PC performance - texturing while rendering question

maze

Hey there! I am wondering if there is a way to limit (assign) 3ds max 2010, a certain amount of computer power while doing renders stills. The problem I am often facing is that while I render my computer slows down a lot (I know its logic but...), and I will like to use that time not waiting for renders but performing other tasks such as texturing, modeling, etc. But even though I try I get frustrated because it lags so much that I either stop trying to advance something else and wait for the render to finish or use internet because it is the only thing that does work fine.

Now, I am not really hardware saavy, so I might be asking something impossible here. In photoshop I can assign the amount of ram but I am not sure if this can be done in max, also if I am not wrong renders are based on processor power and not ram??

at least if I can use photoshop while rendering it'll be a great improvement.

if there's nothing to do well...I guess I render overnight...

thanks for your time, and for any help on this!!


my current system specs are:

- Corsair dominator 12gb - sdram ddr3 1600
- i7 930 intel processor 2.8 quad-core
- PNY Quadro Fx1800
- win 7 -64bit

Ark

Check the help for 'BSP.'

fattkid

If you have some sort of multi processor/multi core set up, go to your task manager, in the processes tab, right click on Max (or whatever app you want to limit), go to "Set Affinity" and check how many processors you want to allocate to said application. Now you'll have the remaining processor power free for other apps etc.

nezach

Offline rendering uses the CPU with few exceptions. There are renderers in the works that can leverage GPU power to help (and some past attempts such as Nvidia's Gelato), but most of the time it's going to be brute force processing power that gets the job done. Renderers ALSO need RAM, especially for scenes with large amounts of data. So you would have to tweak both CPU settings like the fattkid said, and be on top of the RAM situation like a bird dog, because both the renderer and Photoshop are going to be fighting for that memory. Some renderers, like mental ray, will just crash out on you mid render in some cases if it runs out of RAM.

dermaeher88

If you have another PC handy you could always use it as a render slave as well. I've done this in the past. It may take a little longer to render as any other computer that you're using will most likely be less powerful than the one that you modelled/textured on, but atleast you could work on other things with your main PC while stuff renders.

It totally depends on whether or not you have another PC though

maze

Ark. What do you mean by bsp? the mental ray settings?

fattkid. I will definitely try that, although it is simple I ignored it, thanks for your help, this might actually be all I need.

nezach. I believe my current setup should be ok. In terms of hardware performance. I am using 3ds max performance driver for quadro fx1800. although this is more for working in max than rendering I think so. About applications fighting for ram, yes it makes sense I will low the ram setup in photoshop and leave 6 processors dedicated to max instead of 8, in the way fattkid explained.

dermaeher88. I was using my laptop to do some modeling while rendering on my pc, yes is a good way to not lose time, although I am about to sell it tomorrow....so I' have to stick with 1 pc for all tasks from now on.

I am using mostly mental ray & vray. Most renders I do this time are for product visualization, so I tend to go a little high on settings (also higher than normal screen res. for 300 DPI) on final renders as they are meant for print purposes.

thanks again for your help!

glenatron

I'm not sure, but I think Ark might be referring to BES?

BES - or Battle Encoder Shirase (frickin awesome name!) basically targets any process in the systems memory, and limits it to whatever percentage of the cpu power you tell it to. It's bliss, I use it all the time.

Parkar

You can also set the priority of the 3dsmax process to low or as someone already pointed out the affinity to a limited set of cores if you have a multi core CPU. I used to do this all the time and it works fine. If you are running out of memory things will still be slow though.

MoP

I dunno if Max has a setting like this (I never looked), but in Maya's Mental Ray rendering settings, you can choose there how many cores you want it to use (it defaults to using all available cores, which will of course kill performance).

I'd imagine Max has a similar setting, and if so it'd be preferable to do that instead of manually forcing it through Windows.

Ark

After reading your post again, i don't think BSP would help you here. But you could try increasing/deceasing the bucket size depending on the complexity of your scene.

Form the help: "To render the scene, the mental ray renderer subdivides the image into rectangular sections, or “buckets.” Using a smaller bucket size causes more image updates to be generated during rendering. Updating the image consumes a certain amount of CPU cycles. For scenes with little complexity, smaller buckets can increase the rendering time, while larger buckets can make things render faster. For more complex scenes, the reverse is true."

maze

hey guys thanks again for your help!

mop. yeah that's ideally what I want to do, after lurking around I found this I will give it a try, and see if it helps.

also is true that lower the power compromises performance, but ideally not as much to be a problem, I mean if I have a little longer render times, but can use that time to advance some other stuff it's well justified for me.

Ark. well my scenes are small, , as they are for product rendering, mechanic pieces and stuff like that , but I haven't tweak the bucket size yet it might help too, my scenes look mostly, like this (simple 3 point light and product):

Mark Dygert

Render Farm.

Seriously it doesn't take much to set one up and the time it saves is great. Install max on some computer on the network, (trail is fine) launch manager, launch server. When you go to render check on net render, point it to the manager and away it goes. You're back working while its hard at work rendering.

Also you can launch manager and server on your own machine so you have a render farm running in the background. The advantage of this is that it only launches the components needed to render the job and can be lowered in priority fairly easily.

You can go back to working in max or close it while it renders and go do something else. Why they don't set it up to render like this by default I'm not sure, its silly that it ties up max while you render when it never really has to.

With as much texture baking and rendering people do now a days I'm surprised more people don't take advantage of backburner more often.

maze

hey Vig! sorry for the delay posting, thanks for that tip, I've been spending some time trying to figure out backburner...although I am kind of busy, I'll start some renders this week, it really seems to be an awesome tool...haven't found too much info about it, but I guess it should be straight forward. This seems to be the right way to go, thanks again man!

Mark Dygert

Shoot me a PM if you have any trouble, I set up our farm at work and I use it on a few boxes at home when I really need it.

maze

Hey Vig thanks for offering your help, sorry I`ve been a little busy lately. I actually have only one computer although it is quite good I think (I posted the specs earlier) So I don`t think I can think of a render farm yet. Maybe in the early future if I can manage to get another box. I will definitely ask you for some help then, have a good day man.

EarthQuake

Parkar wrote: »

You can also set the priority of the 3dsmax process to low or as someone already pointed out the affinity to a limited set of cores if you have a multi core CPU. I used to do this all the time and it works fine. If you are running out of memory things will still be slow though.

You can also "set priority" to "below normal", this gives you pretty much the same result, except that if you go make a sandwich or something it will use all the power it can. I only limit cores when setting priority still results in slowness.

maze

that seems like an easy fix, thanks, I'll try that today. I am doing some render passes for a matte painting and it will be cool to texture other stuff in the meantime.