Blowing off some steam
mod
I love my job, I really like what I do and I couldn't be more happy with the pay, benefits and perks. But like every job there are a few downsides to it.
So I'm at work watching my system render out 9720 frames of mini-cinematic animations at 15min a frame. Breaks down to roughly 100 days of nothing but straight rendering. While it is going I can open another copy of Max and work on simple things like props but that ends up pushing render times up to 20-30min per frame.The good news is it is almost done, and up until now I have been able to use my system during the day and set it to render at night. But we have reached the point I must have it rendering the 8-12hrs during the day I'm at work. So I sit and watch it render...
I asked my AD if I could get a second computer for Christmas so I could keep working while a billion and a half frames of animation render, but that was shot down, not in the budget. I would understand but we just bought a new copier, a new 50" widescreen TV from Dell for the break room no one uses and doesn't even have cable. [sarcasm]But hey Wii sports looks great on something that mammoth... [/sarcasm] I suspect it was purchased to give our lead tester something to do in his down time. I would use it to play games in my abundant down time but I want to kick the thing because even if I took it to a pawn shop I could get enough for a decent render box. I've also offered to drag my system in from home, but that was shot down by my bosses boss.
I have a long laundry list of stuff to do but these renders are priority, and I can't get around the time it takes for them to render.
The lucky thing is, everyone knows what is going on its not a secret and it suggestions have been made to get the art department a few computer upgrades, which means bitch boxes for the 3D artists. Everyone is also nice and sets their computer up as a render node after they go home, so that helps, but it creates a bit of a nightmare when the Seattle power grid is so F-in twitchy. One brown out and my little sweat shop grinds to a halt. Because of the cold weather the H-VAC system at work has been working non stop and has caused the power to go out a few times.
I have roughly until the end of the month to finish the rendering and get a few other misc tasks done before art lock down, I can get it done and I keep my AD updated constantly he is sympathetic to my plight and would do anything in his power to help, if he could. I'm not in any danger of losing my job, in fact I get the feeling they are a little worried I would leave now that I have two titles under my belt and I'm kind of getting the company shaft at the moment.
I'm not to the point I want to start looking for another place because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We also do in house postmortem evaluations, I started mine already since I have some down time, heh. Many many suggestion on what not to do in the future, what equipment we should purchase to avoid this type of thing. On the up side I think at least 1 copy of Mudbox will make it on the next budget. I'm not getting my hopes up because it might not happen, the suggestion still has to get past the wise bean counters who make such good purchasing decisions.
Everyone wants a copy of Mudbox but no one has used it before, not like the learning curve is all that high, but I'm not sure everyone would use it past the "OOoOoo it really is like sculpting in clay!". Because everyone wants it and not everyone has an honest need, I might not get my hands on a copy for work. Which is a frustrating prospect since I have been using it at home to make rock faces and just muck around and get used to it. I can't tell you much faster it is than modeling that kind of detail by hand, it really would allow me to do more detail in less time. I should talk to my AD and see if there are any problems if I buy a copy to use, I might be able to take it off my taxes at the end of the year? I know they let people who work construction deduct their tools and other work related gear.
So I'm at work watching my system render out 9720 frames of mini-cinematic animations at 15min a frame. Breaks down to roughly 100 days of nothing but straight rendering. While it is going I can open another copy of Max and work on simple things like props but that ends up pushing render times up to 20-30min per frame.The good news is it is almost done, and up until now I have been able to use my system during the day and set it to render at night. But we have reached the point I must have it rendering the 8-12hrs during the day I'm at work. So I sit and watch it render...
I asked my AD if I could get a second computer for Christmas so I could keep working while a billion and a half frames of animation render, but that was shot down, not in the budget. I would understand but we just bought a new copier, a new 50" widescreen TV from Dell for the break room no one uses and doesn't even have cable. [sarcasm]But hey Wii sports looks great on something that mammoth... [/sarcasm] I suspect it was purchased to give our lead tester something to do in his down time. I would use it to play games in my abundant down time but I want to kick the thing because even if I took it to a pawn shop I could get enough for a decent render box. I've also offered to drag my system in from home, but that was shot down by my bosses boss.
I have a long laundry list of stuff to do but these renders are priority, and I can't get around the time it takes for them to render.
The lucky thing is, everyone knows what is going on its not a secret and it suggestions have been made to get the art department a few computer upgrades, which means bitch boxes for the 3D artists. Everyone is also nice and sets their computer up as a render node after they go home, so that helps, but it creates a bit of a nightmare when the Seattle power grid is so F-in twitchy. One brown out and my little sweat shop grinds to a halt. Because of the cold weather the H-VAC system at work has been working non stop and has caused the power to go out a few times.
I have roughly until the end of the month to finish the rendering and get a few other misc tasks done before art lock down, I can get it done and I keep my AD updated constantly he is sympathetic to my plight and would do anything in his power to help, if he could. I'm not in any danger of losing my job, in fact I get the feeling they are a little worried I would leave now that I have two titles under my belt and I'm kind of getting the company shaft at the moment.
I'm not to the point I want to start looking for another place because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We also do in house postmortem evaluations, I started mine already since I have some down time, heh. Many many suggestion on what not to do in the future, what equipment we should purchase to avoid this type of thing. On the up side I think at least 1 copy of Mudbox will make it on the next budget. I'm not getting my hopes up because it might not happen, the suggestion still has to get past the wise bean counters who make such good purchasing decisions.
Everyone wants a copy of Mudbox but no one has used it before, not like the learning curve is all that high, but I'm not sure everyone would use it past the "OOoOoo it really is like sculpting in clay!". Because everyone wants it and not everyone has an honest need, I might not get my hands on a copy for work. Which is a frustrating prospect since I have been using it at home to make rock faces and just muck around and get used to it. I can't tell you much faster it is than modeling that kind of detail by hand, it really would allow me to do more detail in less time. I should talk to my AD and see if there are any problems if I buy a copy to use, I might be able to take it off my taxes at the end of the year? I know they let people who work construction deduct their tools and other work related gear.
Replies
Bottom line: An extra machine or two costs nothing compared to the productivity you are pissing down the drain having to wait around doing nothing - especially if this happens to more people than just you.
I would suggest getting a floating license or two of mudbox so that everyone can install it on their machine and use it as needed. Though one license is a bit silly and will probably cause problems with people wanting to use it at the same time. 2 or 3 should be more reasonable and cause fewer lineups to use the software.
I can maybe see an issue over security for not allowing you to bring your own machine into work, but installing your own software should be ok I would think. Though it sucks when you are spending your own hard earned cash on tools needed to do your job... maybe that should be sending a message to your bosses too.
I agree though, it does seem like an additional machine should be available and it is ignorant to say there is no budget when they are making other non-critical purchases. My company does the same crap. Can't buy equipment and materials to do our job, but they are building new buildings on the campus and redoing the current buildings. Not that they don't need a facelift, but there isn't money for that right now (I'm in the automotive biz... which is suffering).
hhmmm in my previous company Im used 11 CPU cores(7 PC with different number of CPU-types, like 2xXeon HTT server))) in dinner, or if nobody work on them for Max rendering.
Its save many time , becouse time decrease proportionaly CPU icluded in rendering. 2 hour per frame on 1 workstation or 10 min per frame in coffe break, what the best?? It saves money for example. Or rendering ambient ocllusion map in 2048 res for character?? on athlon 64 3000+ 1Gb ram it spent about 5 hour, and after that find a errors on map and loose all day))))
At current company Im ask for second monitor and receive on next day.
But in russia, we think what in USA , companies works more effective than in our country, hmmm strange....
Sorry my english.
From all you've told me, and the awesome art you've made for the games, you should have enough pull to point out the obvious, and they should have the common sense to agree that adding some render machines would improve the workflow speed insanely. I wish you luck sir!
....and damn I want that Dell TV! That thing is SEXAY!
Possible solution that involves staying at the company, talk to your IT guy and see if you could get a distributed rendering program installed on other people's machines. Companies commonly have these for code compiling.
For example, your producer is off in the break room yucking it up and meanwhile your computer needs to render. It notices his machine is inactive and sends some of the rendering over the network.
Im half of a 2 man 3d team at our company and rendering causes huge problems as,like you we both have our own computers but tahts it. No 3rd rendering machine.
If soemthing is needed shortly we sit and watch it render,but normally we can get away with using both our PCs with backburner set-up overnight/weekends,if something is really urgent,we use our programmers PCs.
One advantage of watching it though is at least you know its coming out OK.
The amount of times we have rendered something over a night and found it had skipped frames or didn't render objects properly and such is just plain bloody annoying.
We feel your pain though bro.
John
- The budgets are separate like Rhinokey pointed out.
- These animations and mini cinematics aren't something new, they have done them in the past but never on this scale. The current setup would be more than fine if they didnt increase the amount needed.
At this point they are waiting to see how the players respond to the feature on this scale to see if they even want to use it again. This makes sense when you dont factor in the lost time on this game.
I have a network render queue set up, the only problem is when the power browns out the que is wiped. The power grid is so twitchy because we had a few high wind storms that have beaten the crap out of the power lines, transformers and sub stations. Where I live & work power lines and trees blur together, it doesn't take much to cause total chaos with the power grid, why they dont burry power lines Ill never know. At work they haven't put permanent repairs in place. With the cold weather, as people try to keep places warm the local grid is limping along. Hopefully they will get the repairs done soon and power and heat won't be an issue. A lot of us have lost work to a brown out. The office joke right now is, hear the heater kick on you better save what youre working on That alone I think has been the greatest source of frustration for me and the rest of the team on this part of the project.
I don't have the right license at home to do commercial work there.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel and while it sucks now, everyone is aware of it and it wont happen (at least this scenario) again, in the future, hopefully maybe