X14 and new PC build update and reat time ray tracing review.

[VisualDandD]

I went a few years without staying updated w/ software even though I kept up my SSA.   I finally decided to get caught up and figured that a new PC would be in order. (especially to use chief new rendering features, but I needed to do it regardless.  Been using Chief since 1997.   I remember back to the old Pov-Ray ray trace generators and it goes withou saying that I have seen the evolution of the program.

I know a lot of people ask how something performs, so I figure I would post my specs and give feedback.

 

Build.

i9 12900k

32gb ddr5 5200mhz

RTX3080Ti.  (I was waiting for the 3090 cards to come out but they just dont seem worth extra $$ over the 3080Ti so I went with cheap(er) version.

1tb PCIe 5000/4000 MB/s

3tb data drive 6Gb/s

 

So X14 runs very well.  The real time ray tracing works as well as one could hope with very little delay in rendering in the image.  That said, I am still not going to use it.   I noticed pretty quickly that it's quality is not what I would want.  Some things are really nice, but way too much garbage and trash elements of it that ruin it for me.  Shame as it might be nice to have it integrated but pretty much my reservations were confirmed.   Doing things 90% well...sucks frankly.

But I have been using TM for a while and Lumion going back to Lum 6.   Switched to TM few years back  and have not looked back. With the RTX card, it SMOKEs and cranking out images is very easy.   I will heat my office up quite nicely in the process   but that goes along with it.

 

I dont make a living rendering, but I like the option to do it.   I generally dont do 'photo realistic' as I dont think it suits my need for rendering.  I do more stylistic to show design themes.

So I feel great about the ability of the above spec to run Chief.   But disappointed in the built in rendering.   I am not surprised and always felt that chief should invest time in making a more functional program for the actual design professionals and const doc/ utility.   Have to give props as there are some nice additions, productivity wise, to the software that I appreciate for sure.  Dont see myself using their rendering engine.   

 

The old jack of all trades, master of none analogy.

 

But overall happy and just about make the full switch over to 14 on next project.  Just been migrating my templates and 'annotation sets' (I know they are not called that any more ;).    But some nice stuff that will be beneficial for sure. 

[Kbird1]

 

Unfortunately this is also my current feelings on Chief , I had high hopes for RTRT after using X12 and how good things were looking.

 

ConDocs just seem like a lot of work in CA  and I think they have forgotten who is using the Program on a daily basis ... to make a living....

 

The new 3D engine is even causing/having Issues for some of us doing Condocs since even elevations are "really 3D cameras" i.e. Wall Surface Triangles lines showing in Layout.

 

M.  

[VisualDandD]

Mick right?   I remember you for sure.  Very talented and creative.   Kinda went away from forum for a while.  Just in the grind and stayed super busy.   I spend too much time on car forums and workout ones, but I have always appreciated the talent on here for sure.

 

I do things in weird ways I guess.  But self taught everything and 25+ years in construction.  Got my start swinging a hammer many years ago, and been involved in all ends of construction.   Love design and found my way back here about 12 years ago.  Simple life and much more enjoyable.

Anyway, this is a project I am working on right now.  And how I use renderings.   Modern Med.   Client has 500k lake lot and worried about views.   I overlay GIS date of lake and inlet, mix with site topo and integrate models.     Mostly line stuff, but every once in a while I throw some textures on things, but dont want to distract them too much.

TM works great for me, and these took me less than 5 min to set up and processed in less than a minute.

 

 

[VisualDandD]

Few more...

 

Obviously you can see the ariel imagery in a mesh over terrain.  If I wanted to really make it look good, I could populate with vegetation, but it serves it's intended purpose. 

[HumbleChief]

29 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

Unfortunately this is also my current feelings on Chief , I had high hopes for RTRT after using X12 and how good things were looking.

 

The new 3D engine is even causing/having Issues for some of us doing Condocs since even elevations are "really 3D cameras" i.e. Wall Surface Triangles lines showing in Layout.

...and you're trying to talk me in to a new 3070? 

[Kbird1]

32 minutes ago, HumbleChief said:

...and you're trying to talk me in to a new 3070? 

 

Sure , on sale again today , see your thread......

 

I am still hoping for the best of course !

 

just a tad disappointed at the moment... 

[Kbird1]

46 minutes ago, VisualDandD said:

Few more...

 

Obviously you can see the ariel imagery in a mesh over terrain.  If I wanted to really make it look good, I could populate with vegetation, but it serves it's intended purpose. 

 

 

 

Nice as always  J.    

 

Have you given Chief's new CLAY Camera a go?   it may suit your needs....

 

Mick.

[VisualDandD]

1 hour ago, Kbird1 said:

 

 

Nice as always  J.    

 

Have you given Chief's new CLAY Camera a go?   it may suit your needs....

 

Mick.

I did play with it a little.   It might be something I use.  Still have not spent a ton of time in 14 as I am still working on getting my defaults the way I want them.

Also got rid my Logitech g13 pad and added a stream deck XL for all my chief functions.  My son bult me a 60& keyboard and I got a separate hot swap num pad so I could really configure my work area the way I want.   My son is into gaming, so he had me try out all these different types of switches...etc.  It was fun for both of us.

 

I will dig deeper into X14 when I start working in it full time. 

 

Appreciate the comments and insight for sure.  

@HumbleChiefAs for the 3070, my son has one in his box.  I borrowed it a few times to explore some of the RTX features.   In TM the 3070 does full ray trace really well.   When I fired it up with the 3080 Ti, it was next level.  Like amazing.   If I could give any advice, the 3080Ti is well worth the leap if you can justify it.   I kept my last box for over 6 years.   Looking at the cost difference over time I will probably keep this new one, it was  a no-brainer.   I could not however justify the 3090 as it really is not that much faster. 

[HumbleChief]

57 minutes ago, VisualDandD said:

I

@HumbleChiefAs for the 3070, my son has one in his box.  I borrowed it a few times to explore some of the RTX features.   In TM the 3070 does full ray trace really well.   When I fired it up with the 3080 Ti, it was next level.  Like amazing.   If I could give any advice, the 3080Ti is well worth the leap if you can justify it.   I kept my last box for over 6 years.   Looking at the cost difference over time I will probably keep this new one, it was  a no-brainer.   I could not however justify the 3090 as it really is not that much faster. 

Not sure when/if I'll play with RTRT as it really doesn't fit my business model very well as I haven't RayTraced for years. Nice work with TM on the posted images.

[VisualDandD]

31 minutes ago, HumbleChief said:

Not sure when/if I'll play with RTRT as it really doesn't fit my business model very well as I haven't RayTraced for years. Nice work with TM on the posted images.

Thanks.  My stuff is not rendering either, but the vid card does so much within chief.   I use a lot of vector view to do my exterior edits and that can really bog down system at times on large complex plans.

 

I just picked up a 3060 card to throw in my old box because I am going to turn it into our sim box to run our car sim.  Currently we steal my sons PC for it with his 3070,   We run 3 1440p monitors at 144hz and the 3060 will actually drive them well of the software we run.  (mainly asseto corsa)

So upgrading my work pc will have some benefits that I can run the car sim as we approach track days for practice now without waiting for my son to get off. So there is double benefit to getting new pc!   This is my Son prepping for VIR.  He just turned 15, but got to run the full course (in real life) twice as a 14 year old.  Not many kids can say that! 

 

 

 

[SteveT]

I'll just pile on here and concur: I was very excited about hardware raytracing until I saw that the quality is nowhere near what you get with CPU-based raytracing. If they got these on par with each other then we might have something. Until then this is a waste of time.

 

And since I'm "not that kind of architect" (software, 30 years), I'd express a fear that the quality may never get to the level of CPU raytracing because that's not what these cards are meant to do: they are made for gaming which is a realm where "almost" is perfectly fine. I could be wrong here, but I have a bad feeling about this.

 

 

 

[Renerabbitt]

31 minutes ago, SteveT said:

I'll just pile on here and concur: I was very excited about hardware raytracing until I saw that the quality is nowhere near what you get with CPU-based raytracing. If they got these on par with each other then we might have something. Until then this is a waste of time.

 

And since I'm "not that kind of architect" (software, 30 years), I'd express a fear that the quality may never get to the level of CPU raytracing because that's not what these cards are meant to do: they are made for gaming which is a realm where "almost" is perfectly fine. I could be wrong here, but I have a bad feeling about this.

 

 

 

I beg to differ:
 

[VisualDandD]

@Renerabbitt  Super nice stuff.   Your stuff looks impressive for sure.  I like seeing your stuff.  I was watching your template you were selling and find your approach very interesting. But our approaches to the software are so very different.  Interesting to see the way we approach things.    

 

It might be interesting to see the way guys in a vacuum have all developed their stuff.  I use a lot of line custom walls that are color and line by layer and those layer sets change in different annotation sets.   I never got much into playing with saved plan views, but might explore at some point.  But just cool to see your approach.  

 

Nice work!

[SHCanada2]

as a somewhat new person to CA, (been at it for a year and a half) I don't understand the approach comment. Rene seems to be able to get good ray tracing, but others cannot.

 

What does that have to do with an approach? 

 

I'm confused

 

Please all, enlighten me.

 

For what I think was my second attempt at ray tracing, with some help from people here, I thought it turned out pretty darn good, but maybe I'm missingsomething

[Renerabbitt]

35 minutes ago, jasonn1234 said:

For what I think was my second attempt at ray tracing, with some help from people here, I thought it turned out pretty darn good, but maybe I'm missingsomething

this is not a PBR RTRT correct? But yes looks great for a PBR, great job, truly
Love the medical equipment, totally translates the design

[SteveT]

53 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

this is not a PBR RTRT correct? But yes looks great for a PBR, great job, truly
Love the medical equipment, totally translates the design

 

I actually don't know what any of those acronyms mean. Maybe that's why your post doesn't make sense to me? When I used hardware raytracing, the results... sorta sucked. And I have a pretty darn recent card (that peaked out at $1500 during the pandemic).

 

 

[Renerabbitt]

25 minutes ago, SteveT said:

I actually don't know what any of those acronyms mean. Maybe that's why your post doesn't make sense to me? When I used hardware raytracing, the results... sorta sucked. And I have a pretty darn recent card (that peaked out at $1500 during the pandemic).

 

Physically Based Realtime Rendering, which utilizes your RTX card if you have one. This were all renderings done in Chief.
There is a pretty detailed post about techniques here if you click on the top heading(not the 2nd heading):

 

[Kbird1]

On 5/6/2022 at 7:28 PM, SteveT said:

 

I actually don't know what any of those acronyms mean. Maybe that's why your post doesn't make sense to me? When I used hardware raytracing, the results... sorta sucked. And I have a pretty darn recent card (that peaked out at $1500 during the pandemic).

 

 

 

If you are still on the Mini Mac in your signature Steve it can not use the new PBR - RTRT (Physically Based Rendering - Real Time Raytracing ) , it is not supported on the Mac as it uses DirectX12 and Nvidia/AMD RTX Series Cards, although you should have the original X12 PBR in X13 which has some downsides compared to the old CPU Raytracing especially on Glass surfaces but can't be beat for speed.

 

PBR Render is highly dependent on Lighting , and the lighting/material properties, but it does not look good in CPU Raytracing usually due to the two different rendering engines, so if you are going to spent the time Lighting a scene you need to pick which way you are going to go.

 

It's a bit of an Artform and why some guys can make a living doing it

 

 

M.

[SteveT]

38 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

 

If you are still on the Mini Mac in your signature Steve it can not use the new PBR - RTRT (Physically Based Rendering - Real Time Raytracing ) , it is not supported on the Mac as it uses DirectX12 and Nvidia/AMD RTX Series Cards, although you should have the original X12 PBR in X13 which has some downsides compared to the old CPU Raytracing especially on Glass surfaces but can't be beat for speed.

 

PBR Render is highly dependent on Lighting , and the lighting/material properties for it does not look good in CPU Raytracing , so if you are going to spent he time Lighting a scene you need to pick which way you are going to go.

 

It's a bit of an Artform and why some guys can make a living doing it

 

 

M.

 

I have a PC available to me to do testing with CA13, so yeah, I'm doing PBRRTRT :-). My PC has an RTX 2070. Maybe not quite the super card you guys have, but I would think I'd get the same results you'd get but a tad slower. But I'm getting nothing of the sort :-(.

 

I'll take a look at Rene Rabbit's thread above. Maybe I'm doing this all wrong...

 

 

 

 

[Kbird1]

6 minutes ago, SteveT said:

 

I have a PC available to me to do testing with CA13, so yeah, I'm doing PBRRTRT :-). My PC has an RTX 2070. Maybe not quite the super card you guys have, but I would think I'd get the same results you'd get but a tad slower. But I'm getting nothing of the sort :-(.

 

I'll take a look at Rene Rabbit's thread above. Maybe I'm doing this all wrong...

 

 

My Laptop has the 2070 Super and the final result is the same but it takes almost? twice as long as my 3080Ti  ( 2min 7sec vs 1min 9sec.) on the same Scene in testing recently though it is a mobile Version of the 2070Super not the desktop version and uses about 1/4 of the wattage, ( 115w max vs 450w max)  so not bad considering.

 

( No Offense meant R.)  I don't think Rene's images are 60 Sec PBR RTRT's either, ie Open Camera, Boom, DONE, ..... or that he is using Chief's generic Materials, Lighting etc. I have no problem with that perse, you use the skills you have, and the Images are good, though I still see the "grain" on large flat surfaces like Walls and Ceilings, as I do in my own PBR RT's but the Grain is not on Rene, that is on the new Astral 3D Engine.

Rene is highly proficient with Thea, Blender, TM etc and with making PBR Materials, along with Photoshop if I am not mistaken looking at the Images...... which is all to say the average everyday User of X13 or X14 is not going to get anywhere close to those images "off the cuff", as there is likely also substantial time put into lighting, material definitions/properties, etc, etc before the PBR Camera was ever opened.

 

M.

 

 

[Kbird1]

1 hour ago, jasonn1234 said:

I don't understand the approach comment. Rene seems to be able to get good ray tracing, but others cannot.

 

What does that have to do with an approach? 

 

I'm confused

 

He is not referring to Rene's Approach to PBR RT's in particular, but in how Rene Uses and Interacts with Chief I believe........

not your average Users methodology  

 

M. 

[MarkMc]

I'm fine with RTRT and so are my clients. I tired for a bit to get decent interior CPU RTs to no avail. Could manage an exterior so so but way too much time spent. None of my clients want to spend extra for them but they do like getting them So I just do pretty down and dirty. No where near what Rene or some others do but not much effort either.

I did fiddle with TM for an hour or two, and some other freebie, have a copy of Thea that I don't use (Rene was kind enough to give me an hour tutor but Alpha with PBR came out a week later and I never looked back)

Point is since nobody wants to pay extra, I'm not willing to deal with perfect material matches, and RTRT fits easily in my work flow (doubt I spend an hour a job at it for 3 or 4 of them) I'm happy enough.

A few grabbed at random, not super but clients were satisfied so I could just deal with the rest of the job, the part I get paid for.

The bathroom did not convince my clients client to NOT do that, to each his own.

[dskogg]

I think there is always room for improvement in construction documents and stairs…

 

But the rtrt is awesome.. everything starts with a vision and design.. to be able to produce quality rtrt in minutes is amazing.

 

check out these photos of design through to finished product..

[dskogg]

Ensuite design

 

[SHCanada2]

17 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

this is not a PBR RTRT correct? But yes looks great for a PBR, great job, truly

..well I think it is ... doesnt the little check box on the right mean it is?