lindsaybutler

I am looking to build additional render nodes for vray for rhino for small arch office so happened upon this thread, though I would share our setup- We have a total of 6 comps, and typically do distributed rendering during office hours while everyone is working on said computers in Revit or Autocad. I have a 4770k workstation, as well as one other in the office, both with 32 gb ram. We have 2 amdfx6300 / 16 gb ram and 2 amdfx4300 / 16 gb ram. Occasionally a render craps out because one computer kind of 'eats it' and all render buckets turn black, but generally this set up works really well. Of course the hyperthreaderd intels blow the amd's out of the water rendering, but it's what we've got that balances rendering needs with general office needs. We run software in the background to limit how much cpu & ram the DR spawner can use on the nodes, (especially if its a node where user is working in a large revit file). I think intel hyperthreading is a must for the workstation, especially if you intend to keep working while you are rendering. Though the workstations have 32 gb ram, we always limit vray in the options to 8gb ram. DR spawner seems to take a lot, and we've realized that if we want the ability to do cpu rendering while working in other 3d applications, that is the magic number. In contrast, I personally have a 5820k at home with 32gb ram and nvidia gtx 970, which handles big files and grasshopper better than work comp, and handles unreal engine really well also (though I think you are better with 4790k, as that is fastest for single threaded applications). After working in the offfice, its painful how long renders take on one machine, even with 12 hyperthreaded cores. My boss paid $600 or so for each AMD machine in the office, and I am definitely of the mindset that the more cores you can get for the dollar the better. Anyway, different cpus seem to work fine together, the comp that gives us the most trouble is one AMD6300 running windows 8 (we just got it, but will be buying a win7 license bc of autocad/revit issues on it), but even it does what it is supposed to 80% of the time for distributed rendering.

Thanks Tom! I will try adjusting the DMC settings. Turning off displacement was going to be my next attempt as the displacement mats will need work in post anyway. and all the plants are already proxied! I have been looking at perfect resize and generally resampling up in photoshop... thinking I can render out at 75% size and bring it up...

I know this subject repeatedly gets hashed out on the forums, but I have tried all suggestions I have come across thus far- so if anyone has any insight please chime in! I need to produce 7200 x 3600 px with rhino 5/vray 2. It is of an interior / exterior habitat for a rhinoceros, (Rhinos in Rhino!) thus, lots of vray proxy grasses, plants, trees, rocks. (though most of the trees are actually flat planes) I rendered out shots at 2048 x 1024 px, and my general everyday settings with dr spawner over 4 networked computers, each took 45 minutes or so, no problems. So, on to render large, and I'm using brute force and ir map, (light cache is always finicky and crash happy for me with lots of plantings) screenshots of settings are attached- I am pre- calculating IR map, and rendering to vrimg, and no memory frame buffer In the past, these have worked for me for large stuff. Especially key was the tweaking the default displacement settings, as vray's default is too high. I am now hoping I can get the RGB and alpha channels rendered out, and plan on scaling up other channels I need in photoshop for post, as I read in a Max/vray thread that the z-depth pass can be heavy if you have lots of proxies far away. Any insight would be greatly appreciated, especially anyone familiar with rhino/vray... things just behave a bit differently than max/vray. Maybe I should turn off DOF? I know lens effects can add significant time... I have attached some of the draft shots- (btw each view is in a separate file now, and geometry not affecting the view is deleted, materials and scene purged) settings- draft shots-

Thanks Simon!

That sounds like an optimal workflow... I work in an arch. office, and we model in rhino, and render with vray for rhino. I have used max in the past, and would like to be able to render in max to take full advantage of vray but have always had trouble with non-autodesk geometry in max. Are those scripts you mentioned available online, or did you write them? I googled a bit but couldn't find anything specific... also curious as we work alot with engineers and fabricators and have to export each layer of a rhino model to stp for translating to solidworks pretty often as well.