Resume/refine Mantra rendering like Maxwell renderer

[dpap]

In Maxwell render you can set a limit for the rendering time of each frame (lets say 1 min./frame) and then refine the render (for less grain) by resuming from the sampling level it previously was without having to render from the beginning.

I guess the new checkpoints in H15 have something to do with this but they are being auto deleted after rendering.

And there is no option afaik in Mantra to limit the time of rendering per frame. Or is there?  

 

more info here:

 

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwelldocs/Progressive+Rendering+Workflow

 

 

Is there an similar workflow in Mantra?

[pezetko]

Not yet.

All the necessary functionality is there, it just had to be connected. So this could be RFE.

 

 

There is vm_timelimit for limiting render time (but there is some time needed for exporting ifd and it's not counted to this time limit).

 

Also when vm_timelimit is reached mantra thinks that render properly finished so it deletes checkpoints (this could be simple to fix in RFE).

 

There is vm_preview and vm_previewadaptive that enables progressive rendering to the mplay (mplay only, not to the disk).

 

So with combination with vm_timelimit you can render the sequence in limited time progressively to the mplay and then save it to the disk.

(When there is rendering directly to the disk then pixels are written after each bucket so vm_previewadaptive doesn't work and you get only part of the image (at least for exr and pic))

 

[dpap]

I don't know how to make such a request (i guess that is what RFE is right? ) .

I am also sure that there are far more experienced users than me that would articulate and justify it in a better way than I would.

If you have the time Petr , please give it a try . You seem to know very well how these things work.

Anyhow, thank you for your detailed answer Petr!

I wish Sesi will fix it. It would be really great !

[webbyeasy]

reviving an old thread as I look in the new features of 16.5 hoping this would be fixed.

this "NEEDS" to be an available feature, like pezetko said, all the available options are there, just needs to be enabled for farm rendering in a production environment.

sure lighters can mess around optimising a scene for a preview look, but using the IPR and setting a 'render time limit per frame' seems like the better and easier solution.

Many times a lighter simply wants to see how an animated object interacts with lighting and shadows through a scene with correct ray limits, without having to turn features off etc. this could be a test render before submitting a HQ render version for dailies.

think of how artists like to squint when they paint, using IPR in batch rendering is perfect for this.

IFD gen will still need to happen, but this is often a much faster process.

Please SideFX team, add this function.

Also I tested with rendering to mplay with 'preview' and setting the 'render time limit', it stops the jobs completely and doesnt go onto the next frame...