Need Some Computer Expertise For Daz

Faeryl Womyn

Now that my son's computer is ready, more or less, all parts are bought and being put together, it's time to work on my computer setup.

My son in law is a computer store operator, he has used Photoshop extensively, yet not that familiar with the 3D graphics programs I use. I know about the Nvidia connection for Daz, yet wonder if I really have to go that root, since I also want to use Poser 11 and Blender, since I now have them. They use different graphic cards for their rendering. Deciding on a card is developing into a headache.

In order to decide what to get and where to start to build this, I should inform you my end goal is animation. That carries it own needs compared to single images. I want to do this in Daz, though might have to use Blender, only if Daz fails me in what I want to attempt. I feel Daz is capapble if I have the right components.

If I understand things correctly, the main items I need to have and good ones, is the graphics card and cpu, I already know Daz can use my cpu if I don't have nvidia. In that case, I need a good cpu. A third item is the amount of ram, both for the card and the computer.

My first question here is what do I need to buy first, to build the computer around, as I get these parts? In order to have the powerful computer I want and hopefully afford, I will be using second hand items as a result of limited income. My son in law says I need a new graphics card due to Blender requiring Open GL 3.3 minimum. I checked online and know they go as high as 4.0

Any help with this would be appreciated so I can get started on the build.

Paradigm

I'm not sure what you're talking about with "I also want to use Poser 11 and Blender, since I now have them. They use different graphic cards for their rendering" because I render fine in Poser and Blender with my Nvidia card (Unless Poser 11 stopped using NVidia cards from Poser 10).

If you're looking to do IRAY in Daz you'll need to use an NVidia card full stop unless you want to render for days on the CPU. For a rendering rig the video card will definitely be the most expensive part of the build. Aim for the one with the most CUDA cores in your budget. There's been some discussion about blender preferring more cores than faster cores (AMD = more, slower cores, Intel = Fewer, faster cores) but I've used both and found very little difference. A modern generation CPU should be fine. You'll probably want at least 32 GB of RAM because multitasking can get away from you pretty quickly.

The following link will give you a good chart for quality vs price for computer parts: LI

Richard Haseltine

As far as I know both Poser and Blender, for GPU, use nVidia cards - initially Cycles/Superthingy were nVidia only just as Iray is, I don't know if they now support AMD as well but it certainly isn't instead.

Taoz

Poser 11 (Superfly renderer) works fine with a GTX 1070.

DustRider

I'll echo what has already been said. I would definitely go with an Nvidia GPU with at least 8Gb of ram (if your budget allows, if not don't get less than 6Gb. For CPU, I would likewise get the fastest CPU with the most/fastest cores (hyper-threading) you can afford, and I would say that you should get a minimum of 16Gb system RAM (at least 2x the amount of RAM on your GPU, 3x would be ideal).

Of course the trick is keeping all that in your budget. A few things that will help people to help you would be to know:

1) What do you want to do (stills or animation), and how big will your scenes be (how many figures, etc. in them)?

2) What is your approximate budget?

3) Will the entire build be used parts, will some parts be new, and are you confined to the parts your son in law has available or will you be using eBay or other sources for used parts?

tj_1ca9500b

It's too bad that the AMD solutions don't have viable CUDA support (via software, not hardware of course), because otherwise at it's price point the Radeon VII would be a no brainer due to the 16 GB of VRAM.  As it stands, a Radeon VII card would pretty much be a Blender card only if you grabbed one.

If you are planning on 3Delight renders in Daz Studio, the advice I'm about go give r.e. GPUs isn't as relevant, as 3Delight isn't CUDA based.  In that case, get the fastest baddest CPU with the most cores.  Say a 16 core Threadripper, those are quite reasonably priced these days, particularly the 1950x's on Amazon.  The 2950X is faster of course, but since it's newer it's more expensive.

For Iray, however, an 8 core CPU should be plenty for most usage cases, say a Ryzen 7 or a number of Intel CPUs.  I'm managing with a 4 core CPU (with integrated graphics) which isn't bad at all, but I'm mainly doing Iray renders using a 1080 Ti, so the CPU is mainly there to help me set up scenes, not render them.

The majority of Daz products being released these days are optimized for Iray, hence why a lot of people use Iray for their renders in Daz Studio.

So, that being said, yeah the first thing to look at is which Nvidia GPU fits your budget.  Short form, get the card with the most VRAM that you can afford. 

The Titan RTX is a nice choice with 24 GB of VRAM, but the $2400+ price point makes it a non-option for a lot of PC building budgets. 

So the 1080Ti (for current Daz Studio release version) or the 2080 Ti (if you don't mind using the beta verssion of Daz Studio) with the 11GB of VRAM is a good choice.  They are rather pricey though (often over $1000).  Most of your Daz scenes should easily fit inside of an 11 GB card, depending on how complex they are.  Many may not even need additional optimization.

BTW, the Daz store product Scene Optimizer can help with this, if you end up needing to shrink the size of a scene a bit, so it's a good product to have.  But that's a separate discussion.

Back to GPUs:

The next option down is the 1070, 1080, 2070, or 2080 cards with their 8 GB of VRAM.  The 1070's are the budget options, and other cards are faster but more expensive usually, but the main thing is that you'll have 8 GB of VRAM.

 

Below that are the 6 GB 1060/1660/2060 cards.  I would suggest not going below 6 GB of VRAM if you can help it, and really, the 1070 with 8 GB of VRAM is probably the lowest I'd personally go.  I used dual 1080s for quite a while and managed pretty well before upgrading to a 1080 Ti.

Whichever Nvidia card you end up with, as mentioned above these will work with Blender just fine, as well as Daz Studio.

Once you have an idea of how much you are willing to spend on just the graphics card, if doing the Iray thing, then yeah, try to shoot for 8 cores/16 threads on the CPU, at least 32 GB of system ram, and a decent and amply sized SSD for your system.  You'll appreciate the fast boot times that an SSD gives you. 

You can manage OK with a CPU with less than 8 cores (to a point), but 8 cores seems to be a preferred sweet spot these days.  Also, depending on how 'new' your current system is, you MAY be able to make do with upgrading your current system, but you mentioned building a new one, so I'm focusing my suggestions towards that goal.

Back to storage: You can pair a SSD with a very large HDD (say a 4-6 Terabyte one) to use to back up things.  Also, consider installing Daz Studio onto a separate partition/drive from where you have your OS installed, that way it'll be more portable if you end up upgrading to a better system later. 

A number of the newer motherboards these days can accomodate having 2 NVME SSD sticks, so you could install a smaller stick for the operating system, and put your Daz Studio Library folders on a large stick (say 1 TB, or 2 TB if you can afford it).  NVME SSDs are faster than SATA SSD drives, but the SATA ones are still pretty quick if you end up going that route.  If you are budget constrained, using 'just' a large HDD is fine, it just won't be as responsive.

The other reason to not install Daz on the C: drive partition is that occasionally Windows updates have been known to do weird things like delete your Daz folders.  This is rare, but it's happened enough times that most of the veterans here just move the My Daz 3D Library and My Library directories onto separate drives entirely, so if things go badly with a windows update, well your main Daz folders will remain untouched. 

You can partition a single drive into multiple partitions to do this as well, but this may make your Daz install a bit less portable, should something go wrong with your motherboard and you need to transfer your OS drive to a new system.  If you are using an OEM system (say something you grabbed at Best Buy) the Windows serial number for that system is intended only for that system, which might give you issues with Microsoft later if you transplant that drive to a new system.  Dedicated data only drives won't have this issue.

Anyways, short form is that having 2 or more physical drives installed in your system will make moving your Daz files to a new system later easier.  You don't HAVE to do this, it's just a good suggestion.

As for motherboard options, there are LOTS of them.  Short form, try to pick one that has multiple double spaced PCIe x16 slots, so that a 2nd GPU later is a viable option.  Most of the 8 core processor systems aren't really set up for more than say 2-3 GPUs, due to PCIe lane constraints.

The High End Desktop Processors (Threadripper or the Intel HEDT processors) have more PCIe lanes to work with.  but you don't need a HEDT processor, unless you are doing a lot of CPU only renders (3Delight), in which case you'll appreciate the extra cores.  Otherwise, they can be nice to have, if budget isn't as much of ca concern.  HEDT systems are also ideal for video editing and such, but you didn't mention that you were planning on that.

In short, yeah the 8 core processors (Ryzen, i7) and their associated motherboards should be fine for now.  A lower end 8-12 core Threadripper system might be in reach, however, if you think that you may want to upgrade to an 'uber' system later.  But back on point...

Finally, make sure to get a decent power supply.  Pick one that gives you a bit of extra overhead (say 20%-50% more than you need right now), so that you can accomodate a second graphics card later, if your motherboard can accomodate one.  You can go even larger if you want, but at some point, it may just be overkill if you buy extra wattage that you'll never use ever.  Power supplies can often last a bit longer if you aren't pushing them to 90%-100% usage all the time, and in some cases pushing a power supply this hard can result in more system instability.  60%-70% of total wattage capacity for regular usage is a number I"ve seen thrown around a few times, but some people think that may be too conservative of a number.

As for a computer case, well if you are buying an 'off the shelf' system, that won't be as much of an issue, but if you have an extra few bucks, splurging on a handsome looking case that makes you feel happy inside is perfectly fine.  Some people are content with beige or black boxes, others like to see the pretty spinning LED fan lights, that's all personal preference.  Just make sure (if doing a custom build) that the case is roomy enough for everything you plan on eventually putting into the case.  And of course don't cheap out on the cooling fans.  Inadequate airflow kills systems!  Water cooling is better, but for 'amateur' builders that may be a bit intimidating.

Hopefully this rambling is helpful to you.

 

kenshaw011267

To add to what has been said, rendering on CPU is not viable particularly for animation. For animation you'll want the newest GPU you can get, the 20xx series cards, as they will render faster than any other card with equivalent amount of VRAM and render times for animation are really long so every little bit will help.

For second hand components I'd go with everything but the GPU. You can pick up most components at pretty good prices from eBay or Craigslist. You can even pick up whole systems on both but you'll need to have your son in law take a close look at any such system's specs before you buy. there are lots of very overpriced computers out there, especially on Craigslist.

Faeryl Womyn

Ok I am saving this to notes and bookmarking the thread.

In answer to one question, I want to do animation, something similar to anime, though possibly with a 3D look as well. 3D in animation is starting to get stronger appeal from viewers, so using all those shaders to make something look 2D might not be needed. I have considered sticky with 3Delight as renders would be faster in the end. As to how much I will have in my scene's, this is yet undecided, though will be starting out with small and building up depending on how the computer handles it. I have no problem doing small rendered animations and joining them later if that becomes an issue.

I'm off for more Dr appts, so will come back this tomorrow since I have to read again to remember some questions I have.