimize the size of my picture.

What have i to do??

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bruno021 posted Sat, 10 February 2007 at 4:33 AM

Use the old "render to disk" option. But you won't be able to generate multipass components.



farkwar posted Sat, 10 February 2007 at 8:57 PM

The external renderer will use far less memory than Vue does.

It will use 100% of CPU though.

And Vue may be shut down, or used for other purposes while the external renderer is running in the background.

It will also store future renders in a queue, and render them in a row unattended.

It will generate an alpha mask, a z mask, as well as the image.


stew451 posted Sun, 11 February 2007 at 6:57 AM

What is external rendering?  Is this in Vue6 or is it the Batch render?


stormchaser posted Sun, 11 February 2007 at 7:32 AM

Because I have only 1GB RAM, should I use the external renderer instead? I also have never rendered to disk, would it also be better to try this option?



bruno021 posted Sun, 11 February 2007 at 8:54 AM

The internal renderer can be two things:

Rendering to disk uses the internal renderer, the old Vue 5 way.

These options don't need as many resources as rendering to screen, because it deosn't have to display the render in progress and keep the textures loaded in the ram. This is particularily useful when rendering hi res images and/or very large renders.

The downside is, you don't see what is rendering, so if it doesn't look like you thought it would, you will only know when it's finished.



stew451 posted Sun, 11 February 2007 at 10:56 AM

Thanks for the clarification bruno21.


bruno021 posted Sun, 11 February 2007 at 11:05 AM

Well, to be really clear, I meant the external renderer is the batch & hypervue, and not the internal renderer, but you figured it out, of course!



stormchaser posted Sun, 11 February 2007 at 11:25 AM

bruno021 - Thanks. I think I'm going to have to start rendering to disk as I want to produce larger images with higher resolution. With only 1GB of memory this may be the only way to really do it.



farkwar posted Sun, 11 February 2007 at 1:31 PM

A typical render from Vue will cost me at least 1.4 Gbs of memory.

A typical external render is between 600 and 800 megs.  It appears to be more conservative.


vincebagna posted Wed, 14 February 2007 at 12:24 AM

I have problems with it: when i choose external render for my actual scene, it wrotes it begins the render, but adds 2 seconds after "render finished render time 00.00.00"!

And no image of course. Even if i specificated a file to save.

What is the trick?

Have i missed something?

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bruno021 posted Wed, 14 February 2007 at 3:42 AM

Are you sure you actually asked to render an image that is not zero size? Did you choose a size for the render?
Sorry if this sounds stupid.



Peggy_Walters posted Wed, 14 February 2007 at 8:18 AM

Here's how I use the external render.

1.  Make sure you have selected exactly how you want your scene to render (size and all the other setting).  

2.  On the render setting screen select External Render, select edit.  Select either Local Standalone render or network.  This will select the Render to Disk option.  Make sure the file name and path is what you want.  Click OK to close the render setting dialog.

3.  Save your Vue file and close it.

4.  Open a new blank scene.

5.  Click Render, Batch Rendering.  Sometimes the render will already have the file name there if you were rendering it and aborted.  Click Clean Finished to remove any files and then click the Add button to locate the Vue file to be rendered.  

6.  Wait for the render to finish.  You should see a DOS looking window with the status of the render showing what percentage is done.  You can minimize or close them.  For best results and time savings, don't use the computer for other stuff. 

LVS - Where Learning is Fun!  
http://www.lvsonline.com/index.html


bruno021 posted Wed, 14 February 2007 at 8:36 AM

You don't need to save and exit, you can just render away the scene you still have on screen.
Other than that, do as Peggy said! It's an order!



Peggy_Walters posted Wed, 14 February 2007 at 8:45 AM

If you only have 1 GB of memory and want to render a really large picture, you do need to save and exit.  That gives your computer some extra room to think.  I have noticed that my main computer renders much quicker (about 25% speed increase) for network renders if I save/exit.   

LVS - Where Learning is Fun!  
http://www.lvsonline.com/index.html


bruno021 posted Wed, 14 February 2007 at 8:48 AM

Interesting, Peggy.
Mea culpa, then!