Recommended hardware for Photorender

[proe_peter]

We are planning to buy some high-end computers for designer doing advanced renderings using both Photorender and Photolux. They are not quite satisfied with their situation as it is today, long time and uneven edges.
Could you please advise what to think of when to buy a new machine? Should we go for dual processors, lots of RAM, extreme graphic-card?
What is the best of the best?
//Peter

 

[Tamas]

Hi proe_peter,

I think Pro/E cannot use (enough) the advantage of the multiprocessors nor duo-core processors (for rendering) at this moment.

Only the pure "MHz" which counts.
Anyway its worth to buy a duo-core or quad-core processor system because of the future versions (f. ex. WF 4.)
Nvidia Quadro FX560 works well. FX1500 (FX3450) is excellent for middle assemblies (300 parts).

 

[pjw]

I get excellent renders on a Pentium 4 3GHz with 3Gb of RAM. I can almost guarantee that your long render times are due to inefficient settings when you render. DO NOT set the number of bounces to more than 2. You won't notice any differences in the renders but the render time grows exponentially with higher bounces. One render I did with the setting at 5 took around 4.5 hours, whilst a render with the light bounce set at 2 only took around 15minutes. To get rid of your jagged edges, make sure you set the 'Feature anti-aliasing' rather than 'Samples' and set this value to around 2-5%.


I am using an NVidia Quadro FX330. The lowest spec card you could have.


What you see below is only a low resolution JPEG.


View attachment 4488
Edited by: pjw

 

[mgnt8]

DO NOT set the number of bounces to more than 2.

Unless you are rendering transparent surfaces. In this case, the rule of thumb I've found is at least 2 bounces per surface.

 

[design-engine]

The first time I ever saw a thermostat work my dad put one in a pan and boiled it to see if it would open at the right temperature. Cool rendering ... the sand cast part looks bumpy.

Edited by: design-engine

 

[gkbeer]

PhotoLux will defiantly use every core available. But it seems to depend on the render setup.

 

[design-engine]

It's so darn hard to manage lighting in Pro/PHOTORENDER... it makes it not fun.

 

[AHA-D]

AFAIK your graphic card only steps in when doing realtime manipulation. Is is then that surfaces, shading, light, ... all come together and have to be continuously calculated at high frame rate to make the image move smoothly. When doing a render you only make one frame and the calculations are of entirely different order of magnitude.


Alex

 

[pjw]

Realtime rendering to me seems pointless. The images produced during realtime are no-where near photo-realistic? What's the point of using it?


Phil

 

[mgnt8]

Mostly to get your lights set up corectly by judging the shadows and setting up your room orientation. Other than that, you are right. BTW region rendering in WF 4.0 is a big improvement as far as getting a good preview.