3D Studio Max performance

[SickBeast]

I'm currently working on a *massive* architectural thesis within 3D Max 6 and it's taking ages to render my images. I need them at 300dpi for 13x19 prints, and the images are very complex. I've designed a train station, and have included the site in the model. There are over 60 ray traced lights in the scene with shadows.

The images are turning out gorgeous, but they take over two hours to render sometimes.

Windows task manager shows 3D Max as using anywhere from ~100mb to ~850mb of physical RAM, along with upwards of 1GB of virtual memory.

Is RAM my bottleneck here? I have 1GB and it has been more that sufficient until now it seems. Would I require dual/quad Opterons to really start pumping out some serious images? I would like to produce an animation, so any upgrade tips would be great!

Here is my rig:

-XP Mobile at 2400mhz
-1GB PC3200
-NF7-S
-36GB raptor
-120GB maxtor
-R9700PRO softmodded to X1 (firegl)

Here are a few renderings:

Here is the lounge

Here is a perspective

Here is a side view

 

[DaveSimmons]

Does 3DSMax support a render farm? If you have a spare $500-1K you could add 1-2 XP boxes (or Dells you eBay when done with them) just to do rendering without tying up your main PC (or in addition to it).

You might check GamaSutra.com or do some googling for 3DSMax forums, and try to find other people using ultra-high resolution in their rendering.

 

[oneshot47]

If its hitting the swap file that much it will certainly slow it down a lot and more ram can help that. On the other hand, this is a good justification to go to dual opterons or something I don't know how much 3dsmax takes advantage of smp setups though. Probably a lot. You might be able to get a dual mp board and use xp's in it if you are cost concious (sp).

 

[SickBeast]

Yes, 3D Max supports a render farm, but my problem with that type of setup is twofold:

- it would not generate my images any faster on an individual basis
- the computers would be useless to me at any time when I'm not rendering

As for the dual XP setup, I hadn't considered that. It sounds like a pretty good idea, but from what I understand getting the Mobile XPs to run on those boards is a PITA.

I'm thinking I'm just going to live with things for now, then buy two dual-cored A64 chips down the line and run them in SMP. That would surely be a massive boost for me.

If anyone has benchmarks of a dual XP rig rendering in Max I would greatly appreciate the info.

 

[Cat]

Maybe you should light artistically and simply, rather than try to achieve your target image through tons of ray-traced lights. Shadow maps instead of ray-traced shadows can also be a win, sometimes.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: Cat
Maybe you should light artistically and simply, rather than try to achieve your target image through tons of ray-traced lights. Shadow maps instead of ray-traced shadows can also be a win, sometimes.

Agreed, ray traced lights eat processor resources like crazy in 3DS MAX, and 60 lights seems a tad bit high. Are you using all the lights to try to fake radiosity in the MAX scan line renderer? The default scan-line renderer in MAX isn't the best renderer out there (it is especially slow with ray tracing and lacks a lot of shading capabilities), so if you are using it you might look into seeing if you can get hold of a faster renderer like mantal ray or brazil.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

I'd suggest switching to something that supports SSE2, 3DS Max gets a big boost from those optimisations. Also, 3DS Max is one of the few apps in which P4's are usually faster than Athlon64's, so keep that in mind if you choose to upgrade your CPU.

 

[mechBgon]

Does 3DS Max license on a per-processor basis?

 

[zephyrprime]

It definitely sounds like you need more ram. Is it hitting the swap file a lot?

 

[AluminumStudios]

If your HD is lit up all of the time during the render then memory is draging you down some, but I can tell you from what you are doing that your CPU is the biggest bottle neck in this one ...

Since you're doing stills, not animation, a 2nd machine in a render farm config won't help. A dual CPU system would be your best bet. Getting a high end P4, A64, or Opteron would decrease render times some, but to achieve an order of magnitude (which is probably what you want so you can work faster) a multi-CPU system would really be the best ... and of course you'd want to give each CPU enough RAM to stay happy ...

 

[ROcHE]

I feel your pain. My GF is doing some architecture drawing in Autodesk Viz 2005 (based on the 3d studio 6 engine) and rendering can take up to 3 hours with my 2500+ at 2200mhz and a gig of RAM.

When you think you have a fast cpu just try to render this kind of scene and you'll feel like you have a 8088 8mhz.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: ROcHE
I feel your pain. My GF is doing some architecture drawing in Autodesk Viz 2005 (based on the 3d studio 6 engine) and rendering can take up to 3 hours with my 2500+ at 2200mhz and a gig of RAM.

When you think you have a fast cpu just try to render this kind of scene and you'll feel like you have a 8088 8mhz.

Indeed. The people who suggested using shadow maps obviously haven't seen the difference that ray-tracing makes. I tried using shadow maps, and there is no comparison. The ray tracing makes my interiors gorgeous. This project is killing my system. I'm going to have to leave it to render for about 72 hours before the drawings are due.

Does 3DS Max license on a per-processor basis?

No, it's a licence for each system AFAIK. It's even got the option to run multi-threaded right now for me, but I turn the option off because my system can't utilize it.

to achieve an order of magnitude (which is probably what you want so you can work faster) a multi-CPU system would really be the best

Thanks very much for the informative reply. I was thinking the same thing; the problem is that I don't have $3000 to drop on a dual Opteron rig at the moment. I'm thinking my best bet is to wait for the dual-cored processors and take it from there. My other option is the dual-XP's, but I'm uneasy about their low FSB and shared memory architecture. On top of that, the project is due in three weeks and I don't think I have time to build an entire system from scratch.

I was hoping that just dropping in a 1GB stick of PC3200 would give me a nice boost. Does anyone know if this would help me considerably?

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
It definitely sounds like you need more ram. Is it hitting the swap file a lot?

Yes, when doing very complex scenes. The strange thing is that often 3D Max will only be using ~150MB of system RAM, but will be using over 1GB of the swap file. I'm worried that if I buy more RAM it will continue to use the swap file instead.

Maybe I should drop Duvie a line.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: Cat
Maybe you should light artistically and simply, rather than try to achieve your target image through tons of ray-traced lights. Shadow maps instead of ray-traced shadows can also be a win, sometimes.

Agreed, ray traced lights eat processor resources like crazy in 3DS MAX, and 60 lights seems a tad bit high. Are you using all the lights to try to fake radiosity in the MAX scan line renderer? The default scan-line renderer in MAX isn't the best renderer out there (it is especially slow with ray tracing and lacks a lot of shading capabilities), so if you are using it you might look into seeing if you can get hold of a faster renderer like mantal ray or brazil.

I'm not trying to *fake* anything; my goal is to create as realistic an image as possible. Ray tracing=realism. With ray tracing enabled, everything creates an accurate shadow, and then reflects off my glossy floor. I will post an image later of the scene and you'll see why I'm using it.

As for your fancy renderer, I don't know where to get a hold of one and I don't want to risk de-stabilizing 3D Max at this stage of the game. Thanks for the suggestion though; it sounds interesting.

 

[SickBeast]

Here is the lounge

Here is a perspective

Here is a side view

I am open to criticism. It's a 4th year architectural thesis for university, so if you guys find serious flaws in the drawings, the profs will have a field day.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

I'm not trying to *fake* anything; my goal is to create as realistic an image as possible. Ray tracing=realism. With ray tracing enabled, everything creates an accurate shadow, and then reflects off my glossy floor. I will post an image later of the scene and you'll see why I'm using it.

As for your fancy renderer, I don't know where to get a hold of one and I don't want to risk de-stabilizing 3D Max at this stage of the game. Thanks for the suggestion though; it sounds interesting.

I just checked the product page on MAX 6, a mental ray license is included with the software, so you ought to be able to switch over to mental ray just by scrolling down to the bottom of "Common" tab in the "Render Scene" dialog to where it says "Assign Renderer" and switch it over from the default scanline to mental ray and see if it works any better.

If you want to stick with the scanline renderer, you might also play around with the raytrace depth a bit, dialing it down so you are calculating only what you need to get the reflections in the floor you want without doing unneccesary raytracing.

 

[SickBeast]

Batmanuel you're a genius. It seems to be rendering much faster now with the Mental Ray renderer, and it's taking up much less memory. My hard drive isn't even blinking during the render process. I'll see how the image quality turns out in the end, but what I've seen so far from it looks great.

Thanks very much for an awesome tip.

 

[mechBgon]

I don't want to throw a drowning computer an anchor, but how about some soft shadows courtesy of radiosity? If the architecture is the focus and not the quality of the render job, then don't mind me

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I don't want to throw a drowning computer an anchor, but how about some soft shadows courtesy of radiosity? If the architecture is the focus and not the quality of the render job, then don't mind me

Well yes, the architecture is the focus of the project, but presentation does count. I've never used radiosity and don't know how it works. Do I just alter the properties of the light in question?

I figure that I can just leave my computer on overnight for a few days and let it render while I sleep (*if* I sleep). I guess I can try some soft shadows and see how it looks, but I can't see it looking as good as the ray traced ones. The other problem with changing the shadows is that it requires a bit of work; I would have to change some of the lights, and then I would have to play around with the shadow settings until it's just right.

Batmanuel's rendering suggestion is working wonders; it's still taking a long time to produce the images but at least my computer is useable while it's rendering. The memory usage has gone way down.

I figure that since the computer is doing all the work, I might as well punish it with some ray tracing. It's not like I'm concentrating 100% for 4 hours to produce these images.

 

[AluminumStudios]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Here is the lounge

Here is a perspective

Here is a side view

I am open to criticism. It's a 4th year architectural thesis for university, so if you guys find serious flaws in the drawings, the profs will have a field day.

I don't know anything about architecture and I've only dabbled in 3D, but I would have to say that for the lounge scene especially the ratracing is a very good thing to have on - it lets you see all of the shadows and light spots just like you would in reality. When in a video game or whatnot less complex lighting can work just fine, but for predicting what a real building will look like, I can see why you used so many lights now ... It looks great IMHO.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I don't want to throw a drowning computer an anchor, but how about some soft shadows courtesy of radiosity? If the architecture is the focus and not the quality of the render job, then don't mind me

Well yes, the architecture is the focus of the project, but presentation does count. I've never used radiosity and don't know how it works. Do I just alter the properties of the light in question?

I figure that I can just leave my computer on overnight for a few days and let it render while I sleep (*if* I sleep). I guess I can try some soft shadows and see how it looks, but I can't see it looking as good as the ray traced ones. The other problem with changing the shadows is that it requires a bit of work; I would have to change some of the lights, and then I would have to play around with the shadow settings until it's just right.

Batmanuel's rendering suggestion is working wonders; it's still taking a long time to produce the images but at least my computer is useable while it's rendering. The memory usage has gone way down.

I figure that since the computer is doing all the work, I might as well punish it with some ray tracing. It's not like I'm concentrating 100% for 4 hours to produce these images.

I only have crummy Caligari trueSpace, but in that software, a scene that takes 20 minutes to render with raytracing might take 2 or 3 days of radiosity computation (but then it would render in a couple minutes once that had been done). If you don't have that kind of computing resources or time, then consider shadowmapping, which if it's like trueSpace, will allow for some soft-edged shadows without massive compute time (you may need to fuss with the sharpness, I'm at a disadvantage to the 3DSMax users here). Maybe after work I'll put up some examples... my avatar room image has about three days of AthlonXP 2500+ computing time into the radiosity solution, for starters. Another one with radiosity: d'oh, I'll have to find that one laters...

What radiosity does is to simulate the real-world "bounce" of light throughout an environment. So a white wall might pick up some green tinge if there's a green plant taking direct sunlight nearby, for example. Surfaces that are not directly exposed to any light source will pick up indirect lighting from lit surfaces that they face. The radiosity computation gets exponentially nastier as it proceeds, with the last few percent being basically unobtainable (in trueSpace at least).

edit: Ooops, link = teh busted Correct links: #1 and #2. The softness of the radiosity-generated lighting is a nice touch and it comes at a great cost, at least in my piece-of-junk software Being an amateur/hobbyist, I can afford to throw away days of CPU time on this stuff, but I realize you probably can't. Still, something to play around with.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Batmanuel you're a genius. It seems to be rendering much faster now with the Mental Ray renderer, and it's taking up much less memory. My hard drive isn't even blinking during the render process. I'll see how the image quality turns out in the end, but what I've seen so far from it looks great.

Thanks very much for an awesome tip.

Glad to be of help. And glad I can put all that 3ds MAX classwork I've done to good use.

Once you have the project turned in and you have some breathing room, maybe you can follow mechBgon's advice and try out some radiosity using Mental Ray. It takes a lot of processing time, but I don't think it is nearly as bad MR as it is in trueSpace (as you can probably tell by now, the mental ray coding team are the true geniuses - which is why both MAX and Maya come bundled with it now). Once you have some time to play around with it and learn how to milk the renderer for all it is worth, you can get an incredibly photorealistic version to put into your portfolio (especially if you throw some radiosity, caustics and HDRI at the project).

 

[dmw16]

I think dual CPUs might be the answer for you. Check around the forums, i thought i saw a guy selling a Dual 1900+ MP setup for about $300. Might not be a bad way to go, although you are losing some clock speed, the two CPUs may still give you a boost.

 

[batmanuel]

One last thing I just thought of. Was the model built natively in MAX or was it designed in another piece of software like Architectural Desktop and then imported in for rendering?

I'm asking because in one of my first student project back in school, I modeled a classic VW Beetle in Rhino and then imported it into MAX for rendering. The thing I didn't know at the time was that because I built it with life sized dimensions in Rhino, the MAX interpreted it as a huge object and when it tesselated the nurbs object, it created a huge amount of polygon faces in the process, which just choked the MAX scanline renderer with the sheer number of plygon faces to raytrace (and this was back with MAX 2.5 on a PII 450). I later learned that by shrinking down the car in Rhino to matchbox-car size dimensions and then importing it into MAX, it would come over with with far fewer faces, and thus was far more optimized for rendering.

Since it is an architectural project, I could see the same thing happening if you are working cross-application (especially if any nurbs objects are involved).

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: batmanuel
One last thing I just thought of. Was the model built natively in MAX or was it designed in another piece of software like Architectural Desktop and then imported in for rendering?

...I later learned that by shrinking down the car in Rhino to matchbox-car size dimensions and then importing it into MAX, it would come over with with far fewer faces, and thus was far more optimized for rendering.

Since it is an architectural project, I could see the same thing happening if you are working cross-application (especially if any nurbs objects are involved).

Yes, I drew the project in Architectural Desktop with millimetres as my units (we're funny like that in Canada). So, my drawing is basically 150,000 millimetres by 200,000 millimetres. I will try converting to metres before I import and see if that makes a difference; thanks again for another informative tip. If you look at my lounge rendering you will see that the black "spots" on the floor look like polygons as opposed to true circles. Hopefully what you're suggesting will help with this.

As for my hardware woes, they have been solved. My university has given me administrative rights on 50 P4 3.0C computers w/ 1GB of RAM each. :Q

The tech guy estimates that I will be able to render a DVD-quality 2-3 minute animation in a few hours using the render farm. The only problem is that I have to personally set up the farm and give them detailed instructions as to what I did. I'm going to look up some tutorials, but if it's not too much trouble for someone to explain this process to me it would be greatly appreciated.

:beer: for all the great help in this thread. Thanks everyone!