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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

Running a second instance


detbear

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Hey everyone.

 

I read that it is possible to run more than one instance for a second render if you have more than one core on your processor. How can you do this without slowwing down the other render?

 

If I simply open the program twice and run the same render, the second render is much slower and seems to bog the firstdown too.....SO I figure there must be some other method of opening the software......OR is that just how it works. Are all renders(3-4) slower than just running 1 single render. That seems to defeat a multi-instance render.

 

How do you set this up properly on a multi-core Vista or XP machine??

 

 

William

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How many cores do you have? And how much RAM do you have?

 

Normally you can run 3 instances without a problem on a Quadcore and it wont slow down anything. this may change if RAM is short or any other compontent isnt fast enough...

 

*Fuchur*

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Sounds like you have a fairly adequate machine...right? Are you setting your render-queue to render odds-evens? I find on a quad-core machine it is best to just render on 3 cores...and leave the 4th for Windows OS. Some people even go so far as to open the task-manager and set affinities for each instance- I never saw any advantage doing that, so I don't anymore.

 

IF you use 3 cores you can setup A:M to render every 3rd frame. Start A on 1, B on 2, and C on 3.

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  • Hash Fellow

Just to make sure it's not the hugeness of your scene, try setting A:M up on a simple scene, like a few spheres and a raytraced sun light and see how render times compare.

 

 

Usually multiple instances scale well, but if it's a case with massive textures or RAM hungry effects.... the bottle neck may not be the CPUs.

 

 

 

Also you may want to turn off the multi-threading option, where ever that is, if you are trying to run several one-core A:Ms.

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You ARE trying to render the same thing right? Like, frame 1 and then frame 2...or are you splitting the scene in half and (say for a 10 sec scene) starting the 2nd processor on frame 5:00. Could be worlds apart in render time depending.

 

I have a new PC and will open a 2nd instance and try a test...

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Yeah....I was splitting it in half instead of trying to run the "stepped" style. The scene doesn't change much, so I figured that there would not be a huge difference which frames were being rendered......... Maybe there is some other element inusing the stepped process that just makes it work better...

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Yeah....I was splitting it in half instead of trying to run the "stepped" style. The scene doesn't change much, so I figured that there would not be a huge difference which frames were being rendered......... Maybe there is some other element inusing the stepped process that just makes it work better...

 

You a better result with "stepped"?

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  • 1 year later...
Hey guys... revisiting this old thread with a Q.... I am running A:M V15 on a Mac here at the new gig (until my PC comes in.) It is not bad. Wondering, how do I open a 2nd instance of A:M on this OSX?

 

I think you have to copy the A:M installtion-folder and open it from there. So I am not a Mac guy and only heard about that.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

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Hey guys... revisiting this old thread with a Q.... I am running A:M V15 on a Mac here at the new gig (until my PC comes in.) It is not bad. Wondering, how do I open a 2nd instance of A:M on this OSX?

There's a little AppleScript app that Steffen added to the Mac version of A:M called "MultipleMaster" launch A:M with that and then wait 30 seconds and it will launch a second instance of A:M.

The neat thing is you can keep on doing this as much as you want and/or your system can handle :D

MultipleMaster_Script_Application.png

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Not a mac guy here, but... I recall Steffen creating a script that would let you run multiple instances on a Mac. That's around here somewhere.

 

Before that people were actually making another copy of the whole installation on their hard drive and running the physically separate instance. Try duplicating the whole folder.

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