Probably been asked - optimizing render speed

[lilrayray77]

I have just gotten started with lightwave and I have come across a small problem. Because the video world is swinging over to HD, I have decided to render all of my images/animations in High Def. Last night I decided to render a grasshopper animation (came in LW extra content) in 1280x720 (1080P is to big for my current monitor) just as a test. With medium anti-aliasing and no raytracing and what not, it took nearly 7 hours to render this mere 8 second, 250 frame, animation. I set multithreading to 2 threads since I have a dual core but I did not notice much a difference. Is there any ways to optimize my system inorder to speed up rendering? Here are my system specs:

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OS: Windows MCE 2005
Processor: Pentium D (2 x 2.8 ghz)
RAM: 1 gb 200ghz
Vid Card: 256 mb Radeon X600 se
Hard drive: Philips SATA 80 gb
display: 1 19" sony with ergo bright technology

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I have heard that RAM has a large responsibility in rendering. I was wondering first, would buying another 2gbs of ram make a considerable difference in my rendering speed? Also I currently have 1gb of 266mz ram; would 2gbs of 667mz be compadible with the 266hmhz? Would the 266 limit the speed of the 667?

Thankyou in advanced :)

[AbnRanger]

CPU and RAM have the most impact on rendering performance indeed, and adding additional will certainly help matters. How much... can't give a flat figure-so many factors involved, but going from 1 to 3GB will provide a noticeable difference. Especially as your scenes get more complex. Set your thread count to 4 with a dual-core. I have an AMD64 X2 4400 and test-rendered with each thread level. 4 was consistently the best.

With Dual Channel RAM (which I think your system should have) you want to have matching pairs (size and speed) in order for the "Dual-Channel" feature to work. RAM has become relatively inexpensive (at least the DDR 400 modules anyway), and you will want to ditch the 200mhz modules and try to spring for a full 4GB of DDR2 533 or 667, so that dual-core of yours has plenty of elbow room, performance-wise. Each core will get 2GB each, an therefore will probably sizzle compared to what you are currently using. In any case, DO NOT mix RAM with different speeds...they need to match.

Do a Google search on how to over-clock your CPU on the brand/model of Motherboard, if you want to boost your system even more. Both Intel and AMD chips are made to handle a good deal of overclocking. Just make sure that you buy yourself a good aftermarket CPU fan like a Zalman CNPS 7700...and you should be able to get your 2.8Ghz CPU up to around 3.2 - 3.4 rather easily, without breaking a sweat.

[lilrayray77]

I read an article about over clocking my specific CPU. It said with an efficieant air cooler I could overclock up to 3.3ghz. It said If you have a water cooler or something along those lines you could overclock without thermal throttlling. Do you know of any good external fans? Can I install a water cooling system into my already built PC? What options do I have about cooling?

[rvarela]

Hi AbnRanger,

"try to spring for a full 4GB of DDR2 533 or 667"

I heard that WinXP will not recognize more than 3 Gb?
Do you know something about it?

Cheers,

[AbnRanger]

That's a misconception. Windows sees and uses all 4 GB....however, it usually separates the memory into 2 allocations. 1) System resources that Windows uses to run in the background and such. 2) Active Programs running....such as LW, Photoshop, MS Word, etc., etc.
It splits the 4GB between the 2, unless you set up the 3GB switch (doing a google search will land you plenty of what, why, and how to's on that subject). When you do that, it frees up a full 3GB just for active running programs, and system resources has to make do on 1GB. Simple as that.

Now, LilRayRay, about CPU fans and liquid cooling systems...check out some of the video reviews and intstallation here:
http://www.3dgameman.com/videos_archive.html

I don't think you'll need a liquid cooling system since some of the CPU fans made now perform nearly as well...and it's usually less hassle to install one. It's hard to beat a Zalman...and they are REALLY quiet.

[lilrayray77]

With a new fan, should I keep all of my others or should I replace my current one with a more powerful one?

[AbnRanger]

Regarding a CPU fan, you'd replace your old one. The one's from the factory are paltry compared to the better aftermarket models, and you'll for yourself, when you hold them side by side. Here's a few links:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118115
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118223
This model from Thermaltake compares well and costs a little less:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835106069R
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835106069

[lilrayray77]

Back to RAM, my friend said he has DDR3 ram which is really good but expensive. Is it worth looking into DDR3 ram even if it is expensive?

[AbnRanger]

You'll find DDR3 on VIDEO cards, but I have yet to see any available for Motherboards. Intel has DDR2 (although it's slow front side bus of 800mhz really negates the benefit of the speedier RAM somewhat...compared to AMD).
Even the most expensive MB's have yet to offer DDR3:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128002

[lilrayray77]

Is DDR2 bad? This is what I was looking at, it is straight from dell. Pretty good price and I know I can trust it to work since it was made specifically for my XPS 400. Here it is, tell me whether this is the way to go:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A0534012&c=us&l=en&cs=19&category_id=2999&page=external

[Dexter2999]

Hmmm....250 frames in 7 hrs. Hi-Res with Medium Antialiasing. That is 250 frames in 420 minutes. You are rendering under 2 minutes a frame and you aren't satisfied? Wow.
I routinely do logo spinners at 800x640 with Enhance low Antialiasing and I run just under a minute and a half a frame. Your rates don't seem that out of line with the specs you described.

[Sculley]

Must admit.. With 2minute render times.. whay bother with optimizing.. doesnt seem worth the benefits of a few seconds a frame.

I render at Pal Widescreen with 1024*576 and it takes me between 15mins and an hour a frame on dual athlon 2.6s. I have a 8 cpu render farm and im lucky to get a 8 second anim back in a matter of days.. and even with the systems cut to the simplest.. clean OS's... fast network, all rubbish removed I only get around a minute a frame difference :(

Is it worth the cost overclocking.. and there are stability issues if you motherboard and ram arnt up to it.. so they may have to go too.

Sometimes all you can do is have patience! Go read a book.. or render when you sleep.. the time will soon pass.

[lilrayray77]

-Im just a hobbiest so I expected that the speed I was rendering at was slow. What speed do the pros render at?

-Also about render farms, I hear they really help deacrese render speed. Do I need multiple lightwave lisceneces/dongles? How do I set up a render farm (my family has a couple comps in the house that arent used all that often)?

[Sculley]

when you buy Lightwave.. you've paid your licence.. its now render farm in a box... You need a network, mapped network drives and a few batch files setup to give cpus the numbers etc.

Its all in the manuals.

Go and ahve fun :)

Speed of rendering completely depends on the scene in question... most studios try to keep render times below 30mins a frame (though this is not law). my own work goes between 10mins to an hour.. An hour is my limit for render times... I dont want to spend 4 weeks rendering a few seconds of animation.. its jsut not productive :(

Very often a complex scene can render much faster.. thats where you try to make as many optimizations as possible.

[AbnRanger]

-Im just a hobbiest so I expected that the speed I was rendering at was slow. What speed do the pros render at?

-Also about render farms, I hear they really help deacrese render speed. Do I need multiple lightwave lisceneces/dongles? How do I set up a render farm (my family has a couple comps in the house that arent used all that often)?
There's nothing bad about DDR2. It's just that it takes MB and CPU maker's longer to collaborate and implement newer technologies, such as DDR3, for a number of reasons. One chief reason is whether or not there will be wide enough availability of DDR3 RAM for MB's to be mass produced using that standard. Right now, there isn't.
All you need to do is find out what size and speed rating your system takes (in this case DDR2RAM 667mhz 1GB modules). Here's a link for 2 such modules for $189, and Mushkin is one of the top brands...so you don't have to worry about no name companies selling you cheap stuff:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1206040&CatId=1651

Adding more PC's to your renderfarm is NEVER a bad thing. your host computer assigns individual frames to each PC in the system. They chew them out as fast as they can, and your host immediately sends them another. There's no way additional PC's cause the farm to lag. Whoever told you that is giving you bad info, or what they were emphasizing is the fact that if you can live with 48 hours to render a complex animation, it may not justify spending thousands more just to trim that time down by a couple of hours.
Indeed, that Dual-Core of yours is doing a pretty good job. However, adding some extra RAM will help it churn out renders noticeably faster, and boost your overall system performance...especially when you get to working on more complex scenes, with large imagemaps...and do multitasking...such as working in Photoshop while waiting on a render, etc

[Dexter2999]

-Im just a hobbiest so I expected that the speed I was rendering at was slow. What speed do the pros render at?

-Also about render farms, I hear they really help deacrese render speed. Do I need multiple lightwave lisceneces/dongles? How do I set up a render farm (my family has a couple comps in the house that arent used all that often)?

Lightwave does come with ScreamerNet and there are instructions on how to set up a renderfarm. (It all in the documentation.) There are also a couple of tutorials posted to help. I wouldn't call it easy, and to be honest I never got it to work right. There are other 3rd party programs that can help. Amletto, Butterfly Render, MULE are the ones I know of. I am sure there are others I don't know about. Amletto has a trial version that is fully functional and will let you control up to three computers after the trial period is over (I think- may need to follow up on that)

More RAM is never a bad thing.

Good Luck- BTW any chance of a link to see your animation?

[lilrayray77]

@ dexter2999 - The high def grasshopper animation? Unfortunately I am still stuck with dial-up (although DSL is suppose to be installed to my street within a couple months) and the animation came out to 84 mb so at my upload speed it would take ~ 11 hours and 40 minutes to upload. So that makes it a little difficult to upload I will post a frame of it though. Oh and this picture is from the Lightwave extra content CDs and isn ot my own creation, I mearly used it for benchmarking perposes.

@ no one in particular - Today I set up screamernet II with my home network and I actually got it working (I think). So I did a couple test renders and I am astounded at how helpful it is for animation. There is just one problem I have to overcome. SN II can only render image sequences right? I really dont wont to spend any money on a program that can compile these images. Does anyone know of a good program that would be able to compile these images produced by SN II and export them into a good, high quality video format?

@ everyone - Thankyou so much for your help :)

[Dexter2999]

You don't have to spend money on a program to compile the images. You can do it inside Lightwave.
Put all your images in a folder (preferably inside your project folder you made for good file management RIGHT?)
Inside your Image Editor load the first still frame. If you look in the Image editor you should click the drop down option box next to IMAGE TYPE and make it SEQUENTIAL. (Keep in mind there is also a box for HOLD LAST FRAME or LOOP can come in handy later)
Now you can set this sequence to be your Composite background in an empty scene and just render the animation to an AVI or QUICKTIME file.

This two step process is better because if for some reason a computer should crash while writing and AVI, it becomes corrupt and you have to start all over. With Still files you just find the last frame renedered and pick up from there.

Good Luck

[lilrayray77]

Well I got 2gb of muskin ram. When I put it in and truned on my computer, my circuite breaker flipped. I tryed changing the slots and no joy. I have an intel i945p/g motherboard. Anyone have any idea what's up? Luckily there is a life time warrenty.

[Dexter2999]

Okay, are you sure it was a circuit? Some motherboards (ASUS in particular) are very picky about what flavor of RAM they like. ASUS will refuse to boot up at all if you put in ECC rated RAM. Non rated RAM is fine.
I learned this one at work the hard way when the purchaser "Got a deal" on other than what I had spec'ed out.
If you can get me more info I will try to give you more help.

[lilrayray77]

Just wondering were in PA you are that they don't have dsl or cable yet?

oh, Im in Bucks County, north of philly. Unfortuneately I live right between the DSL areas and my driveway is so long that cable would cost thousands just to get it run down our driveway.

As for the ram prob., I fixed it. It turns out that my computer serge protector was faulty and replacing that fixed it nicely.