Isotropix Forums

My old former co-workers kept suggesting I use a GPU renderer for my personal work (like Octane or Redshift), and upon that advice I went heavily into learning Octane, however after discovering Clarisse I found I was much happier with the Clarisse interface and features. I could build anything I wanted and it would render. Where-as when I was trying to use Octane my time tended to be split between artistic decisions and then trying to ration the amount of VRAM I had work with. With Octane I often had to do separate renders with bits of geometry turned off (so it all could fit on my video card)

My earliest Clarisse tests were throwing my heaviest Zbrush assets as my friend's gaming laptop with clarisse on it and seeing if it could render. I was very impressed.

I was interested in taking advantage of the Black Friday sale Clarisse has going on right now... but I had questions about the viability of online renderers for clarisse. The main reason why my co-workers suggested I get a GPU renderer was because any of the CPU renderers would be too slow to render camera moves (as I don't have my own farm). I would have to rely on some sort of service like Foxrender as it can take several hours to render a single frame on the computer I have now. -- especially when I'm using any kind of volumes or VDBs.

I was interested in the viability of using online renderers. I found Foxrender through the Isotropix site although there wasn't any Clarisse icons on the foxrender site itself.... so contacted them.

I was confused about how it was possible to transfer my project folders to them and have everything show up properly. I asked them about a render archive as well...

This is what they told me:

"Secondly, there is no need to create the render archive; Please just upload the .project file together with all the elements which are necessary for the rendering that include the OBJs, alembics, textures, etc. Make sure the path are the same as your local which will be fine.

Thirdly, Please do not use C nor D drive letter if your are using absolute path;

Fourthly, I know you have all assets stored on several locations, Please just make sure the files could be run successfully at your side and upload the files to our server with the same location."


When I opened my clarisse project file in notepad there were tons of paths pointing to my D drive, as that is where all my assets are. So that's already breaking that rule...

Did I set up my project wrong? Is there some sort of export that can give absolute paths to the project itself? -- or is this just how the PLE version organizes itself?

Obviously I can't try any of this out yet. I'm still on the PLE version of Clarisse. I needed more information before I take the jump.

Sorry if this question about asked before. I did try to do quite a bit of searching to see if there was any specific tutorials with concerns to Clarisse and online renders before I started contacting anyone.

Thank you

Hi,

You can organize your paths using variables like $CDIR or $PDIR. $CDIR stands for "content directory" and have to be set in the Preferences > Application >Project. If you set, for example, a folder called "My_Project" as "content directory" and all your files (including your project's files) are in this folder or sub-folder, you will have to upload this folder to the render farm. You can use the path manager inside Clarisse to rename quickly your paths.

You can use the export archive button as well located on the general shelf.


It will recreate the folder hierarchy that holds your dependencies inside a zip file, you will have to unzip it and upload the content to the farm.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask

Cheers !

Hi
I think you want all assets under the clarisse project file and then link them relative with the $PDIR

Here is a thread for example that ask for something similar
viewtopic.php?p=17410

No need to bother with paths and variables. The Export Project Archive script does everything automatically (copies all file dependencies and changes path for you in the zip).

Thank you very much for the info. This helps a lot. I really appreciate it.

Hey Ken,
Please share your thoughts about Foxrender once you use their service. How it performed, if it was too pricey, etc.
Many thanks.

Norberto

Hi Norbertoritter,
I will once I try something out. I also have a friend in town who uses Clarisse as well and we've been talking about putting a project on Foxrender. If either of us get to try it out first I'll report back with my findings.

If you're interested in trying it out as well I think Foxrender will let you do a test for free. They offered to let me upload a test file once I'm ready to try it out.

Ken

Hi,
we had and have very good experiences with Fox Render. The support is awesome and the system is great to handle.
They are switching to a new admin panel right now where Clarisse is not ported yet.
So if you need the render service, ask for clairsse and the "old" panel.

Greets Tom

Hello there,

Do you guys ever had any trouble to pass the analyzing phase from FoxRenderFarm ?
I'm a Murph's law official, if something has to go wrong it's usually for me.

On the positive note, Fox guys (and actually girl) are super kind and reactive, and willing to resolve the problem, but I can't even validate an empty Clarisse project :S ...

++

paq wrote:Hello there,

Do you guys ever had any trouble to pass the analyzing phase from FoxRenderFarm ?
I'm a Murph's law official, if something has to go wrong it's usually for me.

On the positive note, Fox guys (and actually girl) are super kind and reactive, and willing to resolve the problem, but I can't even validate an empty Clarisse project :S ...

++

hi paq, yep i had problem like that all the time.

seems like even if only one of the path are problematic it would Analyzeing ForEver and Never pass the analyzing phase. no warning, no error, no nothing.

if i double check and make sure all of the path are correct than it would go through.

which kind of render the analyzing phase useless