Auto Tile Size


[Gif of usage]
[Download] [Documentation]

Tile sizes can be confusing and for some reason they actually make a difference in render speed! But why bother to figure it out when you can have a simple addon do it all for you?!
This addon takes care of that. Just enable it and you should never need to worry about tile sizes again!

It automatically calculates the best size when you change the resolution, or when you change from CPU to GPU and back, or accidentally change the tile size yourself! (although if you do want to set it manually, simply toggle the Auto Tile Size button)

Check the documentation for more info, or this post on my blog for a more elaborate explanation for the reasoning behind why tile sizes are important.

(Currently for Cycles only, though I’m investigating what determines good tile sizes for BI)

Thank you man, really a timesaver!

Beautiful!

I’m not sure about Cycles but in most 3d render engines larger bucket sizes equal slower render times! The smaller the render bucket
the quicker the calculations. Bigger does not always mean better.
Thanks for the script!

@gregzaal

very nice addon.
Thank you

My first message as a registered user is for you gregzaal. Thanks a lot for this little gem!

This usually depends on how they do filtering. For instance, Arnold, by default, filters 2 pixels to the side of every tile, so a 32x32 tile is actually calculating 34x34 pixels. This means that using small tiles can GREATLY increase your render times. Cycles uses a different method of pixel filtering which I’ve never seen anywhere else, but doesn’t filter outside of the immediate tile. Thus smaller tiles are better on the CPU unless the render speed of the tile is faster than the overhead of assigning new tasks to the thread. On GPU large tiles are ALWAYS better due to what amounts to a huge number of threads, each of which is essentially assigned to a single pixel.

@IvI - I’m honoured, thanks!

I’m busy looking into tile sizes in more detail - what sizes makes quick renders in what situations. Including border renders and Blender Internal engine :slight_smile:

an other great feature would be auto cropping,

If you render an image that has transparency for instance a layer that only contains a character, and you crop it to the character part the speed increase is amazing.

Hi! That’s nice Addon. But I can’t set as startfile-addon. Is That just happened to me?

Exception in module register(): ‘C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\blender 2.6
addons\auto_tile_size_release_02.py’
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\blender 2.6\2.69\scripts\modules\addon_u
11, in enable
mod.register()
File “C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\blender 2.6\2.69\scripts\addons\auto_til
2.py”, line 221, in register
bpy.types.CyclesRender_PT_performance.append(menu_func)
AttributeError: ‘RNA_Types’ object has no attribute ‘CyclesRender_PT_performance’

Thats weird - try this one: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqe99620nry5xos/auto_tile_size.py
Do you have the Cycles addon enabled?

Thanks buddy! I’ve try your new file. Problem still there even if restore factory settings.
If that case just happening on me. I believe problem not in your code.

I’m sure that “Cycles Render Engine”[addon] is actived And as default render engine.
Maybe I’m waiting another bad luck guy. And figure out the problem in common :slight_smile:

Another PC with your code is working fine.

That’s my problem.

Thanks again!

Hi buddy! I’ve been figure out that.

Your script should be under ‘addons_contrib’ folder.
That’s meaning we can’t use “Preferences–Addons–Install from File”(put into ‘addons’ folder).

addons_contrib is for addons that have been approved by developers and packaged officially. Using Install from File works for any addon, contrib or not. You seem to be the only one having this problem, so it does seem like something wrong with the computer. You could try download a new build from builder.blender.org, since it may be something wrong with the specific build you’re using.

Thank you gregzaal for this helpful addon, a real time saver

Cheers, mib

Hey Greg, thanx for this addon but most importantly, thanx for the adaptive samples treasure which I have recently discovered! :slight_smile:
As a complete cycles noob, I am beyond stunned!

Hi Gregzaal,

I’ve discovered something, if I change to BI I can’t change the tile size; it has to be done through the cycles render. Is it hard to add it to the Blender Internal? I love it so much it’s on my startup.

EDIT: -Nevermind, I found out it’s been already suggested on Adaptive Samples- Updated it and it’s working great :smiley:

Ah forgot about this thread - yeah, updated it last night, it now works for BI and doesn’t affect any renderers other than BI and Cycles.

hi friend, this is my problem. Would you have a solution?