Forum Replies Created
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12th January 2008 at 7:54 pm #14779I echo this, as it’s basically the same as the other thread. I think that you need to make a window that appears on the screen when the renderclient starts rendering that says with nice graphics that this machine is now rendering, there’s a meter showing CPU load, and there’s a button to Kill And Pause so people can get their computer back.
I don’t think it works to simply do it with Idle, because while it means that rendering will START when the computer is Idle, it also means that rendering will STOP the moment someone moves the mouse, and that’s a little excessive. What if you’re the render administrator and want to use the artist-computer to quickly check the paths or that a file loads properly. Should touching the mouse really Kill the current render? Then how will you ever be able to monitor rendering while ON the computer?
Therefore, I think that a little Muster NOW RENDERING window is the parfect solution. With the CPU meter, people can easily see how busy the computer is, they can still even use their computer with the knowledge that it will be slower. And they have a Kill And Pause button so that they can take back their computer, knowing that it may destroy an hours worth of rendering.
This way, if someone just quickly checks their email, that will not kill a render. But they can easily take their computer back at any time without opening any weird tray applications or anything.
A Muster NOW RENDERING window would be perfect.
Best,
Per
11th January 2008 at 12:30 am #14778Hi,
I’ll hope that you’ll design this tray-application specifically for people who don’t really know a lot of Muster. For example, I’ve been installing CPU meters on computers around the house for the sole purpose of people knowing IF their computer is currently rendering or not.
That’s why I suggested above to literally open a window on top of all others saying that this computer is currently being used for rendering. That is the sort of hand-holding the non-technical folks need. To ask them to open a Task Manager to look at the CPU usage and then go into a tray application or Muster Explorer to change the node state, is WAY too much to ask them to do.
So I’ll hope that you’ll make an application that will tell people up-front IF their computer is currently rendering, and HOW to turn it off. Don’t require people to open anything or read any funny numbers. Make it really, really, really easy.
Best,
Per
11th January 2008 at 12:26 am #14777Another option is to do as suggested above, so simply set a maximum number of polls per second. Then if it’s set to 1, only one node will be polled for CPU usage every second, in a circular rotation, so if you have 100 render nodes, it will take 100 seconds for all CPU usages to be updated.
Then if you set it to 10 per second, then all CPU usages will be current after 10 seconds with 100 nodes.
I think the problem you were having design-wise might have been that if you wanted to poll a hundreds render-clients every second, then you’re right, this is no longer an insignificant amount of data. But 2 or 3 nodes per second should be totally doable.
Thanks for putting it in!
Per
29th December 2007 at 6:45 am #14765Hi again,
I should only add that the way CPU Usage is currently implemented is especially useless, because it only updates exactly at the times that CPU Usage is unrealiable, such as when a new chunk is queued. At the exact time you’re polling the CPU Usage, it tends to be around 20%, because you’re *between chunks*. I don’t think I could come up with a worse way to do it if I tried.
Sorry for the rant. It would be really nice to see this feature live up to its potential.
Per
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