Peter made an interesting comment on another thread. - With regards to Iray, he said:
"... we do allow batch rendering so you can render without iClone even running ... "
Can anyone explain how this would work?

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

It looks like the Iray plugin can run independently. I've seen this with other renderers: a task is sent to the renderer, which is then carried out, and the main program is no longer needed. But, better get clarification form those in the know...

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That implies that there is some sort of separate Iray renderer installed that can process, render, a sequence of exported files without iClone being opened and running. This could mean that it is possible to have images rendered in the background while still doing something else in iClone, or any other software.

Depending on just how this is implemented it could result in a huge drain of system resources on a borderline system - and maybe even on a high-end one. 


Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

Drawing on how the Indigo plug-in works, you can:
a) Kick off an immediate render, but it writes to a temp folder, and if you close iClone you will run into issues trying to restart or change the parameters of the render
b) Write ("export") the Indigo scene, and then you can run that render anytime, with our without iClone open.  <-----  Pretty sure that's the sort of behavior he's talking about.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Yes, found this:
Iray Batch Render
iClone and CC will export and pass the scene to Iray Batch Render, which implies that users are allowed to render without iClone and CC running in the background. 
*The Development Team is looking into cloud-based rendering service, but we can't promise anything at this moment.
Source: https://forum.reallusion.com/374900/Iray-Plugin-for-iClone-7-and-Character-Creator-3

So yeah - it mustn't *require* iClone or CC in order to 'do the render' .... So just because you've got to run a very long render - it doesn't mean you can't still be 'creating' in iClone on your other PC - because you'll still only be using 'one' instance of iClone.

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Raytracing renderers are essentially "standalone"... the overhead is too high to be integrated into the 3D software - hitting the 'render preview' or 'render' button writes a "temp" file with all the geometry, lights, cameras and materials that the renderer needs to build the scene.  Batch rendering allows you to build a list of "renders"... so, in the day you can create 3 or 4 scenes and then add them to a list to be rendered one by one overnight - so even when you're sleeping you're still being productive! ;-)

Steve... you're correct in that the render will no longer require iClone - but - as the renderer is going to choke your GPU resources you won't be able to work with iClone or any other graphic dependent program... unless you have two graphic cards and assign one to the render engine and one for displaying iClone.

Yes - so by the time you're creating the 'last' part of your project, all the earlier parts would already be Iray rendered.
So that way, the render time need not extend very far beyond the project's creation time .....
Talking here of projects that are reasonably *complex* (many days, or weeks) - such that the creation time is the dominant time.

Yeah well different graphics card would be on a separate PC ... (still using the allowable 1 'instance' of iClone use - though installed on 2 machines).
So you 'create' and 'render' simultaneously.

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

I agree. The Indigo Plug-In would continue to render, after iClone was shutdown or another project was loaded. Thus, once started, it runs independently.  The Iray plug-in may be (more-than-likely) based, and operate the same way.
Just an observation.

Earl 

So this could make Iray usable for animation - if it's create AND render, rather than create THEN render.

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1