My second 10 sec animation within the render farm took 6 hours for a 1440 x 960 animation. (Actually it was still rendering after twelve hours the last three frames the slaves seam to lock up.) No special features other than alpha turned on. So I will need to look at what i did in the settings to make sure I did not mess things up. I lost some textures on some of the slaves. I had 7 slaves going and still frustrating to get everything just right. This is the third time of I have tried to render this. I will keep you up to date

Steve

Steve,
I feel your pain....

Some things to check for:
Hair, if it is on, turn it off, unless you absolutely need it.
Particles, same thing.

I have submitted an A:M report on the issue, you can as well.

Missing textures...
Are you using Darktree or A:M Enhance?
If not, try to make sure the texture images are all located in the project directory.

I usually create a separate directory for
Images,
Materials,
Actions,
Models (model decals can be a sub directory of each model).

I'll monitor this or you can pm me if you need any other help, I could also setup an online meeting where we could see each other's computer, so we can help you figure it out.

David

David

Found it!!! Went back to the start and did not change anything other than I found one texture was a Dark sim texture. Went to the model and retuxed the surface with a tga. Once that was completed, bingo the second animation of a fly into a building is almost completed.

It seams that all the textures created with a jpg cause a delay. I actually found two jpg files. Converted them to tga and reapplied decals and texture. That 10 sec with 1440 x 960 will be completed in less than 3 hours.

One really wierd thing is the AMD 4000 machine is chocking on this rendering. I am tempted to remove it. I am noticing that the AMD 2400, 2600, 3000, an even an 1800 are out-producing the AMD 4000. All the machines have at least 512mg of mem. The 4000 has 2 gig of mem. All are connected to the server on the same router / switch. The fastest machine on the render is a AMD 3000 and then the P4 3 gig.

Steve

Steve,
What are the clock speeds of the AMD's?
I use a software cloking utility to "tweak" a couple of my slaves up 2.4 Ghz. It makes a big difference.
It doesn't work on all of them.
A p4 out rendering an AMD sounds strange.

Glad you figured it out.
David

Jpegs should be faster than tgas......or both equal. If you can repeat that problem and the darksim one on a simple project send it in to AM:Reports. You want it right for next time.

Hi Ken

You are right and I will send a report as soon as the rendering is done!

David

AMD 1800 is 1.5
AMD 2400 is 2.0
AMD 2600 is 2.1
AMD 3000 is 2.2
AMD 4000 is 2.4
AMD MP2100 Dual Processor is 1.7 each
P4 is 3.0

What is the tweak tool you are using?

Steve

http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

I use this to up the clock speed on the 2.2 Ghz Athlon 64's to 2.4

It works well with no problems unless you over do it, then NR generates errors and you can get lock ups.
The good news is that it's software, so if you have a crash the settings are reset when you reboot.

You need to test it on each system with a non critical project, your mileage may vary.

I have tried it on other machines in my farm with out success.
The Athlon 64's benefit the most it seems.

Be sure to read the documentation on the site.

Hope this helps.
David

Thanks David

The redering stopped at just under 4 hours. All in all pretty good. There is one texture / decal that turns off and on thank good ness it is off to the side and can work around this. Any way the alpha channel worked perfect as well. I will keep you udated as I have another three minute animation coming up and then a 5 minute

Steve

Steve,
You should be able to determine if there is one slave that has the texture issue.

If you look under the project in NR there should be some sub items, open frames rendered, it will tell you which frames were rendered by which slaves.

Most times I have seen where it is one particular slave that can't find the texture.

Once you know which slave it is and the individual frame, you can re-render the offending frames with the other slaves.

If you right click on the project in NR you can select "add frames" and enter the frame number.

When I experience that issue, I page through the frames and locate the bad ones and make a list (also seggregate the bad frames to a different directory), then add those frames back in to be re-rendered.

David