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Strictly speaking, the question you're asking is "law of diminishing returns, David?"
Your numbers-crunched-per-pound-spent criterion ascribes an arbitrary value to the numbers-crunched, based entirely on the cost of a particular performing processor at a given time.
In your shoes, assuming similar intense levels of Brycing interest and abilty with such successful prolific output and quality, I would assign an extemely high value to numbers-crunched and choose a processor that gave me the most I could possibly afford.
But that's just my appreciation of economic value. The same appreciation that made me value what you do and say enough to get back out of bed, navigate to the computer and fire it up to respond to your comment, having thought about it enough to prevent sleep.
Strictly speaking, the question you're asking is "law of diminishing returns, David?"
Your numbers-crunched-per-pound-spent criterion ascribes an arbitrary value to the numbers-crunched, based entirely on the cost of a particular performing processor at a given time.
In your shoes, assuming similar intense levels of Brycing interest and abilty with such successful prolific output and quality, I would assign an extemely high value to numbers-crunched and choose a processor that gave me the most I could possibly afford.
But that's just my appreciation of economic value. The same appreciation that made me value what you do and say enough to get back out of bed, navigate to the computer and fire it up to respond to your comment, having thought about it enough to prevent sleep.
Thank you! I read carefully every word - at least twice and in a slightly different order - that's not special treatment, just my special reading (in)ability.
Today my computer booted again - woo... but the hard drive is thrashing and making "the noise" that frightens me - "the noise" we all fear to come from hard drives - the one which stars with a bit of a wirrr and ends with a dull hollow "donk". Today I think is the day...
OK but here's another consideration I wanted to throw into the mix from my perspective. Not only is there an obvious cost in going for more expensive hardware - the cost - there is also the risk of leaving the majority of Bryce users behind who don't have the advantage of super computers. As it happens testing Bryce 7 on my old Pentium 4 was a good thing, because it highlighted when suddenly operations which should have been smooth got unexpected tardy. On my i7 I might not have seen these changes. It also forced me to develop ever more efficient ways of working with volumetric materials. Which in turn made it possible for more people to experiment themselves with them. If I were just producing images, yes a super fast PC would be great, but as a lot of my output revolves around tutorials, so I suppose it is a good idea that I experience what most people experience - at least to some extent? I know I'm hardly suffering with the i7 but by the same token there are faster solutions out there.
Anyhow, thanks for the insights into your hardware contemplations. I think probably there is more than just me that is Xeon curious?
The purchase of a CPU is one thing - benchmark points per £ or $. The other thing is how expensive it is to run: W (power) per speed. Interestingly, comparing my i7 920 8-way CPU (4 cores, all multi-threadable) with the i3 (4 cores, not multi-thingy) I see that the i3 performs 60% of what the i7 does, but at half the electric power and without a noisy fan. If I have an overnight render, I don't actually care whether it takes 4 or 6 hours since I'm sleeping through the render anyway, but I appreciate that the i3 is silent and uses less power for the same end result.
I am running a thread about building a fast graphics computer:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15714/
I am an AMD fan, but there has been a paucity of AMD response, which is why I asked Chohole about her recent experiences(response appreciated).
One of the interesting things to come out of my thread is the difference between Xeon and i7 for intel chipsets. The i7 is more the consumer based and the Xeon is more the higher-end server based with multicore and something called hyperthreading (not available on all xeon chips). Xeon servers are usually really expensive. But one of the fellows in my thread suggested looking for something like a top of the line graphics Dell precision computer coming off, say a three year lease, with a high tech firm. This is something I'm contemplating due to cost.
Here is a helpful link that shows you the difference between Intel i-series chips and xeon series chips. There is also a comparison bar that allows you to compare 5 chips at a time.
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html
And, Dave Brinnen, Have you tried Norton Ghost? You should be able back up a full operating disk (at least as far as 500Gb that I know of) and operating system through a USB Hard Disk sata or pata cradle. Turn it on at night when you go to bed and you should have a new operating disk in the morning. Take the one out of you computer, switch slave to master on the one from the Sata/PATA and put it in.
I am running a thread about building a fast graphics computer:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15714/
I am an AMD fan, but there has been a paucity of AMD response, which is why I asked Chohole about her recent experiences(response appreciated).
One of the interesting things to come out of my thread is the difference between Xeon and i7 for intel chipsets. The i7 is more the consumer based and the Xeon is more the higher-end server based with multicore and something called hyperthreading (not available on all xeon chips). Xeon servers are usually really expensive. But one of the fellows in my thread suggested looking for something like a top of the line graphics Dell precision computer coming off, say a three year lease, with a high tech firm. This is something I'm contemplating due to cost.
Here is a helpful link that shows you the difference between Intel i-series chips and xeon series chips. There is also a comparison bar that allows you to compare 5 chips at a time.
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html
And, Dave Brinnen, Have you tried Norton Ghost? You should be able back up a full operating disk (at least as far as 500Gb that I know of) and operating system through a USB Hard Disk sata or pata cradle. Turn it on at night when you go to bed and you should have a new operating disk in the morning. Take the one out of you computer, switch slave to master on the one from the Sata/PATA and put it in.
I would never let any thing Norton makes near my puter !
The alternative to Ghost is Acronis.
To me, the secret to faster renders, and particularly faster animation renders, will be making Bryce opengl compliant. I know that's a big step, but it serves no purpose to let the parallel processing power of GPU cards, or even multiple GPU cards, go unused, particularly while the CPU is churning away at 100%.
David Brinnen mentioned
What does this refer to? Where there animation features removed from Bryce 7?
Thank you
Heaven alone knows what bigh meant, he is often cryptic so only he knows the answer to that.
You can still do animation in Bryce, as much as you always have been able to. It was never psossible to animate Poser figures in Bryce, not in the same way as you can animate them in Poser or DS.
I thought, in some previous Bryce - DS interactive mode, it was possible to adjust the poses of figures "live" within the Bryce - DS interactive mode rather than going back to DS, adjusting, then exporting and re-importing, etc, etc. I assumed this was what bigh was referring to. Never used DS so never checked this feature out, so not sure.
I also thought bigh was female, which should probably give you some pause when considering my thoughts... :mrgreen:
What does this refer to? Where there animation features removed from Bryce 7?
Thank you
yes we could do animation - DS to Bryce - I had more but the site is no more .
http://youtu.be/HHW9wv5AD7k
Right, c'mon Mr B, spill the beans. What happened, what did you do to recover - and what's this Cuda thingamajig you've slotted in?
Hmmm, "C dive" and "they" is an ambiguous combination. A C drive is a singular item outside of a RAID array, and in any case I do seriously hope that you are not keeping important data on a C partition of any description. C drives are for operating systems and any programs (like MS office) that so hopelessly tie themselves into the OS that they are useless without it. C drives should be regarded as completely expendable due to corruption / viruses, etc.
Standalone programs and data should be isolated on at least one other partition / drive. It's very easy to relocate "My Documents" and similar imposed folders to another drive letter, along with default email storage. etc. This other drive letter (D, E, whatever) should be backed up regularly with great discipline (just like wot I do - not).
To protect against disc failure, I'm going for RAID 1 for data in my next setup, plus regular automated backup offboard to protect against that other greatest system danger - me.
Thanks for the quick replies.
Is there any discussion about Bryce 8 possibly being opengl compliant?
Thanks
Thanks
ok it was Bryce 7 and DS 3 - and you used the bridge to bring your model with animation over .
then you set up your scene in Bryce and render it .
Thanks
What David was referring to is that Bryce only uses the processor to render. Bryce can not and does not access any features within a Graphics card as yet. Therefore getting a fancy all singing all dancing graphics card will not have any effect on speeding Bryce renders up.
I'm completely with you in this. All machines sport six virtual drives. C=System, D=graphics and editors, E=programming languages and IP tools, F=data (images and renders), G=bulk storage, H=system backup. For copy and backup (Ghost, Acronis), there are six network drives.
Thanks for the re-mention of Large Address Aware and the links earlier in this thread. I just started repeatedly hitting the out of memory limit and having trouble with the project I'm working on, but Large Address Aware appears to have allowed me to continue and add more to the scene; hopefully that will buy me enough extra memory to complete the project.
Right, c'mon Mr B, spill the beans. What happened, what did you do to recover - and what's this Cuda thingamajig you've slotted in?
Hmmm, "C dive" and "they" is an ambiguous combination. A C drive is a singular item outside of a RAID array, and in any case I do seriously hope that you are not keeping important data on a C partition of any description. C drives are for operating systems and any programs (like MS office) that so hopelessly tie themselves into the OS that they are useless without it. C drives should be regarded as completely expendable due to corruption / viruses, etc.
Standalone programs and data should be isolated on at least one other partition / drive. It's very easy to relocate "My Documents" and similar imposed folders to another drive letter, along with default email storage. etc. This other drive letter (D, E, whatever) should be backed up regularly with great discipline (just like wot I do - not).
To protect against disc failure, I'm going for RAID 1 for data in my next setup, plus regular automated backup offboard to protect against that other greatest system danger - me.
I try to back up everything often. My organisational skills are weak. I'm not very good at doing anything fancy like partitioning drives, it take me a long time to learn stuff - think about how long I've been fiddling with Bryce. I don't even know how to use my mobile phone properly, I just give it to the nearest sprog and ask them to program in what I need.
I'm even baffled by forum notifications, like some theads tell me when there have been posts and others - like this one - just don't. Which is annoying because I continually loose track.
So you're an old fart then, David. But you're not as old a fart as I am - my mobile phone isn't programmable at all and is actually older than most sprogs. My phone is an old fart! Fortunately the internet enables us to de-olden-farten ourselves to a large degree, so with a little effort we can learn without embarrassment. And you are far more capable than you make out here. We can all see it by what you achieve (tell him, Horo).
Partitioning is a bit of a faff but worth the effort if you have only one hard disk. It's much easier still to buy another hard disk and make that your data drive. You definitely need to back it up against mechanical death, of course, but it's safe from a corrupted operating system requiring a "format C". Having said that, modern operating systems are much more robust than the bad old days of Windows 95, etc, with which I learned my safety procedures.
Well, your divergence into Octane has certainly opened a new avenue of window shopping. If I follow you there (and it seems a worthy route considering the tumbleweed from DAZ regarding Bryce), graphics cards become interesting. For a while I was happy because the (out of date) FAQ on the Octane website indicates that the older 500 series of GeForce cards are better than the latest range. But checking out the forums shows that the 1.1 update changed things to the advantage of the 600 series.
To build a topflight(ish)* system to accommodate both Bryce (CPU) and Octane (GPU) will be very expensive. This can stay safely in the realm of window shopping until I get some time to actually enjoy the softwares.
*one of the Octane forum members bought four GeForce Titans. That's £3600 in UK money. Way too rich for me.
The used Xeon route is tricky, there are so many variations and you have to look carefully to make sure you get the best options - taking account of availability of other items like motherboards and memory.
The main advantage is gaining 8 "enterprise" quality physical cores on which to run Bryce. But 8 physical cores is only worth it up to a point. Rashad has, or had, an 8 core Xeon setup, but it was outperformed by my overclocked 4 core Q6600. Bryce render speed is about clock cycles (of the floating point stylie), and if you can get more clock cycles out of "enthusiast desktop" gear that's designed to be overclocked, than you can out of "enterprise workstation" gear that's designed to not be overclocked, then the answer is obvious (unless you need "professional" durability).
The current-tech desktop route is ultimately faster, the used Xeon route is safer and... interesting. Watercooling is definitely needed to get the best out of desktop tech, so cost wise the choices are not too dissimilar for similar speed.
I'm certainly in the mood to build a new system (to some extent, just for the hell of it) but won't rush. Trouble is, at the rate things are going, our morally and intellectually superior elites will soon turn my PC savings into about enough to buy a tin of beans. I'm certainly not keeping it in the bank...
PJF, my phone... has a led torch built in instead of a camera. To fit the sim card in, I had to cut it to size with a pair of scissors - which amused those who'd never seen a sim card the size of (well probably in their bright untroubled eyes) the size of an A4 folder. Mostly I get things working... just... and leave it at that. Explains why when I plumbed in the heating system I left the floor up for several years and still unconsciously step over the holes that are no longer there. Wires festoon the hall and the living room has bare walls. So I work, I play with rendering and then I sleep. Sounds bad huh? Living the dream...
Yeah, take your money out the bank and blow it before the EU descends on you and levies a "tax" on your account (just you - oh and Cyrpress). I just could not believe it when that news story broke. I still can't. What were they thinking? OK don't answer that, we arn't supposed talk politics. Except use getting a graphics card as an excuse to make this point. I spent the last money I had on this GTX660 - so far, I'm very happy with the results. I picked it because it offered 3gb of memory and a performance rating of 3.0 on the nvidia cuda table. I saw the Titan - yeah, right - either that guy is rendering the next Avatar or he's got some insecurity issues.
Another quick Octane example of SSS - exported from a Bryce scene - originally modeled in Winds3D. So that's the path so far, make in wings, compose in Bryce, back through wings for some material linking shenanigans, and render in Octane.
Yes, OK, me on the left, Chris, Mr Bryce Tutorials in the middle and Dan, Mr Loopcycle Music at the Motorcycle festival this last weekend, in the rain, watching the stunt show - indeed being photographed by the stunt show commentator who was impressed by our fearless disregard of the wind and rain.
Thank you.
OK since Bigh put this question I see no harm in answering and it does relate after a fashion to the OP.
1 Yes I'd like to see 64bit.
2 Bugfixes for the Mac OS too and any Windows 8 issues addressed.
3 Then the Bridge fixed to efficiently move content between DS and Bryce - in both directions (which would mean either making DS procedural texture compliant or the other option, fixing the texture exporter).
4 The next must have is Sub Surface Scattering.
5 And to answer concerns over render speed, if that's a really big issue, something that allows the export of entire scenes to a third part GPU renderer - say Octane - for example - which would not be so arduous if the texture exporter has already been fixed in the Bridge for DS.
As things stand, at the rate Horo and I are going, I think there is still another two to three years work for us picking apart the 7.1 Pro feature set and documenting that. Maybe after that... we'll start fretting for new features.
...a second on all these. especially the Two Way Bridge as it would make adding Daz characters to Bryce scenes so much easier since you could actually pose them in direct relation to the setting.
As to a third party render engine, how about a Bryce version of "Luxus" which is already available for Daz Studio and Carrara?
...thank you. just installed and ran it. That will give a bit more overhead.
...a second on all these. especially the Two Way Bridge as it would make adding Daz characters to Bryce scenes so much easier since you could actually pose them in direct relation to the setting.
As to a third party render engine, how about a Bryce version of "Luxus" which is already available for Daz Studio and Carrara?
...a third on all of the above, and a second on a Bryce version of "Luxus."
As a long time Brycer I am perfectly happy with the Bryce render engine, it beats many others hands down.
...I will agree with that as it is the only render engine that never crashed on my old 32 bit notebook. May have taken it's good nature time, but renders always finished and looked incredible (and when monitoring the system temperature, ran much cooler than 3Delight or Firefly).
Bryce has, in fact, two different render engines. Though folks notoriously complain the Bryce render engine is slow, others are not that much faster if settings for high quality are used to match Bryce's quality. The greatest thing about the Bryce render engines is the Plop-render option. It can be a huge time saver. And the worst thing about Bryce is that it is still a 32-bit application.
I also am happy with the Bryce render engines. A Bryce version of Luxus would give an easy path to SSS without the high cost of Octane, at the expense of render time. Bryce is much faster than Luxus for the same quality, so no reason to use Luxus except for SSS.
Ah OK, yes that makes sense. I am always a bit sceptical, because I have seen so many iffy images which were supposed to be realistic just because they were using a Lux plugin
Ah, SSS, yes, we certainly miss that one.
Blender offers both CUP and GPU rendering, plus there's also real time rendering. Any changes made are immediately seen in the render window. Be nice to see this available in Bryce.