nXt Studio testing

[Peter Milner]

AutoCAD 2018

Windows 7 Professional

Latest versions of nXt Render and nXt Studio.

Material image based textures and decals are not being translated from AutoCAD to Studio.

Also, the render named view is there, but it doesn't carry the resolution. This has to be set separately.

[Peter Milner]

A few things that seem to be missing:

2 point perspective

Translation of lighting channels

Burn control in image editor

Tiff support in image editor

[Peter Milner]

I found the 2 point perspective, but it doesn't seem to affect the preview image.

I've tried the render farm and it works, but the render nodes only run up to a maximum of 25% of their CPU performance.

Also, I ended up with a default plan view render rather than the selected camera view.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Yeah-- a bunch of this stuff I'm working on now.  I'll have a mature version to test after the holidays and we can list and pick up some of the omissions then.

The thing I do have immediate concern about, and don't quite understand, is the 25% performance of the farm nodes.  These should be running full speed or close to it.  What happens when you run an interactive session on one of the nodes?  The results should be the same-- the code is the same.

Some other stuff (not critical yet)--

Remind me, are you using the "arscene" command or the "arstudio" command?

Make sure nXt is loaded if you want to see legacy data like material images.  I think decals should be working too in your version.

[Peter Milner]

I'm running nXt first and then running ArScene.

ArStudio doesn't seem to work from within AutoCAD.

When I render an image locally on one of the nodes, it uses the CPUs up to 100%.

Image based textures show in the material editor, but don't show up in the render.

Decals don't show at all.

2 point perspective works when rendering locally, it just doesn't show in the preview.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Yeah-- like I said-- a bunch of this stuff I'm working on right now-- so keep listing them but let's reevaluate in early January.

Can you try measuring using Performance Monitor rather than Task Manager?  It's a bit more accurate.  You want % processor time as your counter-- let me know if you need help with this.

Even if we're only achieving 25% percent-- I think I can come up with a system for the new stuff that allows multiple farm nodes on the same machine....

[Peter Milner]

Well I've just run the test again and 3 nodes are running near max while the 4th is only running at 45%.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

That doesn't make much sense-- they're doing identical things.  It may be the measurement tools-- performance monitor or task manager?

[Peter Milner]

Both. I've also noticed that the 4th node is holding less information in its RAM than the other 3.

[Peter Milner]

Just running the same scene again and this time all 4 are running at around 50%. Wierd!

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

In terms of what they're doing for me-- they're absolutely 100% identical-- there should not be a difference.  They load the same (single) file and run the same simulation.  It's possible something at the OS level is configured differently on the machines.  I would quickly make sure they're running exactly the same version of Ar Studio-- but otherwise there should not be a difference.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

It's either the measurement tool or something in the OS configuration that's causing this.

[Peter Milner]

I loaded them all up with the latest AR Studio this morning and with nXt they've always run identically.

They are all set up identically with the same software and hardware.

I'll run the same test a few more times. It may have been a one-off glitch.