Why can't I save or resume an interrupted Iray render?
cherpenbeck
Posts: 1,412
With Studio4.9 I used to be able to save interrupted renders. Now I tried 4.10 beta, and wasn't able to. Tried it several times. No save, no resume, just cancel. That's the only working button. What am I doing wrong?
Render-no-save.jpg
1589 x 1051 - 443K
Post edited by cherpenbeck on
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Ok that is weird. Are you not rendering to window?
How do things look in the "general" tab of the render settings? Wher you can select what type of render you have, etc.
Based on the image you posted, it looks like the image is still rendering. (It's behind the Daz Studio window. I'm assuming the weird stuff in the viewport is a memory issue...) You have to "Cancel" the render to stop the rendering process. Once the process has stopped, the buttons to Resume and Save should become accessible.
I've always found "Cancel" to be an odd choice for ending a render. When I think of "cancel" in terms of software, I think of escaping or negating the operation. I really think it would be less confusing if the button was labeled "Pause." If looking at the render window, you saw only the "Pause" button active, you wouldn't panic.
By the way, if you pause a render, you can go to the main window file menu and save your last render. That can come in handy if want to work on a low quality version while the image continues to render. Just pause, save from the file menu, and hit resume. (It doesn't work for Spot Renders or renders in the Viewport.)
You should be able to rescue your render from the temp folder - C:/Users/YOU/AppData/Roaming/Daz 3D/Studio4/Temp/Render. Are you sure the render hass topped? I agree the progress bar is not there, but the lack of screen redraw does suggest DS is busy. What happens if you clcik the Cancel button?
At that time I had already clicked the cancel-button. Nothing happened. It happily continued to display the same stuff. Had to force shutdown of Studio with task manager.
And before that, the progress bar was there, showed me it did render (iterations and such, but at the same time the progress bar stayed with 0% rendered, despite the already visible picture.
Sometimes it take a few minutes for a cancelled render to wind down for me, but I never had to task manager it to get to stop though. It takes a lot longer when I use canvases than just a plain render.
These few minutes counted to 20 Minutes already before I lost my patience.
And I do have to use Studio 4.10, because the centaur just looks totally weird in 4.9.
This is a screenshot of how far the render was when I cut it down.
By the way, the temp folder is empty. Nothing there. I'll leave for tonight, it's past midnight here, and I have to work in the morning.
Thanks for trying to help!
I've had that happen a few times with 4.9. It is really frustrating. I cancel the render, but Z-GPU shows the 1080 working at 99% give-or-take, and only the Task Manager will stop it.
I've never tried rendering straight to file, but that might be an option. You could copy the render file to a new location before canceling the operation. Then if you have to End Task, you'll have a copy of the latest update. In Theory.
The render looks super cool, I love the centaurs. Maybe pick up batchrender and let it run at night. Then you can set your renders up in the day and render the longer ones at night.
Cancel the render but do not close the render window.
Go to "File > Save last Render..." and save it
Then you can go back to the render window and hit resume
Problem is, I can cancel the render ... but it continues to render. Can't save anything, it won't let me. Can't close the window eiter, even if I close DAZ Studio, the render window stays till I use task manager.
If you close DS the render in the temp folder will be lost. I had an issue with DS crashing when I hit cancel and it wasn't a DS issue but my graphics driver which I had to roll back.
It might be heplful if you detail your system specs.
System tell me, I have this:
Windows 7 prof, (64 bit)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 CPU @ 3,2GHz 3,2GHz
NVIDIA GeForceGT 730 4096 MB memory
8GB RAM
did you close the infomation window by clicking on the red x or did you hit the cancel button on that window? If you closed the window via the red x, it only closes with window, it does NOT stop the render. You need to hit either the cancel button on the info window or the cancel button on the render window
I tried both variants (did start the same render a second time), both times same result. Window didn't close, render continued, no save possibility.
The ESC key will also cancel a render if the render window is on top.
A terrible work around I know, but you could take a screenshot of your render (PrtScr) and crop it afterwards.
@cherpenbeck, I just tested my idea about rendering to file, (above,) and it doesn't work. It looks like Daz Studio is storing the render in RAM until the render is complete or cancelled, and then writing it to r.png in the temp folder until you name and save the file from the dialog at the bottom of the render window. Your released and beta versions have their own temp folders, too. For example, on my computer, the temporary render file for the Beta would be stored at:
C:\Users\LAdair\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4 Public Build\temp\render\r.png
It is the r.png file you are saving when you go to the main menu for File and Save Last Render. Regardless, that's no help.
So a couple more questions: As large as your render is, are you able to render it with your GPU? Or is it using CPU?
What I'm thinking is you may be running out of system RAM, and that may be causing DS to hang. If the scene takes up too much RAM on your video card and drops to CPU, you're using that 8GB for both the render in progress as well as the info for the mesh, materials, etc. (and the paging file and to run the display, too!) I had 32GB on my render computer and kept running out of memory due the way Windows allocates memory. (I solved my problem by adding another 32GB.)
(And I suppose this is the point where you tell me you're running DS on a Mac, or a Linux box... LOL)
Anyway, have you tried splitting the image up by using the Spot Render tool? (Set to render to a new window.) You could try rendering a bit more than a quarter of the image from each of the corners, then composite the four as layers in a graphics program. You should probably save your images as PNGs so the area not rendered stays transparent. Another trick, if a quarter of the image is still too big, is to display the Thirds Grid in the viewport and use it as a guide to spot render 9 sections.
If the Spot Rendering trick works for you, it may be time to upgrade your RAM, if you can swing it.
Okay. Spot render did work, so I need more RAM.
But PROGRESS BAR still didn't show anything, despite the continuing render. Progress bar stayed with 0% the whole time.
So there at least is something not working right.