[Paraview] Fwd: Rendering speed sluggish using cluster

[Christian Butcher]

Utkarsh,

Previously, it was not okay when interacting with the 3D view.

Now, however, I have recompiled ParaView (both on the cluster and on
my workstation), and with settings at:

Remote Render Threshold : 0 (I don't think this was the culprit - it
was already low, but this makes it certain, I suppose)
Still Render Image Reduction Factor : 1 (I can't increase this, or I
seem unable to see the features of interest)
Image Reduction Factor : 8 (I'm uncertain if this is helpful, but
certainly the description would indicate it may be the option of
interest)

and
mpirun -np 12 path/pvserver --use-offscreen-rendering
each having a maximum of 16G RAM and an IB connection between nodes,
the problem is vastly reduced/gone.

I'm sorry I can't be more specific as to what changed to make this so
much smoother - there are still delays, but now these are just a few
seconds, and that seems reasonable, compared with the multiple minute
lockups previously experienced.

I suspect I might have had some combination of poorly chosen
compilation options, and poorly chosen rendering settings.

Best,

Christian

On 13 April 2015 at 23:58, Utkarsh Ayachit <utkarsh.ayachit at kitware.com> wrote:
> Christian,
>
> Sorry for the late reply, just saw this email.
>
> You say things are slow when moving the scalar bar or resizing. Does
> that mean things are okay when interacting with the 3D view?
>
> Utkarsh
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 2:18 AM, Christian Butcher
> <christian.butcher at oist.jp> wrote:
>> Dear ParaView Users,
>>
>> I'm rendering a pseudo-2D data set of approx 7 million cells, running
>> 'mpirun ... pvserver'.
>>
>> I can connect remotely. The cluster does not have graphics cards
>> installed, so I'm using the '--use-offscreen-rendering' flag.
>>
>> The client options for 'Remote Render Threshold' and 'LODThreshold'
>> are both set to 0.
>>
>> On the cluster, I'm currently trying with 48 cores each using 16GB
>> RAM, just in case I was previously using too little. I'm pretty sure
>> this is overkill - certainly the problem seems comparable to when I
>> run it on 8 cores each using 4GB RAM etc.
>>
>> I suspect I'm just not using the software well, or have installed
>> either the client or (more likely?) the cluster's pvserver badly.
>>
>> Both are using 4.2.0, client has version "4.2.0-287-g1631961 64-bit",
>> pvserver returns just "4.2.0" as the version.
>>
>> When changing any aspect of the render view, the client becomes
>> unresponsive/sluggish for long periods of time. This includes, for
>> example, moving the coloring scale bar across the screen.
>>
>> I'm sure I'm missing something obvious (like a step to cut down the
>> requirements on the client workstation, for example).
>>
>> What should I be doing differently?
>>
>> The script I used to start ccmake is below - other options were left
>> at default values (iirc):
>>
>> ccmake \
>>         -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=RelWithDebInfo \
>>         -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH=/apps/gnu/openmpi.gcc/1.8.3/bin/mpic++ \
>>         -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER:FILEPATH=/apps/gnu/openmpi.gcc/1.8.3/bin/mpicc \
>>         -DCMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER:FILEPATH=/apps/gnu/openmpi.gcc/1.8.3/bin/mpifort
>> \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_USE_MPI:BOOL=ON \
>> \
>>         -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications \
>>         -DBoost_INCLUDE_DIR:PATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications/include
>> \
>>         -DBoost_LIBRARY_DIRS:FILEPATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications/lib
>> \
>> \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_QT_GUI:BOOL=OFF \
>>         -DBUILD_TESTING:BOOL=OFF \
>>         -DBUILD_EXAMPLES:BOOL=FALSE \
>>         -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=ON \
>>         -DBUILD_DOCUMENTATION:BOOL=OFF \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_INSTALL_DEVELOPMENT_FILES:BOOL=ON \
>> \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_ENABLE_FFMPEG:BOOL=ON \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_USE_VISITBRIDGE:BOOL=ON \
>> \
>>         -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_OSMESA:BOOL=ON \
>>         -DVTK_USE_OFFSCREEN:BOOL=ON \
>>         -DVISIT_BUILD_READER_GMV:BOOL=OFF \
>> \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_AnalyzeNIfTIIO:BOOL=OFF \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_H5PartReader:BOOL=ON \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_GMVReader:BOOL=FALSE \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_Moments:BOOL=FALSE \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_PacMan:BOOL=FALSE \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_SLACTools:BOOL=FALSE \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_SciberQuestToolKit:BOOL=FALSE \
>>         -DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_SierraPlotTools:BOOL=FALSE \
>> \
>>         -DVTK_USE_SYSTEM_ZLIB:BOOL=ON \
>>         -DVTK_USE_SYSTEM_EXPAT:BOOL=ON \
>>         -DVTK_USE_X:BOOL=OFF \
>> \
>> -DModule_vtkFiltersParallelGeometry=ON \
>> -DModule_vtkFiltersSMP=ON \
>> -DModule_vtkFiltersSelection=ON \
>> -DModule_vtkIOMPIParallel=ON \
>> -DModule_vtkImagingMath=ON \
>> -DModule_vtkImagingStatistics=ON \
>> -DModule_vtkImagingStencil=ON \
>> \
>>         -DOPENGL_INCLUDE_DIR:PATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications/include
>> \
>>         -DOPENGL_gl_LIBRARY:FILEPATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications/lib/libOSMesa.so
>> \
>>         -DOPENGL_glu_LIBRARY:FILEPATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications/lib/libGLU.so
>> \
>>         -DOSMESA_LIBRARY:FILEPATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications/lib/libOSMesa.so
>> \
>>         -DOSMESA_INCLUDE_DIR:PATH=/home/c/christian-butcher/Applications/include
>> \
>>         $APPS/source/git-sources/ParaView
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