DT-Side Chat Thread v. The Blu-Ray is out so I changed the friggin' title

[Whatsername]

Yep, 3D rendering does a crazy amount of calculations. It takes literally 2-3 days per frame for a modern Hollywood movie to render on one computer. I have to limit myself to a mere fraction of that for obvious reasons.

That reminded me of this article I just read about Pixar's Monsters University:

https://venturebeat.com/2013/04/24/the-making-of-pixars-latest-technological-marvel-monsters-university/

Even with all of that computing might, it still takes 29 hours to render a single frame of Monsters University, according to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi.

All told, it has taken more than 100 million CPU hours to render the film in its final form. If you used one CPU to do the job, it would have taken about 10,000 years to finish. With all of those CPUs that Pixar did have, it took a couple of years to render.

Holy tits!

Yup! I assume Pixar has a render farm which makes the rendering a bit faster. We have one at school but only the *graduate* students are allowed to use it.

[wasteland]

Well, the sooner you graduate...

[ProgressiveIce]

So someone just payed $455 for a copy of the clear ADTOE LP...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/281154519225




That's a higher price than the test pressing that Cargo Records auctioned last December, which is certainly much rarer...

[JayOctavarium]

[BlobVanDam]

Yep, 3D rendering does a crazy amount of calculations. It takes literally 2-3 days per frame for a modern Hollywood movie to render on one computer. I have to limit myself to a mere fraction of that for obvious reasons.

That reminded me of this article I just read about Pixar's Monsters University:

https://venturebeat.com/2013/04/24/the-making-of-pixars-latest-technological-marvel-monsters-university/

Even with all of that computing might, it still takes 29 hours to render a single frame of Monsters University, according to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi.

All told, it has taken more than 100 million CPU hours to render the film in its final form. If you used one CPU to do the job, it would have taken about 10,000 years to finish. With all of those CPUs that Pixar did have, it took a couple of years to render.

Holy tits!

Yup! I assume Pixar has a render farm which makes the rendering a bit faster. We have one at school but only the *graduate* students are allowed to use it.

I had my own little render farm of 3 computers, although they're getting old now, and my current PC is faster than all of them combined, so I just leave it rendering overnight now. I still use the render machines during the day though.
Back in the old days when my friend used to work at a high school, I used to use a whole room of their computers remotely to render. Good times!

[JayOctavarium]

[Whatsername]

Well, the sooner you graduate...

Unfortunately, by graduate, I mean people going for their master's degree, so even if I graduate, I'd have to go back to school. Which I might do eventually but my finances are in such a shambles right now because of loans that I don't dare take out more yet.

I had my own little render farm of 3 computers, although they're getting old now, and my current PC is faster than all of them combined, so I just leave it rendering overnight now. I still use the render machines during the day though.
Back in the old days when my friend used to work at a high school, I used to use a whole room of their computers remotely to render. Good times!

I generally leave things rendering overnight. I also work on a Windows platform, so I've set up a lovely little batch file that will render each shot and put all the renders in their own folder by file name, without ever having to open Maya. It makes me feel smart. 

[BlobVanDam]

I had my own little render farm of 3 computers, although they're getting old now, and my current PC is faster than all of them combined, so I just leave it rendering overnight now. I still use the render machines during the day though.
Back in the old days when my friend used to work at a high school, I used to use a whole room of their computers remotely to render. Good times!

I generally leave things rendering overnight. I also work on a Windows platform, so I've set up a lovely little batch file that will render each shot and put all the renders in their own folder by file name, without ever having to open Maya. It makes me feel smart. 

It doesn't have a render manager to do all that? 3DS Max has the network render manager, where I set up all of that stuff.

[wasteland]

Well, the sooner you graduate...

Unfortunately, by graduate, I mean people going for their master's degree, so even if I graduate, I'd have to go back to school. Which I might do eventually but my finances are in such a shambles right now because of loans that I don't dare take out more yet.

That's really sad. 

And, by the way, one of the reasons I wouldn't probably consider living in the US: University is too expensive.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

I had my own little render farm of 3 computers, although they're getting old now, and my current PC is faster than all of them combined, so I just leave it rendering overnight now. I still use the render machines during the day though.
Back in the old days when my friend used to work at a high school, I used to use a whole room of their computers remotely to render. Good times!

The rendering exerience I have is catpoop compared to what you do but I have done some gaming videos in 1080p and I remember always getting annoyed when you come back after 30mins or so and watched your rendered movie and realize you forgot to edit some or sync some scene and you had to do it all over again. I'm guessing you are more careful when you render for several hours. Although your brain can only functions for unlimited amount of time meaning you'll come to a point when you just want the shit to be done and that's when things get out of hand.

[BlobVanDam]

I had my own little render farm of 3 computers, although they're getting old now, and my current PC is faster than all of them combined, so I just leave it rendering overnight now. I still use the render machines during the day though.
Back in the old days when my friend used to work at a high school, I used to use a whole room of their computers remotely to render. Good times!

The rendering exerience I have is catpoop compared to what you do but I have done some gaming videos in 1080p and I remember always getting annoyed when you come back after 30mins or so and watched your rendered movie and realize you forgot to edit some or sync some scene and you had to do it all over again. I'm guessing you are more careful when you render for several hours. Although your brain can only functions for unlimited amount of time meaning you'll come to a point when you just want the shit to be done and that's when things get out of hand.

My videos go through several different stages, so there's a lot to keep track of. And not only do I have to render off the frames from my 3D program, but then I still have to edit them together in After Effects and add effects and export from there, and that final video exporting stage like you go through is about the least of my problems.

The 3D rendering takes so long, that I really have to keep an eye on it to avoid mistakes, because I often don't have time to render long shots twice. It often has to be right the first time. Some shots I can render several times without any problem though. It can take several days continuous just to render off one shot of under half a minute.

I've gotten pretty good at avoiding any catastrophic mistakes, and pretty good at covering up the minor mistakes.

[Whatsername]

I generally leave things rendering overnight. I also work on a Windows platform, so I've set up a lovely little batch file that will render each shot and put all the renders in their own folder by file name, without ever having to open Maya. It makes me feel smart. 

It doesn't have a render manager to do all that? 3DS Max has the network render manager, where I set up all of that stuff.

It might, but not having to have Maya open means that it takes away less processing power from the rendering, meaning things render a lot faster.

That's really sad. 

And, by the way, one of the reasons I wouldn't probably consider living in the US: University is too expensive.

Yup. Most the time it wouldn't be so bad but I chose to go to a university that didn't accept my associate's degree and won't give full scholarships to transfer students. I basically intentionally screwed myself.

[BlobVanDam]

I generally leave things rendering overnight. I also work on a Windows platform, so I've set up a lovely little batch file that will render each shot and put all the renders in their own folder by file name, without ever having to open Maya. It makes me feel smart. 

It doesn't have a render manager to do all that? 3DS Max has the network render manager, where I set up all of that stuff.

It might, but not having to have Maya open means that it takes away less processing power from the rendering, meaning things render a lot faster.

You don't need the program open. It's a separate render manager, not within the program itself.
It shouldn't affect rendering speed, unless you don't have enough ram, as having the program open does use up more memory.

It's been too long since I've used Maya, so I can't remember what its network rendering was like.

[Whatsername]

You don't need the program open. It's a separate render manager, not within the program itself.
It shouldn't affect rendering speed, unless you don't have enough ram, as having the program open does use up more memory.

It's been too long since I've used Maya, so I can't remember what its network rendering was like.

Well I will definitely have to check that out and see if Maya has an option for that because it would make things much easier. The problem I run into is without the program open I sometimes will not realize there are issues with the shot until I go check the renders and then it's like d'oh!

[BlobVanDam]

You don't need the program open. It's a separate render manager, not within the program itself.
It shouldn't affect rendering speed, unless you don't have enough ram, as having the program open does use up more memory.

It's been too long since I've used Maya, so I can't remember what its network rendering was like.

Well I will definitely have to check that out and see if Maya has an option for that because it would make things much easier. The problem I run into is without the program open I sometimes will not realize there are issues with the shot until I go check the renders and then it's like d'oh!

Whenever I'm rendering, I always have the render folder open to periodically check it. Nothing worse than having a finished render only to find you got some simple option wrong.

[Whatsername]

I've taken to rendering the first 15-20 frames just to make sure everything is good, and then going back and rendering it for real. Can't believe how long it took me to realize that's a good idea.

[?]

Censorship seems to be working well on a street in my new home city (photo taken by me):

[Onno]

 

[wasteland]

Ariich, did you recently take a trip to Finland? 

[?]

I'm not sure Rich is as conservative as whoever did that... Why would he make it harder for someone to be sexin' others later?

[Whatsername]

Walked into Starbucks today for a small frappuccino. Found out I had a reward on my card, so I got a large one instead.

[wasteland]

I walk into Starbucks approximately once every two or three years. I hate having to go to London in order to do that.

Now I want a fruit frappuccino. NOW.   

[Whatsername]

There's one across from my office. It's like they knew I would work here.

So guys I can't sit still now. Is this normal?

[Onno]

So guys I can't sit still now. Is this normal?

Yep 

I hate Starbucks, it's way too overpriced to me. That said, I never even bought anything there, but I just won't since it's so expensive.

[Whatsername]

It is overpriced but they've suckered me in with fancy coffee things.

[Onno]

That's true, it's original and it should be good... However, the only Starbucks here is at the Central Station and I just won't pay 5 euros for a cup of coffee, however fancy.

[Sketchy]

And they do not do oolong!

[Onno]

I had to Google that 

[wasteland]

Am I the only one who thought you were talking about this guy? 

https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/6529/585468-dragon_ball_oolong.jpg

[Whatsername]

I have a friend who's a major tea junkie so I knew what you meant.

Am I the only one who thought you were talking about this guy? 

https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/6529/585468-dragon_ball_oolong.jpg

Now I will think of this forevermore.



I had a dream I was in a giant Teavana and I was looking for the oolong for my tea junkie friend and this place was the size of a giant supermarket and I was wandering up and down aisles and aisles of tea that I had never heard of looking for this one particular kind. I wonder if this is a metaphor for my life.

[BlobVanDam]

I had a dream the other night where I was predestined to kill some kid by pushing them into a cage full of spikes, so that I could perpetuate some evil cycle.

I try not to over-analyze these things.

[Whatsername]

Note to self: never get Blob angry.

[BlobVanDam]

WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?! I'LL KILL YOU. I'LL KILL YOU ALL.



I think you're safe. 

[wasteland]

Wanna talk strange dreams? Here you go:

I was being told by a friend about the so-called "final university exam" - something that doesn't exist - and what it entailed. I distinctively remember that the third part of such exam was made up of multiple choice questions aimed at verifying one's lateral thinking. The question that I "saw" in my mind was:

The king trusts his mathematician and he finds 196.000 out of 197.000 pirated songs about Roma and Lazio (for the record, two Italian football teams that I don't support). Whom should he trust?

A - His horse
B - His horsekeeper
C - Can't remember
D - Can't remember either

I woke up while wondering whether a horse could be seen as a trustworthy animal and most of all what the fuck the question could be about.

Analyze that.

[BlobVanDam]

That's nothing! Every second dream I haveis about a final exam/project I didn't prepare for.
The most recent one I remember involved the teacher slipping me a note telling me he was my real father.


Analyze THAT.