I'm trying to evaluate if I can use vue to render ginormous images (32k x 32k).  I've downloaded and installed vue7.5PLE on 2 machines; a laptop using vistabusiness64 w/4G RAM, a desktop running windows7 ultimate64bit w/12G RAM.  My hope is that I can use region/blowup to divide up the pieces into manageable sizes then batch render them all.

I dropped a terrain into a default scene and it just will not render using external renderer.  I've installed the application and the rendercows as administrator.  I run vue and the rendercows as administrator.  I've tried different port numbers.  I've tried rendering small resolutions.  The hypervue rendering mngr reports both rendercows as "Idle".  The batch rendering dialog reports "Scheduled" status for the job.  Nothing gets rendered :(...   

I didn't see anything in the documentation suggesting the external renderer does not work in the PLE version.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Cheers.

Quote - The batch rendering dialog reports "Scheduled" status for the job.  Nothing gets rendered :(...   

I didn't see anything in the documentation suggesting the external renderer does not work in the PLE version.

Everything seems to me to be correct: RenderCows are reported and 'Idle', job gets scheduled. Next thing should be a status change to 'Initializing'.
But: www.e-onsoftware.com/try/vue_7_ple/ says: "The PLE is for personal, non-commercial use only, files cannot be exchanged with other PLE users and are not compatible with other versions of Vue, network rendering is disabled, renders may be watermarked and carry a logo".

Quote - > Quote - The batch rendering dialog reports "Scheduled" status for the job.  Nothing gets rendered :(...   

I didn't see anything in the documentation suggesting the external renderer does not work in the PLE version.

Everything seems to me to be correct: RenderCows are reported and 'Idle', job gets scheduled. Next thing should be a status change to 'Initializing'.
But: www.e-onsoftware.com/try/vue_7_ple/ says: "The PLE is for personal, non-commercial use only, files cannot be exchanged with other PLE users and are not compatible with other versions of Vue, network rendering is disabled, renders may be watermarked and carry a logo".

Thank you. 

Do you have happen to know if the Vue8 release version would be capable of rendering a 32k x 32k image?  Either using regions/blowup/batch or as a single image?  If it can do it as a single image, any idea how much RAM I should plan on getting (32k x 32k is ~4G for 8bpc)?

Forgot to ask... I guess "network rendering disabled" also means no hypervue/background rendering?   It makes sense that such a limitation is included in the PLE, however, I'm really surprised that background rendering is totally disabled also. 

My next step will be to ask Eon SW if they'll allow me to return the software if it cannot do what I need, render >32k x 32k :)...

Quote -

Do you have happen to know if the Vue8 release version would be capable of rendering a 32k x 32k image?

The main problem would be the computer on which Vue is running. If it can hold the scene, the network RenderCows are NOT the problem, because you can adjust the tile size which are submitted to the RenderCows. For extremely complex scenes (which need a lot of memory to render) I simply decrease the tile size until:

a: the RenderCow PC itself can handle it without crashing
b: in the best case no virtual memory is needed on the RenderCows. This speeds up rendering.

Of course with smaller tiles there's more network overhead, so a Gigabit ethernet connection is recommended.

If you can render a scene this big doesn't depend on Vue. Vue can do it, if your machine can handle it. Have you tried  doing something like this with another program? This would prove your machine can do it, provided you use the same specs (if you're planning on rendering large ecosystems, try using many instanges of the same object in another program, object with  the same poly count as the Vue object you wiull use in your ecosystem, for example)

Quote - > Quote -

Do you have happen to know if the Vue8 release version would be capable of rendering a 32k x 32k image?

The main problem would be the computer on which Vue is running. If it can hold the scene, the network RenderCows are NOT the problem, because you can adjust the tile size which are submitted to the RenderCows. For extremely complex scenes (which need a lot of memory to render) I simply decrease the tile size until:

a: the RenderCow PC itself can handle it without crashing
b: in the best case no virtual memory is needed on the RenderCows. This speeds up rendering.

Of course with smaller tiles there's more network overhead, so a Gigabit ethernet connection is recommended.

Thank you...  that is helpful info.