[D_Ratty]

Hi

I have been using maxwell for quite a while now but I still can't work out why it takes so long to get a decient image quality I have done a couple of renders for a internal hotel room.

I left it running overnight and it still looked really grainy

Any tips


Thanx
David

[messire]

it all depends on your machine, on if u are using pure white or 220 220 220 white on walls, and if you are using lots of lights...

render times can go x20 faster on a newer machine ( mac pro nehalem) compare to a 2 years old single processor xeon...so hard to answer!

Nils

[D_Ratty]

Hi Messire

I have seperate machine just to run renders so it is basically stripped of all programs apart from Maxwell, and is running off Microsoft xp.

It is running on two intel Xeon dual core 2.4GHz processors and has 3.5 gig of ram. some of the renders do have emitters in them but not great numbers.

It looks like some of the materials have the reflectance 90 set up as 255,255,255 could that be the problem?

Thanks

David

[brodie_geers]

Ratty, the issue with using pure white, as I understand it, is that it's TOO reflective. It takes a very long time to get rid of all the noise because it's constantly reflecting off of a pure white wall. The other issue would be that it's not terribly realistic. I seem to recall drywall, for example, being somewhere in the neighborhood of 218,218,218 or something like that.

Your machine doesn't sound bad to me. Could use some more RAM but then you'd have to get a 64 bit OS as well. Have you run the benchwell.com benchmark? If so how'd you score?

Also what kind of resolution do you usually run at? Any examples of how long a typical rendering might take to get to a given SL?

-Brodie

[creasia]

Sometimes you just need more light. I work at a furniture showroom and I have found that in architectural photography that they often use a flash, to make the highlights come out more on the surfaces, and other lights to fill in some of the shadows in the frame.

Experiment with a multilight "flash" directly above your camera, or with more large rectangular showroom photography lights in other places of the scene. These have made a huge difference for me in Maxwell, and I also use this light setup with Vray.

[Fernando Tella]

The problem with pure whites is in reflectance 0º chanel, not in 90º. You can have pure whites there.

[Richard]

What is your emitter geometry? Single plane or complex? This will make a big difference!

Is the emitter within a reflector? If so ensure the reflector is darker diffuse material.

I do a lot of exteriors but in each do a lot of internal lighting and fitout - the internals tend to clean VERY fast if I observe these and the no whites rule! And all emitters are set within a square recessed ceiling reflector with a dark grey diffuse material.

And all happens on a dual core 2.2g with 2Gb ram on 64bit.

[D_Ratty]

Cheers for your help

I have run the benchmark test and was down quite low on the list, basically the same a a single processor.

So i had a look into that, basically i am using my old server stripped and upgraded running xp and mounted on VM ware so I can clone and set up a render farm on the one machine, i will keep adding hardware etc. Because I am still setting up the materials i was running on only one platform, which means that basically i was only unsing half of the two dualcore procesors. so I have cloned and now have two seperate platforms so i can run a cooperative render using the render farm.

Also some of my materials were set up as pure white so I have changed that. The emitters where sigle plan but with a shinny metal reflector surround so changed that.

I wass also only using downlights and a couple of low light table lamps for the lighting so added a couple more lights in.

I will run a render today and try and upload to see that it comes out like.

Also is there any benifit in upgrading to 64 bit?

Thanks

David

[brodie_geers]

I'm not sure what the benefits are in regards to speed simply between 32 & 64. The primary reason I've seen for upgrading is that 32 bit systems only recognize something like 4gb of RAM whereas you can stuff all sorts of RAM into a machine running a 64 bit OS

-Brodie

[Richard]

Mate next limit cretainly suggest speed inceases using 64bit.

I know my laptop (64bit) has lesser processors than my desktop (32bit) and cranks through renders in comparison!

[D_Ratty]

I still cant get the speed up to a decent spec i think i might upgrade and spend some money! I think it will pay off in the long run there is a few of us how us Maxwell in the office, so it might me worth it to build a seperate render machine again!

[messire]

machine switching:
We've just invested $$ in the newest mac pros 2 x 4 cores and the investment was paid back after the first job that got calculated so quick we could process other tasks etc...
Basically after a month of buying the new machine, its been already paid...and we are not a 3D company, just basic architects doing our own images...
(Also when renders are so quick, you experiment with textures n lighting, something not easy when on a slow system)..

Nils

[Richard]

Also when renders are so quick, you experiment with textures n lighting, something not easy when on a slow system

Mate that in itself is an interesting point though!

I've found that with computing in general.

I've only computed a few years now - prior was all by hand! Now a job that took a month previously now takes six - why? TESTING! Simple indecision!

[messire]

richard,
not quite, indee you test more, but since feedback is quicker, you get the solution faster!
Nils

[D_Ratty]

Right, upgraded to x64bit now i need to spend some money what is required more Processors, Ram or both?

i have not got a fortune so i need to spend wisely what do you all recomend?

Thanks

David