TheKitchenAbode

Scott - Just one more example. Same as above but with Photon mapping. My machine 1 minute 45 sec., your machine about 20 sec. Graham

Scott - Thanks for the compliment but trust me, you are over stating my level of expertise. You should post some examples of the quality of output you consider as your "Minimum" requirement, would help when offering some suggestions as to how you might best achieve this. For example, I just ran this in 41 sec., on your machine this would run in no more than 10 sec. Graham

Scott - Many thanks. Those additional cores over my 4 cores (8 threads) dropped the time down from my 80 minutes to your 20 minutes to complete 10 passes. We have now established that more cores are beneficial in reducing raytrace times. However, through this exercise we have also established that the lighting technique also impacts on raytrace time, and in-fact it can be a more effective way to reduce retrace times than throwing more cores at it providing the resulting image quality is to ones satisfaction. This is demonstrated by my previously posted scene (lights adjusted) that ran 25 passes in 4 minutes. Adjusted to 10 passes it ran in less than 2 minutes. When I compare the two scenes they are different, but is one really better than the other. Personally, neither of them are Photo Realistic so what was the benefit of such elaborate lighting and all of that raytrace time? Graham

Scott - You just have to download the plan, open the camera and click on the Raytrace icon and run. You don't have to change any settings other than say the pixel width & height. That way you will be running the scene exactly how CA intended. When I initially got involved in this, one of my issues was that this scene takes forever to run and that the quality is not worth of the wait. The example below is their scene as downloaded. It took 1hour and 21minutes for 10 passes at 1200 x 612 pixel size. As you can see 10 passes is not enough to clean this up but I'm not going to wait all night. Hopefully with your rig you can run maybe 50 passes within a tolerable time frame so we can see the result. Graham

Scott - By any chance did you run it as per CAs settings. That's the number I'm most interested in as we already have some benchmarking on this. We can always play with the lights to get a fast raytrace. The one I have attached is 1200 x 612, 25 passes in 4 minutes. Altering those killer lights in the original seems to undermine the benefit of having a really capable system, which is to be able to run complex lite scenes within a reasonable length of time. Graham

Scott - Is this plan the one that is currently on the CA? From what you posted it looks as if the lights have been altered. I reloaded the plan yesterday from the site and the lights and their type appear different. Just wondering. Graham

Hi Scott - The one we were using was the full River stone house model, the plan just above the one you have. Don't forget to extract the textures and you need to open the "active layer display options" to display the cameras. Suggest you also reduce the render pixel size to say 1200 x 612 just so others can provide some comparisons. Happy Rendering!!! Graham

Hi Scott - Agree, you now need to harness that power to generate scenes with improved lighting and more realistic looking materials. Would be interesting if you were to run the original Riverstone from CA as per their settings. On most systems this takes an absurd amount of time to run. Graham

Scott - I calculated your 319 passes in 30 minutes, that's 5.6 seconds per pass on a decent sized pic. That's Quick!!! Graham

Another option is to play with the stainless steel material settings as this seems to be the only material that is material showing the red cast. Graham

This does not use photon mapping. I believe the color casting is more related to material & light settings. Many of those hardwood floor materials are set to "Polished", try changing to "Reflective", say around 6%. Graham

Here is a link that was recently posted to some very good tutorials on Raytracing. Well worth watching. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1909/ray-tracing-tips-and-techniques.html?playlist=103 Graham

Scott - I don't think you would need to increase your RAM. Best way to see is to open up the Windows Task Manager, it will tell you the % Ram utilization. On my system this never exceeds 7GB. Articles that I have read on RAM levels tend to indicate that having excess RAM has little or no benefit. I'm certain your 32GB is more than adequate. Graham

Not aware of any setting that allows you to lock a cameras position. Believe this has been requested in the past and would be a great feature. Graham

As Michael indicates, just open and close the cabinets DBX. Sometimes you need to also do this for the other cabinets in the same run and then the molding will rebuild. Also happens with attached light valances. Graham

Here is an example showing two under cabinet light configurations. The left uppers have spots adjusted to look like LED strips, the right bank uses spots to represent pucks. The difference is the cut off angle and number of lights, LED has 180 and double the light count, pucks are 90. Both have their direction set to -55 to angle them towards the backsplash. You may also need to play with the material settings for the backsplash and counter top to get the right level of reflectivity. Graham

Is there a particular reason you need the computer to go to sleep after the Raytraces are finished. You can set the screen to turn-off, this will not affect your Raytracing. Once the Raytraces are complete your system won't really be doing anything so it is just idling, not much power consumption if that is what you are trying to achieve. Graham

Go to a site like CPUBOSS and pull up some comparison charts on the CPU​'s you are interested in. The GeekBench Multi-core score is a reasonable number to indicate rendering performance. Graham

Mark - Yes, I find the softness with Photon Mapping a bit much and definetly not worth the added Raytracing time. The softness can be easliy and quickly simulated in Photoshop by adding a slight Gusian Blur, takes about 1 minute. As I have experimented, my Raytrace times have gone down while the quality of output has risen. The samples I posted are fairly high resolution, 2400 X 1200 px. The Photon off version takes about 30 minutes for 50 passes. At a resolution of 1200 X 600 the same scene runs in 10 minutes for 50 passes. Unless one wishes to zoom in or crop, there is not much visual difference between the two differing resolution. With the lower resolution I can usually tell within 10 passes (2 minutes) if things are going in the right direction. If I really need to move it along I could always knock down the resolution to say 600 X 300 bringing the Raytrace time down to about 3 minutes for 50 passes. Graham

Here is the Photon results. The first pic is my original from above posting. The 2nd pic was run with Photon Mapping "ON", everything else is the same. This Raytrace took almost 3 times longer to render the same number of passes as the original. Notice that the overall scene is less bright and the recessed lights and under cabinet lights appear to be less intense. The in-cabinet lights are now more intense. The 3rd pic is the 2nd pic with just a few adjustments made with the Image Properties in the Raytrace Dialog. Adjusted the brightness, contrast and intensity. If these settings are not enough then the lights will need to be adjusted and the Raytrace repeated. In general, the Photon Mapping tends to soften the scene. Painted surfaces take on a slight mottled appearance. Properly adjusted the scene is most likely more realistic. The issue is, is it worth the extra Raytrace time? Graham

Mark - No room divider, just one room. The opening between them uses a soffit to simulate a door opening. I am just running the same scene with Photon Mapping "On", will post shortly, just taking a bit longer as this setting requires more processing time. Graham

As far as I am aware, Photon Mapping should not effect whether or not a light shows, it is supposed to effect how light bounces around the room. Here is one I just ran, no Photon Mapping, just Ambient Occlusion and Direct Sunlight. All my lights are showing correctly. Graham

Use a poly line solid or custom counter top, they can be curved and their height can be set. Change material to match. Graham

It looks to be working properly. Just add some lights, there are no limits to the number of lights when Raytracing. The 8 light limit is just applicable to standard camera views. Graham

Terry - It's just interesting the look back at what some of us see as the good-ole-days. You have to admit that though technology has brought about many advances, it has also resulted in a certain personal disconnect, kind of reminds me of the "Borg" collective in Star Trek; highly advanced but impersonal. I am fascinated by technology, but do often question it's values and place. For all it is touted to bring, rockets still explode on launch and crash land, buildings are definitely more energy efficient but can barely last 25 years without constant on-going maintenance and retrofitting, our environment continues to decline and there is still no cure for cancer. On the bright side, I can be assured that a drone will deliver to my home my next order from Amazon. Graham