cache of simulations
Message boards : Server backend and mirrors : cache of simulations
iz a secret
Message 15013 - Posted: 15 Jan 2017, 16:48:53 UTC
Could it be so that BURP servers would have a net storage, which could be accessed in read mode for distributed processing? That could be one solution to ease the amount traffic and still allow usage of cached information. That would allow so much for number crunchers who have been waiting cached processing for ages.
Last modified: 15 Jan 2017, 17:24:33 UTC
Could you give an example of what is being asked about?
Message 15015 - Posted: 15 Jan 2017, 17:59:38 UTC - in response to Message 15014.
Caches on server distributed piece by piece to clients for ie. smoke simulations.
Ah ok, so we are talking about physics simulation data. The path ahead for that feature is mostly clear as all 4 possible solutions have already been implemented and tested in prototype form:
1) Compute the simulation on each renderfarm client (Fails due to physics instability and is inefficient because it is recomputed many times)
2) Compute the simulation at the artist (Takes fairly long to upload, adds a lot of management overhead, but artist has perfect control of results, depends on library feature which hasn't been released yet)
3) Compute the simulation on the server cluster (Requires dedicated high-mem resources, has low overhead but artist no longer in perfect control).
4) Compute the simulation on farm once, send back to server (Requires a lot of upload and is a very heavy task for a single computer, cannot be split)
Options (1) and (4) are out of the equation.
The hope is to be able to support (3) up to a certain size of physics compute complexity and (2) on request in cases where (3) does not provide a reasonable result.
At the moment the only outstanding issue with the prototype is that it doesn't work with vector- or inter-frame-based motionblur, but the issue has been analysed and a fix is in the pipeline.
An example of (3) is Session 1569 that contains a complicated physics system for the leaves. It was used to test that the file distribution and frame-mapping software was working as intended.
How about if BURP community developed a addon to blender, which purpose would be exporting of cache included .blend custom files? I'm pretty sure that it would be very wanted feature.