IIRC, P_12 external render facility is currently restricted to Firefly.

( Per October 2020 documentation ...)

Is there any indication if 12 updates will extend this to Superfly ??

You can send a Superfly animation to Queue; each "remote" will be assigned a frame to render. You can also send a series of individual renders to Queue (aka "batch list") in Superfly. I have a batch list of five Superfly renders running now.

Yay !!

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I was so sure I'd seen this clarified in the forum, but could not find it. Official Poser_12 info, dated Oct'2020, remains flagged 'Firefly Only'.

Beyond render speed, I'd realised I could build a powerful 'external render' PC for less than it would cost to seriously upgrade either of this CAD_Tower PC's twin GTX 750 ti GPU cards.

I collected Corsair R200 case, WD Black HDD, mini-kbd with trackball, 16" display and VESA arm. Saw that official 'Firefly Only', had a panic. Deferred Corsair 750 Watt PSU, Win'10_Home OS and Ryzen_7 pre-loaded mobo...

FWIW, I was getting mobo with 16 GB RAM. D'you reckon Ryzen_7's sixteen threads would do better with 32 GB ? And/or Win_10 Pro ??

My workstation is using 13.3GB RAM rendering at the moment, so I would go for the 32GB RAM.

So that nobody misinterprets (and invests in hardware only to be disappointed), I want to clarify that currently Queue only assigns entire renders to a remote; Queue does not distribute a single render over multiple machines. That has been on my wishlist since Pro2010.

seachnasaigh posted at 8:45AM Mon, 01 February 2021 - #4411593

My workstation is using 13.3GB RAM rendering at the moment, so I would go for the 32GB RAM.

So that nobody misinterprets (and invests in hardware only to be disappointed), I want to clarify that currently Queue only assigns entire renders to a remote; Queue does not distribute a single render over multiple machines. That has been on my wishlist since Pro2010.

Yes it It could be so good if it was buckets that where distributed and not only frames.... may be poser 13 ?

"...may be poser 13 ?" Likewise an upgrade to FBX rig handling from current options of 'IT WORKS !!', 'Barely poseable Multi-Part' and 'SPLAT' ?? ;-)

My networked box's loaded mobo has arrived early. As recommended by seachnasaigh, I went for the version with 32 GB to complement the R_7's sixteen (!!) threads. Now Brexit has deranged Win'10 supply, I've ended up with 'Pro' as currently much cheaper than 'Home'. That arrives today. Barring delays due pending 'Beast from East 2.0' snow-storm, Corsair fully modular 750 Watt PSU should arrive this week...

As I'll be running PP_11 until P_12.1 or even 12.2, I'll recount my networked adventures over there.

Superfly WILL work with multiple NVIDIA GTX cards. Make sure they all have Optix if you need the faster rendering otherwise they will run at the slower speeds.

ghostship2 posted at 8:12PM Sun, 07 February 2021 - #4412216

Superfly WILL work with multiple NVIDIA GTX cards. Make sure they all have Optix if you need the faster rendering otherwise they will run at the slower speeds.

I searched Newegg for "Optix" among the GPUs and got no matches (several monitors match); what series video cards have the Optix feature?

I'm an idiot. lol I meant RTX cards. RTX cards do the Optix thing

https://developer.nvidia.com/optix

Ah, I see some cards which fit that descriptor. Searching Newegg's GPU section still draws a blank if searched for "Optix", but now I know which series cards run Optix (for the benefit of other curious folk, look for RTX2060, RTX2070, RTX2080, RTX3060, RTX3070, RTX3080, RTX3090). These are PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 4.0, so they will be only for my planned new PC build, as budget allows.

In the meantime, I'd like to retro-fit my old PCIe 2.0 / Win7 workstation to be at least moderately GPU render capable. On Newegg, going to the GPUs, I filtered PCIe 2.0, and then filtered to get only cards with at least 4GB onboard RAM. I see several 4GB GT730 cards, an 8GB GTX1070, and a 6GB nVidia Tesla M2070.

I got my network-render Box working with 11.3, but discovered a Superfly remote-render only uses one (1) thread of its 16 available, so CPU usage holds at ~8%. Firefly happily 'pulls in' 100%. FWIW, looks like the same now applies to 'internal' CPU-only renders: Superfly takes but one (1) thread of my FX8350's 8 so ~20%, Firefly swings between 40~~100%.

Rendo gurus aware...

I've never seen a discrepancy between Firefly and Superfly insofar as the number of CPU cores used for rendering. My older C1100 blades each have two X5675 Xeons, the r610 blades and the workstations each have two X5690 Xeons. I don't have experience with any other CPU series in either P11 or P12.

Check the number of render threads in the general preferences, just to be sure, though I wouldn't think that this would affect the remote's behavior.

Shows 8, uses all during parts of Firefly render, few during Superfly...

NikKelly posted at 12:57PM Tue, 09 March 2021 - #4414581

...Superfly remote-render only uses one (1) thread of its 16 available...

If the master -the machine with Poser installed- has a HyperThreaded 8-core, the render threads should be 16. If only the remote has 16 threads available, then you might look in BIOS to make sure HyperThreading is enabled for the remote's CPU. If you had/still have Pro2014 on the master, I'd install Queue2014 on the remote and see if it behaves the same or differently than Queue11. Do any other programs make full use of all of the remote's cores?

Hi ! Thanks for taking an interest !!

I'm sorry, I was out of Poser between P4 and P10, soon upgraded the latter to PPro_11...

Firefly render seems to use all of Box' CPU resource, taking it to 100% for complex 'swatches'.

Box' BIOS' only CPU related field that seemed relevant and was 'OFF' was SVM virtualisation, which I switched from OFF to ON, saved and exit, booted.

Has not changed Box' Superfly rendering behaviour. That spiked at 30~~40% CPU during set-up phase, then settled back to 8~~9% CPU for full render.

Not what was hoped. Disclaimer: I may have missed an effin' relevant setting...

FWIW, six-up scene PZ3 ~160MB. This time, I set a 'wide field' sorta letter-box view 1089x572. Looks like Box run will take 5~~6 hrs, but I must do some document printing on this PC, so I'm very glad render is off-loaded...

ps: Some of my fun short stories and cat piccies may be found at... https://the-nik-files.deviantart.com/ {"Browse Folder"}

Problem solved: Was excessive buckets for CPU-only render !!!

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2958942

64 vols +1024 buckets Settings for my twin GPU cards do not suit a CPU-only render.

Break-point seems to be 128 volumes + 128 buckets giving ~90+ % CPU.

64+128 ~100%, 64+256 ~ 75%.

with 128+128, that six-up scene remote renders ~10x faster, ½ hr instead 5½ hrs...

Yay !!

Thank you for posting the solution; might be others who encounter the same problem.

Thank you for inspiring me to go the network-render route !!

FWIW, setting '128+128' or, sweet-spot '64+64', on this CAD-Tower woke all its 8 available threads, so ran 5x faster in CPU-only render mode. Makes 'quickie' set-up and scene tests that much less tedious...

"Synchronised Staring Team" ( networked to Box, ~95% CPU, ~½ hr progressive Superfly render )