From: Greg <greg@(email surpressed)>
Subject: After Effects CS4 + Render Only License for Red Giant Plugs + Rush
   Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:09:40 -0800

Hey Folks,

So here's the question:

Much Appreciated!

Greg Shiff
Leroy + Clarkson
NYC.

Greg wrote:
> [posted to rush.general]
> 
> Hey Folks,
> 
> I am brand new to Rush, so apologies if this is a newbie question, 
> though I poked around a bit and didn't see an answer.
> 
> So here's the question:
> 
> Does anyone out there have experience using Render-only licenses of Red 
> Giant plug-ins for AE CS4 (TrapCode, Knoll Light Factory, etc) with Rush.
> 
> Do they work?  I want to repurpose the licenses on workstations and use 
> render only licenses on the nodes. But I before I buy, I'd like to know 
> if its a'gonna work.

    Afraid I can't answer your question, but..

    I don't suppose they offer an eval you can test with?
    If so, try it.

    In general, if it works from the command line with 'aerender',
    and doesn't try to interact with the window manager by popping up
    windows, it should work with Rush.

    You can probably also ask them if their tool has been tested
    to work from the aerender command line for the purposes of
    unattended rendering.


-- 
Greg Ercolano, erco@(email surpressed)
Seriss Corporation
Rush Render Queue, http://seriss.com/rush/
Tel: (Tel# suppressed)ext.23
Fax: (Tel# suppressed)
Cel: (Tel# suppressed)

Great.  I will ask the ask them about that and report back what I'm told.

On 12/13/10 4:29 PM, Greg Ercolano wrote:

Greg wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

Hey Folks,

I am brand new to Rush, so apologies if this is a newbie question,
though I poked around a bit and didn't see an answer.

So here's the question:

Does anyone out there have experience using Render-only licenses of Red
Giant plug-ins for AE CS4 (TrapCode, Knoll Light Factory, etc) with Rush.

Do they work?  I want to repurpose the licenses on workstations and use
render only licenses on the nodes. But I before I buy, I'd like to know
if its a'gonna work.

     Afraid I can't answer your question, but..

     I don't suppose they offer an eval you can test with?
     If so, try it.

     In general, if it works from the command line with 'aerender',
     and doesn't try to interact with the window manager by popping up
     windows, it should work with Rush.

     You can probably also ask them if their tool has been tested
     to work from the aerender command line for the purposes of
     unattended rendering.

In my experience,  the only Red Giant plugin that wasn't farm-friendly was Knoll Light Factory due to its GPU rendering.  I've seen that error before.   

Trapcode is a PITA as well due to its severe licensing scheme.     However,  the others seem to work just fine.   I often ask artists to pre-bake knoll effects if it's not too much trouble for them.  If it is trouble,  then I make sure the job is sent to a portion of the farm that has supported GPU rendering.    For instance,  Mac minis and xserves do not render Knoll,   but a Mac Pro will.

Best,
Vic

On Dec 14, 2010, at 9:06 AM, Greg wrote:

> [posted to rush.general]
> 
> Great.  I will ask the ask them about that and report back what I'm told.
> 
> I actually installed the full versions of those plugs on my render nodes.  When I try to render projects with those plugs, AE crashes hard.  I get a popup window on each node, repeated over and over and over again:
> 
> The exception unknown software exception (0x40000015) occurred in the application at location 0x07cab44a
> 
> In a previous chat with red giant, they told me I had an unsupported video card in my render nodes and that's why it wasn't working...but I suspect that is not true.  I didn't think aerender used the GPU at all, and GPU preview is disabled in the plugins anyway.
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/13/10 4:29 PM, Greg Ercolano wrote:
>> Greg wrote:
>>> [posted to rush.general]
>>> 
>>> Hey Folks,
>>> 
>>> I am brand new to Rush, so apologies if this is a newbie question,
>>> though I poked around a bit and didn't see an answer.
>>> 
>>> So here's the question:
>>> 
>>> Does anyone out there have experience using Render-only licenses of Red
>>> Giant plug-ins for AE CS4 (TrapCode, Knoll Light Factory, etc) with Rush.
>>> 
>>> Do they work?  I want to repurpose the licenses on workstations and use
>>> render only licenses on the nodes. But I before I buy, I'd like to know
>>> if its a'gonna work.
>> 
>>     Afraid I can't answer your question, but..
>> 
>>     I don't suppose they offer an eval you can test with?
>>     If so, try it.
>> 
>>     In general, if it works from the command line with 'aerender',
>>     and doesn't try to interact with the window manager by popping up
>>     windows, it should work with Rush.
>> 
>>     You can probably also ask them if their tool has been tested
>>     to work from the aerender command line for the purposes of
>>     unattended rendering.
>> 
>> 
> 

Thanks for the info!

#1: you've gotta have a supported video card in your node
#2: you've gotta have a monitor plugged into that card

+G


On 12/14/10 1:34 PM, Victor DiMichina wrote:

In my experience,  the only Red Giant plugin that wasn't farm-friendly was Knoll Light Factory due to its GPU rendering.  I've seen that error before.

Trapcode is a PITA as well due to its severe licensing scheme.     However,  the others seem to work just fine.   I often ask artists to pre-bake knoll effects if it's not too much trouble for them.  If it is trouble,  then I make sure the job is sent to a portion of the farm that has supported GPU rendering.    For instance,  Mac minis and xserves do not render Knoll,   but a Mac Pro will.

Best,
Vic

On Dec 14, 2010, at 9:06 AM, Greg wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

Great.  I will ask the ask them about that and report back what I'm told.

I actually installed the full versions of those plugs on my render nodes.  When I try to render projects with those plugs, AE crashes hard.  I get a popup window on each node, repeated over and over and over again:

The exception unknown software exception (0x40000015) occurred in the application at location 0x07cab44a

In a previous chat with red giant, they told me I had an unsupported video card in my render nodes and that's why it wasn't working...but I suspect that is not true.  I didn't think aerender used the GPU at all, and GPU preview is disabled in the plugins anyway.



On 12/13/10 4:29 PM, Greg Ercolano wrote:

Greg wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

Hey Folks,

I am brand new to Rush, so apologies if this is a newbie question,
though I poked around a bit and didn't see an answer.

So here's the question:

Does anyone out there have experience using Render-only licenses of Red
Giant plug-ins for AE CS4 (TrapCode, Knoll Light Factory, etc) with Rush.

Do they work?  I want to repurpose the licenses on workstations and use
render only licenses on the nodes. But I before I buy, I'd like to know
if its a'gonna work.

     Afraid I can't answer your question, but..

     I don't suppose they offer an eval you can test with?
     If so, try it.

     In general, if it works from the command line with 'aerender',
     and doesn't try to interact with the window manager by popping up
     windows, it should work with Rush.

     You can probably also ask them if their tool has been tested
     to work from the aerender command line for the purposes of
     unattended rendering.

Greg wrote:
> [posted to rush.general]
> 
> Thanks for the info!
> 
> I just got off of the phone with yet another Red Giant tech, he told me 
> basically the same thing.  That Knoll LF hits the GPU during a render 
> and that:
> #1: you've gotta have a supported video card in your node
> #2: you've gotta have a monitor plugged into that card
> 
> Further he said that this behavior is a bug and that it will be fixed 
> next year, though of course he couldn't tell me when that fix was expected.
> 
> However,the Red Giant tech was a little fuzzy about how Knoll actually 
> does its rendering. What I understood is that Knoll initializes itself 
> by pinging the GPU, but still render on the CPU. I'm hoping that's the 
> case.  Otherwise, I would imagine having lots of fast CPU's wouldn't 
> speed up Knoll rendering at all, if each instance of aerender was trying 
> to use the GPU all the time....

	GPU rendering is a bit tricky; it's tough to blame the vendors
	because basically they're trying to use hardware in a way that
	the hardware wasn't really designed for.. so weird things like
	having a monitor plugged in is something it sounds like the
	video card's hardware actually needs in order to initialize
	sufficiently to be able to provide GPU services. (My guess is
	once the monitor is plugged in and the graphics comes up,
	you /may/ be able to then remove the monitor and it will
	continue to operate (until rebooted)).

	I *think* some KVM switch boxes may simulate a monitor sufficiently
	to help graphics cards think a monitor is connected enough to operate;
	you might try that. (IIRC, SVGA cables are actually bi-directional;
	they not only receive video signals, but also communicate info back
	to the graphics card about the monitor's resolution, etc. which in this
	case probably helps the graphics card's driver to initialize sufficiently
	to provide GPU services.)

-- 
Greg Ercolano, erco@(email surpressed)
Seriss Corporation
Rush Render Queue, http://seriss.com/rush/
Tel: (Tel# suppressed)ext.23
Fax: (Tel# suppressed)
Cel: (Tel# suppressed)