Rendering overnight
Blender should be able to bake and render automatically, so that after baking a frame, it renders it immediately. Because baking uses only CPU, and rendering uses GPU, Blender can start baking next frame while its rendering. This way overnight renders are most efficient.
5 Comments
Just to make sure I understand you correctly: You're suggesting that since Cycles can be set to GPU-only, and physics bakes are CPU-bound, that we should have the option to bake the next physics frames in the background while Cycles is rendering the current frame? Is that correct?
I suspect that is how Blender works already, but would love to hear from someone more experienced if that's actually the case.
User CAN bake and render at same time, but if baking is slower than rendering, things will go sideways eventually, and blender will render empty images. Thats why blender should pause rendering before it goes further than bake. And im talking about baking mantaflow or flip fluids.
You might want to clarify that a little more in the proposal then. It's not clear that you're talking about physics, Mantaflow or FLIP since they're not explicitly mentioned. It would also be worth mentioning the blank frames issue so people know why it's a problem that we don't have this.
Thanks so much for contributing to RCS!! :)
I don't know if this would have an actual gain? Considering both GPU rendering and physics baking involve the same hardware at some point of their process, they will interfere each other at some point. I.E. disk I/O can be intesive in both render and baking.
Plus I think it does adds to energy consumption; and you also have to deal with temperatures.
From my experience, rendering and baking simultaneously isnt problem. And if it is, solution is to bake and render alternatively. Disk I/O hasnt been problem to me either. Power consumption isnt problem, baking and rendering at same time doesnt use any more electricity than baking and rendering seperately. My PC hasnt overheated once. And if you think you dont want to use this option, you are free to bake and render manually.