[choo-chee]

So I've decided to do a real test to see if ver. 2 is better with noise. I did a long render of a scene and tried to merge MXI. Surpise ! even all the 3 MXI's I rendered on different PC where at the same resolution, I get the msg that 1 of them will be ignored. The size of that file was 3 times bigger. On that PC I asked for a render + alpha + material ID, on the 2 others- only render. Could that be the problem? on 1.7 it didn't matter.... ?

[Mihai]

In V2 the channels are embedded in the MXI which allows network rendering of channels and also resuming of channels. In 1.7.1 these were separate, so any options you enable should be the same for all renders.

[choo-chee]

Ah. Ok. I'm not sure this is smart since I get huge files and you don't need all PC's to render material ID, I guess ppl with big farms may use this. Maybe an option to turn that off?
p.s. - I'll test again since I'm not quite sure if ver. 2 is really a big jump for me ...

[Mihai]

You could do a network render without any other channels, and if you later need a matID channel, just render that.

[tom]

you don't need all PC's to render material ID

Why not? Just like render, it's also faster/cleaner when cooperatively rendered.

[choo-chee]

I didn't know those channels can be merged ... how do I save the image id channel after merging? I see only the option to save image?

[tom]

Once other channels are activated, you will find additional images saved under output directory. For example, if you've set output as test.png, the other channels will be saved as test_alpha.png, test_material.png, test_object.png and so on.

[choo-chee]

ok that's a good idea !
I'll do my testing since TIME is the most critical part for us (a small office that needs to deliver fast)
thanx