0000653: Add to FlexImageFilm an new option to stop the rendering after X seconds

Notes
(0001772) Dade (developer) 2009-11-18 04:42	Added the new option "integer halttime" [seconds].

(0001775) jeanphi (administrator) 2009-11-19 00:14	This shouldn't be part of the v06x branch, v06x should be a bug fix only branch. Also the way you implemented the option won't provide exactly the requested feature: by using the enoughSamples mecanism you can delay a lot the halting (using 512 samples/pixel in the lowdiscrepancy sampler for example). I think it'd be better to implement the option as a command line switch and force the render to terminate once the time has elapsed. This option is only usefull to do benchmarks so you must respect the deadline at all costs.

(0001776) Dade (developer) 2009-11-19 01:03	As discussed in the dedicated forum thread, this option can be useful in some real case (i.e. animation preview). Implementing this option as an hard limit instead of a soft one would produce incorrect results (i.e. only half rendered images with multi-pass samplers like LD, etc.). At the moment, I can not figure out how an hard-limit implementation could be useful even for benchmarking (what is the point in benchmarking an incorrect rendering ?).

(0001778) jeanphi (administrator) 2009-11-19 03:22	For benchmarking, if you use lowdiscrepancy, once a full pass has been done, the result is not incorrect if you stop, it will just not have the same noise level everywhere in the picture. For a benchmark it makes sense though to stop anytime: if the image isn't complete, then so be it, if another algorithm manages to complete in the requested time it wins. Maybe we could relax the test so that we wait at least for a full pass, then we allow to stop at any point.

(0001801) Dade (developer) 2009-11-25 02:32	As discussed above, the soft limit and hard limit have 2 different purpose and different area of implementation too (i.e. soft is in FlexImageFilm like halspp while the hard is more a command line option). I could rename the "halttime" Film option to "halttimesoft" to highlight difference. I think we should close this issue (after updating luxblend/documentation) and open a new one for the hard limit implementation in case we need one.

(0001815) Dade (developer) 2009-11-27 02:47	Wiki updated.

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2009-11-18 04:22	Dade	New Issue
2009-11-18 04:23	Dade	Summary	Add to FlexImagefilm an new option to stop the rendering after X seconds => Add to FlexImageFilm an new option to stop the rendering after X seconds
2009-11-18 04:23	Dade	Status	new => assigned
2009-11-18 04:23	Dade	Assigned To	=> Dade
2009-11-18 04:42	Dade	Note Added: 0001772
2009-11-18 04:42	Dade	Status	assigned => feedback
2009-11-19 00:14	jeanphi	Note Added: 0001775
2009-11-19 01:03	Dade	Note Added: 0001776
2009-11-19 03:22	jeanphi	Note Added: 0001778
2009-11-25 01:39	jeanphi	Target Version	=> 0.6.1
2009-11-25 02:32	Dade	Note Added: 0001801
2009-11-26 12:43	Dade	Relationship added	related to 0000661
2009-11-27 02:47	Dade	Note Added: 0001815
2009-11-27 02:48	Dade	Status	feedback => resolved
2009-11-27 02:48	Dade	Fixed in Version	=> 0.6.1
2009-12-22 01:49	jeanphi	Status	resolved => closed