First Job with Maxwell Render

chedda

Thanks Brodie i see 3m22s i'm guessing that's not bad ? Well for sure IT guys are a weird breed that's a given, i keep a time machine backup & a bootable clone so a dead drive is pretty easy to restore in about 30 mins.

chedda

@designerstuart said:

great renders and a nice design too.
is the design yours?

No unfortunately the design is not mine but the architect who commissioned me. Although as always i took a lot of design decisions while modeling & texturing from a flat dwg file.I also enjoyed working on the building as i appreciated the design it really makes a change from my run of the mill residential work !

brodie

Yes, that's quite good. About what I expected based on my own tests. A brief rundown.

74m 35s - an old machine with a single core processor
17m22s - my old rendering machine with a Q9550 (4x2.83ghz nonHT)
10m03s - i7 860 these are what they're currently using for revit machines here
6m19s - our server machine, I think it has an older but very good quality (for the time) xeon
5m35s - 980x, my current rendering machine

To get into your range I had to start networking the benchmark...
3m32s - the 980x plus the server
3m00s - the 980x plus the server plus the i7 860 revit machine

How much did that setup cost, btw?

-Brodie

chedda

Yes the price is the catch Brodie well spotted ! I had my old G5 2.0 dual powermac for 7 years so bear that in mind !

The bare machine with ATI Radeon 5870 upgrade from the UK £5,238 (2x6 2.93 xeons)

24 GB 3x8 1333Mhz ECC $699.99 (OWC USA)

60 GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD $179.99 (OWC USA)

The impending divorce and medical bills however were a hidden cost.

PS i just restored my boot SSD drive from the clone it took 12.08 minutes IT meh !

brodie

Well, that is a pretty penny.

I'm not sure I understand your backup method. So Time Machine is like an automatic backup software I guess that mirrors all of your data from the SSD to another drive. And if your SSD goes down you can just boot from that other drive? Is that about right?

Out of curiosity, were you willing to spend the extra money for a mac primarily because it's what you're used to using, or did you see some other advantage(s)?

-Brodie

chedda

@unknownuser said:

Well, that is a pretty penny.

I'm not sure I understand your backup method. So Time Machine is like an automatic backup software I guess that mirrors all of your data from the SSD to another drive. And if your SSD goes down you can just boot from that other drive? Is that about right?

Out of curiosity, were you willing to spend the extra money for a mac primarily because it's what you're used to using, or did you see some other advantage(s)?

-Brodie

I doubt you can build a dual xeon machine for less with the same specs and included software. Also be aware that it came under the cost of the 3 networked machines used in your benchmarks.

Time Machine is included in mac osx it makes incremental backups at certain time points allowing you to fly back in time to retrieve files or restore to a certain point.It's pretty seamless and works in the background. For double safety i use an external raid 0 array for this . For triple safety and simplicity i also clone my important drives using an app called super duper.Both these methods can be restored from although the super duper method is restoreable & bootable.

My first machine was a sony vaio i kept it for a week before i headbutted the screen through, as it kept telling me the network cable was unplugged. Since then i have never used a windows machine. I know CAD lives on the PC but for me it's just not worth the hassle.I'm lucky in my day job also uses macs (i7 imac's).I know all the short cuts now and my workflow is superfast. The mac pro is silent & beautiful (on the inside too !). There is a whole bunch of advantages IMHO the installation and lack of anti virus being some of many. Networking screensharing & sharing in general is a dream compared. Plus the best thing is never get asked to fix my friends windows machines ! There is really a ton of bonuses IMHO they are all time saving and stress levels are low which is priceless.Is it still true windows machines slow down over time ? Most IT guys rely on windows for a living this is a known fact. If you ask them they will agree that a mac based office needs little to none IT support.There are endless lists of mac advantages available on the web a lot of mac myths have been busted now.I'm sure you can find some non biased articles.I will wait for a quad core mini to come out then i will add them over time as render nodes.

This article is a little dated but still stands true: http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/why-pros-use-mac.htm

In the meantime this guy is a bit extreme but you will get the message lol

http://www.youtube.com/user/millenium12#p/a/u/0/GXz_Xa_b1I0

The 12.08 minutes was the time it took to erase my bootdrive and copy the clone back to it.Then a simple re-start

jason_maranto

Hey Chedda, do you participate on the Maxwell forum? We can always use some more active Mac and Sketchup users to represent Also JD (who designs the plugins) is easy to approach about plugin design issues... feedback is very welcome there.

Best,
Jason.

chedda

I only just got my license Jason, i was lucky enough to get it at a charity auction for Japan's earthquake. It was super of next limit to donate a copy ! These small things make all the difference in my eyes. I helped Japan through the red cross and got a license as well ! The forums, no not yet Jason but i intend too ! That's great news as i do have some basic workflow questions. Forums and communities cannot be underestimated in software choice.

brodie

Interesting article. I come from an admitted standpoint of experiential ignorance when it comes to macs. The last apple anything I've honestly used was probably in the very early 90's and that was mostly playing Oregon Trail at school. I don't have an iphone, and itouch, not even an ipod. So all I know is what I've learned from friends and online. I'm not against apple stuff in principle, I'm mostly just cheap so I have a custom pc at home, a cheapo cell phone, and a creative zen mp3 player I got for xmas years ago.

A lot of things in the article didn't really resonate with me. He was pretty heavy handed regarding windows crashing all the time and getting viruses. That hasn't really been my experience. He mentions color calibration but from what he said, there's no real difference - both need hardware calibration for best results. He talks a lot about photographers using macs, but doesn't really give concrete reasons as to why they do so.

However, I can understand how piece of mind and not having to ever fuss with restarts or antivirus software would be nice. And being able to connect two computers and transfer files could come in handy sometimes. I pull those out because that seems to be a major claim to fame (they're somehow better for visual work), which I think is a bit outdated/unfair. At one time macs may have been inherently better but since they now use the same hardware and software (adobe), I don't see how that's possible. That said, there's certainly a lot to be said for a product that just works, which macs seem to do.

I suspect most of the issues (like viruses and such) that are mentioned could be an issue for novice users. A system could slow down over time, not so much from an OS standpoint but from a hard drive standpoint if you kept getting spyware and such. But with a decent antivirus program (i use a free one at home, avast, that autoupdates and such and haven't thought about it for a couple years). And it doesn't hurt to defrag your hard drive from time to time which you can also set up a schedule for and then forget about (macs probably do that for you I'd guess). But I guess those are the sorts of things a mac user can avoid - I just don't think they're as big an issue as many mac users make them out to be.

One question that I've had which he touches on. How DO mac users uninstall a program? I've heard that as an issue from one of my friends but he lists it as a positive.

-Brodie

chedda

Just drag it to the trash along with it's preference file, there are some apps like appzapper that do this for you.I think windows prefers an uninstaller as it leaves bits & pieces everywhere such as dll and registry bits (doesn't exist in mac)

Adobe layout and UI differs between platforms the mac has a different way of laying out things & methodology even in sketchup.

I think you are interested and have a lot of un answered questions, ultimately you will get a mac perhaps a mini to start, just to quench your inquisitiveness.

I have no need for a laptop but it's pretty un-deniable apple have a great line up also.

I'm sure you have bumped into some experienced CG artists on your travels on the internet who use macs.

Anti virus software eats cpu cycles and scans everything pretty much constantly including email and attachments this is not a snappy experience.

Otherwise how will you know ?

PS you can tell i am pretty much entrenched now and am a stalwart !

brodie

We'll see how it goes. I certainly wouldn't mind having one to see what all the hype is about. Next time I'm computer hunting I'll have to give them a fair shot. Thanks for the input.

-Brodie

jason_maranto

@chedda said:

I only just got my license Jason, i was lucky enough to get it at a charity auction for Japan's earthquake. It was super of next limit to donate a copy ! These small things make all the difference in my eyes. I helped Japan through the red cross and got a license as well !

That is a great cause -- Next Limit does charity donations like this often...

@chedda said:

The forums, no not yet Jason but i intend too ! That's great news as i do have some basic workflow questions. Forums and communities cannot be underestimated in software choice.

I agree and Brodie and myself are just a few of the active members on the Maxwell forum that try to help whenever possible -- overall it is a great community to be a part of. If you haven't discovered it yet there is also a free video tutorial site called THINK!( http://think.maxwellrender.com/ ) that can help as well.

Best,
Jason.

chedda

Hey Jason i have an account at the maxwell forums but for the life of me i can see no way of posting a new topic. Am i missing something ? Do i have to use my customer gateway id to post ? I had made the registration prior to getting a license for research purposes.

jason_maranto

Follow the instructions here to get posting rights:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=32637

This keeps the spambots out very nicely

Best,
Jason.

ramy_ramroum

woooow !! i liike it very good job
pleaase how did you do the metalic structure were can i find it please ? or can you share it ? thanks a lot

chedda

Ramy i built the whole model with sketchup from flat dwg's. This included the metal structures you requested. I simply made some cylinders and scaled them at the ends making tapers then rotated etc. It was quite simple. Thanks for the comment.

Richard

Chedda

I saw you were on the Maxwell forums of late, and mate WOW have you taken to it like a duck to water!

Well done! So what was the final reaction from the client?

Btw mate don't be shy of adding a lightly weighted dirt layer to most materials as a matter of course - it really helps to bump up the realism!

Man I don't know how you lasted with Artlantis for so long, that must be a record for any user - you deserve points for persistence mate!

Richard

chedda

Hey Richard i remember you from back in the day at PPB and the early beta's of maxwell ! I would recommend 2 years with artlantis to my worst enemies. Joking aside it was like training with ankle weights on. Now i am literally bounding along. It did teach me the basics though of composition and more importantly lateral thinking lol. The client did a lot of chin scratching and mis-informed observations followed by reducing my asking price by 1/3rd. My next visit saw the bridge view printed and framed in the focal point of his office same old story Richard ! Studio is really a godsend for composition it makes up for our beloved sketchup's inadequacies with high poly support. I have found the software to be fantastic along with the plugin which now with fire is a revelation. Even though i threw my artlantis libraries to the wind i have not regretted my migration. I can recommend maxwell highly, everything is very predictable and beautiful.