Rendering Time

[flakie]

I have a Imac pro with 8 cores and it has been very capable at outputting renderings. The longest has been about 30 mins at 2500x1200 with glass, chrome, frosted glass and grass finishes. I just had a project where the file took over 3 hours to render and suggestions on why that file took so long to render.

[Justin Montoya]

Hi there flakie,

We need more information about your scene to understand what's really going on here.  For example, Low light (night time and interior) renderings can be particularly slow if you are using a low powered rendering workstation.  8 CPU cores is really not much in 2019 when it comes to rendering power, and since it's an iMac, it's using a lowered powered version so it doesn't overheat it's silly thin design.  Apple continually prioritizes form over function.  Even as an Industrial Designer myself,  I find this puzzling when it comes to their supposed 'Pro' grade machines, which need function over form all day long.

VRay comes with 2 different rendering engines.  CPU, and GPU.  You will get much faster rendering times using the GPU rendering engine with VRay and GTX/RTX GPUs from Nvidia.  Unfortunately, Apple has refused to support the 3D creative professional with it's poor choice of hardware in the entire Mac line by not including new Nvidia GPUs.  That's why you can't easily use this much faster GPU rendering option on a Mac without a lot of 3rd party workarounds.  Apple has also stopped allowing the new Nvidia Drivers on it's newest Mac OS.  All signs point to, they don't care about the 3D creative professional and the industry standard of CUDA powered GPU rendering.

In short, if you need faster rendering speeds, you'll need to switch to a Windows PC with Nvidia GPUs, or use a rendering farm for your larger rendering projects.

[snow]

Justin,

If I had a dollar for every time you talked trash about Apple/Mac hardware on this forum I'd be able to treat myself to a nice steak dinner 😂 No hard feelings, your input is always informative and welcomed by all of us formZers.

But yes, flakie, if you posted your file or some screenshots of your settings we should be able to better assist you.

 

 

[flakie]

It's an interior scene using plane lights.  I have used the same set up in the past, usually with 4-8 lights. I understand about the GPU and CPU configuation dilemma with macs, but the speed so far has been fantastic. just not sure what happen with file file. 

[Justin Montoya]

39 minutes ago, snow said:

Justin,

If I had a dollar for every time you talked trash about Apple/Mac hardware on this forum I'd be able to treat myself to a nice steak dinner 😂 No hard feelings, your input is always informative and welcomed by all of us formZers.

But yes, flakie, if you posted your file or some screenshots of your settings we should be able to better assist you.

I wish it wasn't the case, and I hope somehow Apple makes a correction one day!  I was a big Mac supporter for 20+ years!  I kept upgrading the last real professional machine they made, a 2012 Mac Pro tower.  By the end, it had 12 cores 24 threads, and 2 Nvidia GTX GPUs!  But with no real Apple upgrade available for 3D Design and rendering using Nvidia GPUs, I was not able to keep up with the other 3D professionals with my work, and continuing to use a workstation that old is a bad idea.  IT professionals recommend upgrading computers every 3-5 years, even more frequently for heavy users like 3D rendering computers.  Having your computer fail in the middle of a big project is very unprofessional and can be avoided with proper upgrade cycles.

[Justin Montoya]

46 minutes ago, flakie said:

It's an interior scene using plane lights.  I have used the same set up in the past, usually with 4-8 lights. I understand about the GPU and CPU configuation dilemma with macs, but the speed so far has been fantastic. just not sure what happen with file file. 

flakie,

I almost forgot to mention that you can try using the faster VRAY GPU engine with only your CPU.  How is that possible?  Hybrid rendering using the GPU engine.  Try this... After enabling 'Use GPU', turn on 'Hybrid', then go to the bottom arrow next to 'Utility' and select 'GPU Device Selection' in the V-Ray Settings palette.  You should be able to enable your CPU as C++/CPU  for GPU rendering!  

Even though you will still only be using the same CPU, the rendering speed should be faster than the traditional VRAY CPU engine.  The results will vary, as they are not the same engine, lighting and shadows are not quite the same.  You will need to tweak your lighting to get it back to what you want if you had already started with the basic CPU rendering engine.  From now on though, if you like the results, you should always start with the GPU engine when designing, building, and setting up your project, so the final result will be as intended.

Hope this helps!

[snow]

23 minutes ago, Justin Montoya said:

I wish it wasn't the case, and I hope somehow Apple makes a correction one day!  I was a big Mac supporter for 20+ years!  I kept upgrading the last real professional machine they made, a 2012 Mac Pro tower.  By the end, it had 12 cores 24 threads, and 2 Nvidia GTX GPUs!  But with no real Apple upgrade available for 3D Design and rendering using Nvidia GPUs, I was not able to keep up with the other 3D professionals with my work, and continuing to use a workstation that old is a bad idea.  IT professionals recommend upgrading computers every 3-5 years, even more frequently for heavy users like 3D rendering computers.  Having your computer fail in the middle of a big project is very unprofessional and can be avoided with proper upgrade cycles.

Ahh yes, the ol' cheesegrater mac.  What a gem!  Hopefully we will see a preview of the 2019 Mac Pro at WWDC.  I'm hoping for a bigger jump in their entire pro lineup.  I'm still holding on to a Late 2013 MacBook Pro because I refuse to own one with a touch bar *eye roll*

 

[Andrew West]

I personally don't think this has anything to do with GPU vs CPU vs whatever settings you have in your V-ray dialogue.   I have had this problem in the past and my solution is something that I used to do all the time when using previous unstable releases (ie. before 6.7).  I once again keep a notebook next to my computer and whenever the program starts to act a little funny (you know what I mean) I write down exactly what I was working on at the time and what tools I was using.  Recently I was working on a project and I introduced a new texture map a client sent me. Within an hour my program was bogging down and acting strange.  I went back and looked at the map and it was a huge png file.  I resized the image and resaved it  and the system cleared right up.  I have had similar experiences with the terrain tool, Reshape tool, Nurbs, Blend tools and lots of others.  It is surprising how easy it is to corrupt your model but still have it render out (but very slowly).   So I guess the best advice I have for your situation is to think back to what you were working on that might have caused some corruption of your model.   If you can't think of anything then slowly go through your materials one by one.  If they check out then start using the object doctor on some of your more complex geometry or things you might have worked on a lot. 

This is not exactly a perfect solution but often it is the only option. 

As for the Mac vs PC thing mentioned above I would not hold my breath for any real upgrades from Apple to their pro line of computers.  They are now a phone company and have been for years.  Why sell a few thousand pro computers when you can sell 300 million phones that need to be replaced every two years.