Network rendering?

[barrie.sharp]

I appreciate this is likely to be a pipe dream but rendering takes soooo long at times and our clients love it, we win much more work! Can I recruit other machines in Revit to share the load and speed it along?

Actually, the question is: What's the most cost effective way to get high quality renderings?

[Elmo]

Go 3D Max Design. You can also get a Visualisation suite from Autodesk now that has Autocad Revit Max Design and Navisworks. With Max Design your rendering times are a lot faster already and what's more you can set up a rendering farm with backburner quite easily.

[Mike Hardy-Brown]

Barrie,

Go to my BLOG (http://reviteer.blogspot.com)and have a look at this...

Also (not sure if I'll get this post bumped) but take a look at this POST (http://reviteer.blogspot.com/2009/09/revit-to-artlantis.html)
I was impressed by a competitive product :? when it came to rendering.

Hey Elmo...........:beer:
Cheers
Mike

[Elmo]

Hi Mike. :)

[barrie.sharp]

Thanks for the replies. I like the RevUp render idea but I don't like the idea of having to get an extra licence. If I have to get extra software then I would prefer 3DS for it's extra capabilities and environment mapping. Would RevUp be cost effective with subscription + Revit purchase with subscription?

Mike: I do subscribe to your blog and saw the artlantis post. I was considering it but if the model changes, do you have to re apply materials? This is why I avoided using sketchup and indigo. I would like to just render faster :(

Elmo: Does backburner leverage the one copy of 3DS max and use any networked machine to render. We have alot of office workers whose machines aren't working hard. Can it just nick a bit of everyones resources?

[Elmo]

Backburner can be installed on a few machines. I am not too sure how many machines it can be installed on or is allowed to be installed. I know that it is better if you leave the machines over night to render instead of letting them render while someone is working on them but I am sure you can do that aswell.

[barrie.sharp]

Cool. What sort of rendering times are we talking about? I have to work out cost savings for budget approval. Facts and figures could help me justify expense. Also, if the results are quick enough we could invite clients to experiment with finishes.

[Elmo]

We are talking of about half the time that Revit would take for the same rendering at least.

[barrie.sharp]

That would be a result. Just to be clear, if I send a Revit model to max I can pretty much just hit render? Doesn't require too much extra time?

Ideally, I was hoping that an Revit could work on a farm. I know an API was created to use journals to batch render. I don't suppose that could be enhanced with a farm option? It would still be worth paying for but just a simple add on would be great.

[Elmo]

Not sure if it can do a render farm from revit at all. Still as to your first question. Only the default materials from Revit come through to MAX. Lighting and setting your view might be your only stuff to set up inside of MAX.

[aaronrumple]

Modo is probably the best cost/speed to quality ratio on the market right now. $1000 gets you as much processing power as you want.

[greg.gebert978266]

Barrie,

Go to my BLOG (http://reviteer.blogspot.com)and have a look at this...

Also (not sure if I'll get this post bumped) but take a look at this POST (http://reviteer.blogspot.com/2009/09/revit-to-artlantis.html)
I was impressed by a competitive product :? when it came to rendering.

Hey Elmo...........:beer:
Cheers
Mike

I understand the idea of multiple cores. In my experience Revit can only use up to 400% of power regardless of the number of CPUs. For example four cores running at 100% each or 8 cores running at 50% each. How do they get around that to use all 16 cores? I feel like Autodesk is blocking the ability to use more cores or use a render farm to get people to go to 3ds max and sell more software. What really needs to happen is someone to develop the programming required to use the NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. If that can be done, worrying about time will never be an issue with rendering.

[aaronrumple]

What really needs to happen is someone to develop the programming required to use the NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. If that can be done, worrying about time will never be an issue with rendering.

Vray has a working prototype of just that.... (There is another thread with link to video.)

[brethomp]

I feel like Autodesk is blocking the ability to use more cores or use a render farm to get people to go to 3ds max and sell more software. I think you hit the nail on the head here.

Don't get me wrong, I am very pleased with the rendering that I can get straight out of Revit, but there are just a few small features that they disabled, that could make it even better. Another is background images. I'm not suggesting that Revit needs all of the features of MAX, but A couple of more simple ones would be nice.

[Scott D Davis]

Backburner can be installed on a few machines. I am not too sure how many machines it can be installed on or is allowed to be installed. I know that it is better if you leave the machines over night to render instead of letting them render while someone is working on them but I am sure you can do that aswell.

With one copy of Max or Max Design, backburner can be installed on every machine on your network. It's an unlimited use license for backburner with no limit to the number of cores.

[Scott D Davis]

Not sure if it can do a render farm from revit at all. Still as to your first question. Only the default materials from Revit come through to MAX. Lighting and setting your view might be your only stuff to set up inside of MAX.

All Pro-materials, all lighting (including IES data), all geometry, and the camera used as the export view from Revit all come through into Max through FBX. You can just "hit render". But you can also use other powerful features in Max, such as Occular Occlusion, to make your images even more realistic.

[Elmo]

With one copy of Max or Max Design, backburner can be installed on every machine on your network. It's an unlimited use license for backburner with no limit to the number of cores.

Thanks for confirming that one for me. I was never quite sure about that. I have only ever taken it to 3 machines.

[barrie.sharp]

All Pro-materials, all lighting (including IES data), all geometry, and the camera used as the export view from Revit all come through into Max through FBX. You can just "hit render". But you can also use other powerful features in Max, such as Occular Occlusion, to make your images even more realistic.

That's good to know. Thanks to everyone. It's clear that the best option is to buy an additional Autodesk product... That's a stroke of luck for them ;) Just down to pricing and pursuading management that there is value in reducing the render times. I know it should be an easy argument but I will be asked if there is a magic wand alternative. Can anyone tell if backburner has a throttle. It would be great to just nick a little power from 50 machines rather than maxing out 10 people or trying to setup a dedicated farm.

[greg.gebert978266]

I think you hit the nail on the head here.

Don't get me wrong, I am very pleased with the rendering that I can get straight out of Revit, but there are just a few small features that they disabled, that could make it even better. Another is background images. I'm not suggesting that Revit needs all of the features of MAX, but A couple of more simple ones would be nice.

I agree. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought we had the ability of using background images when Revit used Acurender. I like the quality and ease of the new rendering, but I still want some basic functionality.

[truevis]

All Pro-materials, all lighting (including IES data), all geometry, and the camera used as the export view from Revit all come through into Max through FBX. You can just "hit render"...

But not families that use RPC -- i.e., entourage and plantings. Certainly not by default -- have you got a method to fix it? Viewport clipping is also lost, right?


I agree. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought we had the ability of using background images when Revit used Acurender..
Yes, user-defined backgrounds, AccuRender's programmatic plantings, spherical/cylindrical rendering, share-able material libraries, etc. were removed when they changed Revit to use metal ray.

Backburner for Revit.. we can only dream.

[bregnier]

If you set up Max properly, RPC content should transfer with the FBX. I think there's a white paper or help tutorial about setting that up. Have many people here worked with this format? I played with it for a while but found that some models couldn't export the FBX format without errors. Then again, we also have custom material libraries already set up in max so the format's not that useful- maybe if I was more persistent I could get it to work better.