I just thought I would post a little test I completed yesterday.
This model was created by Stephan (downloaded on the Silo forums) but I beleive was originally from a TopMod tutorial.
This rendered in under 5 minutes on a Mac Pro using 7 Cameras.
A single camera took over 20 minutes- so that’s a 4x MP speedup- not too shabby for an app that supposedly “doesn’t have MP”!
BTW- this file uses HDRI maps from my “Capsule” packs over at Paralumino.
In particular I am using one of the “Studio Lights” for a skymap and the “glossy” effect, and one of the “Distortions” for RT reflection and refraction. I should also add that these are all default settings- no tweaking was done in the HDR dialog. So setup was very easy and fast.
The Distortions Capsule is really pretty cool- the set was inspired by the old “Wierd Hi-Con” reflection image. But this set is all HDRI and includes lots of color variations. Very effective for reflections and refractions!
If you need some HDRI images for EIAS check out the “capsule” sets at Paralumino.com by clicking the links below. These sets are an exceptional value.
Now the work I do is for visual projections in music festivals. in our production time-line need frames between 1-3 min render time per core 1080p. So I use the wonderful Raitracing of EIAS.
I do not know the result that can give your HRD maps in a raytracing render, and if render time will longer or be more or less similar.
please take a look in our web site in order to know a little bit our work:
This rendered in under 5 minutes on a Mac Pro using 7 Cameras.
A single camera took over 20 minutes- so that’s a 4x MP speedup- not too shabby for an app that supposedly “doesn’t have MP”!
Hi Dave, I just got an 8 core and, without wishing to derail the thread, I wondered how you set up the cameras on your project?
Hi Diego,
Your visual-music work is very creative. I am very impressed. The architecture is very nice too (Maxwell?).
Since you need very fast high performance rendering for your music-animation I will focus on that aspect of your work.
EIASv7 has support for 2 new types of texture maps: RT refraction and RT reflection (in the world tab). By placing HDRI maps in the RT tab your RT reflections will be much brighter and more realistic. If you need to render glass, placing an HDRI map in the refraction tab will allow the map color to be returned if a raytrace ray leaves the glass and does not hit any objects.
More importantly- the refraction map color will also be returned if the RT recursion limit is reached (default in the render control is 10 recursions).
Normally when the RT limit is reached the color returned is black making glass look very dark and bland. So with an HDRI refraction map you could limit the RT to only a few recursions, and refractive glass objects will still have “sparkle”. This optimization will greatly help render time. In the image I posted I used only 4 recursions. The default of 10 took 2 hours to render. I think this optimization may make it possible for you to do some more advanced refractive glass-like materials in your work.
Most of your work is very abstract/ science fiction/fantasy themed. I think the “distortions” capsule would be a good set for you to try. They will provide abstract reflections and give all of your objects quite a bit of extra sparkle. When used for RT reflection there should be no render time penalty- your reflections will just look brighter, and more realistic.
In this video Ian says you can use “computername.local” in Rama, and this does work, but it is not officially supported. It is probably better to set up your computer with a static IP and just use the IP address. This will get you started.
However there are a few other things I am doing to help use Rama.
I am using spaces in Leopard, and have Renderama, 7 Slaves, and all of my cameras set to use space#2. This keeps my main application space uncluttered when 6 or 7 cameras are rendering “in the background”. Generally I leave 1 or 2 CPU’s free so I can keep working/ check e-mail etc. while rendering.
The downside to this is that spaces has an “auto-swoosh” behavior that switches you to another space when a specified app launches. So when Rama Slave launches a camera you will be “swooshed” into space #2. I have disabled this behavior via terminal.
Launch Terminal and type this exactly (or copy and paste):
defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO
hit Return
Then type:
killall dock
hit Return
You can then switch spaces manually by ctrl-1 for space1, ctrl-2 for space2, etc.
Or you can scroll between spaces with ctrl right/left arrow.
As for optimizing Rama for a project there are only guidelines. For animation Rama scales very linearly- so best performance is gained by letting the slaves render multiple frames simultaneously. Do not use “strips” for animation.
For still images you can divide the image into smaller horizontal strips and each strip will be rendered by a different Slave Camera. This can be much faster than a single Camera, or only a little faster. It depends on the scene. Stripping will help most with scenes that have heavy raytracing, like GI renderings, and refractive/ reflective glass. The general rule of thumb is to have one strip per Camera, and this works pretty well. In my sample scene below you can see that there are some “empty” areas at the top and bottom edges of the image. In cases like this these two strips will render in just a few seconds and those slaves will then sit idle for the rest of the rendering process. If you have images with simple backgrounds like this, you can try doubling the number of strips (7 cameras would = 14 strips). This might get you an extra 10-15% performance.
Stripping is also useful for very high res GI scenes that push Camera’s current memory limitations. I have heard of people using over 80 strips to render scenes like this. This is not faster- it just allows each Camera to render a smaller portion of the total GI samples which is very memory intensive. I have 14 GB of RAM, so I can render to 6 or 7 slaves with maximum memory available to each Camera.
If you are animating and using Camera’s very fast Phong shading, you may also see performance bottlenecks with your hard drive. In some cases when using Phong- Camera can actually render faster than real-time. Couple this with lots of buffer shadows (especially in illuminators) and your hard drive will choke on the amount of data being read/written. I have 4 hard drives in my Mac Pro with 2 slave Cameras per drive so that the I/O load is distributed. I have measured up to 180MB/s of data transfer in certain situations. If you are not using lots of buffered shadows, or are using rendering features that take a while to calculate (like RT glass, and GI) this may not be a problem at all for you. and one or two drives may be just fine.
I hope this helps you set up your new computer.
I have been very happy with mine
Thank you very much for your comment about my visual work im glad that you like it, all is done with EIAS. As for the archiviz it s done with Cinema-VRay it is very easy tu setup nice for visualization, but I really preffer EIAS Phong and Raitracing render to express myself.
We thought about buying one of your HDRI set but we do not know which. Please if it is posibble to have one low resolution sample of each set? I like distortion but studio Light too, so if i can have a little sample of both that coul hepl me to choise.
I like the idea to have brighter reflections , and more realistic, with no render time penalty.
If you look around the Net you can find various free HDRIs.
If you experiment with those, you’ll get a better idea of how they can help you.
Once you’ve become accustomed to them, you’ll probably conclude that a purchased set is worthwhile. There are various sets of HDRIs available, but Dave’s are quite reasonable AND optimized for EI. I’m just a hobbyist, but I’ve found them very useful.
In this video Ian says you can use “computername.local” in Rama, and this does work, but it is not officially supported. It is probably better to set up your computer with a static IP and just use the IP address. This will get you started.
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