Hi all,
I'm currently evaluating 3ds Max 2019 for purchase (well, subscription). I've been out of 3ds max for a couple of years and I'm getting back into 3D rendering. Currently I'm testing toon (NPR) rendering in Arnold. With my system (AMD 2990WX-128GB-Windows 10), I have 32 cores and 64 threads to use. By rendering the same file (a high res car model), I see the usage of threads vary between 100% and 10% and this of the same scene! So by rendering the scene (thread usage for example 95%), closing 3DS max and reopening the scene and render (thread usage only 30%), the thread usage varies greatly. This shouldn't be the case imo.
So I'm taking about the thread usage when starting the actual render (not the preparing of the model/scene). I've noticed this with a couple of scenes so this problem isn't limited to one specific scene.
So the problem is with Arnold or 3DS Max I assume?
Has somebody seen this before? Is this a known issue?
I'm running 3ds Max 2019 trial with Arnold 2.3.37
I've also varied the bucket sizes between 32 and 512, but no change in behaviour (except impact on render times ;-).
I've varied the resolution size (up to 11.000x7400 pixels), but no change in behaviour.
I've attached a log file when I got 67% usage of the threads. And also a screenshot of the Taskmanager to indicate the load on the threads/cores. This particular scene has 5 lights, but I've got the same problem with 1 light-scenes.
Any help would be greatly appreciated and many thanks in advance!
Best regards,
David
Try increasing the texture cache size. I think the default is 2GB, but I've seen very similar behavior when the scene textures exceed the cache size by some large amount (CPU usage will drop down to 5-10% while Arnold loads in textures, then jump up to 100%, then back down while it loads in more textures, etc, etc).
-CMPX
Thank you I'll try that. Although I only have 1 small texture in this scene, I hope this works. Thanks again!
Unfortunately it didn’t help. Also playing with the other texture settings didn’t solve the problem...
as a testing scenario here you need to have a consistent scene where all the buckets take generally the same 'long enough' time to process the pixels, have the same geometry and textures load, and also a resolution that is a multiple of your bucket size in both x/y and perhaps is also a multiple of your threads count.
in the while however I can't resist to say that if you're getting back to 3D with that kind of machine and you deliberately choose 3dsmax and windows .. that's what your deserve :)
The problem has been solved.
By reducing the Filter width of the Contour-filter (which is required for Edges to render for Toon) all threads are used to their fullest extent.
@Max Tarpini I've been using 3ds Max from when it was still called 3D Studio in the early days, so I'm used to some strange behaviour ;-)
We were just going to suggest it might be toon or contour, and to test with different shaders...
This is the place for Arnold renderer users everywhere to ask and answer rendering questions, and share knowledge about using Arnold, Arnold plugins, workflows and developing tools with Arnold.
If you are a new user to Arnold Answers, please first check out our FAQ and User Guide for more information.
When posting questions, please be sure to select the appropriate Space for your Arnold plugin and include the plugin version you are using.
Please include images, scene and log files whenever possible as this helps the community answer your questions.
If you are looking for Arnold Documentation and Support please visit the Arnold Support site.
To try Arnold please visit the Arnold Trial page.
