Jump to content

Cloud Services


Cloud Services  

11 members have voted

  1. 1. I use Cloud Services :

    • Regularly - it's an important part of my workflow - couldn't do without it
    • Every now and again - it's ok, but not a game changer
    • Never - it is of no use / interest to me
    • What is Cloud Services
      0


Recommended Posts

As a recent convert to Cloud Services, having meant to give it a try since it came out, but never got round to it, I am interested to know how many others use it.  (And I've always wanted an excuse to set up a poll!)

 

I've found it invaluable recently and am surprised it doesn't get talked about more on the forums.  It's not perfect and could be improved (somehow saving the viewport cache - though I don't know how that could work in practice) - but I can't believe I haven't used it earlier!

Link to comment

I think the problem you highlight kills off most of its value above generic cloud service. 

 

Just think full set rendered overnight in morning check prints to realize a couple of notes on a rendered page didn't pick up a conversation you were having with the client as the "draftie" sent the file to cloud and went home. 

 

If the viewport cached no problem fix and publish.

Sure you can cut the render out of the PDF paste it over the wireframe viewport.

 

Link to comment

I have used it from time for large sets of drafts. As I don't render directly out of VW I don't use it for renderings. As a cloud rendering service user, I think VW could make some adjustments/improvements:

-Let users know what the VW cloud specs are so they can compare to their own rig. All cloud renderers let you see the number of virtual cores, RAM specs, etc.This is helpful when gauging how long a cloud render could take vs leaving it on your own machine. 

-Let individual viewports be the "unit" of the rendering service. Complicated sections, perspective views with rendering styles, these are the viewports that bog me down. I'm ok with having those be out of date if I can get a relatively quick return so I can just see what is what in the viewport.  

-Allow for "token" data of each viewport. These are tags that the user can add to the viewport that give information back to the user about that viewport. Specifically helpful: Date, Time, Version.  By giving having this information available (say in the Navigation Palette) the user can see if the rendered viewport is still relevant or warrants sending back to the renderer.  Let the user decide if the viewport needs updating or not, or can it be locked so that it doesn't require an update.  Often times VW will highlight a viewport that requires updating when there is no reason to do so from the user's point of view.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
17 hours ago, Andrew Davies said:

(somehow saving the viewport cache - though I don't know how that could work in practice)

 

7 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

If the viewport cached no problem fix and publish.

 

This is already on the wishlist here - 

I think its very handicapped without the ability to receive the VW file back with rendered viewports.

 

KM

  • Like 1
Link to comment
On 06/07/2017 at 8:28 PM, grant_PD said:

By giving having this information available (say in the Navigation Palette) the user can see if the rendered viewport is still relevant or warrants sending back to the renderer.  Let the user decide if the viewport needs updating or not, or can it be locked so that it doesn't require an update.  Often times VW will highlight a viewport that requires updating when there is no reason to do so from the user's point of view.

 

 

It would be a real time saver if rendered viewport flagged which geometry effected then and could estimate how much change will effect them. Give higher weighting to changes front and centre.  Even break the dirty viewport indicator up to show which part of the viewport is effected.

Link to comment

I've just rendered out 4 viewports on my MacBook Pro (2016) in a fraction of the time compared to Cloud Services.  I began to suspect Cloud was taking too long earlier today, so thought I would give it a try.

 

Will do some more scientific examples when I get a mo - but that's disappointing.

 

I was wondering whether the file was locked (as I still had it open in VWX) - but I saved as first to be sure.

 

@JimW- any chance you can let us know what the specs are of the machine(s) doing the rendering in the cloud?  Maybe I was just unlucky.

Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

It spins up a machine with a E5-2670 CPU running at around 2.6 - 3.0 Ghz, 8 cores 16 threads (it has dedicated GPUs as well but these wouldn't affect Renderworks at all). Going to see if it's possible to run Cinebench on one of these machines remotely to give a direct comparison to the other machines we've benchmarked.

Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Each machine is dedicated to one users job at a time. However, I DO believe there is a maximum number of concurrent machines that can run at any given time, I do not know how many that is (asking the Cloud team now) but I can give the following example:

Assume for the moment the max limit was 8 concurrent machines. If there were 9 users all submitting a job at around the same time only 8 of them would start right away, and the 9th persons job would sit in the queue until whichever of the first 8 users finished. Whichever machine finished its job first (based on complexity) would be freed up and then the 9th job would start.

However, I also think at the moment there is a 24 hour maximum time limit on a job, so if your render took 25 hours on that hardware, it may fail. I will confirm this as well.

Link to comment

Thanks again for the info Jim.

 

Just did a basic test rendering out a single viewport from scratch,  My 2016 MacBook Pro took 7 minutes, and cloud took 15.

 

However, the status bar did say queued for a while - so assume that was whilst it was waiting for a machine.

 

A shame it seems to be slower, but not dead in the water for me - I still had my machine to work on during those 15 minutes

Link to comment

Going back to your original question, I voted for use it  'every now and again'. Thinking on it, not strictly true.

Is there a category for 'haven't used it for a while and now tried it again and can't get it to work'!

Files uploaded ok last night, but no file created. To be honest, I seem to recall a slight  issue last time so maybe user error..

 

Any ideas?!

 

170714_Capture.JPG.19b0b4eeb95ed05ffa8cd1334077b863.JPG

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...