marvins_dad

Sorry - thought the title might explain. I'm using Autocad and SketchUp to build the model then Twilight Render to do the rendering. http://twilightrender.com/ The floor is a weak point...still working on locating a better map for the type of granite we are using that doesn't repeat as bad. I have the bricks bumped pretty high...maybe that is a weakness of Twilight or myself. But the scale of the brick to the building makes them very small in comparison.

I posted this over at the Twilight forums, but thought I would share here.

Wow! This thread has been really educational! Hadn't even thought of running the OS and programs off of a SSD. Thanks for the discussion, I will definitely be referring to this in the near future as I look at reaplacing two of our render machines at the office. Our Boxx systems are getting long in the tooth. What was the outcome of the drives? What did they end up replacing with and how is the system running?

Yeah - that's the kind of info I was looking for. I downloaded the program, but haven't installed because I need some sort of "roadmap" to look at before I start poking around. When you get a chance I would love to see a write-up on like that and possibly examples if you have any. Thanks!

CINEBENCH 9.5 **************************************************** Tester : AD Processor : BoXX 5404 MHz : 1.81ghz - dual core opteron 265 Number of CPUs : 4 Operating System : Windows XP Pro Graphics Card : Nvidia Quadro FX 3400 w/ 256mb Resolution : Color Depth : **************************************************** Rendering (Single CPU): 261 CB-CPU Rendering (Multiple CPU): 768 CB-CPU Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.94 Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 273 CB-GFX Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1140 CB-GFX Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 2178 CB-GFX OpenGL Speedup: 7.97 ****************************************************

Yeah - that is the Render Server - so the said that the video cards don't need to be too powerfull. Besides the unit is probably 1" thick. LOL I gotta wonder though if it had a little beefier card would performance increase. I still need to my 5400 dual 265 Opteron (dual core) and post those numbers up - maybe after I meet tonite's deadline.

Our new Render Server RenderBOXX - 7104 w/ 3gb ram CINEBENCH 9.5 **************************************************** Tester : AED Processor : Dual 270 (dual core) MHz : 1.99 ghz Number of CPUs : 4 Operating System : Windows XP Pro Graphics Card : ATI Rage XL PCI Resolution : Color Depth : **************************************************** Rendering (Single CPU): 295 CB-CPU Rendering (Multiple CPU): 930 CB-CPU Multiprocessor Speedup: 3.16 Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 339 CB-GFX Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 236 CB-GFX Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 137 CB-GFX OpenGL Speedup: 0.70 ****************************************************

So have you brought in a model into Blender's game engine? I'm wondering where to start, or is it self explanitory once you load the application?

Has anyone used Blender's gaming engine to do real time walk thru's? I tried out RTRE and felt that it's current (3 year old) release is rather limiting and I couldn't get the quality of graphics to render properly. I read on this forum that others suggested Blender's gaming engine, but I haven't installed Blender yet and wondered if there was a How-To out there or if there was a resource that walked you through the process of Baking and Max model, bringing it into Blender's gaming engine and then setting up perimeters to allow you to do a virtual walk around. Any suggestions or links would be appreciated. Thanks antoine

Recently went round and round with Autodesk about the Mental Ray deal with Viz. Viz 2006 only has license for Mental Ray on your workstation...no extra nodes. Max 8 has unlimited... Viz 2007 - they couldn't say, but said it would be similar to Max, however I just looked at that documentation that was linked in the 2007 thread and it states 8 render nodes in 2007.

I haven't visited in a while, but I did get two new Boxx 5400 Workstations and a dedicated Render Node 7401. I'm not done optimizing for performance, but they seem to be good machines so far. I have a big render job coming up this weekend so we will see how they fair.

Thanks - I'll try that. Yeah the grass is something I have been battling to make it look real...I think maybe the map itself is too light...I'll check that out.

They are the low poly RPC's for populating parking lots - not meant to be seen this close, most likely. Also, all the RPC's are really strangely tweeked w/ lighting because of the use of Mental Ray and using RPC for Mental Ray plugin...I haven't been able to figure out how to tweek them yet. These stills were created on a strict deadline and on machines that can barely render them without crashing...that is the main reason there is entourage - because I had to have that content in the final rendering. I have another go at the final since they didn't like the initial material choices of the building so I am working on this project between other models trying to get it to look more realistic.

I have linear exposure on but Exposure Value is set at 0. Brightness and Contrast are set at 50% and Physical Scale is at 1500. I turned it off and everything went way too dark. I guess I could play with the percentage of exposure or try to tweek the sun numbers to get more output out of it.

I haven't posted anything yet...mainly because the majority of you really have it all figured out and I don't have anything that compares to the quality of your expertise. Anyhow - I guess you gotta start somewhere with asking for help and suggestions. I am running Viz 2006 with Mental Ray renderer. This model is using a "Sun" light source with Global Illumination. I can model - but when it comes to textures and lighting I have tons to learn! What can I do to make my renderings pop more and look less flat? Okay - let me have it.