Faster Render Equipment

[Benson Shaw]

A recent RW final render at 360dpi of a camera view of a site model took about 1.5 hours. A Save to pdf (360 dpi again) of the same rendered view took another three or more hours. The resulting pdf is a 17 MB file displaying on a letter size sheet. I'm not complaining about VectorWorks here or Renderworks. I knew it would take a while. Rather, I am curious to know which hardware components most affect render and image save so I can optimize a system purchase in the future. CPU speed? Bus? Graphics card specs? RAM? all of it? What setup would bring those hours of render down to a few minutes?

Is there a way to cache the render so that a subsequent save to pdf can skip some of the rerender? Or render/save pdf together? Or skip the screen render and render direct to pdf?

-B

[propstuff]

What setup would bring those hours of render down to a few minutes?

A render farm. (ha ha ha)

No support for X grid (yet) I'm afraid, but multi processors for FQ Rendering yes. IE, ditch the old powerbook and get a new Dual Mac book or Quad MacPro

Or skip the screen render and render direct to pdf?

Definitely! Set up your render view etc, start off the FQ render and when its started, hit the ESC button (sometimes it can take a while). Then do the Export image.

HTH.

[Benson Shaw]

I think I will wait another rev or two on the MacBooks or Quad. But then all new!

Yah! Esc then export! I will try it with Save to pdf, too.

Thanks for the tip!

-B

[alanmac]

Benson

When you've got some spare time to experiment try rendering your results at 200 and 150 dpi as well as 360, print them

out on some good quality paper and compare the results.

It has been my experience that the resulting images are very difficult to tell, if not impossible, from one another.

Certainly from the point of view of a presentation document its just not worth the higher resolution, meaning longer render times.

If its going to be viewed on screen via a computer it can be even less dpi.

Alan

[LarryAZ]

Benson,

For what it's worth my new MacBook right out of the box gave me just over 7 times the performance of my G4 iMac on final renderworks.

[Gytis]

Then add 1GB...or 2GB RAM... and all is sunshine!

[propstuff]

Then add 1GB...or 2GB RAM... and all is sunshine!

Not quite, Gytis ;-)

When NNA implement Final Gather

http://www.lightworkdesign.com/glossary/finalgather.htm

http://www.lightworkdesign.com/products/latestrelease.htm

THEN all will be sunshine, the birds will sing, AND scantily clad Nymphs will scatter rose petals in the paths of our renders. (True: I read about it in a magazine) :-)

Edited February 4, 2007 by propstuff

[Gytis]

Oh boy, Nicholas--I am so excited I can't think straight. Will the nymphs impact processor, umm,.... focus? Will the rose petals jam my hard drive?

[Benson Shaw]

Darn, those lightworkdesign links were dead. But will the nymphs need feeding, employee benifits, etc? Or are they really render sunshine? And will they dance along the xGrid?

Nevermind

Anyway, Thanks to Larry for reporting on the new Macs. It's great to hear that the new Core 2 duo equipment is so much faster at this task.

-B

[Benson Shaw]

Alan - The lower rez does produce good quality, faster renders. However, I often present with Adobe Reader, rather than PPT. The Reader zoom tool allows showing vignettes of a single drawing or page. As I create the marquee, the audience sees exactly where the detail comes from. At 300 or 360 dpi, extreme zoom works a treat. The blurring in lower rez zooms is less desirable. But, you are absolutley correct in that usually the lower rez render is fine.

Thanks, Alan

-B

[Charlie_P]

Concur with Larry. FQ RW fairly zips along, a lot of the time faster than open GL...

Just open activity monitor and watch those four bars go all the way up...

Regards

Charlie