Renders so slow?
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Hi, all...
I've been following threads here that discuss render plug-in options for Sketchup and there appears to be a sizable selection. They all seem to be fairly equal with some consideration as to strength and weakness. I have soldiered on as a 3D modeler/animator for many years, using old 3DS Release 4 for DOS. I've come to like how fast and simple it is. Time has come to move on as the old DOS towers have died. They served me well.
What really puzzles me when looking at the options to render within and without Sketchup is the astronomical rendering times! My old system could render fairly complex scenes with shadows and reflections aplenty at about 3 to 5 minutes each frame (animation TGA sequence at NTSC res.). It seems this new generation stuff is MUCH slower, despite far more sophisticated technology! Sure, scene generation is much more sophisticated and light calculation far more accurate, but it seems the machines can't keep up with demand. How is it practical to do animation sequences with frames coming out at 20 to 30 minutes each???
Can any of the dozens of render options out there produce render times even approaching what I was able to do in 3DSR4? Do you find yourselves having to resort to render farms?
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Think we need to see some reference imagery of what kind of results you are expecting.
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@thomthom said:
Think we need to see some reference imagery of what kind of results you are expecting.
Thanks for reply. The top image is the quality needed for rendered still to be printed. The middle and bottom images represent the minimum quality needed for animations.
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You can easily get that quality level from several "real-time" render engines (I'm partial to http://lumion3d.com/ for this type of work) -- however most of them use GPU processing so if you don't have a recent/powerful video card you would need to purchase that in addition to the program.
Alternately you might look at http://www.artlantis.com/ or http://www.light-up.co.uk/ which can also hit that target very quickly and have different relative strengths.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
You can easily get that quality level from several "real-time" render engines (I'm partial to http://lumion3d.com/ for this type of work) -- however most of them use GPU processing so if you don't have a recent/powerful video card you would need to purchase that in addition to the program.
Alternately you might look at http://www.artlantis.com/ or http://www.light-up.co.uk/ which can also hit that target very quickly and have different relative strengths.
Best,
Jason.
Thanks, Jason. I know I can get the quality needed, but my concern is that render time for an animation TGA sequence of frames is prohibitive. I need to produce TGA sequence for post-production studios. I am looking for a renderer that can output animation sequences with the minimum quality shown above at a rate of about 5-6 minutes per frame at HD 720p(?). -
If I recall right 3DS Release 4 had a scan line renderer. So pretty much all "modern" renderers do use much advanced technologies (and also material systems) and naturally results are quite different, even with low quality settings. So... using default settings, new renderers are probably slower, but if you are willing to play and test, then I think most biased renderes should be able to give fast enough results, if you happy with quality like in those reference images.
If looking those reference images, I am pretty sure that Thea can render a interior like that (720p) about in a minute (with biased core). Thea can also save image sequences as TGA. http://www.thearender.com Not to forget that Thea can produce very high quality results too if needed, but render times will increase.
Naturally "game engine" based renderers can be even faster (Lumion etc.). -
@notareal said:
If I recall right 3DS Release 4 had a scan line renderer. So pretty much all "modern" renderers do use much advanced technologies (and also material systems) and naturally results are quite different, even with low quality settings. So... using default settings, new renderers are probably slower, but if you are willing to play and test, then I think most biased renderes should be able to give fast enough results, if you happy with quality like in those reference images.
If looking those reference images, I am pretty sure that Thea can render a interior like that (720p) about in a minute (with biased core). Thea can also save image sequences as TGA. http://www.thearender.com Not to forget that Thea can produce very high quality results too if needed, but render times will increase.
Naturally "game engine" based renderers can be even faster (Lumion etc.).
Thanks, notareal. The render times sound encouraging, with room to raise parameters for better results. Sheesh! I have a lot to learn re: new terminology. I've been out of the loop too long. Biased? Unbiased?
Oh, well, your recommended program seems to support both, so that can't be bad. One question. In addition to 3D modelling/animating, I also play keyboards in a prog-rock band (Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, etc.) and am looking at a cool device called "ControlBLADE", by Music Computing. It is an i7-based computer with a built-in piano keyboard, designed to run software synthesizers and samples for composing, recording and live performing. It has 16 gig RAM, 1 TB SATA drive, but only has system board graphics (dual monitor support at HD 1080p). I assume this program, like Sketchup can only benefit from a heavy-duty graphics card (nVidia?)? Also, this system is 64-bit. Do either of these programs benefit from that? -
Thea Render is one of the few commercial renderers that can offer both biased and unbiased render engines. Biased/unbiased is a question about accuracy of render algorithm, biased rendering do make some shortcuts for faster results that are needed for animations and so. With it user has a control on every aspect and parameter of render engines. Unbiased rendering is progressive by it's nature, it does offer a easy, parameter free and highly accurate, but slower rendering. You can use the same scene no matter witch engine you choose to use.
Thea and SU both do use OpenGL for displaying the workspace, so one can say that even reasonable "light" GPU can handle the burden (even integrated display adapter might be enough). Later Thea will have GPU accelerated rendering, but at the moment just your system should work just fine with Thea. With i7 and 16 GB RAM it's hard to choke Thea as it does benefit from 64-bit OS - you can render more complex scenes and use more freely some features like relight (as available RAM is the main limiter).
You can freely test Thea, with resolution limited and watermarked version. If you want to compare render time for 720p or higher, it will raise linearly related resolution change. So even with a smaller test render you can estimate how long it would take to render some higher resolution image...
Please, be free to join to Thea Render forums for further questions.ps here is some interesting music & relight experiments by Wax http://www.youtube.com/user/wax78/videos?query=relight
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