SummersGone

Chapter 4 - Dev log #3

Added 2021-10-21 19:56:58 +0000 UTC

Hello,

Last Dev log I told you guys about the Workstation I ordered.

I managed to build it and everything went well.

I still lost around 3 days of developing due to all the setups I had to do, and boy... was this a headache.

I had connected all my PCs through my home network. This way, I have access to all assets from both games.

I tried everything to establish the connection but I still couldn't get it to work.

At the moment, PC 1 can't access PC2 and PC3 but they can access PC1. PC2 and PC3 also can't access each other.

I spent easily 12-14h on this issue, trying everything from changes to the IP, changing tons of ms.service thingies but I just couldn't access the other PCs and so I gave up and had to look for an alternative.

I now have a second Cloud that is connected to all three PC's and it allowed me to build an entirely new "Work-Network".

The good thing is, I can now work on for example WiAB, on all three PCs.

Before, I couldn't work on WiAB on the SG PC. It would through a huge amount of missing files.

2. NvLink

The current PC setup looks like this:

- SG is now on the Workstation and works with 2x3090 & 128GB Ram

- WiAB moved to the old SG PC and now has a 3090 + 2080Ti on 96GB Ram

- The third and oldest PC is only being used to render animations and currently only features a 2080Ti and 64GB Ram.

After I resolved the Network issue, I encountered the next headache.

One reason why I got a third 3090, was to make use of the NvLink.

Hooking it up to get ~40GB of VRam.

But as you can already imagine, NOTHING made it work.

I spent 1-2 days on this issue, constantly re-attaching the Bridge, switching cards, reading manuals, changing and deleting drivers, flashing the bios, updating drivers, etc.

The only thing I didn't do was to reinstall Windows. (It would've rendered all my previous work of setting up the work environment useless.) and I just gave up on it.

I ordered two different bridges to rule out a defect and yeah, I assume the issue is that I'm using mixed cards. (EVGA FTW3 Ultra + Asus TUF OC)

I was in contact with people that know a lot more about this than I do (Thanks Stoya and Hank Rockwell.) but even they didn't know what was wrong.

I kept one of the Bridges and I'll see that I can get a matching 3090 in the future. The other one would then go into the animation PC. (Which renders so fucking slow on a 2080Ti.) 120 Frame animation in 13h.

After I gave up on this, I encountered a new problem. I was locked out of the hard drives. (I switched my drives from the SG PC to the Workstation and gave the now WIAB PC a new 8TB drive.)

Took me a while to find the solution but gladly, I did.

3. Test rendering

One thing that is really grinding my gears is that Daz abandoned the ability to save materials for animation frames.

Short explanation: For every frame, the software needs to load in all the materials. Which isn't a big problem in small environments. (Still annoying.)

But now imagine the new WiAB House of the MC. (Or the basketball environment in Chapter 3,5. That's actually a reason I aborted one planned cinematic for Chapter 3.5.)

A TEST RENDER with 90 frames and just 75 iterations on 2x3090s took over an hour.

The actual render process of 75 iterations takes 5-10 seconds. Loading in the materials about a 45sec-1:15min.

Back in the day, you could save the materials by keeping the Iray preview on but these morons removed it for whatever reason and it's putting a huge dent into my render times that I just can't influence.

The example above is just for a test render. Trial and Error.

(Blender offers an option to keep all materials loaded.)

Alright, enough ranting.