Viewport Rendering Time

[Grethe Connerth]

Dear VW lovers,

 

when rendering a Viewport and searching for the best outcome and in a time saving manner at the same time, I do Test Renders of various Viewports along side of each other and monitor the time they take to render apart from the result of the quality.

 

Rendering a Viewport can take some time, so either I work on something else - once the VW program allows it - or I walk away.

 

Either way - once the Viewport is not 'active' the slider on the bottom right hand side of the program won't show the time it took to render.

And it cannot be retrieved. At east I haven't seen it.

 

At times it doesn't show the render time at all when the 'Auto-Backup' pops in between.

 

Q&A

Is there a Setting or some way I can go back to a Viewport and see how long it took to render?

 

Any insights are appreciated.

 

Cheers,

Grethe

 

 

[Art V]

Not that I am aware of, a workaround could be to have a utility on your computer that can track activity of a specified application. Once the activity goes down below a certain level for a certain amount of time it can be assumed that the render finished. This could give you some idea of how long a render takes. But it would only work when you have one render going on, not if you have multiple viewports rendering simultaneously.

 

Maybe have a wishlist item to have VW keep track of the render time for a viewport in the form of a render report that also lists the render settings etc. so that you can save it for future reference.

[Grethe Connerth]

Hi Art,

thanks for your input.

I would call myself a VW gig or nerd, but sorry to say, your suggestion is outside my capabilities ...  ;0))

A post on the Wishlist will follow once I know there is currently no solution in sight.

G

[zoomer]

A Render Time output would be fine !

 

At least there is a Render Time shown in Viewport Rendering.

But that is so easily wiped out by VW proudly telling you that it saves a backup

[Grethe Connerth]

Hi Zoomer,

 

exactly, thank you!

You put it in much easier words than I did above ;0)) 

G

[zoomer]

No, it looks like I didn't read your post

I thought you were in SLVPs ....

 

It would be fine if a Render Time would be saved permanently and available.

Maybe ad in "Shutter speed" in EXIF image data.

(ah wait, that is needed for exposure and motion blur already)

[Grethe Connerth]

Hi @zoomer

 

I'd be happy if it were simply in the Obj Info Palette.

 

Here for example as a line item when the VP is activated just above the Background Render Choice.

See screenshot attached.

[zoomer]

Yes, I would like it in this way too.

 

But I often thought it would be nice for any Rendering that you ever

saved out as an image and return to it in Finder/Explore years later,

to have such an Render Time Info available.

[Art V]

23 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Yes, I would like it in this way too.

 

But I often thought it would be nice for any Rendering that you ever

saved out as an image and return to it in Finder/Explore years later,

to have such an Render Time Info available.

And render settings as well if it is not one of the predefined default settings.

Even if it would be saved as a log file like the timetracking in the sessions tab of the VW preferences. Maybe have something similar for renderings with date/time start and end of the render logged and its settings.

[Grethe Connerth]

I like the idea of "log file like the time-tracking' !!!

 

In regards to 'Render Settings' - that's an ongoing desire of mine and many others as I have found.

 

Have a look at the post I created where I posted a couple of PDF files showing an Overview of Renderworks Style Settings for various necessities - Glow, Backlit 3D objects, Lit Fog, ...

Maybe that eases the pain for the time being ;0))

 

Enjoy !

G

 

 

[PVA - Admin]

On 4/29/2018 at 9:13 AM, Grethe Connerth said:

I'd be happy if it were simply in the Obj Info Palette.

 

 

On 4/29/2018 at 9:47 AM, Art V said:

Maybe have something similar for renderings with date/time start and end of the render logged and its settings.

I want this as well. Its very difficult to catch the render time in the message bar, and it's wiped by standard automated actions like autosave.

[Art V]

53 minutes ago, JimW said:

 

I want this as well. Its very difficult to catch the render time in the message bar, and it's wiped by standard automated actions like autosave.

Can't there be an option to disable autosave during rendering? To avoid issues there could be another preference option to ask to save first before starting rendering (in case it crashes, but then I normally always save before starting a render if changes have been made)

[PVA - Admin]

2 minutes ago, Art V said:

Can't there be an option to disable autosave during rendering?

This system isn't working as it should at the moment, there is a bug VB-126931 on it to make sure that autosave doesn't interrupt renderings in this way. However that bug doesnt address the autosave message. 

The main development issue is that if we allowed disabling Autosave during renderings, its possible for a user to do house of work on a design layer now for instance now that renderings are non-blocking (even if they slow things down significantly), while a sheet layer viewport is rendering in the background, and then a simple misstep could wipe all that work even though normally autosave would have salvaged all but the last 15 mins or whatever number of operations it was set to.

On top of that, even if autosave was simply disable-able DURING a rendering, it popping up every 15mins or so after the render completed would still wipe the message, which isn't ideal. I think the solution lies in a log file, in the OIP for the viewport, or perhaps even in an enhancement of the message bar letting you look back over the history of messages.

[zoomer]

For me it looks like it does already and especially does the next Autosave

directly after the Render finished to wipe out your Render Time.

[PVA - Admin]

2 minutes ago, zoomer said:

For me it looks like it does already and especially does the next Autosave

directly after the Render finished to wipe out your Render Time.

It's supposed to suspend the Autosave action until ALL rendering is done, which it does in most cases (some exceptions being tracked as bugs now). However this just solves the "Autosaves interrupts rendering" issues, not the "Autosave wipes the render time" issue.

[Kevin McAllister]

30 minutes ago, JimW said:

It's supposed to suspend the Autosave action until ALL rendering is done, which it does in most cases (some exceptions being tracked as bugs now). However this just solves the "Autosaves interrupts rendering" issues, not the "Autosave wipes the render time" issue.

Couldn't you work around this by setting your Autosave to number of operations instead of to a fixed amount of time? I find number of operations very reliable and have used it for a long time now. I was previously using a fixed amount of time but autosave would try and interrupt everything.

Kevin

 

[PVA - Admin]

49 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

Couldn't you work around this by setting your Autosave to number of operations instead of to a fixed amount of time? I find number of operations very reliable and have used it for a long time now. I was previously using a fixed amount of time but autosave would try and interrupt everything.

Yep, that's how I have it set too so it doesn't affect me personally, but I'd like for users to be able to have as much control over their autosave workflow as possible. For instance there are a number of reasons that a lot of users favor time intervals for autosave, commonly when multiple users are working on related/referenced files, or when files are being saved over a network or to a device/with a larger file where saving is a major delay. I don't use these workflows but theyre non-negoptiable to many of the people I've spoken with.

I'm a big fan of both having my cake and eating it. I'm greedy and I like cake.

[Art V]

For me the advantage of time based intervals is that your work/backup will get saved. The risk I run with number of operations is that either it is saving quite frequently (more so than with a time based interval) or I get interrupted for something else (happens more often than I like) and will have to leave the computer  for a " few minutes"  (which often takes longer than expected) or switch to some other memory hungry program or to another VW drawing.

It wouldn't be the first time that with number of operations for autosave I'd end up being short just one or a  tiny few operations for the next autosave, walk away from the computer and forget to save before walking away (does not happen often) or another drawing in VW or another program eats up all the memory and then find VW locked up with no changes saved (almost always happens when you can't use it).

 

As Jim mentioned, it depends on your workflow what will work better for someone. It might actually be nice if there would be an option to combine the two, number of operations being the leading one, resetting the time save upon number of operations save, and when you have not made the number of operations before the time interval is up then the time interval autosave kicks so that you will always have an autosave (e.g. when you left the computer before the number of operations was used and forgot to save before leaving).

[trashcan]

Did this happen or nah?