k, this is not a ranting or whining thread. : ) lol

First, my specs:

Vue 7 Infinite
Windows XP (Home)
Service Pack 2
Single processor (1.7 GHz) [aren't those of you with mutliple processors happy??] LOL
2 Gigs of RAM [don't brag about having 8 gigs! I wantssss, my preciousss!!]

Issue: A simple scene renders in Vue 6 in about 1 minute on Final, but takes about 30 minutes in Vue 7 using Final. (Used Render to screen, 640 x 480).

The scene contains:

• a Cylinder with simple material (and displacement).
• ground plane using a material from the closeup groundpack package (sold at cornucopia3d).
• GI atmosphere

Now, I thought I saw a thread 'round here about tweaking certain Vue 7 settings to decrease render time, but I don't recall the name! (I hope I didn't imagine it). hahahaha

I simply need to know where to begin looking so that I can get the render times (hopefully) very close to what I had in Vue 6. After all, 1 minute vs. 30 minutes is a huge difference. :P

Btw, I did not find any difference in times when using the default texture for the ground.
The problem is obviously lurking in my render settings, or some elusive setting for the materials!

Much appreciated in advance!

Attached Link: http://www.xn--rnskldsvik-dcbe.net/c3d/Vue6_render_settings.pdf

Generally speaking, render times in Vue7 are better than in Vue6 but with some kinds of materials, lighting conditions, etc, they are worse. I still didn't figure out exactly what makes them worse. Fortunetally, these are very rare conditions (from my experience) but it seems you've come across one of them.
There's this good document from Peggy Walters in the link above. I would only add these points:

• Not mentioned in the document, but a correct handling of the quality slider in the atmosphere settings, tab "Light", is very important for a fast render. You can set that to negative values. The more the light balance is to the right, the more you can put this slider to negative values. For example, if the light balance is at, say, 90%, the quality slider can be at -2 or even less. If you see blotches on the shadows, it's time to increase the slider. My renders are normally done between -1 and -1.5.

• Peggy recommends never to increase the advanced special effects slider to more than 46%. I wouldn't be this radical. In radiosity mode, it's many times necessary to move this to 80% or more. Otherwise, you get light leaks. But, if you don't need it, keep it at low values (most of the times I have it at 40%).

• In page 9, Peggy recommends to use "optimize last render pass". I absolutely do not recommend this. The final result is a somewhat blurred render in the detailed areas. If you have no details, it's ok but it's very rare to have no details at all in a render.

• Also in page 9, Peggy recommends to check "compute physically accurate caustics". That's a render killer and most of the times, on a "normal" landscape, has no effect. It can be good to leave it on if you are under the sea or have glass near the camera, but otherwise leave it off.

• Also in page 9, Peggy recommends to check "ignore indirect lighting on plants". I would say that's not a good idea as it flattens out the lighting on the plants. The overall look is very bad, IMO.

If you tell me what atmosphere you used and what material you used for the cylinder, I could try it on my system. I don't have that ground pack but I could use something equivalent.

I should have known it would be you to the rescue! Many, many thanks!

Since I can't remember which atmos I used (it's either a vue6 atmos used as-is, or slightly tweaked), I'll send you the scene. (Don't worry, I'll remove the mat from the ground so there will be no copyright issues)!

In the meantime, I'm going to test your tips & check out the pdf file. (Btw, I'm pretty sure it was your tips I had read before! The bit about the quality slider in the atmosphere settings sounds verrrry familiar!)

Thanks again!

I've been dealing with the render time comparisons, and find that Vue6I is faster, with the same quality settings on most complex outdoor scenes (using scenes created in Vue6 -- spectral 1 atmosphere -- can't compare apples to oranges).

Hardware:

1. Mac Pro 2.8 Ghz 8-core Xeon, 14 GB RAM (Vista Business 64-bit)
2. 3.0 GHz PC with 4 GB RAM, (Vista Home Premium 32 bit)
3. 2.4 GHz PC with 4 GB RAM (Visa Home Premium 32 bit).

I only used the Mac Pro for these comparisons, as Hypervue / Rendercow usage could skew results.

On one scene, I used the same render settings under "User Settings," with anti-aliasing set to "Systematic," to eliminate any adaptive anti-aliasing criteria differences between the 2 programs. The differences in render speed are dramatic -- in the wrong direction!
Vue6I= 8'36"
Vue7I= 13'51"
I zoomed into different areas of the rendered graphic, and the visual quality (the human eye is still the final "tool" in these cases), and the quality seemed the same. I'm still doing some comparisons, but at this point I would conclude that the new Vue render engine still needs some tweaking before it is mature.  Hopefully Eon is doing that as I write this.
I also discovered problems with Hyperview / Rendercow settings. If using an 8-core PC (this would likely include Intel i7 CPU based PCs) as a render node, Rendercows will only see 4 of the 8 cores, IF you use the "Force tile size to" option. So, if you have an 8 core PC (Mac in my case) or a new Intel i7 CPU based PC, don't force tile sizes when rendering via Rendercows.
If you are planing on purchasing one of the new Intel 7i CPU based PCs, please upgrade the OS to at least Vista Business 64-bit, as Vista Home premium 64-bit will not see 8 cores. I'm not sure how businesses like Dell are going to deal with this -- everyone uses at least Vista Business to use the i7 8 cores? The i7 is a quad-core, with (advanced) Hyperthreading on each core; still = 8 cores. Unless MS and Intel have worked out a method to allow hyperthreaded cores not to count as a CPU in Vista Home Premium, some folks are going to be disappointed.

Quote - "The bit about the quality slider in the atmosphere settings sounds verrrry familiar"

Yes, I must have written that a million times in this forum... :-)
I just don't get tired of saying it because many people don't know it and the difference in render times is really big.

Quote - "with anti-aliasing set to "Systematic," to eliminate any adaptive anti-aliasing criteria differences between the 2 programs."

Why would you want to eliminate this difference? If Vue7 does a better job with the "optimized" algorithm than Vue6, that's an advantage, so why are you eliminating this difference? I'm not saying Vue7 does a better job with that algorithm, but I just don't see the point of eliminating Vue7 advantages if you are comparing Vue6 with Vue7.
As you know, the systematic algorithm is much slower than the optimized.

Anyway, your conclusions are based on a Mac and most bugs in Vue7 are reported in Mac's. So, maybe you are suffering from some of these bugs? When Vue7 was launched there were a number of people who made tests (Chipp Walters, for example), documented them in this forum, and Vue7 was a much faster renderer than Vue6 on all standard scenes.

I'm using Bootcamp on the Mac. It IS a PC running MS Vista Business 64-bit. The Mac version of Vue is still 32-bit, so I use the PC version.

Yes, systematic is slower -- more CPU intensive. Adaptive rendering can be a bit subjective, based on what one defines in the adaptive strategy.

One must define a "standard scene," and just what is the acceptance criteria for a standard scene? Forgive me for my insistence concerning objective criteria, but my work involves nuclear instrumentation and system / device testing ( including PLC ladder logic).

Hi,

don't done a direct comparsion yet (I have only 7 installed at the moment), but I can confirm, that it seems to be "material dependent" how fast Vue7 renders.

Also lot of loaded polygon objects slows down the rendering for me. Especially when the  objects have many different materials.

I have also noticed a few other things:

A Vue scene saved in Version6 with high object anti-aliasing settings (min/max: 4/26) opened in Vue7 shows different settings like min/max values of 3/12. Another scene saved in Vue6 with the same values, opened in Vue7 shows different min/max values of 4/16. If I find the time I will verify this and install Vue6.

Usually when working on a scene, I often save it under a different name. I have done this with a scene which contains a lot of plants painted in 3D View with the "Paint Ecosystem" feature. Without doing a modification to the plants, one of the scene versions contain far more smaller plants.

The worst thing happend yesterday: A complex scene rendered with the standalone renderer has finished after 24hours. At the moment the renderer saves the file to disk, it runs out of memory and I end up with a 0 byte picture. Re-rendering the scene with lower settings finished without problems.

It would be a reals great feature, if Vue would only let you render resolutions which it can handle.

Cheers
Ralf

.

Quote - "One must define a "standard scene," and just what is the acceptance criteria for a standard scene?"

Sorry, I wasn't clear. By "standard scene" I meant one of the scenes that comes with Vue, in the extra content CD. Most of these scenes are the same for Vue6 and Vue7 and so the comparison is easy and can be done by anyone, even comparing different render times in different systems, if necessary.

I couldn't render it in Vue6, for comparison, because the scene was saved in Vue7. Anyway, in Vue7, in a quadcore machine (VueMark7=103) the scene rendered in 1m40s, which is a lot for such a simple scene (GI, spectral atmo, spectral1 clouds and 1 cylinder with displacement).
I immediately noticed the culprit for such slow render were the clouds. I disabled the clouds and it rendered in 5 seconds. I added some standard clouds ("Low clouds 3") and the render time was 8 seconds. So, conclusion is: it really pays to search for the right clouds! :-)

Anyway, I went back to the original clouds and did some more tests. I decreased the quality slider in "Clouds, Fog, Haze" tab from 1 to zero. The render time was 1m08s. There's no significant difference in quality. Then I decreased the quality slider in the "Light" tab to -2. The render time dropped less than I expected, probably because of the simplicity of the scene. The new render time was 1m04s (6% drop).
I decreased the quality slider in "Clouds, Fog, Haze" tab to -1 and the new render time was 45s. The clouds start to show some signs of the low quality slider (some grain) but it's still ok, I would say.
So, conclusion is: if you really want to use those clouds and still have good render times, you have to significantly decrease quality slider in "Clouds, Fog, Haze" tab.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to test the scene, Rutra!

Quote - I couldn't render it in Vue6, for comparison, because the scene was saved in Vue7.

DUH! I should have sent you the Vue 6 version... :O

Quote - ...I disabled the clouds and it rendered in 5 seconds...

Hmmm... maybe this is worthy of a bug report, then...? Because it seems odd that Vue 6 should be able to handle those clouds beautifully & quickly, but Vue 7 drags terribly when using the same exact clouds.  

In short, I thought Vue 7 would be able to not only match Vue 6, but excel it...
I appreciate all your help! At least I now know what the problem is. :P

I rendered the V6 scene you sent me and, without changing anything, it rendered in 1m36s (V7 had rendered it in 1m40s, a 3% slower). I replaced the clouds by "low clouds 3", like before, and it rendered in 11s. V7 had rendered it in 8s, so V7 was faster by 25% with these clouds.

Interesting that with the original clouds V6 was 3% faster but with other clouds, V7 was 25% faster.

Like before, I reverted to the original clouds but decreased quality sliders ("Light" to -2 and "Clouds, Fog, Haze" to -1). V6 rendered it in 41s (V7 had rendered it in 45s, 9% slower).

So, conclusions? My conclusion is that there's no universal comparison V6 / V7 because these things are non linear. Some things are faster in one, other things are faster in other. So, it's very likely that someone compares V6 with V7 and draws one conclusion and someone else draws a completely different conclusion. For example, all that's needed is to change clouds for the conclusions to be completely different!

And this matches perfectly with the never ending discussions in forums about which is faster. No one is right and everyone is right. :-)

So, I say: forget about comparisons and just enjoy Vue 7. :-)

Quote - So, conclusions? My conclusion is that there's no universal comparison V6 / V7 because these things are non linear. Some things are faster in one, other things are faster in other.

I understand what you mean.... Thank you very much for that (and for your additional testing!)
Btw, I am envious of your 1m36s & 1m40s times!! (Time for a new comp for me, eh??) 

Angelsinger,
cue the 64 bit PC build tutorial link in signature! ;)

Quote - Angelsinger,
cue the 64 bit PC build tutorial link in signature! ;)

You made me literally laugh out loud! :P  :P

Yes... yes indeed... Did you not, btw, write a post about a recommended machine at cornucopia somewhere? (Ahhh, nvm! I just searched the Big Corn, and found it here! 

Y'know... I've been keeping my eye on that post, for the time when I will finally get THEEEEE Machine of my Dreams. HAHahaah!!

Your post is most helpful... THANKEES!  ;)

Consider bypassing the quad-cores and maybe go with the new Intel i7 CPU. The CPU is 4 cores with 4 Hyperthreaded cores.  The new Hyperthreaded cores are much more efficient than the old P4 Hyperthreaded cores.

In essence, you end up with an 8-core CPU -- maybe the equivalent to 6 real hardware based cores.
Some rendering comparisons with 3D Studio Max 9:

*Core i7 920 (2.66 GHz) = 0:31
*Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66 GHz) = 0:43

And with Cinema 4D Release 10:
*Core i7 920 = 1:44
*Core 2 Quad Q6700 = 2:18

The i7 motherboards also support 12 GB of 3 channel RAM.
Just don't forget to use Vista Business 64-bit or Ultimate.

*Complements of Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057.html

I was involved in a similar testing of Vue6 vs 7 scene renders at another forum recently. Some points to consider:

1. Only use "User Settings" for render settings. V7 has changed how it renders scenes in different base settings like Ultra-- so Ultra 6 vs Ultra 7 is no longer apples to apples.
2. Make sure one is rendering the same scene on both V7 and V6.
3. Make sure "optimize last render pass" is NOT checked in both scenes. Most people never use this, but one fellow did, and V7 doesn't honor this checkbox (except for Preview mode). I believe it's there for compatibility sake.
4. Adding non-standard settings (like Systematic AA) is not a good way to benchmark render speeds in a global way.

I've found V7 renders substantially faster, and BETTER when using Radiosity vs V6. Most other scenes, it's a tad bit faster, but results are generally a bit sharper.