Feature REQUEST...again. Offline or command line mode?
by James Brad Barnette · in pureLIGHT · 11/19/2009 (4:21 pm) · 6 replies
It would be nice to be able to do light-map in a non GUI way. I mean once the setting are setup and and then saved to the scene file it would be nice it that could then be loaded on to a machine without the need for DirectX 9 SM3. I mean if I'm not mistaken aren't the calculations being dont in the CPUs anyway? The Direct X 9 is only there because of the viewport environment no?
Advantage for a command line or batching version? can be run on a different machine while you continue to use your workstation.
Plus, you can run on any machine pretty much, even those with intel graphics. like multi processor servers that have to be logged into via remote desktop.
plus, we can then design a web-based front end/queue for it.
or is the architecture 100% dependent on the video card for some reason?
Advantage for a command line or batching version? can be run on a different machine while you continue to use your workstation.
Plus, you can run on any machine pretty much, even those with intel graphics. like multi processor servers that have to be logged into via remote desktop.
plus, we can then design a web-based front end/queue for it.
or is the architecture 100% dependent on the video card for some reason?
About the author
#2
11/24/2009 (12:15 pm)
Definitely something to consider. We don't have any definite plans for a command line version, but as Tom said we have talked about it.
#3
11/25/2009 (11:32 pm)
we would love this I hope you guys can do this. We have server that we use for rendering that are 8 core but it wont run on them because the DirectX thing. 
#4
11/26/2009 (11:53 am)
I'm curious, what sort of hardware is in this server? I'd certainly like to make pureLIGHT work on it.
#5
Initial scene setup will of course have to be done on a local workstation where you can see what you are doing.
03/11/2010 (9:42 am)
What error message does it give you James when you try to run it on your gpu-less servers? I've added in support for a completely gpu-less mode of operation, I'm curious where the failure point is though.Initial scene setup will of course have to be done on a local workstation where you can see what you are doing.
#6
I get the following error :
"A DirectX 9 Shader Model 2 capable video card. or better, is required for running pureLIGHT." then I hit ok and it crashes.
The specs of the server are:
dual 2.8GHz quad core xeons
8GB ram
Intel onboard graphics. Using standard VGA driver.
S5000PAL0 motherboard 5000P chipset
Windows 2008 server SP2 64Bit
03/11/2010 (3:23 pm)
this is in the latest version? I get the following error :
"A DirectX 9 Shader Model 2 capable video card. or better, is required for running pureLIGHT." then I hit ok and it crashes.
The specs of the server are:
dual 2.8GHz quad core xeons
8GB ram
Intel onboard graphics. Using standard VGA driver.
S5000PAL0 motherboard 5000P chipset
Windows 2008 server SP2 64Bit
Torque 3D Owner Thomas Pittman
I do throttle the rendering thread's priority down, so other tasks you are running will take priority, but yeah, it would definitely be better to just be able to run it on some server over in the corner.
The DirectX 9 support is only needed for rendering the interactive preview and loading in textures (which would be able to be done with even the software ref rasterizer if need be, and could be done manually if need be). We could likely roll back the shader model requirement if necessary as well, though you can't buy a non-SM3 card anymore (at least I don't think you can).
The calculations are done on the cpus currently. I have been investigating options for adding in gpu support as well, though by the nature of that, that functionality would have to be optional anyways as you basically need a dx10/11 level card to do that in a useful manner.
Even if you only had a single machine, a command-line rendering mode would still be useful, since it would save on video memory for the various graphics resources (which would help alleviate address space limitations on 32 bit systems), and would eliminate the bit of processing time that goes into rendering the preview. Note, that if you minimize purelight at any point, it will stop rendering the preview and speed up slightly as a result, I wouldn't expect a command line version to be any faster than that.