AWS Thinkbox Discussion Forums

Preview algorithm

I mentioned this preview algorith in the last post…



Here what I mean about that.



I would like to be able to check preview in my jobs so that key images would be rendered for all the current jobs.



Example: I have 20 jobs queued. 15 of them have the Preview checkbox on. Because I requested a preview for all these 15 jobs, Deadline will render key images in those 15 jobs, even if some of these jobs uses higher priority and higher pools. These key frames could defined in the preferences, so using a preview valu of 50 would be like rendering an animation every 50 frames.



The preview algorithm will make sure that the first frame and the last frame are always included in the preview and every 50th frame will be rendered. So for an animation of 1-150, frame 1, 51,101,150 would be rendered in priority.



All the other jobs with the preview on would be rendered in the same manner. once all preview jobs are completed, the render would resume as it is now.



Of course… This would be complex for jobs with task size bigger than 1. So maybe the preview could only work for job with a task size of 1.



Again I can do all this by hand by sending 2 jobs using different pools. and again I could automate this submission.



So the more I write about it the less usefull my idea becomes… well it’s a thought anyway.



Have a great day. :slight_smile:



Sylvain Berger | Technical Director | Alpha Vision


We have implemented a preview option in our new 3ds Max Submitter (which is still in beta but is used in production at Frantic).



It submits two jobs per scene - one with priority of 100 and only the preview frames (the user can specify for example 3 frames, and the job will pick the first, the last and the middle frames automatically), and a second, dependent job with the regular user-defined priority and all the remaining frames.



This ensures that the first max. priority job will render full frames as a preview before any other frames will be picked when machines are available. The artist can check the preview frames and see whether they look as expected, and cancel the second job or allow it to continue. In addition, the frame range in 2D comp. packages like Digital Fusion will be set to the correct range because the preview job always renders at least the first and the last frame.



Interestingly, this was an idea that was pitched by a Frantic employee in LA and it took me an afternoon to implement at submitter level.



I am sure we can do the same for Maya, XSI etc.



Cheers,



Borislav “Bobo” Petrov

Technical Director 3D VFX

Frantic Films Winnipeg

That would be great to have by default in the submitter.



It would also be interesting to be able to choose between higher priority on simply a different pool.



By using a Preview pool and making sure all machine have the preview pool the first in the list, it’s like using a priority of 100.



I personnaly prefers using pool than priority for these kind of things.



Sylvain Berger | Technical Director | Alpha Vision


Using a separate pool sounds like an option.

Our pool organization is slightly different, but a special pool for 3D rendering previews could work for us, too.

I was trying to avoid adding many more controls to the Preview option (the current dialog has 8 tabs full of options already, and is still growing), so a default priority of 100 sounded like a good idea.

I think I will make it an option to either submit with highest priority, or to a dedicated pool, or both. Of course, I am responsible for the 3ds Max side of things only, somebody else will have to look into modifying the other submitters…



Borislav “Bobo” Petrov

Technical Director 3D VFX

Frantic Films Winnipeg

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