TheKitchenAbode Posted May 19, 2015 Author Share Posted May 19, 2015 Graham, What tweaks did you apply? The goal here is to determine the optimum settings in both CA and our respective Hardware to obtain maximum result. Post a screen capture before you stop the render so we can see the TIME, PASSES and SIZE from the bottom of the screen. Beautiful image!! Thanks, Hi Scott, Over the years I have found two things that really impact on Raytrace times. One is the number of lights and more importantly the type of light. The tweaks I performed was to turn of all lights that were not important to the scene, this reduced the lights on to about 8. The other more important one was to get rid of those point lights, even one will slow down rendering 8 to 10 fold. The sconces beside the mirror are points, changed them to spots. There are also several 3d cameras pointing towards the mirror walls, these are also points, changed them to spots. Made some adjustment to these to create a similar effect as a point light. If you do this with your machine I suspect your Raytrace time per pass will be in the seconds. To make the sconces appear lite I cranked up the emissivity on the glass, around 70%. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 I'm running mine now but is doesn't look as bright as yours. What are your RAY TRACE Setting in PREFERENCES? What lights do you have on and did you change something in the lighting? I have 24 cores running at 100% at 2.4 GHZ 32 GB of DDR4 ECC RAM GeForce 980 4 GB RAM ...not making the same rate as you so there must be something different in your settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 19, 2015 Author Share Posted May 19, 2015 Hi Scott - I have the Raytrace settings as follows: Use Camera View Settings "OFF" Use Ambient Occlusion "On". Min .3, Max 1 Direct Sunlight 5.0 Enable Environmental Light "Off" Photon Mapping "Off" Size is 1630 X 791 300 pixels/inch Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 No turning the plants and trees off!!!!! I noticed they were missing from the fence line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 19, 2015 Author Share Posted May 19, 2015 Here is my last run. See screen capture below. All lights are off, just using 8 3D Spot cameras to light the scene. This did 10 passes in 8 minutes 56 sec, that's 54 seconds per pass. Probably about as good as I will ever get on my machine. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Never setup "3D Spot Cameras". Hum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 19, 2015 Author Share Posted May 19, 2015 Just ran again. This time 30 passes, 26 minutes 28 seconds. 57 seconds per pass. Was doing some other work at the time, likely a smidge slower due to multi-tasking. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 You should write a Rendering lesson! With all those adjustments I can't wait to see my system will do! I have think 24 cores at the same speed as your quad should really hum! I may write back for a few more tips. Forget stressing the system! Sounds like you unlocked the key to high speed quality raytracing! Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 You should write a Rendering lesson! With all those adjustments I can't wait to see my system will do! I have think 24 cores at the same speed as your quad should really hum! I may write back for a few more tips. Forget stressing the system! Sounds like you unlocked the key to high speed quality raytracing! Thanks Hi Scott, I would not under estimate the value of your system. From the preliminary results when Raytracing this plan as is you did 10 passes in 1 hour, 45 minutes. On my system it took 54 minutes to do just 1 pass. Your pushing this through at least 6 times faster. Also, there is no way I could run such a scene on my system, it would take about 10 hours. There is also another important advantage with your system. As my designs reach completion I have to refine color & texture, as we all know there is often a significant difference as to how these appear in a regular camera view versus a Raytrace. To get these right I need to run a Raytrace, usually about 2 or 3 passes. Even with my tweaks this takes about 2 to 3 minutes. In most cases it may take 4 or 5 adjustments per color or texture, combine this with maybe 8 different important materials to adjust and you can see how this time can really add up. For my work these lighting tweaks are more than acceptable, however there are members who may not have this option. I believe Jon is a prime example of this as it appears he is producing images for print/publication. This would require the utmost accuracy and quality and a system that allows this to be achieved in as efficient manner as possible. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_Park Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Ray trace performance is highly effected by the size of the image and the number of lights. All other settings being equal number of pixels wide X number of pixels high X number of lights will tend to be the primary multiplier in the cost of a ray trace. Note that model complexity, while a factor, becomes a minor contributor as the number of pixels and number of lights increase. Other settings can also have a huge effect, for example photon mapping is costly. The smaller the image the more some of the other costs tend to effect performance. But a good test is to do a ray trace, then cut the image size by 2 in each direction. This should result in a nearly 4X improvement in speed since the number of pixels is 1/4 of what you started with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 Doug, I have mentioned in this and in other postings that point lights for some reason have a very negative effect on Raytrace times. Even one in a plan will degrade performance significantly. I never use point lights for this reason, only spot lights. For me they are the most significant item concerning Raytrace time. I have also found that some materials can cause problems, not sure why but some polished items and some metals. I always change polished to reflective and alter metals to general type material. The other factor concerns shadows turned on with lights. I try to minimize how many lights have this turned on. In most cases it is not necessary to have every light generating a shadow. One or two or just a 3D light will usually do the trick. You can see from the Raytrace times I have posted above that by adjusting these items alone I was able to drop the Raytrace time from 54 minutes per pass down to under 1 minute per pass. I could never get that improvement level no matter how much hardware I threw at it. What surprises me the most is that I am not hearing from any other member as to their experience concerning these items or whether they are able to confirm this on their systems. Raytrace times are for many of us a real issue and as such I believe it is important to nail this down once and for all. Keep in mind that potential new users of Chief run the trail version and scan this forum, if I was evaluating this software and ran a Raytrace on the Riverstone example I would not be impressed at all. These renderings are extremely important to my clients and my sales, and the ability to generate them as rapidly as possible is equally important to the sales of Chief Architect. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_Park Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 I know that we would all like ray trace times to be faster. However, we should put this in perspective. Ray tracing is one of a class of algorithms, like weather forecasting, computational dynamics, and a number of other engineering algorithms, that require massive computational horsepower. Traditionally these types of operations were limited to those that had access to super computers. I once did an estimate of how long a ray trace would run based on Moore's Law and ran it back to the early 90's. If I recall correctly assuming that a pre 1990 computer had the memory and other necessary hardware to do a ray trace and assuming you could keep it running. A ray trace that we do today that takes a couple of minutes, would still be running. It is important to appreciate that this class of computational problem is at the limit of what can be done on today's hardware. And while there are things that we can do, such as leveraging the GPU to do some computations, the algorithms involved are very expensive computationally. Bottom line it is expensive but it will get faster over time. Ray tracing, conceptually, computes a ray from each light source to each pixel in the model. It then, depending on the properties of the material, extends that ray based on reflection and refraction on to the next pixel until some limit is reached where the light contribution becomes insignificant or it hits some limit in number of bounces. In reality the rays run the other direction from the camera to the pixels and then on toward the light sources, but I like to think of it as going the other direction. This is a highly simplistic explanation, the actual explanation is much more complex. Given that description it should be easy to see that a spot light that doesn't shine in all directions will have fewer pixels in the model that it will effect. Also, highly reflective surfaces allow the light to travel further and will increase the number of pixels that are affected by the light source. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 Doug, From a programing perspective I understand enough and appreciate the complexities involved. What I am driving at is why there appears to be a lack of any definitive information as to the relative impact on Raytrace times for a given set of parameters. For example, I just ran the following comparison. 1630 x 791 @ 300 pi = 8:47 minutes, 15 passes 1630 x 791 @ 1200 pi = 8:57 minutes, 15 passes 1630 x 791 @ 4800 pi = 9:46 minutes, 15 passes I was expecting the times to have increased according to the p/i density count increase. Took these pics into Photoshop and realized that the images were not really being generated at a higher p/i for the set size. The pics were being resized downward as the p/i increased and as such there was no purpose in increasing the p/i, which explains why the times were not effected. This may have been the programmers intent but I am certain that most users do not interpret increasing p/i in this manner. My assumption was that the resolution for that size was being increased and as such the image could be enlarged without suffering significant loss in quality. Just a simple example that only took about 1/2hr to investigate. I am certain that other users have done similar investigations/comparisons, still baffled as to why the answers seem to be so elusive. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis_Gavin Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Graham, Are you able to get the effect you want when using spots instead of point lights? I could see maybe using a 3D point light in conjunction with 3 pendants over an island with 3D light to make up the upward light Never played with lighting with that kind of an approach in mind. Do you have some set approaches that you use to create the right effect while limiting the number of point lights? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 Hi Dennis, I change all point lights to either spot or off. Say for example you have a wall sconce point light, if you aim a 3D spot light with shadows off at the wall sconce light and adjust the angle & drop off rate you can simulate the lighting effect on the wall behind the point light. To make the wall sconce appear on increase the fixtures emissivity to make it look bright. That's what I did in the Riverstone bathroom renders. Also used 3D spot lights between the ceiling beams to create the downward light effect. From my testing you have to turn-off all point lights in the plan, even having one turned on will really slow down your Raytrace. Best is to just use a very simple plan with one or two lights. Raytrace with all lights off. This is likely as fast a trace as you will every get. Then make the light(s) a spot and run the Raytrace. Then change it to point light(s) and run a Raytrace. I think you will see a big difference in times. No need to run more than a few passes as for a given scene every pass takes the same length of time. Let me know if this helps. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Just ran again. This time 30 passes, 26 minutes 28 seconds. 57 seconds per pass. Was doing some other work at the time, likely a smidge slower due to multi-tasking. Graham Graham, At the risk of beating this horse to death. I have tried everything I can think of and my image looks nothing like yours. I would very much appreciate it if you would share your settings for this one scene. I've done all of what you suggested (that I understand) but mainly turning off all lights. I changed all the bathroom lights to SPOT. My render times are great. currently but look at the image. Thanks, Some images to show my settings Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 27, 2015 Author Share Posted May 27, 2015 Hi Scott, I am only on my tablet right now but it looks as if there are no lights turned on in the bathroom or the direction angle is not correct or the watts are to low. From the other DBX shots the settings appear to be correct. What I will do is zip up my plan file and you can explore the lighting I setup. This is on my system at the studio so I will not be able to send it until tomorrow morning. When you run this I would be really interested in the time to render. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcaffee Posted May 28, 2015 Share Posted May 28, 2015 Scott, Set "Software Edge Smoothing" to 0--let your expensive hardware do the work it was designed for. Also, under "Ambient Light", set your color to a mid or dark gray if you'd like shadows more apparent. Keep lighting simple to start. Turn off all fixtures and add two User Defined Lights (UDL); one in front of the camera, and one behind. Play with the height, type, color, and intensity of these two lights. This is a learning exercise that teaches you how pure light behaves in CA. Good luck, jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 28, 2015 Author Share Posted May 28, 2015 Scott - Here's the Riverstone plan with my camera settings. Just open the bathroom camera (identified in red) and run a Raytrace. The Raytrace is set to run 10 passes. After you can adjust the intensity, contrast, saturation, etc. Also recommend you try the suggestions provided above by Jon. He has a lot of experience with this and from the posted images from him that I have seen it really shows. Graham Riverstone_Abode.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 28, 2015 Share Posted May 28, 2015 Graham, There is a missing textures in your file I do not have C:\Users\Graham\Documents\Chief Architect Premier X7 Data\Textures\Stainless Steel Library_Mick.zip#zip:Shiny Stainless.jpg which don't have. I searched and cannot locate it on my system so I can only assume it is a personal added Texture. Jon, "UDL" Lights? I assume you mean "Light sources"? If so, what type do you suggest, Point, Parallel...to create ambient right? When I display all light sources I see two Parallel Lights in the Riverstone MB. If I delete them and turn off the Sun the scene goes Black. This is good as now I am beginning to see how CA is lighting the scenes. I also understand that once I add a light the CA ambient light is muted significantly. Anyway, I just want to make sure I am applying your suggestions correctly. Thanks, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 28, 2015 Share Posted May 28, 2015 Graham, Without your texture and straight up Raytrace.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 28, 2015 Author Share Posted May 28, 2015 Graham, Without your texture and straight up Raytrace.... Looks like you are well on your way to happy Raytrace times. 10 passes in 1 minute and 48 seconds. Best I could do was about 9 minutes for the same scene and settings. Also, what this exercise has demonstrated is the significant difference that light settings can have on Raytrace times. For your system the original plan with all the lights on and those point lights it took about 1 hour & 45 minutes for 10 passes. By just shutting off non scene relevant lights and changing the points to spots you dropped your Raytrace time down below 2 minutes for the same number of passes. Now the real question is what are you going to do with all of that freed time. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 28, 2015 Share Posted May 28, 2015 Just ran again. This time 30 passes, 26 minutes 28 seconds. 57 seconds per pass. Was doing some other work at the time, likely a smidge slower due to multi-tasking. Graham Okay, after running the RT and checking your settings I get what you are doing with the lights. I also noticed you changed the Sconce Fixtures from Point to Spot but have them off for your RT. I assume they were unnecessary so you left them off - correct? Attached I see how you made the Sconce appear illuminated without actually using a virtual light source (bulb). The shadows behind the sconce come from the ceiling spots and the wall illumination comes from the spot directly in front of the Sconce. The wide angle Spots shown on the second attachment are ceiling mounted at 134" -90 degrees so they point straight down, while the 4 point at the Sconces provide slight wall illumination behind each fixture. Very cool...nice looking image and all 10 passes in 1 minute, 48 seconds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted May 28, 2015 Author Share Posted May 28, 2015 Scott - You've identified correctly the techniques I used. Point lights, those vanity wall sconces, require a bit of playing around with to create a similar look without actually having them set as a point light. Just changing them to a spot light will not be good enough. In this example I just turned them off. Increase the glass luminance to make it look light and then aimed a 3d light directly at each one to make the wall behind appear brighter. It's important to turn the shadows off on these so you do not get the sconce shadow showing up from the front facing light source. You can then adjust the 3D lights drop off rate and beam angle to get the desired amount of glow behind the sconce. Given the speed of rendering you are now achieving you can now play around with different settings and see the effect usually with no more than 3 passes. That's only about 30 seconds and you will know the effect. Beats waiting an 20 minutes or more only to find out you need to make more changes. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrscott Posted May 28, 2015 Share Posted May 28, 2015 A few people have asked so here are a few stats and pictures. System specs are in my signature. Build cost $3500 ish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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