What do you do while everything renders?
polycounter lvl 5
I find too much time being spent surfing was wondering if there's a better way to use my time while everything renders.
Edit: Oh and listening to audiobooks.
Edit: Oh and listening to audiobooks.
Replies
But also, we're game artists, so... no render time, if we can avoid it.
Reading, is probably what I'd opt for.
that way I can still work whilst rendering takes place
Coz, rendering static lightmaps for levels is whole different story.
I know, lightmaps in 2014... WHAT THE HELL, you think .. Me too, everytime I move light and click rebuild lighting to see how it looks ;/
even still with I7s 32gigs + of ram and cuda drivers I can't go and do the weight set I used to do
Downtime is important though.
That way you can render in the background while you still work in max/maya. Or if you have another machine install Max/Maya on it (you don't have to authorize it for it to render as a node), launch server and let it do all of the work while you go back to working on important stuff.
If background rendering is too intensive for your machine then you can queue up renders in manager and then turn server on (or set a schedule in monitor) so the jobs process when you're not around.
Also make sure you aren't needlessly cranking up settings, sometimes you can render at double resolution with lower settings, and resize the image back to normal and get better results than cranking up the settings on a smaller map size. Pay attention to the resize settings in photoshop.
I guess keeping the desktop tidy is also something to pass time during renders, I know that doesn't sound like a big deal but getting files/folders cleaned up is good way to stay organised, that includes keeping your workspace at home organised too as I think it can effect your focus.
If you use Xnormal you could check out Airborn Studios tools, its actually pretty good for setting a bunch of bakes going instead of painstakingly rendering one chunk at a time: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=125244
Sigh...
This is something i forgot a while back after a PC reinstall. I was desperately trying to remember how i did it and couldn't. Nice one!
Also scripting or just cleaning up
I used to search for a solution to distributed lightmapping in Unity. I never found anything. These days while lightmapping I've been reading over our game design docs, and doing some light scheduling and planning.
I typically start and cancel a lightmapping session 3 or 4 times while I remember last minute settings I forgot to adjust.
Nerf wars :shifty:
Really though, either browse polycount or setting up stuff. Baking usually doesn't take long and if it does there's always something simple you can do in the meantime. I'll sometimes google ideas I've had, search for reference or just browse through some relevant tutorials... the vertex books are great for this.