Ram and Processor speed, bus

[rubixstarr]

I am a beginner at lightwave. I have a computer that is 100mhz BUS, 800mhz Ram and 800 mhz Processor speed, and 120GB space. it is a G4 computer. Is that a good amount of power to have to use Lightwave and make animation without my computer having major problems while rendering beginner type 5-30 minute animation movies?

[js33]

If the scenes don't use the raytracing options you should be OK. But you will need alot of patience to render out 30 minutes of animation on any single processor machine (Mac or PC).

Cheers,
JS

[rubixstarr]

hm... if i do use raytracer, what would you recommend my computer to be upgraded to? Maybe to a Ghz for both processor and Ram? or would just upgrading Ram be ok? Any suggestions would be much appreciated. thanks a lot.

[mlinde]

If you are rendering 5 min. or more, and raytracing, you want to build a render network to maximize output. You must assume that each frame will take at least 1-2 mins. to render, and at 30 FPS your computer is offline rendering for something like 500 hours for 5 min. of animation. If you are a Mac only guy (no PCs or desire for PCs) then look at some used boxes on eBay, any flavor G4 will do. Here's a short list of render network rules:

1) Minimum 512 MB RAM in each box
2) Network set up with switch (not hub)
3) Any G4 processor(s) (should be faster because of Altivec, and cheaper than G5 setups). eMacs and FP-iMacs are inexpensive boxes for this kind of setup.

If all you can afford is to U/G the system, max out your RAM and processor.

[rubixstarr]

Holy Smokes!! 500 hours for 5 minutes!!??? OMG!! So I'm a beginner and I'm sorry I'm asking all these questions, but I'm trying to understand the concept of networking. If i use two computers to render instead of one, does that mean that the time is cut in half? and then if i render with 3 computers, then the time cut to a third? I'm sure it varies as to what computer you get, but... hm... There has to be a way to make the render time faster without having a hundred computers rendering your movie... cuz 500 hours for 5 minutes is way too long and it will take a zillion years to do a feature animation film... Or is that the reality of animation today? What kind of set up do the average independent Solo animation artist have? I am planning to work on my own without the help of other animators... is that an impossibility for one animator to create a 2 hour feature without waiting 12,000 hours to render a movie and not investing millions of dollars? Do i have to join a production of animators to get a feature animation film done?

[mlinde]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news.

It's unfortunately all math. There are 24,25, or 30 frames of animation every second on screen (in film, Europe, and the US, respectively). If you do the math for 30fps (easier than 29.97fps, the US Standard for TV) and 300 seconds to five minutes, 30 x 300 = 9,000 frames. Now multiply the frame number by the rendering time (2 minutes per) and you have 18,000 minutes, and ...oops...my math was a bit off before... it's only 300 hours. Now, 300 hours is processor time. Each processor (and dual processor computers count as two) can render a single frame, so if you have four computers, and one of them is a dual processor computer, you have basically 5 render nodes. 300/5 = 60 hours rendering time. See how it adds up quickly?

As for "feature" animation, I assume you mean things along the 90 minute length. Most of these productions come out of studios that have a team of animators (anywhere from 3-300) working on a single project, and a "farm" of computers (often more than 50 machines) rendering frames of animation.

Most independent animators seem to work in the :30 - 7:00 format, mostly because there are so many skills to handle a feature film you can't do it alone, unless it's all you do for a LONG time.

Anyone else feel free to correct me or chime in here...

[rubixstarr]

WOW! Thanks Mlinde! Seems like you know everything about animation!! Im obviously still new at animation and trying to decide whether to buy LW or not... thinking about Animation Master, but I like the image of Light wave better. Another question: After you animate everything, do people export the animation onto quicktime or something and then import it into another Music program such as Logic or Protools and create the soundtrack for it as well as the voice overs? or is there another procedure that the average animators take? Hm... I'm not super rich, so I can't buy that many computers to render my animation, so I guess I'm gonna have to wait those hundreds of hours to do a 5 minute animation clip... which is kind of discouraging... is it the same amount of time to render 2D animation? i'm assuming that 2d will be a lot quicker... thanks Mlinde!!

[Beamtracer]

It's all about workflow. You work in the day, render in the night.

It's not like the completed "film" will be done in one day and then you hit the render button. It could take just as much set up time as render time.

So, as you work on shot 2 in the day, you render the previous shot 1 in the night.

[rubixstarr]

To beamtracer:

Ahhhhh..... that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. But still, the massive amount of rendering time still scares me...

[Antimatter]

if youre interested in building your own mosix cluster, i would highly recommend pc and linux, because there's a freeware version of mosix for linux called openmosix

you can use your mac workstation just fine, but only problem is price, i belive its still about $1,000 for a g4 i think, correct me if i'm wrong?

now to setup a little mosix cluster, i would recommend 10-20 cheap computer in a rack mount, and each would have the following spec.

1-3 ghz
512+ meg of ram
80 gig harddrive or lower,
100mb/sec minum for network

cost about $300-2,000 per computer depending on how powerful each machine is, brand name, etc...

for about $3,000 you could build an cheap cluster of 10 computer for $300 each, or you could go and do 5 computer for about $600 each.

and yeah the price adds up fast dosen't it. and after a certain point its not worth the price for the time saved if you know what i mean.

good example is let's say we got this setup about $500 per computer, and let's say were rendering an animation that is 5 min long and it takes 2 min per frame as perse mlinde's example. on a one single machine it would take 300 hours.


5 computer cluster
price: $2,500
render time: 60 hours

10 computer cluster
price: $5,000
render time: 30 hours

20 computer cluster
price: $10,000
render time: 15 hours

40 computer cluster
price: $20,000
render time: 7.5 hours

80 computer cluster
price: $40,000
render time: 3.75 hours

160 computer cluster
price: $80,000
render time: 1.875 hours

320 computer cluster
price: $160,000
render time: 0.9375 hours

now do we see a patten here, double the number of computer and double the price, you haves the rendering time (assuming each computer is the same) anyway after a certain point its not worth the cash. now for large large studio, that point might be 100's or 1,000's of computer.

anyway it would take about 300 computer to get the rendering time down to one hour. and would cost about $150,000 now for the price figure im assuming each computer cost about $500 dollars each and each alone can render one frame per 2 min, now we could end up using say a $2,000 computer for each nodule, but how much faster would it be than the $500 computer, onice again we got an sort of curve here, after a certain point its not worth going over a certain amount per nodule.

anyway i hope that was clear enough.


anyway for the heck of it i'm going to figure out how long it would take a 1,000 nodule cluster to render out an 90 min animation :) then figure out how many nodule it would take to render that animation in one hour, assuming 2 min per frame. which figures out to about 5,400 hours for a single computer. price is about $500 per nodule

1,000 computer cluster
render time: 5.4 hours
price: $500,000 in other word half a million

5,400 computer cluster
render time: 1 hour
price: $2.7 million dollars

[Triple G]

Antimatter,

Unless I'm misinformed, the terms "cluster" and "render farm" refer to different things, and should not be used interchangably. It's my understanding that a "cluster" refers to multiple CPUs connected and interfaced in such a way as to appear and perform as one giant, super-fast CPU. A "render farm" refers to multiple independent CPUs, each performing a task (rendering the next available frame) that is assigned by a host machine.

If I'm wrong, please let me know...this was always my understanding of the situation.

Anyway, @ rubixstarr: My advice to you is to save your money and not spend it on anything right away. The system you said you have is fine for learning LW. My current machine is a first-generation G4 upgraded to 1GHz, with 1GB of RAM. Sure, it's no G5, but it gets the job done pretty nicely. Since you're just getting started with Lightwave, there's no sense in going out and dropping thousands of dollars on hardware that you won't be able to put to good use until you get past the inevitable learning curve of the software, which depending on your abilities and the level of skill you wish to achieve, could take anywhere from a few months to a few years. By that time, you'll have a better feel for the program and what you will need to purchase in order to achieve your goals.

[Jean-Paul Lar.]

Not sure if anyone mentioned it as im in a hurry but there is always www.respower.com ive never gone to them but i hear its i good choice if you need allot of rendering done....later good luck i am also a one man army and know the pain.....:cool:

[Beamtracer]

It doesn't matter how big your computer or network render farm is... your big enemy will always be render time.

So... rather than looking for a gazillion dollars to buy a new building to house 20 new computers, you're better off setting up your Lightwave scenes so they don't require much render time.

The biggest studios of all making the biggest Hollywood movies still adjust the content or quality of their scenes in an attempt to limit render times.

Look at Jimmy Neutron. The produces admitted that the only reason they didn't have characters with hair was to reduce the render times.

Look at Ice Age. They used a lot of 2D backdrops to reduce render times.

All the big animated features avoid too much camera movement as this increases render times (if the camera doesn't move you can use a single frame for your background).

"Bake" the lighting and textures on your scenes, and avoid too many procedurals and transparency.

There's lots of things you can do before you purchase a render farm! ...Especially if you are "a beginner at lightwave".

[Antimatter]

Beamtracer: he's correct, there's alots stuff you can do to redcludle rendering time, but when you have pulled all the trick you can and it still suck, its time to break out the heavy duty hardwares

Triple G: youre correct, an mosix cluster is basically a type of cluster that performs load balancing type of stuff so if one computer is geting too loaded down with rendering stuff it gives it to another computer that has less load. works great now i'm not sure about lightwave. because i haven't yet had the luck or money to build myself an cluster yet :(

anyway its really more of an techical term to the end user they probably don't overly care how the cluster or renderfarm does it they only care that it yields results in a reasonable amount of time.

[Beamtracer]

rubixstarr: I'd suggest you use the computer you've already got. You can learn Lightwave with it, you can animate with it.

Sure, a faster computer will render your scenes a bit quicker, but the one you've got should be OK for "beginner type" animations.

After you've got more familiar with Lightwave you'll get to know if you need a faster machine or not.

I think this talk of render farms is a bit over-the-top.

[Antimatter]

Originally posted by Beamtracer
rubixstarr: I'd suggest you use the computer you've already got. You can learn Lightwave with it, you can animate with it.

Sure, a faster computer will render your scenes a bit quicker, but the one you've got should be OK for "beginner type" animations.

After you've got more familiar with Lightwave you'll get to know if you need a faster machine or not.

I think this talk of render farms is a bit over-the-top.

heh i was just expanding on the rendering time, of some of the earler post that's all :)

anyway i agree with you on the fact that his computer is just fine right now for learning lightwave, i learn lightwave on an old 1ghz p3 with 256 meg of ram, not that great of a machine.

now i'm moving up to an 3.2ghz overclocked with 1 gig of ram, machine, then in the future if i have the need for more power i will probably move up to an dual machine or an small few computer renderfarm or mosix cluster but that's for the future.

[Ge4-ce]

Also.. we did not mention that here yet.. I you do wanna upgrade your computer a little bit.. Check you 3D graphix! you can better upgrade that card to a nice one because that dramatically improves the way your machine reacts when modelling, and setting up your scenes and stuff..

try to get a nVidia card.. I have ATI, but.. read all the threads on this forum concerning 'modeler crash' ATI and OS 10.2.6 and you will see why I advice nVidia cards..

Also another tip: I always adjust some things when rendering.. basicly, I have 2 modes when animating:

one to look how the result will look, and then I put everything on: raytrace, .. the entire mic-mac and render just one frame

another to check your animation. Then I reduce my camera resolution to 50% and put my rendersettings to "quickshade" instead of 'realistic'.. then you're able, even on your machine to render frames at less than a second per frame!

You would be surprised how many beginners render a scene overnight to notice in the morning that their character's left foot sticks through a wall or floor...

[simonbrewer]

When I was at college around 1996, I was allowed to create a 3D animation for my final project. I ended up doing a 10 minute long sci-fi movie called Chase

I was using LightWave 4 and my Amiga A4000 with a 50Mhz 060 processor and 120mb ram.

I would do some animation and modelling during the day, and render overnight and at weekends.

Frames took anywhere from 1 to 15 mins to render, and so my Amiga was rendering non-stop for 6 months :-)

Got a distinction for the final film though!!


Simon

[rubixstarr]

Awesome!! That makes everything a lot more clear. I feel that I am starting to understand the animation world more and more as you guys give me more feedback on the million questions I have. thanks a lot! I really appreciate your help!!

[Antimatter]

Originally posted by rubixstarr
Awesome!! That makes everything a lot more clear. I feel that I am starting to understand the animation world more and more as you guys give me more feedback on the million questions I have. thanks a lot! I really appreciate your help!!

good luck and have fun animating.

oh yes i think i got a few ideas for you to speed up your test rendering.

use smaller texture maps, and simpler model, say for example you got an model of an person and its very detailed, just use some sort of LOD and set it to be basially not that detailed, and etc... half the size of your resolution when youre rendering etc... then you probably can get some pretty fast preview rendering, ive got some movies that are what 10 min long rendering in a hour or two.

now onice you are happy with your animation, then turn on all the highdetailed models, turn on all the options etc... enable raytrace, then start rendering and walk away for a few days to week :)