SMTD Tile Rendering : Image Aspect Ratio

Deadline
1

Hi,
There seems to be a maths problem with the number of X/Y tiles spinner under “Tiles Rendering” in the SMTD.
The bug is easily replicated:

  1. Open 3dsMax, any version.
  2. Under render scene dialog, make output size=custom, Width: 6614, Height: 4677 and Image Aspect Ratio:1.414
  3. Boot up SMTD
  4. Now try and change the tiles in X or Y, beyond say 2 or 3… The spinner is unable to calculate the tiles.

We regularly have to render high-res stills out at strange image aspect ratios so we need to split the images up for the farm to process effectively.
I was thinking that if the Maths cannot be fixed, perhaps we could approach the problem another way…
By increasing the width and height of the image by a certain % until they are both ‘even’ numbers would allow the tile spinners to operate again.
Perhaps we could add this additional feature as a checkbox in the SMTD so that Artists can render the image slightly larger than required but at least with the correct image aspect ratio. Better still, if the SMTD code could then handle this % increase on submission, so that the tiles it creates are cropped? before being passed to the tileAssembler.exe for final assembly?

Thanks,
Mike

2

Hey Mike,

The problem is that our tile assembler application only accepts tiles that are all equal in size, which is why the SMTD limits the X and Y options to values that are divisible into the width and height. We would have to change our tile assembler to support arbitrarily sized tiles before we can do anything in SMTD. I’ve logged this as a feature request.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

The workaround I’ve snuck through the farm before is to just render a weeeeebit too large and then crop a pixel in photoshop.

Perhaps there is a way to trick the tile stitcher into automagically implementing such a workaround (and indicating crop pixels in flourescent pink) in the mean time? Or perhaps an automation of the workaround would be just as difficult.

4

Having our tile assembler support arbitrarily sized tiles would probably be more straightforward to implement then padding and cropping the final image automagically. :slight_smile:

At least you have a workaround for now. :slight_smile:

Cheers,

  • Ryan