limitless8

1 minute ago, SabGroup said:

 

I rendered this in Lumion. If you want my Lumion settings I can check what my settings were.

Had a feeling it was too good to be true for Chief   But still yes, do share the settings if you can.  I hope chief decides to up it's game with the rendering engine.

On 3/28/2018 at 1:09 AM, SabGroup said:

Started on this prelim yesterday and was happy with how the rendering for the client turned out. 

Great render!  If you don't mind me asking, what are your light settings for the exterior lights that highlight the exterior stone walls?  If you can post a screenshot or just the settings would be grateful to give them a try in a render I'm working with now.

7 hours ago, DavidJames said:

Just a sample render. House still isn't complete.

Where did you get the panamera from? 3dsketchup or?

First pass just finished, and I want to say thank you, thank you, and thank you again!  Doubling the active window size in resolution solved the problem enabling to capture the scene the way I wanted to at a higher resolution!

Once again everybody at chieftalk are the best!

Thank you everybody for the help!  I was trying to increase resolution without the scene expanding, meaning if split my screen and the view I am going to ray trace is 1618*1181, I would increase the resolution, but at the same time it would increase the field of view...for example if the scene that I want to trace has a view of the fireplace/couches, and I don't want the side walls to be seen or the door or the window on the left, I focus the camera on the fireplace and so on, but I want the image at a higher resolution.

I am currently trying the advice given by just doubling the resolution in accordance with the window size and hoping it won't include any extra areas of the living room.

I'm running at nearly 4k (3440*1440), and yeah it's frustrating, because I want a specific view point to come out at 4k, for example a detailed view from behind the couches...and when i run 4k suddenly I end up seeing the whole living room side to side....surely there has to be a solution

So simple I think question that I can't figure out, for example I split my 4k screen into two screens, in one 'screen' I have a ray trace scene ready, and let's say its 2000*1000 pixels, and I want to increase the pixel density, meaning make it a truly 4k image, but I don't want my scene view to expand?  I've tried to figure this out and in the ray trace window I would put in new values, but in the end the ray trace scene view would expand... not sure if I made sense...Basically let's say I want to ray trace the view of a table, and when I increase the pixels to 4k it ends up including the neighboring cabinet that wasn't in the original window. I don't want the field of view to expand, rather pack more pixels in the current camera view/active window.

Any and all help much appreciated!

On 2/6/2018 at 1:36 AM, TheKitchenAbode said:

Some may find this to be of interest. Both the Ray Trace and PBR have their pro's and con's. I have done this a few time which is to blend the two together. In this sample the PBR version is placed overtop of the Ray Trace version with it's opacity 25%.

 

Ray Trace PBR Blend

Thanks again for your input, I am sure every user here appreciates the time you put in to help others and give advice!

After having gone through the thread a few more times, and played around with lighting/ray trace settings/ and the whole shabang, decided to share two results I got yesterday over night of an apartment kitchen.

Interesting insights, never tried pbr. As for the settings thank you, I swear sometimes I use the same settings but chief gives me different results.

Hell once I was finishing a house and when I got to the last room, the kids room, every ray trace I ran was filled with dots and black even.though all.settings remained the same and only chief objects were in the room. Out of curiosity ran new ray traces of other rooms and all was well but the kids room was black and spot filled....checked everything over.and over nothing helped. 

17 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Just a note concerning your Ray Trace time. Here is an example of a Ray Trace I just ran, it has about 30 active lights and the size is 3000 X 1565. 15 passes took 11 minutes.

 

I believe there must be something about your lighting or Ray Trace settings that is resulting in such long Ray Trace times.

 

Here is the same scene Ray Traced at my usual 1200 X 626. It took only 2 minutes for 15 passes.

 

 

Could maybe post your light settings for the lights and overall ray trace settings ? In my case I tend to you many furniture pieces from sketchup and realize the polygon count slows down the ray trace. So if you find the time let us all know your settings for such a nicely lit up scene.

Don't want to be repetitive but I don't see why the gigabyte aero 15x isn't your #1 choice.  Yeah you cant  draw on it but sure as he'll.will tackle all your 3d requirements 

Well if he wants an all rounder that can handle CA and render and do more than why not? Beats paying 3k for a surface book. My desktop set me back 4k in 2015. 

Just realized they released the gigabyte aero 15x. 1070 8gb card for 2200$. Can't go wrong with that imo

In my opinion go for the gigabyte aero 15. 1060 card at 7700hq for 1800. Bezeless screen, long lasting battery, 15 inches but comes off at 14.

When I will be upgrading my laptop, it's what I'll be taking.

these went through i think 50 passes each in about an hour or so

A quick raytrace will never give you the look you need concerning things like stainless steel.  First of, check that photo mapping is on, that would normally fix the black steel problem.  Otherwise as said, for more details post the plan, I'm sure if it's in x9 others will take a look, if its x8 as said before ill also play around.

Throw the plan in and let us all see what is up and what needs to be changed. If it's X9 then i'm afraid I'm of no help, still haven't gotten around to the upgrade. if x8 or before, I'll gladly give it a look

Gosh darn it, you think you could save it as an X8 file as well? (Didn't upgrade to x9 yet and file won't open)

I second that (a video would be amazing but as said we all understand if time is tight).

13 minutes ago, jcaffee said:

 

Ok.  Technology has a lifecycle.  At best, you plan for that lifecycle based on experience and industry norms.  At worst, your needs are on the bleeding edge and the lifecycle is measured in weeks.

Most CAD and ArcVis technical requirements are safe at 36 months.  Do people get more?  Sure.  Some folks also get way less.  But the concept of technical "future-proof" is something that went out the door in the 70s.  

When I said future proof I didn't mean for eternity.  I think we just have different understandings of the same expression.   When I say future proof I mean that it'll last him prob 2 to 4 years depending on what he will be doing.   

The example rig I posted would deff last 2 years with chief if not all 4.  My rig is still going at it without any problems and it's been 2 years. 

Also considering that of his three examples the most pricey was 2300$, I suggested what I did.

30 minutes ago, jcaffee said:

hahahahahahahahahahahaha.  Oops, sorry, I didn't mean to laugh out loud.

Well Jay I don't know what to say except maybe explain your reasoning instead of just being plain sarcastic?

Concerning laptops, try sites like newegg, or xoticpc.

My honest opinion is if you want to stick to around 1000$ not more, maybe a little more to increase ram go for this:

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7850-clevo-n850hp6.html

at 1k with a 7700hq quad core 8 threads, 1060 card should cover anyyyy needs you have including ray traces, and the rest is up to you.

From what I heard the new 7700, can be safely clocked to 4.5 and many get 4.7 even, but you would deff need an AIO.  You can check from my signature what I'm using, it's a 2 year old system, 6 cores and 12 threads at 4.3 stable, the 980 gets the job done as well (running a 4k monitor basically).  I agree with Graham that if you screw up the lights in a scene won't matter what you're running, as well material definitions and so on, something I came to realize in the early days when I began using chief (trial and error).

Up until recently I was thinking of getting a laptop for on the road work or client demonstration, but came to the conclusion that putting out 2k for a good laptop wasn't worth it simply because I rarely have to do work in front of a client, and showing images and so on many mid level laptops that I have can do.

I'm actually thinking of investing the money for the laptop, into a second system, to double work load ( have one system battling ray traces all day, line them up and watch them fall), and have a second desktop to keep working on and if need be ray trace as well.

For what it's worth, pcpartpicker is deff a great site for anybody who doesn't fully understand how hardware compatibility works, and I personally love building my comps as much as houses, it's a form of art in some ways.  

Currently I have my heart set on an AMD ryzen 7 1800x, 8 cores 16 threads at 4.0 when overclocked and it'll be stable (not too far from my current cpu).  As for gpu consider getting an MSI corsair hybrid 1070, it's water cooled and from what I read gets great results in any aspect.  With memory 32gb should be what you aim for, there are always deals on packs of 4*8gb sticks, for speeds well as much as they might not affect chief, higher clocked ram will have your system in all aspects running smoother and faster.  

You're 3 build I saw was around 2299

Check the link below, same price, and I don't know what everybody else will say but from my perspective for the same money you get a much more powerful system that's future-proof.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kFRF6X

1 hour ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

This is what I came up with.

 

I drew the main staircase, turned off railings on right(wall) side. Used the copy/paste to duplicate the existing staircase in it's current position. Minimized it's width so it was tight to the wall. The main wainscoting back panel was created by increasing the stringer height, added a top hand rail and used the balusters to create the vertical stiles, I then duplicated this one and lowered the height a bit, replaced the top hand rail to get the panel rail just below the actual hand rail. As it is using the staircase tool all of the curvatures are taken care of automatically. 

That is deff some out of the box thinking!!! Thank you Graham, you just gave me the solution!

Yeah here's a screenshot of the staircase that spirals up between three floors, and I've been losing my nerves over how to panel that wall.  It's come down to me either drawing specifically this moment by hand or explaining it and using example photographs to the client.  Or I need to update to X9 asap and give the wall niche tool a go.