Maya Render Options for Processor Use

[tropistic]

What you're looking for is a way to control the CPU affinity from the command line. Here's a great little tool that does just that, plus a bonus for those with multiple processors:

http://www.appliedvisual.com/xcpu.htm

Jay

[lazlow69]

Thanks for the link. The program seems quite nice... Have you used it much? Are there any problems that you've encountered? In the documentation it mentions that you can set priority levels for your applications. Would Normal Priority mean the default allocation, or mean 25% since it is the 2nd of 4 options? I was hoping there would be a way to assign a specific percentage of processor power, you see.

Thanks for all the help so far!

[stunndman]

normal means default thread scheduling priority - by default every program runs as normal

you can set priority and processor affinity for processes in your task manager (ctrl-shift-escape)

[lazlow69]

That actually brings up an interesting question... Can you simply assign processor use as a tag from a command line prompt? I know in Task Manager you can change priority, but that is only after the app has been executed.

Ideally, I am looking for a way to run locally and also send over a LAN command strings that run the render.exe of Maya at a specific percentage of processor usage. Any suggestions to meet that end, perhaps cmd examples?

This info has been quite useful so far, so thanks everyone!

[beaker]

Operating systems dont give the ability to get that specific in your assigning of processor power. Most work on the basis of priority of who goes first. You can get plenty of interactivity in your current app by just setting the background render process to low.

"start render /low" will start the render process at low priority. Just look up the "start" command in the windows help for more info. You could just put that into a batch files and call it something like render_low.bat. Then you just call that command instead of render.exe.

[lowkey]

hmmm ... unfortunately xCPU only works on multiprocessor systems ! :(

someone know of a similiar tool for use with single-processor setups ?

i want to keep at least 20% of CPU cycles for browsing while doing my maya renders.

[beaker]

lowkey:
just goto the task manager and right click on the batch render job and set it to low priority. All your other apps will respond faster after that.

[lowkey]

ahhh yeah, i wasn't even aware of that option ! :bounce:

thanks a lot, beaker :)

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.