Perfromance & video card recommendations

[Anonymous]

Hello.

I am tasked with Lighting Sims and Studies using 3dsmaxdesign 2015 & mental ray. I have no issues with either. My boss just wont understand that these things take time and a lot of processing. I have a co worker that uses Maya and fakes his lighting using standard lights (non photometric) As I understand it, this is no way to perfrom a Light Study with accurate results. I am being compared to him based on render times.

With this said, I have been told by my boss that I am too slow and need to make things as fast or faster than my co worker. I have a nice system to work on but only have a mid grade video card.

Could someone please recomend a better one for my system (current stats are in my digital signature....and I have attached a jpeg of full stats) I feel that my boss wants me to turn around a 1024 x 768 300 dpi rendering in about one half hour or less for a scene that contains 55 plus photometric lights all with default shdows and about 3 or 4 fg bounces and default settings on the render panel with the exception of refraction which I have turned off. My scene is artificial light only & I have contained everything in a box with flipped normals.. Box doesnt cast shadows.

I have attached 1 image that took about an hour and a half from begining to finish rendering... Is thiat an acceptable amount of time or am I milking time?

Please advise....

Andy

[Anonymous]

All depends on your budget.

Flagship workstation cards as of now are the AMD Firepro W9100 and for Nvidia, the K6000....both respectively priced over $3k.

[Brock_Lafond]

I think in your case a better video card will not improve render times.

You mentioned FG bounces, which suggests to me mentalRay is your rendering engine. If that is so, you should look into getting a faster processor with more cores.

A better video card will benefit your renders if rendering with a GPU based renderer like iRay or V-Ray RT.

Here are some things you can do to speed up the render:

Precompute the GI solution.

If you're only placing lights but not changing the geometry, cache/reuse the geometry for the render.

In the render settings turn down the Contrast/Noise Threshold values, instead of increasing samples/quality.

Use a regular box filter for the anti-aliasing; it's faster than gauss and is okay for stills.

Turn down the number of visible reflections.

Avoid using materials with soft glossy reflections.

Run some BSP diagnostic renders; if BSP2 shows a lot of red, consider switching to BSP and adjust settings manually (size specifically)

[Anonymous]

Thank you Brock! I will give those tips a try.

Thanks for taking the time

Andy

[VishnuR]

Hi Andy,

You might want to review the link below > note 2 selectable options.
System Hardware
Graphics Hardware

www.autodesk.com/graphics-hardware

If using Mental Ray or Scanline, faster cpu will give faster render times, not gpus ( for MR or Scanline ).

Also gathered some quick tips for you below, some already mentioned

Experiment with changes in values as per link below.
• Ray-Trace Acceleration: Parameters for the BSP Method
 

http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/16/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/files/GUID-14A2CCDA-1B04-441D-BFC6-7E8A2780EC4A....

• If they use mental ray, see Zap’s blog post:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/maxstation/n193-interesting-post-by-master-zap-on-the-mental-ray-thre...

Optimize scene where possible , using ProOptimizer on as many dense objects as possible. ProOptimizer Modifier
http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/16/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/files/GUID-109C880F-181B-4067-91F0-B4EF79639FB3.... 
 
Where possible > reduce number of lights in scene.
Fewer lights = less calculations = faster render times.
Use the Light Lister to disable lights where possible.

Disable Receive / Cast Shadows on  objects not needing them
(right click object: Object Properties > Rendering Control >Receive Shadows/Cast Shadows)

Do same as above for “Visible To Reflections/Refractions

Disable/Exclude objects from Caustic and GI Calculations
(right click object: Object Properties > Mental Ray, uncheck where necessary
options for Final Gather, Caustics and GI, etc.

Reduce number of reflections/refractions in scene. More to calculate = longer render times.

Hope that helps increase  your render speeds.
Best Regards
VR

[Anonymous]

Thank You Vishnu. I've just returned from Season Hiatus....appologies for delayed response.

Some great tips. I have already employed most. I need to spend more time in the Calculations area and get to know the render engine options advantages, pitfalls etc. Never a fun thing for me as Im all about the "pretty picture".

Once again. Thank you

Kind regards

Andy M