[feynman]

My remaining grey hair is falling out fast - after not having success with TIFs and embedded channels (no-show in Photoshop) and not having success with resuming renders from SL 17 to 19 (always commence at SL 15, then reach previous SL 17), I rerendered a batch of jobs as 16bit PNG files with separate channel file (did not dare a resume to higher SL yet).

All renders came out with 8bit only. Why? Before upgrading to 2.7 everything worked well :(

[Bubbaloo]

Workaround:

You can open the MXI and save out the channels separately in any format and bit depth. Just hover the mouse over the buttons on the lower left side of the rendering in Maxwell, then save an image.

[feynman]

Thanks for your very helpful hint, I do that then... phew... thought I had to rerender everything for a third time.

But, still, why present users 16bit selectors when output is 8bit? It's like this channel embedding which does not embed in a way that's usable in Photoshop. Or the Time Elapsed/Remaining that is not showing the time elapsed nor remaining. And the move/rotate gizmo which is malfunctioning. So many quirks not explained in the current manual.

[Mihai]

This only happens in network rendering right? Rendering straight to Maxwell gives me 16b here.

Regarding the TIF channels in PS - ask PS about it

I didn't understand your post about the gizmo, what's happening from that screenshot. Maybe try Alt and the + - keys on the numeric keypad. This will increase/decrease the size of the gizmos.

[feynman]

I'm using Bubbaloo's method for now, because it works. However, if there's 16bit selectors in the user interface, I assume they will make the software render 16bit images. It would be good to mention a TIF warning in the manual; most designers use Photoshop as their main application and maybe naively - but very correctly - assume that if a software offers embedded channels with TIFs, they would get what they think they would get. Or why not put Bubbaloo's hint in the manual, to manually save channels or 16bitters from the render application, because I did not find this solution there. The rotate/move gizmo goes gaga since 2.6 from my experience, objects just suddenly fly around, arrows disappear...

ps: I dared resuming the new PNG file format only renders which were approx. SL 18 - with two more hours, I get 'em to approx. SL 19.5. But, I realised just now previewing the first one, that the renderings are turning out noisier than before with a lower SL! Unbelievable. Now I have to redo them to SL 18 again to have less noisy renderings. I rendered exactly the same objects in March with 2.6 and all was fine with resuming renders and getting less noise with higher SLs.

Before resuming


After resuming


Result: even slightly more noise at higher SL!

[Bubbaloo]

ps: I dared resuming the new PNG file

You can't resume a PNG. You can only resume an MXI. Open the new MXI and save out a new PNG file. Just remember, "MXI don't lie". OK that was stupid, but you get the picture. Start making use of the MXI files. They are valuable. You can resume them, you can export multiple file formats from them, you can adjust them, etc.

[feynman]

ps: I dared resuming the new PNG file format only renders which...

Looks like my English is still goin' strong and long after three days without sleep :)

In any case, all resumes result in higher SLs but more noise. Too bad.

[Mihai]

Maybe post a gif animation of just those parts and a bit of the surrounding because it's difficult to tell really.

Another option you have is saving renders as EXR with embedded channels and use the ProEXR plugin in PS, since again, these can't be read by PS for now. Should we not have added this functionality just because PS can't use it? They can be read directly by Nuke an After Effects. This is mentioned in the docs.

[feynman]

Thanks. The much more troubling issue at hand is the degrading of resumed renders. All 3 hour renderings have gone down in SL and noticeably up in noise, after they have been resumed for an extra 2 hours. Here, you can see it much better. This is insane, going to make me jump from my ground floor window soon...

What the monitor shows after all resumes


SL 18.2 after 3 hours


SL 19.7 after another 2 hours


SL 17.4 shown (Maxwell Render) for SL 19.7 rendering (Monitor) that was 18.2 before resume

[eric nixon]

This thread is troubling I think it might be really helpful to state the obvious..why render this on a network?, thats the big question.
I assume the network was purchased for vray animations. For learning maxwell your better off with an 8core i7, that would render this in 10 minutes, prob a lot less?? Use the network for animations with maxwell ofcourse.

I think your very right that there are many glitches still in the current 2.7.10, I found 2.6.1 ( I think ) was very stable and productive. However 2.7.1 renders better images and seems easier to build highly diffuse materials with a touch of sss in a single basdf, etc, highly rough refraction seems much nicer, for me 2.7.1 is great.

[Bubbaloo]

why render this on a network?

We wouldn't get our high volume of renders out without our render nodes... We would still be using mental ray.

[feynman]

I just wish I had not upgraded - never change a winning team. I purchased MR in December - 5 node special offer. Built a bunch of workstation and render node PCs. Started rendering furniture and lighting design stills on a daily basis soon. Always predictable results.

Now, besides UI glitches and other issues posted in other threads, I can't get a single noise-free or noise-reduced image out. I have to fall back on shitty Bunkspeed Shot Pro to get what we need, until this gets sorted out. I am interested primarily in designing and engineering, images are necessary as communication device. I don't have time to learn de-noising softwares, buying a Mac to open TIFs to see my embedded channels, to do this, to do that. A day only got 24 hours and I don't have the time to spare becoming a debugging specialist, network administrator or computer nerd. Version 2.6, or whatever it was what I bought, delivered, reliably, noise-less images I could bump up at will.

Ok, pressure vessel vented now ;)

[Mihai]

Oh boy, everything's gone to shiiiit!!

If there is indeed an issue here with resuming, it will be fixed, but it's very weird that it lets you resume and then actually shows a lower SL. It could be that it's finding older MXI files in the temp folders and instead resuming those...

Can someone else run a simple test?

Try first clearing all temp folders from Manager, Nodes, Monitor (File>Purge temp folder).

Then, run ONE single coop test. Check the final SL of the result.

Then try resuming and see.

Otherwise it's very difficult to know what is going on...

[Bubbaloo]

Testing...

[Bubbaloo]

Coop render on 12 nodes to S.L. 11.29:



Resumed on 12 nodes to S.L. 14:



Works as expected. I think maybe your process for resuming is different than mine? It would be helpful if you listed your exact steps. If there is a problem, it needs to be identified and fixed.