danfrancis Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Hi all, A good friend of my family is doing some designs using the above and they are currently running an I7 4700K, which I understand for most things is great. The struggle is photorealistic rendering for building designs and their current system struggles. So was thinking about creating a rendering node using a dual E5-1620 or 1650 V3 system. Alternative is to repurpose their 4770K core box as a render node, build another one (with a 4770K) and then go for a 4930K or E3-1XXX line Xeon (I run a E3-1245 V3) for the main station with a KXXX line card. Total budget is about £2000 for the final solution. Appreciate your input. Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krimson2580 Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 Hello Dan, Maybe it's better to change software instead of hardware? Kind regards Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 Hello Dan, Maybe it's better to change software instead of hardware? Kind regards I'd totally agree with this. I find it hard to believe that their quest for realism is being hampered by hardware; people have been able to render photoreal scenes on hardware much worse than the system you quoted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danfrancis Posted January 27, 2015 Author Share Posted January 27, 2015 Wim and Chris, thanks for your feedback. I have downloaded a trial of Sketchup on my Xeon E3-1245 V3 box with 512GB SSD and 32GB of Ram. What trial software is there to evaluate doing photorealistic renders? Appreciate your feedback, looking into software solutions with the possibility of moving the innards to a new case, upgrading the graphics card and seeing what I can do with the RAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 Sketchup isn't really geared up for full-on photoreals. It's great for modelling, then exporting into (for example) 3DS max and then rendering. If you want to stay with Sketchup though, there are two rendering packages that I would be looking into: 1) Vray for Sketchup 2) Thea Render Both are very capable render engines, and I think the only barrier between them and photoreal would be Sketchup itself. Don't get me wrong, I love Sketchup and do most of my modelling within it, but for things such as cars, trees, plants, furniture and such you will struggle to achieve realism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danfrancis Posted January 27, 2015 Author Share Posted January 27, 2015 Thanks Chris again. I will try both, Thea Render looks like it can use the GPU, I suppose a decent card such as a GTX 970 would be better rendering than the i7 4770K? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 (edited) I think you'd have to do some tests really. Are they struggling to render things in time, or are they struggling to achieve realism? A new rig will only improve render times, not realism. These renders were done on this spec machine: "My "normal" computer is a Q9550 and only 4GB, in order to work efficiently in viewport I had to use mr-proxy obligatory. Istancing and BSP2 are very important too; renders took 2 - 3 hours" In terms of speed, GPU rendering is certainly aproaching CPU speeds however there are a couple of drawbacks that (in my opinion) don't make it worthwhile making the jump just yet: Firstly GPU rendering is progressive, not bucket based rendering - meaning that the whole image gradually refines until all the noise is cleared. This is a good method for accuracy and such, but the problem arises when you need to get an image out the door quickly and the noise just isn't clearing up in troublesome areas quickly enough. Bucket based renderers can generally be tweaked to reduce certain types of noise, etc. Secondly the VRam on graphics cards isn't enough to cope with large scenes and texture sets just yet. It's all well and good having 32Gb of RAM, but if your graphics card has 4Gb then you've got a bottleneck. Adding more graphics cards won't help either as each card needs to load the entire scene/texture set to be able to render it. Of course, if your scenes are lightweight and not anywhere near that RAM limit then you've got no issues and adding more GPU's will certainly speed everything up. Edited January 27, 2015 by Macker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danfrancis Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Hi, It is being able to start it I believe. I will ask some more questions and try around with some of the other render software. Thanks for your help, greatly appreciate it. Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryhirsch Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 I agree with Chris...and would suggest Vray and Thea...and I would try Maxwell ...there is a free version (limited Image resolution) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlstorr Posted February 8, 2015 Share Posted February 8, 2015 I come from a 3DS background with V-Ray. My current firm used Maxwell with sketchup. Maxwell is a great renderer but the learning curve was too steep for a lot of the staff, so we ended up with bottlenecks. When decided to make a change a year ago. I advocated for V-Ray (easy to use, fast production, granular control with a very high ceiling) but ultimately we went with podium due to cost and skill levels in the office. Podium is a phenomenal tool that's easy to pick up, gives great results quickly, and is incredibly easy to use. The benefit has been that we now have a large team of render-capable people who we can easily plug into projects as needed. No bottlenecks. Our design process is FA's and fluid and it allows a lot of flexibility for changes. The drawback is that podium severely hampers our ability to produce high-end renders that clients occasionally request. It doesn't offer the granular control that other renderers do. It has generic light and natural controls, doesn't have built in scale ability, and its less efficient rendering from sketchup without proxies, etc. Overall it's fantastic for 90% of why we do, but when we need HQ renders I export back to max and fire up V-Ray. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philippelamoureux Posted February 8, 2015 Share Posted February 8, 2015 @OP, vray or corona renderer are going to help you achieve photorealism. Your cpu is fine! Corona is free at the moment, check out their render gallery. The software is very easy to use too! Like Chris said, import your sketchup model in 3ds max, and from there, render with corona! great workflow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted February 8, 2015 Share Posted February 8, 2015 lol at a 'photorealistic rendering box' i wish such a thing existed id buy it right away! do some tutorials, learn some new techniques and keep the current computer. technology isn't the answer here. have a look through this for inspiration http://www.the-boundary.com/blog/2015/2/5/3dslondon-recap when you are running at 6.4gb for a 3dmax scene file and getting results like these guys then you may look for a technology solution! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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