Jeff Mottle

Hey Guys,

As crazy as this probably sounds I have a file with 700 RPCs. All trees and vegetation. My problem is the time it takes to process the file before the render starts. Surprise. Does anybody have any secrets or tips on doing this to cut down on rendertime? I'm getting about 10min per frame.
We have to use RPCs as they are the only ones with the selcection and the client wants specific trees. I'd billboard everything but I'm in close proximity to all of the RPC almost all of the time. Basically I have a week to render this out (30 sec), which leaves absolutely no time for error. Yikes! To add to the problem I have to render this out twice so that it can be comp'ed with a Lightscape plate with a reflection pass.

[ May 27, 2002, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: Jeff Mottle ]

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Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

alexandre

hi jeff,

have you copied the rpcs onto your hard disk or are you giving a path to the cd ?

have you tried making a copy of your file with just the necessary geometry for the rpc mask ?

have you instanced your rpcs ? they say it won't work that way.

have you thought of begging third parties to allow rpc technology into their software so as to get rid of that g…ed max renderer ?

Jeff Mottle

Hey Alexander,

have you copied the rpcs onto your hard disk or are you giving a path to the cd ?

Yes all of the RPC's are on my HD

have you tried making a copy of your file with just the necessary geometry for the rpc mask ?

No, but I'm not sure this will work as the purpose if the RPCS in MAX is just to get the RPCS and their shadows into Combustion to be compe'ed over a Lightscape background plate. The geometry is almost all Matte/Shadow.

have you instanced your rpcs ? they say it won't work that way.

Made that mistake last go round and had to re-place everything. This time though they are unique interstions. The RPC mass editor amoung other things screws up if you instance them.

have you thought of begging third parties to allow rpc technology into their software so as to get rid of that g…ed max renderer ?

Not yet, but I may. Unfourtunately this won't help me this week.

Thanks,
Jeff

[ May 27, 2002, 10:10 AM: Message edited by: Jeff Mottle ]

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Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

nisus

Hi Jeff,

A very simple solution is to rent a few machines You'll half the render time with only one other machine!

Another technique might be to render a lot of views of the trees seperatly and map them on a plane facing the camera. It's a sloggy way, but faster if you instance your planes

rgds

nisus

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alexandre

how much memory do you have ? rpcs tend to eat up alot of ram.

Jeff Mottle

Between my partner and I RAM and proccessing power shouldn't be a prob, but it's still cutting it very close. We've got 2 Dual AMD 1900+, Mine has 2GB RAM and and my partners has 1GB. Having never done a big render with RPCs, do you know if the RAM consumption goes up over time or will it stay where it is after the first frame? Just rendering one frame I was at 780MB, so far from peaking my RAM out. If the RAM does keep climbing, I'm going to be really screwed.

Jeff

[ May 27, 2002, 10:23 AM: Message edited by: Jeff Mottle ]

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Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

alexandre

i'm not positive but if in that first frame you saw all of your rpcs then ram usage should stay put; why don't you try asking archvision directly, they seemed like a nice bunch of fellas to me when i had some trouble.

sorry, but i have to go, see you all tomorrow

STRAT

try splitting the rpc's up into xrefs.

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Jeff Mottle

Hey STRAT,

How will that help and what will that do? I've never used XREF in MAX.

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Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

STRAT

XReffing in max works basically the same principles of autocad. I dont know if it will make a difference to rendering times, but it may well do. try it.

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