What affect does Graphics card have on animation?

brodie

I'm using an ATI card that I've been having issues w/ in that it doesn't play well with Sketchup (slow, selecting errors, etc). If I switch to a good NVidia card do you think my animations would take a significantly less amount of time to render?

btw, my drivers and such are up to date.

-Brodie

remus

Shouldnt do, as rendering is done by the CPU rather than the graphics card. I believe nVidia generally have the upper hand when it comes to graphics power anyway, might be wrong though.

brodie

@remus said:

Shouldnt do, as rendering is done by the CPU rather than the graphics card. I believe nVidia generally have the upper hand when it comes to graphics power anyway, might be wrong though.

So having Graphics Acceleration checked or unchecked shouldn't even affect rendering time then? The trick is to just get the best CPU I can?

-brodie

remus

If you want to be able to render animations quickly, yes you will definetly need a powerful processor.

brodie

@remus said:

If you want to be able to render animations quickly, yes you will definetly need a powerful processor.

Right now I've got a Pentium 4 HT 3.4GHz. I don't know a lot about hardware but I think that's pretty dec right?

The thing is I know I need a new card because the one I've got now is just not working right w/ SU. I'm wondering if I should just be fine w/ a mid-range NVidia or if I should go high-range. If the card doesn't really matter for the animation renderings then I'll save some $$$ and maybe look into a better processor later on.

-Brodie

remus

What software do you use to render your animations? if it supports mu;tiple cores it would be well worth looking into getting a dual or even quad core processor, althugh this is a fairly major upgrade as it would mean youd need a new motherboard. Youd probably be beter of just getting a new macine if you do decide to upgrade the processor.

In terms of grahics cards, id recomend an nVidia 7000 seires card.

brodie

@remus said:

What software do you use to render your animations? if it supports mu;tiple cores it would be well worth looking into getting a dual or even quad core processor, althugh this is a fairly major upgrade as it would mean youd need a new motherboard. Youd probably be beter of just getting a new macine if you do decide to upgrade the processor.

In terms of grahics cards, id recomend an nVidia 7000 seires card.

I'm using Adobe Premeire Elements 4.0 to compile a list of .png files that SU renders.

Here's a test I did last weekend to create what I'm considering an ideal rendering for my purposes...

Render 2048x1536 .png files at 29.97 fps.
Render time: 20 hours
This created 1982 .png files at a total size of 4.9 gigs

This was based off of a complete model but I only rendered 1/3 of the scenes so a full project rendering would be 60 hours

Adobe Premiere Elements 4
I haven't compiled the images into an avi file yet but in my previous tests a 10hr. render time in SU translated into a 2hr render time in APE4. So I'm presumably looking at 12hrs.

I'm not sure if APE4 supports multiple cores.

-Brodie

Daniel

Brodie,

I'd go for the higher end graphics card if I were you; even if you don't use it's full potential now, chances are you will in the future (given how programs have been advancing). I've kicked myself numerous times because I "made do" only to spend more money later upgrading. Of course, it's all a mater of how much one can spend. My desktop at home has NVIDIA GeForce 6600M LE card, and my laptop has GeForce 8600M GT card - the laptop runs circles around the desktop. You also want to make sure your graphics card has plenty of memory, too.

bytor

Brodie,

While the graphics issues you are having can be improved with a relatively inexpensive (<$200)nvidia card /w 256 mb memory - it will not help your animation. Your processor is decent, but not great in terms of horsepower. Currently, Sketchup does not take advantage of multi-core processors. But - if you decide to upgrade the cpu, a dual or quad could possibly allow for you to do some other tasks on your pc while saving out an animation. If you choose to use a rendering plugin to render your animation - most are capabe of using multi-cores to get the job done quicker. Plus - if and when SU is able to take advantage of mulitple cores, you will be prepared!

HTH......Bytor

LReavis

I'm currently rendering a sketchup model (exporting a fly-around using the free Xvid MP4 codec), as I write this in VMware's virtual linux machine running firefox inside Window$. This afternoon, I was rendering another sketchup project, while also rendering a Poser animation, while also doing other tasks on this computer. I'm using a quad-core Q6600 with 4GB ram with an nVidia 7600GT GPU. My motherboard is an ASUS P5B. Incidentally, I recently made a system identical to this for a friend except for skipping the 7600GT in favor of a P5 motherboard that includes a GPU, and the cost came to little more than $500, using a case with a very good power supply (not a good idea to buy a cheap PS if you want a stable system). The Q6600 overclocks nicely to 3.05 gHz.

I found this thread after searching for "graphics card," as I was hoping that by upgrading my 7600GT to a 9600GT or 8800GT I could get faster rendering times. Too bad it doesn't work that way - I'm only loading the CPU about 30% at the present time. Renders take soooo long; let's hope the next release of SU will incorporate multi-core rendering. Incidentally, rendering with the Divx codec, which claims to be optimized for 4 cores, does not accelerate rendering times or CPU utilization.

jhauswirth

@unknownuser said:

Render 2048x1536 .png files at 29.97 fps.
-Brodie

Why such a high-res animation? Are you transfering to film and displaying
in a movie theatre? The best HD TV only does 1920x1080.

brodie

@jhauswirth said:

@unknownuser said:

Render 2048x1536 .png files at 29.97 fps.
-Brodie

Why such a high-res animation? Are you transfering to film and displaying
in a movie theatre? The best HD TV only does 1920x1080.

I watch all my animations in a movie theatre, that's just how I roll.

Seriously though, I've found that outputing them at a large resolution and then scaling them down seems to help with the moire affect and crispness. The former can be a big problem with a 6 story brick building.

-Brodie