Computer upgrade feedback and suggestions

[paulchoate]

27 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Yes, I think that would be a win win situation. A dual approach would truly maximize your gains and just might save you some money.

 

Just another example, this ran in 1 minute and only needed 7 passes. I realize it is not magazine quality but for 1 minute of Ray Trace time I really find it hard to fault.

I REALLY need to watch the tutorials on ray tracing because I (more often than not) need AT LEAST two hours too get 7 passes. Occasionally my traces will be very fast but that's only when I just have a kitchen without foundation, roof, other rooms, etc.

[TheKitchenAbode]

1 minute ago, paulchoate said:

I REALLY need to watch the tutorials on ray tracing because I (more often than not) need AT LEAST two hours too get 7 passes. Occasionally my traces will be very fast but that's only when I just have a kitchen without foundation, roof, other rooms, etc.

 

I personally did not really find a lot of benefit from the tutorials, just spent a lot of time trying to identify(understand) the impact that different Ray Trace settings have and the different types of lights. The amount of structure does not really effect your Ray Trace times, it is dependent upon the type and number of lights you use, certain materials, Photon Mapping, Environment Lighting and Caustics.

 

I am not using any tricks, the scene I posted has 17 active lights, they are not faked. The materials are essentially as per their library settings, just some minor reflection adjustments. If I were to identify the most impactful thing it would have to be the lights, point versus spot, and their default library settings. I never use point lights and in almost all cases I significantly reduce the lights intensity.

[Renerabbitt]

32 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

 "The amount of structure does not really effect your Ray Trace times,"

I would check in with someone at Chief about this...most any rendering program I know works independently of the camera view...which is to say that it doesn't know not to reflect outside light off of the foundation or roof because the camera is inside. It will calc light for ALL materials including ambient light and ambient occlusion...in the program I use, I have to delete anything I don't need to contribute to the scene to speed up my renderings.

I believe their was a discussion about this years ago about turning off all lights that don't contribute to a scene.

BTW kitchenabode not being combative, totally admire your work and knowledge!

 

and Paul, will you setup a scene and post your plan, we can tweek it for you and tell you what we did to cut your time

53 minutes ago, paulchoate said:

 

 

[paulchoate]

1 minute ago, Renerabbitt said:

I would check in with someone at Chief about that...most any rendering program I know works independently of the camera view...which is to say that it doesn't know not to reflect outside light off of the foundation or roof because the camera is inside. It will calc light for ALL materials including ambient light and ambient occlusion...in the program I use, I have to delete anything I don't need to contribute to the scene to speed up my renderings.

I believe their was a discussion about this years ago about turning off all lights that don't contribute to a scene.

 

and Paul, will you setup a scene and post your plan, we can tweek it for you and tell you what we did to cut your time

 

That would be great...I'm actually working on it now. It's far from complete but I'll send over what I have shortly.  It's still in concept stage and I have to provide a few different layouts for my customers...once they choose the layout they like best I can refine and improve the concept (you guys know the drill lol). Thank you.

[paulchoate]

Here is a trace I just did: Two passes in 45 minutes. Now I'm gonna read up on ray tracing and get some pointers (my stainless steel always comes out looking black).

[TheKitchenAbode]

2 minutes ago, paulchoate said:

Here is a trace I just did: Two passes in 45 minutes. Now I'm gonna read up on ray tracing and get some pointers (my stainless steel always comes out looking black).

 

What is the pixel width & height of this? If you double the width & height the Trace will take 4 times longer.

[paulchoate]

I have no idea...I'll look into it (does a 4k monitor make a difference?)

[TheKitchenAbode]

3 minutes ago, paulchoate said:

I have no idea...I'll look into it (does a 4k monitor make a difference?)

 

It will be in the Ray Trace DBX under General and it will be displayed on your Ray Trace Image window, bottom right corner.

[paulchoate]

2996 x 1219

Edited June 29, 2017 by paulchoate
mistake

[limitless8]

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

[TheKitchenAbode]

1 minute ago, paulchoate said:

2996 x 1219

 

That's one of the reasons your traces take so long. I normally run at 1200 X 582, would maybe only run at a higher resolution on a final.

[paulchoate]

Thanks. I'm testing it out now at about that resolution (you'd think that by selecting the "quick" ray trace option it would automatically select a lower resolution.

[paulchoate]

And why are all my lights on except the two pendant lights over the island? I have them turned on in all views...can't figure this out now.

[limitless8]

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.

[limitless8]

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

[paulchoate]

Impressive...I gotta sub out to you lol

[TheKitchenAbode]

Last example for today. I loaded up the Grandview model from CA. This model is very complex with over 1.4 million surfaces.

 

This Ray Trace is as per their settings and lighting, just changed the size to 1200 X  582. It took 1 hour 24 minutes to run 20 passes.

 

This is the same scene same size using my lighting technique and settings. It took 6 minutes 44 seconds to run 20 passes.

 

I was able to reduce the Ray Trace time by 99% and in my opinion generate a better looking scene.

 

[Kbird1]

6 hours ago, paulchoate said:

I have no idea...I'll look into it (does a 4k monitor make a difference?)

 

By default CA uses the Window size , used in the View before you hit the RT Icon , that size is usually on the Status Bar at bottom right in the Camera View.

 

Best to "edit" the default CA settings in the RT DBX  to something about 1/2 the size ....

 

KB

[Kbird1]

2 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Last example for today. I loaded up the Grandview model from CA. This model is very complex with over 1.4 million surfaces.

 

This Ray Trace is as per their settings and lighting, just changed the size to 1200 X  582. It took 1 hour 24 minutes to run 20 passes.

 

This is the same scene same size using my lighting technique and settings. It took 6 minutes 44 seconds to run 20 passes.

 

I was able to reduce the Ray Trace time by 99% and in my opinion generate a better looking scene.

 

 

I'd agree , the 2nd image looks better to me too..  is there a post where you describe your setttings... other than no point lights?

 

 

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

11 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

 

I'd agree , the 2nd image looks better to me too..  is there a post where you describe your setttings... other than no point lights?

 

 

 

 

The Ray Trace settings are straight forward, I only used Ambient Occlusion min=0, max=1, Direct Sunlight 5 and Photon Mapping On. Made some adjustments to the Image Properties such as the Intensity & Contrast.

 

Certainly the key is dealing with those point lights. Just turning them off, though significantly speeding up your Ray Trace, will of course have a significant negative impact on the scenes appearance. This plan also uses a number of invisible 3D point lights and these must also be compensated for. It is unlikely that this compensation can be done by only using the existing visible spot lights such as the recessed ceiling cans. Certain materials such as polished surfaces and predefined metals rely heavily on highly scattered light for them to render properly and point lights are very good at providing this type of light. One needs to think about how the type of light a point light provides could be simulated with spotlights and made invisible so it can be used as a replacement for a 3D point light.

 

The next challenge is dealing with visible point light fixtures. Obviously if one just turns them off the result is going to be unacceptable, again one needs to think about how they can replace the existing point light with a spot light and adjust it to simulate the effect of a point light. Keep in mind that with light fixtures you can assign more than one light source to it so you may need to assign more than one spotlight, each with different settings/positions to get the right effect. It takes some experimentation to get a handle on it but once understood the benefits are significant. For example, if you have a lamp fixture with a shade that is open at the top and bottom you can assign one spot for the downward light and one for the upward light, each can be adjusted independent of the other to get the desired downward/upward look.

 

As I have tried to demonstrate, the really big benefit is a missive reduction in Ray Trace time. How many cores would one need to obtain the same time reduction I was able to achieve by just changing some lights?

[TheKitchenAbode]

The last thing left to speed up the Ray Trace is to turn off Photon Mapping. In doing so I needed to adjust my lights and some material properties such as the stainless steel to compensate for the lack of photon mapping. The benefit after doing this was that my Ray Trace time for 20 passes is now down to 4 minutes. To recap, I started with a scene that originally took 1 hour and 24 minutes to render 20 passes, by just changing light types, a few materials and some Ray Trace parameters the time has dropped to 4 minutes. Though not photorealistic it's still pretty good and more so if one considers that this output was attained in only 4 minutes, and if I take full advantage of having Photon Mapping turned off I get my scene in 39 seconds.

 

Photon Mapping Off, 20 passes, 4 minutes

 

Now one of the big advantages of turning off Photon Mapping is that your scene will clean up very fast. So do I really need to run 20 passes, not likely.

 

After 5 passes, 1 minute

 

After 3 passes, 39 seconds

[TheKitchenAbode]

Now that my Ray Trace time is around 30 seconds I can now run high resolution scenes and be able to crop the image for more drama and improved detail. This was cropped from a 4800 X 2338 px scene that ran in 9 minutes.

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

Last one, have to head out. I cropped in further, dropped it into Photoshop and simulated some depth of field.

[Kbird1]

Nicely done !  those are really nice despite not be Photorealistic . Thanks alot for spending the time to flesh out the concepts I have seen you talking about lately

 

I played around with the Grandview Model last night , and just turning off all the unused lights for the scene (view) in Rooms other than the Kitchen,

made a significant difference in the time for 20 passes  (2hrs + down to 13mins)  though of course it didn't look anything like yours above.

I guess I am going to have to keep playing with lighting and material defs etc till I get a better handle on it.

 

Would you mind posting a copy of your Grandview Plan so I can compare your light sources to the Original ?

 

Thanks.

[Renerabbitt]

2 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

Nicely done !  those are really nice despite not be Photorealistic . Thanks alot for spending the time to flesh out the concepts I have seen you talking about lately

 

I played around with the Grandview Model last night , and just turning off all the unused lights for the scene (view) in Rooms other than the Kitchen,

made a significant difference in the time for 20 passes  (2hrs + down to 13mins)  though of course it didn't look anything like yours above.

I guess I am going to have to keep playing with lighting and material defs etc till I get a better handle on it.

 

Would you mind posting a copy of your Grandview Plan so I can compare your light sources to the Original ?

 

Thanks.

 

So I've been plugging Thea render studio on this site namely because I want to see chiefs rendering capabilities get reworked by the programmers. As much as i love chief and all it offers, it still doesn't cut it for me for renderings.

from the point of me clicking the download button on Grandview to the second I typed up this post it has been 1 hour and 13 minutes. I made sure to use only stock textures and stock camera and light settings from the program, which means the only thing that took time was setting up lighting and cameras. I'm sure most people playing with this rendering took much longer just setting up chief. The render was a rough render at 4min and 42 seconds.

if I were producing this for a customer I would take 2 days on it and make it look photorealistic, it would be 4K résolution with depth of field, custom textures with bump/normal/reflectivity/microroughness/displacement maps and all the bells and whistles... Even at stock (poor) settings and textures, and no effort put in, this render and workflow still looks better than the best render chief can produce.