Long renders - how to stop them, save them and resume

Electro-Elvis

If you have a long running render, it often is handy to interrupt it and save the actual progress and even close "Bryce". E.g. if you have a notebook and should go to work with it, but there still is a render on-going. (That is the situation I have a lot.)

Bryce can do that. Actually it is rather easy, but I needed nearly one year to realize how it works. Now I would not miss that function anymore. Because it is not that obvious, I thought I write a short description how to do that...

First you begin to render your scene while you either click on the "Render" button, or choose the function "Render" in the "File" menu or press the keys CTRL + R.
To interrupt the rendering you click on the "Resume Render" Button right next to the "Render" button or you hit once the Escape key. And know you can save your scene. It saves the actual state of your render, too. Afterwards you can close Bryce and shut down your computer.

If you like to resume your saved render, you have to do the following.

1. Open your scene. You will see the rendered scene exactly the way, how you leave it.
2. Now you click on the "Resume Render" button. (Here it is essential not to click the big "Render" button, because this would start the render from scratch and maybe 20 hours of rendering are squibbed.)
3. The render resumes.

A last remark if you are using the Escape key to stop the rendering process. If you accidentally hit it twice, the wire frame presentation appears. That's no problem, your render progress is not lost, then the Escape key simpley toggles between the to presentation: wire frame and rendering.

GussNemo

Cool, thanks electro.

Chohole

Just to add that another way to halt the render is simply to click on the render pane itself with normal left mouse button.

Horo

And a warning: do not double click on the file, launch Bryce and load the file.

Dave Savage

chohole said:

Just to add that another way to halt the render is simply to click on the render pane itself with normal left mouse button.

Also to add to tis because it's the way I work most of the time.
If you are rendering a picture that is bigger than your monitor. Once you've clicked to pause the render, pressing the space bar on the keyboard and keeping your finger pressed on it will then allow you to pull your half completed image around to allow you to see the bits that are hanging off the edge.

Electro-Elvis

@chohole: Thanks very much, I did not know that
@Dave: Good point, I had the problem a few times and no solution for it. Thanks a lot.

Horo

@Dave - thanks for that. That's news for me.

Chohole

TheSavage64 said:

chohole said:

Just to add that another way to halt the render is simply to click on the render pane itself with normal left mouse button.

Also to add to tis because it's the way I work most of the time.
If you are rendering a picture that is bigger than your monitor. Once you've clicked to pause the render, pressing the space bar on the keyboard and keeping your finger pressed on it will then allow you to pull your half completed image around to allow you to see the bits that are hanging off the edge.

Can't you also do that with the little hand, on the right hand side?

Dave Savage

chohole said:

Can't you also do that with the little hand, on the right hand side?

I don't know but I'll give it a try when I get home tonight. :)

Also: If you are thinking of exporting your image as an HDR file, you can't pause it, it has to be rendered in one go and exported immediately upon completion of render (well not immediately as long as you don't do anything to it or Bryce before exporting it).

Horo

Forgot that detail, Dave. Good you mention it. 48 and 96-bit files cannot be exported - well, they can, but they are only 24-bit. And, if I'm not mistaken, render to disk cannot be stopped and resumed.