[Mitsurugi]

Hi guys,

I am having a bit of a frustrating situation.

I decided to finally move on to Maxwell 4, since I am curious about the Denoiser feature. I installed it alongside M3 on my workstation and on some of the rendernodes. Everything works fine when I render on a single machine, but when I try to network render I get the error messages which can be seen on the attached image.

I thought there were some licence issues, so I completely uninstalled M3 and M4, deleted all the old folders and any Maxwell related files on the computer, then cleaned the registry with CCleaner. Performed a clean install of M4, but the issue is back. The Network manager receives the mxi files from the nodes, but then keeps merging them for like 10 minutes.

Could anybody please assist with this, I dont know what to try anymore and cannot continue my job with this issue.

Thanks,

[alberto.manchenos]

Hello Mitsurugi,

When using cooperative render with denoiser, as i can see you are doing, the denoise itself is performed by mximerge process. (More exactly, mximerge calls maxwell in background to do it). Usually this implies that mxi merge lasts more than usual, but 10 minutes is definitely too much, moreover with so low SL as 8,(seen in image). So my guess is that background maxwell is frozen.

But to be sure and be able to help I would need a little more info. After that 10 minutes does anything happens? Were you able to get your denoised image or something?

In your manager machine, is available any GPU? Is it the same machine you were able to render with no problems in a single machine?

[Mitsurugi]

Hi Alberto,

thank you for your reply.

I figured out later, that the long merging process only happens when the Denoiser is turned on, with it turned off, the mxis get merged in normal time.

Yes, I get a bunch of files, the regular and denoised .png along with the layers necessary for the denoising process. I find it strange, however, that I get 3 mxi files of the same project. If the projects name is "Room", I would get the expected "Room.mxi" along with extra "Room_1.mxi" and "Room_2.mxi". Are the "_1.mxi" and "_2.mxi" the files that the Denoiser uses?

Yes, in the manager, the same computer that renders solo without a problem, I have an R9 390 8gb AMD card.

I also noticed another strange thing, I was hoping you might be able to help. When I play with the Multilight settings, and then want to click on Re-denoise, I dont have that option available, its there, but I am not able to click on it. Is there something that I might have missed, or it should be working?

EDIT: Also, I am curious what the messages mean in the Node and Manager window, never had that before in M3.

Thank you for your time,

Regards

[luis.hijarrubia]

EDIT: Also, I am curious what the messages mean in the Node and Manager window, never had that before in M3.

This messages are caused from the change from QT4 to QT5 as library for UI, and you can ignore them. We are trying to hide them, as some people find them annoying, but it's more complicated than it looks.

[alberto.manchenos]

So, then it is working!

But i find really strange that denoise process spend more time at the end of a cooperative process than in a single render. It shouldnt happen in that way.

Related with redenoise option, it should work once denoise process is finished. Since then the button should appear as active. Before that, probably maxwell has not collected enough information to perform denoise.

[Mitsurugi]

EDIT: Also, I am curious what the messages mean in the Node and Manager window, never had that before in M3.

This messages are caused from the change from QT4 to QT5 as library for UI, and you can ignore them. We are trying to hide them, as some people find them annoying, but it's more complicated than it looks.

Ah, ok. They do not bother me, but was curious if it has anything to do with the slow merging process. What about this oranged out warning about the license path? Does it have any influence on anything? The installation was standard, and now there is only M4 on the computer.

So, then it is working!

But i find really strange that denoise process spend more time at the end of a cooperative process than in a single render. It shouldnt happen in that way.

Related with redenoise option, it should work once denoise process is finished. Since then the button should appear as active. Before that, probably maxwell has not collected enough information to perform denoise.

Yes, it does, I just got worried about the really long merging process.

Regarding the re-denoise option, I am attaching a picture of the output I get from Maxwell (please ignore the funny file names:)) and a screencap of Maxwell, after I played with Multilight to try and achieve a desired lighting scenario. The re-denoise option is still greyed out, could you let me know if I am missing something?

Thanks,

M

[alberto.manchenos]

I understand.

The reason redenoise is not enabled is because you are opening the final mxi. And that mxi does not have information of the separated two passes needed to generate it. So, redenoise is only possible by now, in the maxwell instance used to render with denoise.

Implementing a mechanism to allow that is something we plan to do, but now unfortunately it doesnt exist.

[Mitsurugi]

Ok, so if I understand correctly, re-denoise is not something that is possible if I use network rendering? Is there any way to use the two passes shown on the image above, the ones that end with _1.mxi and _2.mxi?

EDIT: What if I adjust the lights, and then resume the render, would that work?

[luis.hijarrubia]

We have to improve the working flow to modify scenes after render and redenoising. Right now, re-denoise, works only in maxwell after rendering. If you save the merged mxi (close maxwell and open again) and load that mxi again, you can't redenoise the image, as it doesn't know what the original mxi1 and mxi2 are. And with network is like you always open that mxi afterwards.

Resume render won't help, as you would do it for a merged mxi, not for the 2 mxi's in origin. But there's a way to do it in command line.

If you have the 2 separated mxi from a denoised render, you can change lights on both of them, save to mxi, and then merging (and redenoising again):

mximerge -source:"C:\path\to\mxi\mxi1.mxi" -source:"C:\path\to\mxi\mxi1.mxi" -coopdenoiser:"c:\path\to\denoised\image\denoisedimage.png" -target:"C:\path\to\merged\mxi\mergedmxi.mxi"

If you don't have 2, but a lot from a cooperative rendering, you can do the same, but towards a folder where all the mxi are (note that only those mxi should be there, or it will fail):

mximerge -folder:"C:\path\to\mxis\" -coopdenoiser:"C:\path\to\denoised\image\denoisedimage.png" -target:"C:\path\to\merged\mxi\mergedmxi.mxi"

[Mitsurugi]

Great,

thanks, that will do for now.

It is actually cool in a way, as I have more control over which two mxis are taken into account for denoising after a network rendering. Because in the renderfarm I have some 4 core i7s, but also dual octa Xeons, and I would prefer that the two mxis are the ones from the more powerful machines, beacuse of the higher SL. Unless the denoiser takes into account only the two highest SL mxis, then it doesnt matter.

[luis.hijarrubia]

If you give more than 2 mxi, it will merge them to 2 and apply denoiser to those 2. You can do that yourself if you want to give the 2 that you prefer. Let's say you have 4 mxi with SLs: 15, 16, 7, 8;

You can merge 15 + 8 and 16 + 7 for example, you will have 15.something and 16.something. And then merge with denoise this two.

[Mitsurugi]

Great, thanks! Will give it a go.