Using Amazon AWS to render?

[Insanepenguin91]

Hello,
I am trying to render animations for a game an im hitting a wall with the render times. Yesterday I tried a render in my local machine and after 4 hours and lots of noises it was stuck at 4%.

I am wondering if there is anyway I can use an Amazon EC2 GPU instances to remotely render my local DAZ files? I tried installing DAZ in an EC2 instance but running DAZ using RDP has a very bad performance. I can't drag things around smoothly and many other issues. But if I could use the 'power' of those machines it would be awesome.
Does anyone has any experience on this? Else, can anyone recommend any onlise service I could use to render my scenes?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Papa Ernie]

Hello,
I am trying to render animations for a game an im hitting a wall with the render times. Yesterday I tried a render in my local machine and after 4 hours and lots of noises it was stuck at 4%.

I am wondering if there is anyway I can use an Amazon EC2 GPU instances to remotely render my local DAZ files? I tried installing DAZ in an EC2 instance but running DAZ using RDP has a very bad performance. I can't drag things around smoothly and many other issues. But if I could use the 'power' of those machines it would be awesome.
Does anyone has any experience on this? Else, can anyone recommend any onlise service I could use to render my scenes?

Thanks a lot!

Need more info: Machine specs, type of scene rendering, Rendering software, etc.

 

[Insanepenguin91]

Need more info: Machine specs, type of scene rendering, Rendering software, etc.

im using daz studio 4.10. im running 2 gtx 1080s

 

[recreation]

this:

after 4 hours and lots of noises it was stuck at 4%.

and this:

im using daz studio 4.10. im running 2 gtx 1080s

doesn't really fit together if you ask me.
I have a gtx 1060 and a gtx 1070 and can render 8k images with tons of assets in under 2 hours with very few visible noise.
Maybe there is something wrong with your render settings.

 

[Nottravis]

this:

and this:

doesn't really fit together if you ask me.
I have a gtx 1060 and a gtx 1070 and can render 8k images with tons of assets in under 2 hours with very few visible noise.
Maybe there is something wrong with your render settings.

Yep. Agreed - or for some reason Daz is ignoring the hardware and using the CPU?

Unless you've a dozen characters in the scene no way it should take that long. I've only a single 2Gb card and my stuff doesn't take me more than 40 minutes a render.

 

[Ryahn]

I've heard good things from people who use PaperSpace. You can get a quadro P4000 for 51 cents per hour.

You must be registered to see the links

This sounds like the best option compared to AWS. AWS can get expensive real quick.

 

[FlipTopBin]

Definitly shouldn't take more than four hours after you optimise the scene a little. Things which can slow you down a lot:

1> HD textures - only use these for very close up objects

2> Too many light sources - every light source is another light ray which needs to be traced. Some environment designers like to include many many lights which can look fantastic but really slows stuff down. What I like to do is hide or delete the ceilings of rooms with lots of lights. Then compose your image so you don't need to see the ceiling. Finally go to the Environment section of the render settings and add an "Environment Map". Does not matter what the picture is because nobody will see it anyway, just something light and bright. Then set "Environment Mode" to "Dome and Scene". Works a treat. I usually delete any walls/ceiling/floor thats not visible and let the outside HDRI do the job of fill light.

3> Not enough actual photons. Iray likes light bright scenes so make sure everything is light and bright. If you are doing a night shot then consider making it light and bright and then post process it. An easy way to add more photons is to use a faster film speed as that then doesn't affect the over light balance. Look for "Film ISO" in the render settings and double or quadruple it.

 

[Insanepenguin91]

Yep. Agreed - or for some reason Daz is ignoring the hardware and using the CPU?

Unless you've a dozen characters in the scene no way it should take that long. I've only a single 2Gb card and my stuff doesn't take me more than 40 minutes a render.

i have no problem making still pictures, takes me around 20min tops for a 4k pic. the problem is movies/clips - takes forever

 

[Insanepenguin91]

this:

and this:

doesn't really fit together if you ask me.
I have a gtx 1060 and a gtx 1070 and can render 8k images with tons of assets in under 2 hours with very few visible noise.
Maybe there is something wrong with your render settings.

its making movie clips that takes me a long time not images

 

[wurg]

im using daz studio 4.10. im running 2 gtx 1080s

I have a gtx 1060 and a gtx 1070

I have an off topic question but I have a question for you guys, I have a friend that renders using a 1060, how much does the second GPU speed up your renders? Is it hard to set up or does DAZ just recognize it and use the GPU? Does it increase your productivity a lot?

 

[recreation]

its making movie clips that takes me a long time not images

Why don't you use Image sequenses and stitch them together in what ever movie editor you want? Even Photoshop is better (and faster) then daz when it comes to movie Clips

I have an off topic question but I have a question for you guys, I have a friend that renders using a 1060, how much does the second GPU speed up your renders? Is it hard to set up or does DAZ just recognize it and use the GPU? Does it increase your productivity a lot?

Good question. It's actually better to not use sli mode for rendering, so it's not hard to set up. I put the card in and DAZ recognised it instantly.
Speed improvement is huge. I expected some 10 to 30 % increase in speed, but I got way more then that.

Quick test.
I used the same (unoptimised) render and let DAZ do its job for exactly 2min each time:
1060 only: 44 iterations
1070 only: 139 iterations (which is already more than I expected)
both together: 285 iterations

I had heard before that every single cuda core adds up nicely, but I did never expect that it's going crazy like that...
For me it was a huge surprise and improvement.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Use teh Image Series option and dont use DAZ's movie option when making anims. Rendering 30 odd images for a animation do take long so. You have 2 x 1080ti card.. your pc is as high end as it gets almost so you should fly through any render basically.

It's down to settings and what you have placed inside your scene.

Oh and the friend Wurg has mentioned is me.. I'll be adding another 1060 6gb card to my pc as Philly agree's it helps a lot.

its making movie clips that takes me a long time not images

 

[gamersglory]

good scaling with two or more cards requires them to be the same make like 1080ti's also clock speed and Vram speed on the cards need to match for best results.

 

[recreation]

good scaling with two or more cards requires them to be the same make like 1080ti's also clock speed and Vram speed on the cards need to match for best results.

Sorry but that's just not true. Of course you get better results with better cards but Iray uses both cards independently, it doesn't matter if they are the same make.
There is a reason why rendering in SLI mode is slower than without it. You also won't get more speed from OC the gpu.
I've read a nice technical explanation for this over on the DAZ forums. I'll post a link if I find it again.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Still waiting for the link..

Sorry but that's just not true. Of course you get better results with better cards but Iray uses both cards independently, it doesn't matter if they are the same make.
There is a reason why rendering in SLI mode is slower than without it. You also won't get more speed from OC the gpu.
I've read a nice technical explanation for this over on the DAZ forums. I'll post a link if I find it again.

 

[recreation]

Still waiting for the link..

Yeah I didn't find the one I was mentioning, here is something similiar, but you have to read several posts on the first page to get everything. The first answer isn't 100% correct.

You must be registered to see the links

this one might also be interesting:

You must be registered to see the links

 

[lancelotdulak]

Still waiting for the link..

I use a GTX 1070 with a 1060. Iray uses the 1070 and it's vram and uses the 1060s cuda cores. I actually turn the 1060 off a lot (my monitors are hooked up to it) so I can do other things.. including playing games.

You made a claim..someone said it was false and you want them to prove a negative......?

 

[Rich]

Sorry but that's just not true. Of course you get better results with better cards but Iray uses both cards independently, it doesn't matter if they are the same make.
There is a reason why rendering in SLI mode is slower than without it. You also won't get more speed from OC the gpu.
I've read a nice technical explanation for this over on the DAZ forums. I'll post a link if I find it again.

To summarize:

1. iRay will use multiple GPU's if they are installed, have a reasonably up-to-date drive and are iRay-compatible. (i.e. NVidia, and of a modern-enough make that iRay supports the chipset.)
2. You can mix and match GPU's without any problem - the two cards don't have to have the same specs, nor do they even have to be from the same chipset generation. Basically, if iRay can use the GPU standalone, it can use it in combination with another supported GPU.
3. The entire scene must fit into each GPU for the GPU to participate in rendering a scene. iRay does not "stack" the memory of the two GPU cards. So if you have an 8Gb card and a 4Gb card, a scene that takes 3Gb will render using both cards, but one that uses 6Gb will only use the 8Gb card. A scene that takes 9Gb will drop back to CPU rendering, even though you have a total of 12Gb of VRAM. iRay handles this automatically. (Note - Windows is known to "steal" memory from each GPU, even if you don't have a monitor plugged into it. So an 8Gb card may only have something like 7Gb available for iRay.) It's important to understand that the texture sizes reported by the DS log are misleading - they are the uncompressed sizes, however textures are typically compressed when put into your GPU. Thus, it may look like you're getting 9Gb of textures into an 8Gb card, but that's because the 9Gb reported is the raw size, not the compressed size. This has led to a lot of arguing over memory stacking on the Daz forums. Bottom line - NVidia says it doesn't. Period. At least with consumer-grade cards.
4. The performance of an individual card is dependent on many items, including the clock speed, number of CUDA cores, chipset, etc. If you have two identical cards, the scene will render in just about half the time as with one. (There's a small amount of overhead in using the second card, but it's quite small.) If the cards have different performance, then the performance gain is more complex to calculate, of course. Remember the old "if John can paint a house in 3 days and Bill can paint one in 4, how long does it take them to paint a house together" math problems? Basically, that's what you're dealing with when you combine two cards of different performance. But it'll be faster than with either card standalone.
5. You typically will get more performance from an overclocked GPU as compared with the same GPU not overclocked, since iRay performance is pretty proportional to clock speed. However, OC'ing a card for iRay may be A Bad Idea unless you have really good cooling. iRay will run your card flat-out for the entire time it's rendering. This is typically a much higher load on the card than you would get using it for gaming, for example. So if you don't have really good cooling, you can fry your card. The first few times you do a serious render with a new card, it pays to monitor the card's temperature to be sure your system can handle it.
6. iRay does not use SLI. The core idea behind SLI is to allow a game to get better video performance by having one GPU render one frame while the other GPU renders the next frame, thus allowing two GPU's to give you essentially twice the video performance of a single one. The SLI connector between the two cards allows the second card to pipe its video over to the card to which the monitor is connected. (And possibly more - I don't use SLI, so I can't speak to it much.) But iRay doesn't work that way - it operates each of the GPU's directly and independently. The folks at Daz recommend disabling SLI when rendering using iRay. I don't know the technical ins and outs of what effect leaving SLI enabled would have.

 

[recreation]

To summarize:

1. iRay will use multiple GPU's if they are installed, have a reasonably up-to-date drive and are iRay-compatible. (i.e. NVidia, and of a modern-enough make that iRay supports the chipset.)
2. You can mix and match GPU's without any problem - the two cards don't have to have the same specs, nor do they even have to be from the same chipset generation. Basically, if iRay can use the GPU standalone, it can use it in combination with another supported GPU.
3. The entire scene must fit into each GPU for the GPU to participate in rendering a scene. iRay does not "stack" the memory of the two GPU cards. So if you have an 8Gb card and a 4Gb card, a scene that takes 3Gb will render using both cards, but one that uses 6Gb will only use the 8Gb card. A scene that takes 9Gb will drop back to CPU rendering, even though you have a total of 12Gb of VRAM. iRay handles this automatically. (Note - Windows is known to "steal" memory from each GPU, even if you don't have a monitor plugged into it. So an 8Gb card may only have something like 7Gb available for iRay.) It's important to understand that the texture sizes reported by the DS log are misleading - they are the uncompressed sizes, however textures are typically compressed when put into your GPU. Thus, it may look like you're getting 9Gb of textures into an 8Gb card, but that's because the 9Gb reported is the raw size, not the compressed size. This has led to a lot of arguing over memory stacking on the Daz forums. Bottom line - NVidia says it doesn't. Period. At least with consumer-grade cards.
4. The performance of an individual card is dependent on many items, including the clock speed, number of CUDA cores, chipset, etc. If you have two identical cards, the scene will render in just about half the time as with one. (There's a small amount of overhead in using the second card, but it's quite small.) If the cards have different performance, then the performance gain is more complex to calculate, of course. Remember the old "if John can paint a house in 3 days and Bill can paint one in 4, how long does it take them to paint a house together" math problems? Basically, that's what you're dealing with when you combine two cards of different performance. But it'll be faster than with either card standalone.
5. You typically will get more performance from an overclocked GPU as compared with the same GPU not overclocked, since iRay performance is pretty proportional to clock speed. However, OC'ing a card for iRay may be A Bad Idea unless you have really good cooling. iRay will run your card flat-out for the entire time it's rendering. This is typically a much higher load on the card than you would get using it for gaming, for example. So if you don't have really good cooling, you can fry your card. The first few times you do a serious render with a new card, it pays to monitor the card's temperature to be sure your system can handle it.
6. iRay does not use SLI. The core idea behind SLI is to allow a game to get better video performance by having one GPU render one frame while the other GPU renders the next frame, thus allowing two GPU's to give you essentially twice the video performance of a single one. The SLI connector between the two cards allows the second card to pipe its video over to the card to which the monitor is connected. (And possibly more - I don't use SLI, so I can't speak to it much.) But iRay doesn't work that way - it operates each of the GPU's directly and independently. The folks at Daz recommend disabling SLI when rendering using iRay. I don't know the technical ins and outs of what effect leaving SLI enabled would have.

Perfectly on point.
One thing I would also like to mention is that, yes OC'ing the gpu gives more performance (despite what I posted before), but it's usually not worth it, even if you have a good cooling.
Oh and the reason why one should not use SLI is that iray simply can't use the full performance of each card in SLI mode.

 

[recreation]

btw could you post that in my render small tutorial thread too?
Link is in the signature.