Raytrace Speed


RobUSMC
 Share

Recommended Posts

Is there a listing that will show each fixture / symbol in a plan that you can view to see what item or items are slowing the raytrace down?  I have plans of  multiple area that will raytrace in half the time or more than a plan where its a single kitchen only.  It must be a symbol or a texture that I have saved in my library over the years and using in a particular plan. This would allow me to change it with something else with less faces...  thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No there is nothing like that available in the software at this time.

 

In my experience, lights are the biggest hog of resources when it comes to ray trace time.

But it is possible to have a high surface count object that slows things down. These would generally be imported from 3rd parties though because our content team keeps all of our symbols at less than 10,000 surfaces a piece.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kirk - is CA considering any sort of render farm in the future for clients?....perhaps part of an SSA package?

Also, does the CA viewer allow Raytrace? I was thinking about getting a dedicated rendering computer for our office but was thinking about the need for additional lic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's been discussed. But I'm not sure how close we are to consider beginning to implement that type of solution. I'm sure that as more ArchViz artists begin to use our software the demand may warrant the man hours to develop such a service but for now, it's just a 'would be nice someday' on our radar as far as I know.

 

Someone from our development team may know more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not huge, but definitely higher than the average scene.

Are their any objects behind the camera that won't show up in reflective surfaces that you can hide or delete temporarily?

 

Also, isolating just that room into it's own plan can help too.

 

And of course, keep an eye on the number of light sources. Only use what is absolutely necessary to portray what you want to show. I've seen minutes added to a scene just from adding one light source.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just took the same plan and made a copy. The actual plan has 7 can lights 4 under cabinet lights and 11 pendants.  In ray tracing this plan take just under 4 mins to complete pass #1. Where as, by taking the same plan and deleting all the pendants only (everything else remains the same) pass #1 completes at 1:25 mins.  Is there a better way to get a decent raytrace with the fixtures we will be using or bottom line if you don't want a dark room and have lighting its going to take three to four times as long to render.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rob - Turn off all the fixtures.  Increase the ambient light in the model.  Place a few point lights in the room at about 5-6' off the floor.

Make the glass on the fixtures highly emissive, maybe 80-90 so they LOOK like the are on.  Also, if there are windows set the sun to shine through

and use the north pointer to rotate the sun angle.  Usually 8-9 AM or 6-7 PM will get you a low sun to come through the windows.

See if that helps.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is just what I've come across in different Architectural Visualization topics, but as a rule of thumb, if you are creating a day time interior scene, you don't want to turn on the lights. This makes the scene seem out of place for most people because if there is sun shining through the windows you won't usually have every light in the room turned on.

 

That being said, I generally turn off small lights such as cabinet lights and usually just go with the one main light fixture, such as the pendants or the cans but not all of them. If possible I avoid turning any fixtures on in a day time scene. Instead I boost the direct sunlight intensity in my ray trace settings and try to angle the sun into the room through the windows as much as possible.

 

Then use "Studio" lights to brighten up the scene. What I like to do is add a point or spot lamp directly behind the camera.

Under light data I turn off 'Casts Shadows'.

 

Then play with the position and intensity so it doesn't mess with the scene but actually brightens it up.

 

This way you only have 2 light sources that are actually present, the sun, and the studio light behind the camera.

You get nicer, softer lighting without the added time required to render all the light fixtures.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there a way to isolate the one scene in raytrace and it ignores all others versus having to delete or turn off?

 

Yes - sort of.  Do a saveas on your model and delete freely outside the area that will be in view.   It's not "vs delete", but If you're doing large raytraces it can be well worth the few minutes it takes. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

This Raytrace took over 50 min. and had only done 6 passes.  I would agree with Kirk that if I had saved the drawing and only took a Raytrace of the area I wanted it would have been much faster.  That being said it is a waste of time either way.  I feel like I have a graphics card that should make lightspeed of this but I now feel that I need a new graphics card to keep up.

post-64-0-15972700-1447952532_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This Raytrace took over 50 min. and had only done 6 passes.  I would agree with Kirk that if I had saved the drawing and only took a Raytrace of the area I wanted it would have been much faster.  That being said it is a waste of time either way.  I feel like I have a graphics card that should make lightspeed of this but I now feel that I need a new graphics card to keep up.

 

Well, unfortunately the ray tracer does not support rendering on the graphics card at this point. It's all done on the processor. The faster the processor the faster the render speed. But playing with lighting and setup can help as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Will this justifiably improve Raytracing? 

OK.  So, I currently have a Macbook Pro with a Quad Core 2.8 Ghz Processor.  I was thinking about purchasing a new Mac Pro in one of the following configurations:

 

3.5GHz 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache -or-

3.0GHz 8-core with 25MB of L3 cache -or-
2.7GHz 12-core with 30MB of L3 cache
 
A few questions:
  1. Would there be a considerably noticeable improvement in Raytrace rendering speeds over my current Quad Core Macbook Pro?  Is it quantifiable?  +25%? +50%, faster etc?
  2. Which configuration is the better choice for Raytracing? Faster speed and fewer cores or more cores and slower speeds?  or perhaps the middle of the road?
  3. Anyone running a Mac Pro currently that can comment on this?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share