GLoria III on DP Athlon & XSI 1.5

[juan-sanchez]

We've just set up an Elsa GLoria III on a dual MP1900+ system & I'm wondering if anyone can offer advice on optimising settings for use with XSI 1.5, like how to set up to use multi-thread & multiprocessor rendering.

All hints & tips would be much appreciated.

Cheers ! : )

[juan-sanchez]

Okay, so I've talked to someone now who's explained that I don't need to set-up anything to use the MP environment,...I'd thought it was similar to organising a distriuted processing / renderfarm set-up,...I'm glad it's not

Can anyone explain in layman's terms the advantages / disadvantages of using 'grid' rendering rather than the BSP option,...
...am I correct in thinking that 'grid' is generally the option to use rather than BSP in MP or distributed environments?

Cheers

[wolfinger]

using grid mode skips some of the initial calculations. which mode is better really depends on how your scene looks.

I've never really tried changing the render mode much, but They Say that sometimes using Grid mode can really speed up a render.

[srvargas]

In fact Grid acceleration is removed in XSI 2. Now there is only the BSP method left for use with Mental Ray 3.
Regarding Grid acceleration - if you set it up correctly it really can reduce your rendering time dramatically - check the docs and you'll find directions for different situations..
See Ya

[juan-sanchez]

Cheers !
We had a play about over the weekend after reading the manual PDF's,...and are much more at home now, although the PDF's seemed to skirt over the subject somewhat....

I think it's the matter of optimising the render set-up for each scene we're producing more than anything else.

Can you point us to a benchmark (ie. a scene & previous timings) for XSI, as the only one I've been able to find was through the 'search' on these forums, supplied by 'Ed', but wouldn't load-up for me.

Cheers in advance

(apologies to anyone who reads the 'hardware' forum here on highend3D as I've posted his topic there too,...naughty, naughty !