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If you live in the UK, have a look at www.overclockers.co.uk. They supplied the components for both my current PCs and their prices seem competitive.
Cheers,
Alex.
You may have saved me a lot of money with that suggestion. I do have a PC running Linux. It has an older i7 and 6GB RAM but I've just checked and the motherboard will take up to 32GB RAM and it will support a GTX980. Your idea of just having a render box is really worth considering. Thank you.
Yes, I've been using their online configure menu to check prices, etc.
If you are going to look at composting here is an app that has a free learning / non commercial version tht has lots of features.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion/training
or Project DogWaffle Howler 10 which was just released.
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/
OK, so decision made. In the end I had to go with cheap. I am hanging on to my iMac and upgrading my "old" PC with an SSD, 16GB RAM and a GTX970 4GB. Not the ideal I was looking for at the outset but a reasonable compromise. I don't know if I will switch away from Luxrender to IRay completely (or at all) but I now have both options. I also have the added option of GPU rendering using Reality 4.2/Luxrender - something I can't do at the moment due to broken OpenCL drivers on the Mac. Last but not least, I can render on the PC while working on the next scene on the iMac - that is a big plus for me.
So what I will do is have the Windows 7 PC as a render box - sitting in another room because it is a bit noisy. I will do all my scene configuration on the iMac and either send the scene to the PC (with DS and a mirror of my DAZ Studio content) or send the Luxrender .lxs files. I can remote desktop from the Mac to the PC.
I figure that if and when I can afford to buy a new computer, it will not be until the new NVidia cards are available with the much-hyped 10x speed increase. The components I have just bought cost me a little over 400 GBP which is far less than I was considering spending at the outset (even taking into account selling the iMac to offset the price).
If you are not using both computers at once you coul then set up lux render as network and have both working onit at once.
I've used both render engines and I love iRay and how instantly you preview results, with LuxRender the only way to preview how light is going on is cancelling render works, correcting issues and again re rendering until see something adequate.
if you have a GTX970 I would suggest you choose iRay over Luxrender, but is your decision, and more important, your time.
With the old Linux machine and 16 GB you can:
Install Luxrender and 3Delight, both native Linux versions.
Install a virtual machine copy or dual boot Windows and Studio...and have your pick of what to render in.
I installed my old copy of Windows 7 on the new SSD that I bought for that PC and then upgraded to Win-10 (it now boots in about 10 seconds!). And yes, I will probably use all my new render options. Sometimes 3Delight suits what I'm doing (especially for toon shaders). Luxrender has a GPU (Luxcore) option which I have not been able to use because of the lack of Mac drivers so now I'll see how fast that is too.
I'm pretty happy with my two computer setup. Though, depending on what sort of scenes you are doing, you might find that renders complete before you are ready to save. That's kind of nice, but it's also oddly annoying, lol. My two computers are connected over a gigabit wired network and I just mounted my mac's runtime over on the new computer. I can't use the content that I download via smart content on both computers unless I download them on both computers, but otherwise, it works fine (I just pretend the encrypted stuff just doesn't exist until they make it work better for folks in our situation). I couldn't tell a big difference between using a copy and mounting over the network, so I just went with the networked filesystem.
That's an interesting way of doing it. I also gave it some thought but I my living circumstances are such that I have my (silent) iMac in my lounge and the noisy PC is in another room connected by wifi, so no gigabit speeds there. I will mount the drive over the LAN but only to transfer the scene files. I have a mirror of my library on the PC.
I get what you are saying about it finishing before you are ready. I tend to do a series of renders - a kind of picture story - of about 30 or so images. So I start rendering one and while it is doing that I get to work on the next scene (one advantage of using Luxrender). If it is as fast as you say, my workflow will change but, after all, I do want the speed. And now I'll be able to carry on working on a scene while IRay is doing its thing.
I didn't get around to testing my setup yet but I will today (it is 7:00 AM here now). I suspect I will have a bit of a learning curve with IRay now.
By the way, there is a nice free file synchronisation program that works well across the network shares. It is called FreeFileSync and works with both Windows and OSX.
Powerline networking is faster than WiFi, I think, though not gigabit. We use it in part here as the house is old enough to baffle WiFi in some rooms.
I have a Mac and a PC too... I've switched to PC for all of my 3D needs, but I still use the Mac for 2D and video...
I've been very disappointed with Apple's focus on consumer hardware too, they've pretty much ignored pro graphics users' needs.
Their black "trashcan" is not for me... I need to be able to swap out graphics cards and expand my system as needed.
Apple iMac 27"
Mac OS X 10.11.3
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX (2048 MB VRAM - 1536 CUDA cores)
HP Z820 Workstation
Windows 7 64-bit
Dual 3.1 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2687W 0 (8 cores each)
48 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro K6000 (12 GB GDDR5 - 2880 CUDA cores)
(Sometimes I switch out that graphics card with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980Ti (6 GB GDDR5 VRAM - EVGA Superclocked edition) for gaming purposes.
My PC workstation runs circles around the iMac for 3D rendering (no surprise).
Having more VRAM and CUDA cores makes a big difference.
GPU rendering is much faster than CPU rendering, but you need the right hardware for it.
Well, I've just been trying a few IRay renders with great expectations of the power of my new GPU and I have to say that I'm totally deflated. A scene which rendered in about 15 minutes in Luxrender using CPU only is currently at 3% in IRay after about the same abount of time. Grainy too.
I followed as much advice as I could, loaded the scene with IRay materials and converted other materilas to IRay if they were no so by default. I tried different lights and settled on the environment light coming in through the windows (I did something similar with Reality and the IBL sphere). Clearly I have a lot to learn about setting up Iray but I suspect that I will not see much faster renders no matter what I do.
GPU-Z shows the performance stats for the GPU so I know that the scene did not switch back to CPU.
This is the same scene rendered in Reality/Luxrender ater only 5 minutes using only the CPU on my iMac. No GPU at all. Materials were 3Delight Mats converted by Reality. One IBL Sphere providing the environment light and one mesh lighting the front of the scene.
Well, it was an interesting experiment. I've now claimed a refund from Amazon for the GTX970 and am returning it. I'll wait until the new NVidia cards are released before I think about upgrading again. In the meantime, I did increase the RAM in the Windows PC so now I can use Luxrender in Network mode. The scene above renders in 12 minutes (1500x1200) with minimal noise.
Is there a spehere in the Iray version?
I believe so. I used the default HDR and turned on Dome plus Scene (or whatever that setting is - I'm not at that computer right now). Nonetheless, I did try the same scene with various types of lighting - with and without the dome/HDR, with photometrics, with planes as emitters, with outside light and with curtains drawn and no external light. All were slow. In fact the screenshot above was about the best and quickest of the lot.
It is difficult to guess what kind of render speeds to expect. I spent several days reading through the threads here only to realise that IRay is a very inexact science. So many variables. For example, I tried a single clothed figure and it "finished" in 5 minutes - about the same time as it did using Reality/Luxrender in CPU mode. However, Luxrender was so much quicker for the scene I posted above.
Dome refers to the HDR loaded into Irasy's settings, not a dome in the scene itself - that will block HDR and distant lights by default.
Yes, I get mixed up with the terminology. Dome in IRay, sphere in Reality. Nevertheless, I tried it with and without environment lighting and either way it was dreadfully slow. Of course, it could be that I missed a few tricks but none of my attempts yielded an acceptable image within an hour. I don't see the point in spending a lot of money (a lot to me anyhow) on a GPU when it buys me nothing in terms of speed or quality.
I just bought a lowly 750TI, and it is rendering free-standing characters pretty quickly (no-hair tests take under two minutes, adding hair to a portrait shot bumps it to six or seven). Obviosuly a scene is going to take longer but I do think your issue is probably down to lighting (or overflowing the GPU memory).
I find myself in the same boat and for various reasons made myself learn Blender, which has Cycles unbiased rendering as an option. This uses CPU or GPU - you decide. My system is an i5 (which is hyperthreaded, btw), which gives me 4 rendering cores. I have a puny 1Gig Nvidia GPU, so use CPU rendering.
A test, using MCJ's plugin to export a fully clothed G3F to Blender - iRay - 5.5 minutes - Cycles 6 seconds! Blender also has genuine layer rendering, where you can render, say, a tree and ground separately and the shadow of the tree will fall on the ground. It also has built-in compositing and post-processing.
It isn't the learning beast it is made out to be - if I can get comfortable with it at age 72, anyone can:)
So, you can get the best of both worlds by combining your use of Daz Studio with Blender.
I would be interested to know how long it would take to render that scene on your 750ti. If you have the products, of course.
http://www.daz3d.com/modern-living-attic-bedroom
http://www.daz3d.com/modern-bed-1
http://www.daz3d.com/south-beach-deco-4-beds
http://www.daz3d.com/modern-living-1
http://www.daz3d.com/south-beach-deco-5-living
I have tried that but wasn't patient enough to persevere. FIrstly, I found that the materials didn't convert the way I expected so I had to look at a long process of changing them all myself. Secondly, I didn't find Cycles in CPU mode to be as quick as I expected - again, no quicker than Luxrender. Granted I did not give Cycles the time it deserved and I would like to revisit it sometime.
I really wish there was an official Blender Bridge plugin for DAZ Studio, not only for rendering but for making morphs etc. Blender has many of the tools that ZBrush has and many of us can't afford ZBrush. Exporting and re-importing object files can be tedious when all you want to do is adjust the fit of a pair of pants.
I do have those, albeit in the waiting to install queue, so if you are willing to provide the scene file I can give it a try.
Just drop the furniture into the room, Richard. I'm not worried about an exact replica scene, just an idea of how you would light it and how long IRay would take to render it. I didn't do anything with the scene or props - I just fiddled with the lights.
EDIT: not that it makes much difference now because the GTX970 has been returned but I'm still interested to know whether better performance might have been possible.
I've put a link to this thread on the desktop - I'll have a go when I can.
Thanks, Richard. As I say, no hurry - If you don't have time, no problem. Just a matter of interest.
Apple's late 2015,2016 line have no units with anything larger than a 2GB nvidia card. If you want a CUDA card with 4GB or more you need a Quadro (which is less effective than a comparably priced Titan for Iray) or 3rd party flashed card(1) and the kicker is only a 3.1,4.1 or 5.1(2) mac pro. The other alternative is you can use an external GPU PSU which are a few hundred dollars and connect to your TB/TB2 port, then buy cards and hope Apple fixed the toolsets in 10.10.0 that as of 10.11.3 are still "iffy"
If you want Iray compatibility with a stock Mac you will need to look to the mid 2014 - early 2015 iMacs, after that your choices begin to come with a premium attached.
(1) Nvidia doesn't do this, it's an unrelated company on the web and they charge you $180.00 to do it.
(2) last 5.1's were retired from Apple in 2012. As of 2013 the form factor is 6.1 and the latest model has not changed a single component from what they put in there 3 years ago.