Computer upgrade feedback and suggestions

[TheKitchenAbode]

Rene - Some excellent points that one needs to seriously consider concerning rendering and whether or not to pursue Ray Trace or move to another rendering engine such as Thea. I completely agree that CA should really take a hard look this and improve it's rendering capabilities and ease of use to provide more consistent results. When it comes to the Ray Trace engine I see two core issues, one is definitely the default light settings, maybe I'm missing something but they do not seem to be conducive to getting something half decent right out of the box. The other one is the quality of the 3 models, they seem to be improving but so many of them are too basic which obviously undermines realism.

 

What is significant in all of this is deciding on what level of realism does one need. From a personal perspective I obviously want the best however, from a business perspective it's more complicated, do my clients expect or need this and is the time or effort worth it, which of course will vary for every user. For myself, the answer to this is no. They need a reasonable 3D visualization but it does not need to be ready for the cover of Architectural Digest. As I do not make money as a direct result of rendering it is important to minimize the time spent on this. On a typical kitchen project I would normally render 4-5 scenes and over the course of design there could be as many as 10 iterations, this equates to potentially having to render between 40 - 50 scenes, If each scene were to take an hour then 1 week of time would be consumed just to render. As this is totally unacceptable my focus has been to get this time down to the minimum. I believe that through my postings I have been able to demonstrate that is very achievable using the Ray Trace engine given that one is willing to take the time to better understand and work within this engines strengths and weaknesses.

 

Even if CA is not willing to expend the effort to revamp the Ray Trace engine, I really think they do a disservice by the way they have things setup. If I was evaluating CA through the sample gallery plans and attempted to render something I would not be impressed at all by the time and the quality achieved for that time. If I have to wait 2 or 3 hours then the output better blow me away. If that is not achievable then it needs to render something of reasonable quality really fast. In the rendering game it's one or the other there just no place in the middle. We all know that the Ray Trace engine as it exist is unlikely to ever produce the quality of say Thea, but I have clearly demonstrated that it can produce some reasonable(subjective) scenes very fast. Why CA does not focus on this is beyond my comprehension.

 

Some minor adjustments to make my scene closer to yours. Obviously there will be some differences as this is a night scene, just forgot to turn off the direct sun.

[yusuf-333]

21 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Rene - Some excellent points that one needs to seriously consider concerning rendering and whether or not to pursue Ray Trace or move to another rendering engine such as Thea. I completely agree that CA should really take a hard look this and improve it's rendering capabilities and ease of use to provide more consistent results. When it comes to the Ray Trace engine I see two core issues, one is definitely the default light settings, maybe I'm missing something but they do not seem to be conducive to getting something half decent right out of the box. The other one is the quality of the 3 models, they seem to be improving but so many of them are too basic which obviously undermines realism.

 

What is significant in all of this is deciding on what level of realism does one need. From a personal perspective I obviously want the best however, from a business perspective it's more complicated, do my clients expect or need this and is the time or effort worth it, which of course will vary for every user. For myself, the answer to this is no. They need a reasonable 3D visualization but it does not need to be ready for the cover of Architectural Digest. As I do not make money as a direct result of rendering it is important to minimize the time spent on this. On a typical kitchen project I would normally render 4-5 scenes and over the course of design there could be as many as 10 iterations, this equates to potentially having to render between 40 - 50 scenes, If each scene were to take an hour then 1 week of time would be consumed just to render. As this is totally unacceptable my focus has been to get this time down to the minimum. I believe that through my postings I have been able to demonstrate that is very achievable using the Ray Trace engine given that one is willing to take the time to better understand and work within this engines strengths and weaknesses.

 

Even if CA is not willing to expend the effort to revamp the Ray Trace engine, I really think they do a disservice by the way they have things setup. If I was evaluating CA through the sample gallery plans and attempted to render something I would not be impressed at all by the time and the quality achieved for that time. If I have to wait 2 or 3 hours then the output better blow me away. If that is not achievable then it needs to render something of reasonable quality really fast. In the rendering game it's one or the other there just no place in the middle. We all know that the Ray Trace engine as it exist is unlikely to ever produce the quality of say Thea, but I have clearly demonstrated that it can produce some reasonable(subjective) scenes very fast. Why CA does not focus on this is beyond my comprehension.

 

Some minor adjustments to make my scene closer to yours. Obviously there will be some differences as this is a night scene, just forgot to turn off the direct sun.

Graham 

Very nice!! Your in depth knowledge to raytracing is much appreciated.

Thanks for sharing, very helpful.

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

14 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.

 

Hi KB - I have just been using the Grandview plan here because it is very complex and as such it would be a good way to demonstrate how impactful some minor changes could have. From a learning perspective this plan is way too complex and due to some other issues, such as the 3D model rebuilding, it is frustrating to work in. I will take a look through the CA sample gallery to find a much simpler plan that we could work with. I do need to say that just looking at my lights may be of limited value, what's most important is to understand why they are set the way they are and how do you change them to get the look you wish to achieve.

 

Really the best way to work through this is to create a very simple room, do not add a lot of complexity as it will just add too many variable. Place a light that you wish to explore, say a recessed spot light and work through how it effects things as you make adjustments to the light and adjustments to the Ray Trace settings. For the recessed light, focus on the intensity, drop rate, cone angle and shadows on & off, leave the other settings alone. In the Ray Trace settings focus on the Ambient Occlusion min/max and the effect of having Photon Mapping on or off. I would not play with the material properties at this time and have found that most of the materials render reasonable well given the proper light settings. You need to do this in a systematic way, otherwise you will loose track of what settings do what. A very important item to study is the effect of turning Photon Mapping on or off. if for example you have set your light to look good when you render with Photon Mapping off then when you turn it on you will likely be disappointed with the result. Activating Photon Mapping is not a simple one click to a better rendering. From my experience you will need to adjust your lights intensity to get the best result from having Photon Mapping on, this usually means reducing the lights intensity. When I Photon Map it would be rare that a lights intensity would be more than 30% and many of my lights would be below 10%. Take note of the time it takes to render and how many passes are needed to obtain a decent result. Also, make sure you have a roof on your room and a foundation with a floor, otherwise you are going to encounter some sever light bleed issues which mess up your results.

[Renerabbitt]

57 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Expanding further on Thea and to clarify, it took an hour to setup the entire house...the outside lighting environment has been established, the materials in the house set, all lights(what chief calls "lighting white") have been set to emissive surfaces, and I have grouped them by room, and the global camera settings have been set(35mm lense at a focus distance of 15 ft and f stop at 5.6 iso at 600 shutter speed 64 with ambient occlusion turned to 7).

Now that I set that up I can pull any render from any view point including spherical/parallel and panarama.

This means that I can pull any shot in that 4 min time, where as chief you would have to setup every room. 

[TheKitchenAbode]

Rene - I know in the past that I have suggested that CA should allow us to individual associate both lights and Ray Trace settings for each camera, and having a personal interest in photography it would be great to have camera settings such as ISO, Exposure, f stop, shutter speed and different lens types.

 

Maybe at the end of the day CA should just trash the Ray Trace engine and just license a plugin version of Thea.

[Renerabbitt]

16 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Rene - I know in the past that I have suggested that CA should allow us to individual associate both lights and Ray Trace settings for each camera, and having a personal interest in photography it would be great to have camera settings such as ISO, Exposure, f stop, shutter speed and different lens types.

 

Maybe at the end of the day CA should just trash the Ray Trace engine and just license a plugin version of Thea.

I think it would really push the software forward, and the community as well. I've certainly noticed a buzz around the community with what chief has done with the raytrace in x9, so many people asking for computer upgrade information. If raytrace stays the standard then it will be left behind its competitors. I don't even design my palette in chief anymore. I put blocks of different color in the room so I can use the big collection of materials I created in Thea.

Yesterday I did my first import into sketchfab and it took less than an hour to get what I would consider a very decent scene, much better than I could produce in chief. My client was thrilled.

I know its a tall order, chief obviously has a lot more on its plate than just the raytrace engine, but the next request would be to make its exporting capabilities better suited for third party software. If they teamed up and saw benefit they may even acquire another company.

I will say again your knowledge, and input are very much appreciated Graham, and I think your work is top notch...my raytrace frustrations are with the software, amidst a TON of praises for its other capabilities

 

We totally hijacked this thread...sorry mods!

 

Here's the sketchfab scene:

https://skfb.ly/68WAs

[TheKitchenAbode]

12 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

We totally hijacked this thread...sorry mods!

 

 

Yes, my apologies also to the OP. Was not my original intention to go off subject this much. My objective was to demonstrate that one does not necessarily need the most powerful computer on the planet to Ray Trace and when considering an upgrade that this should be given due consideration.

[Kbird1]

1 hour ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Yes, my apologies also to the OP. Was not my original intention to go off subject this much. My objective was to demonstrate that one does not necessarily need the most powerful computer on the planet to Ray Trace and when considering an upgrade that this should be given due consideration.

 

Yes , partly my fault too , but this discussion has shown even on my Old i7-950 system I can cut the render time down significantly and still get images good enough for most of my Clients... Like Graham I don't get paid for Renders.....

 

And one final thing....at one time Chief used POV Ray as their Render Engine I think?, but the ability to even export to POV was removed in X9. Not sure why they went their Own way , perhaps cos' not many used that Option?

[paulchoate]

Really nice. Those quality ray traces used to take me at least 6 hours...I'm getting better. Thank you.

[pazzfam]

This thread got my attention  I am a builder /  draftsman and I love the quick 3d looks for customers I am trying to show space and furniture room to walk around 

I have never used ray trace could never get anyone to pay for. I always tell clients to get pictures in the past but with Houz it is unlimited. to get exactly what they like.

I am working on a very expensive spec  and the group of investors would like a few quality renderings which I am not capable of.  The conversation here is seem to be with a program Thea Is that extremely hard to learn . The software I have researched  was Lumiom which I called and they said it would work with Chief.  Another program that looked to good to be true was pool studio So when I called them to see if I could import the house I drew in chief then add pool and decks which it could not  be done. So my question is are these  rendering programs hard to learn? If I wanted someone to render for me do I post on this board or the board for services.    

 

Thanks Adam

 

[DRAWZILLA]

Just do it within Chief, I doubt any layperson  will see the difference. Chief does a very nice job of it. Just learn it.

[dshall]

1 hour ago, DRAWZILLA said:

Just do it within Chief, I doubt any layperson  will see the difference. Chief does a very nice job of it. Just learn it.

 

That is the easiest way to get what you want.

 

 

[Renerabbitt]

21 hours ago, pazzfam said:

This thread got my attention  I am a builder /  draftsman and I love the quick 3d looks for customers I am trying to show space and furniture room to walk around 

I have never used ray trace could never get anyone to pay for. I always tell clients to get pictures in the past but with Houz it is unlimited. to get exactly what they like.

I am working on a very expensive spec  and the group of investors would like a few quality renderings which I am not capable of.  The conversation here is seem to be with a program Thea Is that extremely hard to learn . The software I have researched  was Lumiom which I called and they said it would work with Chief.  Another program that looked to good to be true was pool studio So when I called them to see if I could import the house I drew in chief then add pool and decks which it could not  be done. So my question is are these  rendering programs hard to learn? If I wanted someone to render for me do I post on this board or the board for services.    

 

Thanks Adam

 

Lumion,Thea,Artlantis all have similar workflows, it took me a day to start producing rendering's in Thea, they have a very thorough manual and a few test scenes to reverse engineer the process and figure the program out. Just like any program it will take a while to learn all of the tips and tricks.

Like Mr Scott Hall and Perry said, if your client needs some basic visuals chief will do the job, else contract someone to do it. Myself and a handful of others on these forums offer a variety of different render packages.

...Back on point to the topic heading, Thea is one of the only rendering company's that utilizes both the CPU and GFX card...even with liquid cooling I am constantly checking in on my system during a 6 hour render

[pazzfam]

Appreciate all the feed back I do not have time to do my own (learn) renderings also may need help with design elements in the house. I need to work on project this week then I will be able to post it to get quotes  

thanks Adam