CompuServe Thread

Robert, there are many posibilities concerning optimizing a file for faster rendering. These (among others) include face count, transparancy, mapping types, and probably most important, disk-swapping when you run out of RAM for the remder. So my first questions would be, are you running out of RAM during your render? If so, by how much? If this is the case, getting enough RAM to cover your file and/or optimizing your file to use less RAM could make a huge difference. -Alan

<<One of our work take about 40 minutes to render on a Pentium 90Mhz with 64 Meg of RAM. We have not tried yet to network some machines together, but we'll give it a shot pretty soon.>> Robert, At 40 minutes a frame, it sounds like you are probably swapping to the hard disk during rendering. A small investment in RAM (comapred to an SGI machine) might increase your rendering speed significantly. (some report a 300%-400% increase in speed when not swapping to disk.) Also, using network rendering to distribute your animations to be rendered over several PC's will significantly offset your rendering time as well. Lastly, if you do get an SGI, don't forget there is a version of the 3D Studio renderer for the SGI, so you could network render on the SGI as well as your PC's. -Brian

> We are a small company but we are doing some big business, thank's to > AutoCAD and 3D-Studio. But we've come to the point where some of us feel that > 3D-Studio is too slow and we need to move to another platform, namely Silicon > Graphics. The Problem is …Do you want to learn a new peace of software and spend through the nose for it and the hardware to run it. Or do you take that money and just buy more and faster PC's. I run Wavefront software on a silicon graphics platform and I have been slowly moving to PC software for Two reasons. 1. PC software has gotten to the point that it is viable for broadcast. 2. For the price of my old software alone I could buy 4 Fully loaded Pentiums with the software to run on them. And they would be faster. Note. If you own only one SGI and it go's down while you have a deadline, what are you to do. If you own 4 PC's and one go's down you can still work while while you get it repaired. Best of luck.

What, exactly, is happening too slowly? From your message, it sounds like it's the renderer. If that's the case, then you've got a big shock for you if/when you start rendering on the SGI, because 3DS on a Pentium 90 is faster than Alias, Wavefront, or Softimage when rendering using the same parameters. The only thing that goes faster on Indigo-class SGI's is wireframe display and interactive scene rendering in the UI. (and their uniqueness on that front is going to quickly disappear this year with the introduciton of the Glint and other pc-based 3D chips) If you need to talk to some references regarding PC vs SGI speed, Robert Taylor is here on the forum and can help you out. His shop uses a combination of Alias and 3DS. – G

What Gary Y. says is absolutely correct. I used SGI h/w & s/w for several years, and apples-to-apples….the quality of the render and relative speed of 3DS is equal on a P90/100, if not faster/better. Now, just wait a short time for the NT version running on multiple Alpha AXP processors, with a dedicated h/w render-assist card,….and I believe it will be a whole new ballgame from here into the future.