Setting Up Revit Render Farm/Server

[CrawfordSmith99]

We've got this big honkin' dedicated rendering server that is going largely unused; I was wondering if it was possible to use it to render directly from Revit.

Apparently, it was once thought that we would have a dedicated visualization position, who would be able to generate renderings using VRay for 3DStudio Max. The position fell through, so now we have this super-duper server to run 3DSM, but only two or three people in the firm know how to use it.

I would like to set things up so that typical Revit users can set up a rendering and use this server to do the heavy lifting, instead of having to run things overnight on their machine. Also, we'd like to avoid having to deal with the aggravating and ever-changing rules for Autodesk's cloud rendering service. (Hey, where'd my 3,000 cloud credits go?)

Is it possible to set things up for Revit do do this? If so, how can I help my IT folks go about getting it set up? Any advice or resources you can provide would be appreciated. Thanks.

-Crawford

[Revitaoist]

You will be better off going with the original plan, use that machine to render with MAX. Do some research on rendering with CPU vs. GPU. If big graphics cards are in that rig to do the renders, they will not be used by Revit, but will be used by max. If it is just a Revit render machine, you should just sell off the graphics cards. Rendering in Revit makes it not much difference if that's a super machine or not unless it's got more than 4 cores. Don't be intimidated by MAX, it's a deep program, but you can just link Revit and render.

[CrawfordSmith99]

If big graphics cards are in that rig to do the renders, they will not be used by Revit, but will be used by max. If it is just a Revit render machine, you should just sell off the graphics cards. Rendering in Revit makes it not much difference if that's a super machine or not unless it's got more than 4 cores. Don't be intimidated by MAX, it's a deep program, but you can just link Revit and render.

Thanks for the feedback! My understanding is that the render server has a puny little graphics card, but something like 40 cores. I'll look into just going with an unadjusted Revit export in 3DS Max to see what I come up with.

-Crawford

[Revitaoist]

You can just link revit to max, change the view to an existing revit camera and hit render. You can improve the quality by creating a camera natively in max, there are a lot more options with lens size, focal length, etc. If you don' have your lights modeled perfectly in revit, you may need to create lights in max. You can create awesome materials in max, but I prefer to do the materials in revit so my BIM model matches the rendering.

[david_peterson]

Option C - Get Lumion.
Depending on the GPU configuration of your server this might be a better option.
I'm not sure what you've got for graphics cards in there.
I know our render farm here works well and it's just a bunch of old workstations.
Revit and Max typically use CUP not GPU, however with iRay becoming more and more poplar, GPU seems to be the new conventional thinking.
You also can't split render chunks in Revit like you can in Max.
If you want to dump a model out so it can render on a separate workstation, Lumion give great results in about 1/8 the time.
Just my 2 cents.

[CrawfordSmith99]

You can just link revit to max, change the view to an existing revit camera and hit render. You can improve the quality by creating a camera natively in max, there are a lot more options with lens size, focal length, etc. If you don' have your lights modeled perfectly in revit, you may need to create lights in max. You can create awesome materials in max, but I prefer to do the materials in revit so my BIM model matches the rendering.

This seems to be a slippery slope. Ideally, I'd like to have something in place with a relatively simple workflow - like in Revit. I've been trying to get a grasp of basics of Revit to 3DSM workflow, and it is anything but simple. Even linking the model between the two is tricky, and given the monster size of some of our projects, it can be a time-consuming process. I'll keep working on it though - I'm sure there is a happy medium between rendering in Revit and the settings-heavy workflow of 3DSM.

-Crawford

[Revitaoist]

You must be using older versions. I use the 2016 Building Design Suite, which comes with a "suite workflow" button. If I am in a revit camera view, I just hit the button and max opens up looking through that same camera. I've got my Iray render setting already setup on unlimited in MAX, so I just hit render and take a break until it looks good. You'd be hard pressed to find something faster.