open max in high priority not low

[twuelfing]

Is there a way to get deadline to start max in high priority mode so that this process is allocated more resources?

below is some windows information about how to start an application in a higher priority, perhaps this will help?
* realtime, priority 24
* high, priority 13
* normal, priority 8
* low, priority 4
* abovenormal 10 (Windows 2000 only)
* belownormal 6 (Windows 2000 only)

To start an application at a priority other than the default use the start command, e.g.

start / , e.g. start /high winword

To do the same thing from a shortcut just use:

cmd /c start /

thanks

[rrussell]

In the 3dsmax.py file in \your\repository\plugins\3dsmax, look for a couple of lines that look like this:

self.ProcessPriority = ProcessPriorityClass.BelowNormal

Change them to this:

self.ProcessPriority = ProcessPriorityClass.High

Then save the file and you should be good to go. Repeat as necessary for any other plugins you use.

The reason why we start the process at below normal is so that if someone needs to administrate the machine or remote in to watch the render, they can do so without the rendering process completely bogging everything else down.

Note: From the MSDN documentation regarding High priority:

Specifies that the process performs time-critical tasks that must be executed immediately, such as the Task List dialog, which must respond quickly when called by the user, regardless of the load on the operating system. The threads of the process preempt the threads of normal or idle priority class processes.

Caution:
Use extreme care when specifying High for the process’s priority class, because a high priority class application can use nearly all available processor time.

[twuelfing]

so do you see a performance increase if it is on high priority?

[rrussell]

Probably not, unless there are other applications running on the machine that are using enough resources to affect rendering performance. When running in Below Normal priority, the process will still use up 100% of the resources if nothing else is running on the machine. You could always run a couple benchmark tests to compare BelowNormal versus High priority rendering to see if you notice a difference at all.

Also, I forgot to mention that running the rendering process at anything higher than Normal would likely affect the Slave application negatively. The Slave needs to use a tiny amount of processing power to update its state and monitor the render logs. If a High priority process uses up all the resources, the Slave might not function properly (unless of course you start up the Slave in High priority too).

Cheers,

• Ryan

[mirkoj]

Is there option to set process to start as Low as well?
I tried replacing BelowNormal with Low but there is error message that there is no Low value or something like that.

[rrussell]

You’ll want to use ProcessPriorityClass.Idle. Here are all the options in case you’re interested:
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library … class.aspx

Cheers,

• Ryan