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I think this is one reason that, even though I had a beta version of the luxus plugin and Luxrender, I ended up never bothering to use them. At the time, 3Delight did everything I needed without having to deal with extra steps.
Awesome system! I am building a couple of machines with surplus E5-2670-V1 ($160 per matched pair, and not ES!), and have Windows 10 installed and working. Nice thing about the LGA-2011 V1/v2 boards as there is the potential to upgrade to the E5-V2 CPU when they are cheap. After I saw your post, I re-checked the price on the new E5-2690-V1, and it has really dropped! I am always concerned about used parts, so it is good to know I could actually go with new CPU's now if I had to.
I was hoping that NVIDIA would throw us regular folks a bone and put out a reasonably-priced card with 16 or more GB (even if it was somewhat slower than the current 1080's) for those big renders, but it looks like 11GB is all we are going to get. My old R9-290X AMD card with 8 GB, which I have seen for as little as $200, will run rings around even these dual-Xeon machines in LuxMark or LuxRender, but of course it won't help with IRAY.
..yeah I can get two E5-2690s (in the box) for 830$ at Newegg. Was pricing memory and 8 sticks of 16 GB of Kingston DDR3 1600 Value RAM (which is for white box builds) will run me 960$. Maybe get a an old 4 GB GTX 740 (something like 115$) just to run the displays.
The 2690 is just a tad faster (2.9 GHz) than my current i7 930 (2.8 GHz). The case I am looking at will accommodate up to 11 fans (7 in the configuration I plan to use) and be big enough to handle decent CPU and Memory coolers. Finishing off the system it will have a 500MB Boot/Application SSD, 1 TB Library SSD (the latter mirroring the Library/Runtime setup on my current system so I can move Daz scene files over without path conflicts) dual 2 TB storage HDDs, a 1,000W PSU and run W7 Pro. I still need to figure out how to perform a mirrored install on both systems so that the location target on the render system is the same as on the workstation.
As to a bigger memory Nvida Card, the thinking is that the next version of the Titan-X might have 16 GB, as with the 1080 Ti, there is little reason to pay the additional 500$ just for 1 extra GB of memory. That would make it worth the 1,200$ price tag (about half the cost of a Quadro P5000).
I've been a staunch Blender user since the old, ugly, dark and dirty days. Many of us are working with Daz/Poser items in Blender and hoping (it shouldn't be long) for the day when we can wipe Studio and Poser off our desktops. Blender isn't just a program, it's a phenomenon.
I tried Reality but it kept crashing
LOL, it's a phenomenon that anybody actually understands the UI, LOL
Blender is mostly keyboard commad driven, so most folks that use it have learned them.
Learning the keys in Blender seems to be a natural progression. So, right now I'm playing with the Video Sequence Editor and I'm gradually picking up what keys to use to do whatever. Many of they keys perform similar funtions in other Blender utilities. I'm progressing feature by feature. First I tried morphing with the sculpt tools (which mimic ZBrush) and now the VSE. One day I'll start making models and rendering DAZ Studio scenes in Blender.
I am not wishing for Blender to replace DAZ Studio but I would really appreciate a working bridge between the two applications.
As for Reality: Blender also has a Luxrender front-end but I find it significant that most prefer Cycles.
Wow, that is a dream workstation!. Another advantage of the E5 series over the 17-930's is that they have the AVX instruction set extension. These extra instructions can boost render speed. I know this is implemented in LuxRender and VUE, not sure about the other rendering engines.
Hoping you are right about the next Titan X. I will wait patiently and save up my money.
...those who got on board early in Blender's development are at distinct distinct advantage compared to people like myself who have primarily worked with Daz or Poser. I've repeatedly tried to figure out Blender's setup and UI after being told "this latest update is better and easier to use", only to find several frustrating weeks, I end up back with Daz, Hexagon, and Carrara as their UIs (at least from my perspective) just seem more intuitive and I cna actually produce illustrations rather than feel like I am spinning my wheels. True, Blender is far more powerful, but at my age, I don't have a second lifetime to become as proficient with it as I am with the programmes I currently use.
I know there are a lot of good tutorials out there but they are all in video format, and as I have mentioned elsewhere, I have a very low retention rate with video learning due to short term memory issues. I do better with text based learning as it can go more into depth as to what is going on (which works better for me) rather than trying to follow someone going through the motions on a computer screen. I can also keep a PDF or book open to the section that deals with the process or task I am working though rather than having to stop and replay or back up the video over and over again.
....thanks. Looking forward and I feel as of this weekend I am a couple steps closer to making it a reality. First need to upgrade the workstation memory before that 24 GB memory kit goes up any more in price.
As to the Titan X that would be the only thing that will keep it competitive since for 500$ less, the 1080 Ti pretty much beats it in just about every department save the 1 extra GB of memory. Last year Nvidia doubled the memory of the Quadro M6000 from 12 - 24 GB and kept the price the same The same happened with the new 16 GB P5000 as it still retails for 2,500$ just like the 8 GB M5000 did. Based on that, don't see why for 1,200$ they couldn't offer an extra 4GB on the Titan-X. Crikey since the Fermi days seven years ago, the top of the line Quadro 6000 has consistently been priced at 5,000$.
I'm 65 so not exactly a lifetime left to figure out a new program. I'm also on a low fixed income so something as powerful as Blender for free is attractive. FWIW I found Hexagon frustrating because of the constant crashing and I feel much the same way about Poser as you do about Blender. I've bought Poser and updated it twice and still have not been able to last more than a week trying to get on terms with it. It also crashed a lot but if you want to crash test any software, give it to me ... I seem to have a curse on me for crashing programs that work fine for everyone else (although I can only remember crashing Blender once).
Reality came along when Luxrender promised photoreal renders and IRay was not available in DAZ Studio. DAZ also sold Luxus but I didn't take to that either. I used Reality even though it crashed and setting up materials often took longer than the render but it was all I could afford until I had saved enough a few months ago for an NVidia GPU for IRay.
EDIT: If you are interested, Issuu.com has lots of text based Blender articles incuding the full Blender for Dummies book (no subscription fees):
https://issuu.com/esc33/docs/blender_for_dummies_-_3rd_edition__
Thanks for the heads up, marble! I'm going to check it out. Dabbled with Blender for a long time now, but its been on my todo list insofar as learning to use it properly for almost as long.
...after nearly a decade working in Daz, Hexagon, and Carrara, I am just too accustomed to a pointer based UI. Blender's keyboard/hotkey driven UI just doesn't seem to sync with me again due in part to my short term memory issues. I come from a drawing and painting background, so a pointer based UI just seems more elegant and simple to use. Keybaord commands and shortcuts are great and make sense when jockeying text or data (why I liked WordPerfect 5.1 more than MS Word).not so much (at least for me) when pushing pixels and polygons around. I know there is power in Blender's customisation, but I don't do scripting (which is where the real power lays). I gave up CG work in the 80s when you literally had to code everything as I felt it was too cumbersome a means to the end for creating art.
For me, Blender's setup and UI gets in the way of my muse, Daz's Hexagon's and Carrara's do not.
What does age have to do with learning? I'm retired but working on my second degree with the intentions of continuing to an advanced degree. I expect to die with a textbook in my hands.
Let's not have another "discussion" of the Blender UI please.
The quality of the renders I was able to archive from Reality going into LuxRender was the catalyst for me to realize the potential of my 3D was not complete without giving actual modeling a try.
The "default" materials Realty picked were designed to be edited they could be modified before import so you didn't need to tweak them or you could later quickly and easily. Computers will do what you tell them to, not want you want them to. If you turn on a light somewhere in a house and click a camera and your disappointed in your final product it's because you failed to be involved in more of the critical decision making