[Rendering stops ? black gap in a video]

Hi Forum ? I?m not a VW user ? I?m an IP pro?

My customer (End user) Kristian is working with Vectorworks 2011. The design is a clothing shop and he wants to make a presentation with perhaps 8 camera views. Furthermore the shop design has multiple illumination sources with soft shadows. A typical walk through is 30-40 seconds long and takes 8-12 hours to render. Therefore Kristian starts the rendering at the end of his work day and in the morning he finds a flawed video.

The rendering have stoped somewhere in the process and there is a black gap in the middle of the .MOV video. At the end it sort of resumes its walk through the shop.

Could anyone point me in the right direction about this problem?

What to look for?

What to observe?

I?d also like comments about ?stability of Windows 7 professional 64 bit'

- the computer is pretty much standard setup from HP ? with all the add on software that sometimes intervene all your doings. (I'd rather uninstall all that junk *LOL*)

I have another discussion going about ?Speeding up rendering? Please see

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=151161Post151161

HP Elite 8100 Workstation Specs:

CPU:

Intel Core i7 870 (Quad-core) @ 2.93 GHz (Turbo boots to 3.6 GHz)

4 cores with Hyper threaded = 8 threads

RAM:

12 GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600)

VGA:

ATI Radeon 4650 DP 1 GB

OS:

Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

- the computer is joined in a Windows domain and connected to the server with gigabit network.

- all files are stores locally

HDD:

1 x 500 GB S-ATA DISK (For OS and Applications)

2 x 1000 GB S-ATA disks (for local storage of work files etc)

Kind Regards

M Borik Denmark

[Speeding up rendering in VW 2011 / Renderworks]

Thanks Grant

- I think it was partly you with your signature that set me off tworads a dual Xeoon processor

- I will inform the community of what result we will get from such an improvement ? if my customer decide they will try this configuration. Right now we are facing a number of problems! The rendering stops somewhere in the process. I will create a new discussion about this in a few minutes.

Thanks bcd

- I?m happy to share all my experiences I gather from this process. There will be more later?

You are right, it is rude to name the end user as ?the 3D designer guy?. His name is Kristian and he is a nice person with a good sense of humor too.

Kind Regards

M Borik, Denmark

[Speeding up rendering in VW 2011 / Renderworks]

Should anyone be interested ?

I have discussed Grant?s ideas of a less complicated design with fewer light sources and soft shadows. Grant points out early in this discussion ?Does one really need to do multiple soft shadows on a moving image??

Well, the ?Designer Guy? works on shop designs with multiple light sources. So for a realistic look of a shop?s interior, multiple shadows are mandatory. All this would be very time consuming to do in PhotoShop (the Designer Guy concludes)

So Im? about to offer the company a different computer and readers of this discussion might want to know what i plan. It?s based on a dual CPU workstation with Intel Xeon X5580 (3,33 GHz) six-core hyper threaded processors. Compared to the Intel Core i7 - 870 CPU (with 8 threads) it will be able to process 24 treads simultaneously.

We have observed that while rendering on the i7 processor, all 8 threads show 100% CPU load while rendering a frame. There is not much kernel activity while a frame is being rendered. So I dare conclude that 24 thread will do much more work.

Kind Regards

M Borik, Denmark

[Speeding up rendering in VW 2011 / Renderworks]

Hi Tobias

Thank you for the correction. It was the ?3D Designer Guy? (an employee at the company that has purchased VW 2011) that informed me of the relationship with Solidworks. I guess he got that information from the Danish company that has delivered VW to the end user.

Now I?m better informed!

Kind Regards

M Borik, Denmark

[Speeding up rendering in VW 2011 / Renderworks]

Hi grant_PD

Many thanks for some really good ideas.

Just need to get some few details right:

First: Your reply seems to support Shaun later reply ? only raw CPU power will do any difference here.

Then: The idea of making the setup of the ?scene? less spectacular is brilliant! I will suggest this to the "3D Designer Guy" tomorrow. I?m sure he knows his way around PhotoShop and can see the soundness in your approach.

I have looked very briefly on the Cinema 4D today. I understand that I it supports OpenGL 3 and that is the basically strength when it comes to rendering. This enables the software to harness the power of the GPU in ? say a NVIDIA GXT580 based graphic card?

But if I understand Cinema 4D correctly the paradigm changes; The ?3D Designer guy? will do creative work in Vectorworks and then only the rendering in Cinema 4D by importing the wireframe in Cinema 4D? (or whatever format is feasible)

I fully understand the NET render concept though. I?m a server and network geek after all?

Kindest Regards

M Borik, Denmark

[Speeding up rendering in VW 2011 / Renderworks]

Hi Shaun

Great to hear from you (and grant_PD). I reply to you first as I just want to clarify one detail. You say Vectorworks ? I say Renderworks.

Are we on two tracks here?

I was informed that it is Renderworks that does the rendering and that Renderworks is based on Solidworks 3D engine. If you visit http://www3.pny.com/MarketingPromotions/Solidworks2010.aspx?Category_ID=452 you will notice that Solidworks 2011 and NVIDIA Quadro shold be optimal?

This confuses me!

Because if Renderworks is really based on Solidworks 3D rendering Engine I would like to hope there was an opening here!?

Hopefully you mean that the Vectorworks ? not Renderworks ? ONLY uses CPU. But if it also goes for Renderworks it is a sad answer. Then I will have to recommend an even wilder CPU ? an Intel Core i9 980X with six cores. In theory this gives 50 % more rendering power.

Maybe some has made a Dual CPU motherboard for Core i9?

Anyway I?m extremely happy of your advice about the Geforce GTX580. Purchasing one Asus GTX580 seems much more affordable than the PNY Quad 6000 ? the price ratio is close to 1:9.

I guess upgrading the ATI Radeon 4650 to ?say ? a Asus GTX580 still is a good idea?

Kindest Regards

M Borik, Denmark

[Speeding up rendering in VW 2011 / Renderworks]

Hi Forum ? I?m new here.

- I?m not a VW user ? I?m an IP pro?

We have just purchased a brand new HP Elite 8100 Workstation with Core i7 CPU

We tested the performance gain a few days ago. The same VW drawing was rendered on the old Pentium 4 workstation and the new HP i7. On the old computer it took +3 hours whereas HP i7 the same job got down to less than 30 minutes. On both computers the rendering were done with Renderworks ?inside? VW 2011. The test was to produce a 20 seconds 3 camera tour on a not so big drawing.

This was a great improvement a few days ago . Now the ?3D designer guy? have developed his ideas and added multiple spots and (soft) shadows to his drawing. The drawing is about 200 megabyte and a multiple camera view tour of 50 seconds will take 10 hours to render.

Question 1 - is a SSD hard drive a noticeable improvement?

I need some advice how to improve this. My plan is to purchase a OCZ RevoDrive SSD hardisk on a PCIe card and a better Graphics card. But will a professional Graphics card for CAD perform better?

I have been looking at PNY?s NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000 and 6000 models. This series of GPU is recommended on the ?Video Graphic Card Guidelines for Vectorworks - 9/15/2010? page and I just need to understand how this type of

Question 2 - what is true ? CPU og GPU power?

I have heard geeks saying that ?it?s really the CPU (not the GPU) that has to perform as the many calculations are to be done in the CPU?. But others explain to me that the GPU at the Graphics card can do the rendering much - much faster as the GPU is designed for just that (which makes sense for me)

Question 3 ? How does the GPU do the rendering?

The 4000 is somewhat affordable and gives me 256 CUDA Parallel Processor Cores whereas the 6000 has awesome 448 Cores!

Does this mean that a VW drawing is chopped up in e.g. 256 small images so a frame will be processed in 256 parallel processes? If that is the case I do understand why 448 cores are faster and more desirable.

Question 4 ? Is Renderworks CUDA enabled?

PNY has this CUDA programming platform (or is it NVIDIA?s?) CUDA enabled products can help accelerate the most demanding tasks. Well? Is VW / Renderworks CUDA enabled then?

Perhaps see this: http://www.nvidia.com/object/what_is_cuda_new.html

My own investigations

When I look at http://www3.pny.com/MarketingPromotions/Solidworks2010.aspx?Category_ID=452 I?m pretty sure that the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000, 5000 and 6000 models are just the stuff that can improve performance.

HP Elite 8100 Workstation Specs:

CPU: Intel Core i7 870 (Quad-core) @ 2.93 GHz (Turbo boots to 3.6 GHz)

- When a rendering job runs the average CPU load is 70-80 % and the load is evenly distributed over all 8 threads (seen in the Windows Task Manager)

- This makes me believe that a 6-core CPU (e.g. Core i7-980X a.k.a. Core i9) could do some 50% more work?

RAM: 12 GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600)

- We have plans for adding 4 GB more so it totals 16 GB ? the maximum for the mainboard.

VGA: ATI Radeon 4650 DP 1 GB

- This is probably the weakest link in the chain?

- Although this has a fair performance we seek a *much* higher performance here?

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

HDD: 1 x 500 GB S-ATA + 2 x 1000 GB S-ATA disks (for local storage of work files etc)

- Plan is to replace the 1 x 500 GB with a OCZ RevoDrive SSD

Kind Regards

M Borik Denmark