Rendering Images in Tiles
The tiled rendering process breaks up the image into a series of tiles. Each tile is then, in turn, processed as individual images and written to disk as a rendered tile file. Upon completion of the last tile, all of the rendered tile files are combined into a single, finished image file, and the rendered tile files are then deleted. For example, if an image is 10000x5000 pixels, a tiled render will process 1024x1024 sections and combine those to give the final image.
Previewing Tiled Renderings
The key-in Save Image Preview is used to display the progress of a tiled render or a non-Luxology Distributed Rendering job. You can specify the path to a tile file on the command line, or if omitted, the Continue Tiled Rendering dialog opens and prompts you for the tile file name. The tiles display as they are being created. You can use this key-in if you accidentally closed the preview window or if you want to monitor the job from another computer.
Files Created by Tiled Rendering
During a tiled rendering process, the file extension is used to identify individual rendered tile files. For any rendered tile file the file name construction will be the combination of the Y tile number (contributing to the first 4 digits) and X tile number (contributing to the last 4 digits) with the ".bkt" extension. For example a tile with name 00120012.bkt indicates that 0012 (first 4 digits) is the Y tile number and 0012 (last 4 digits) is the X tile number. Because of the potential of overwriting existing files with similar extensions, it is recommended that these tile files be stored in a separate directory. This directory is identified with the configuration variable MS_IMAGEOUT (Image Output in the Rendering/Images category of the Configuration Variables dialog).
Error Recovery
Rendering an image in tiles and writing each tile to disk makes it is possible to recover from an interruption in the process.
Using Multiple Systems
The Render Image in Tiles option lets you use multiple systems to render and save a single image. All of the systems must be connected to a common networked file system.
The system on which the tiled rendering process is initiated creates the control file on the shared network drive. The Continue button in the Save Image dialog (see To restart a tiled rendering after an interruption) is used on subsequent systems to continue the processing with the first unrendered tile. After the last rendered tile file in the series is created, the system by which this file was generated combines all of the previous tiles together and creates the final image file. This system also deletes the individual rendered tile files.