Dedecated Rendering Station Specs?

[pashley]

This has probably been asked but this is my first time on this forum.

As our team works to integrate Revit into our work, rendering is emerging as a major service we want to offer. We are rapidly discovering how very long it takes for our computers to complete a final rendering using our standard desktops (single processor P4 2.4Mhz 768 Mb Ram).

Does anyone have and recommendations on what would make a a good rendering station that would be not outrageously costly but that would make a noticeable diference in processing time?

[GuyR]

They're all decent processors, although the rams a little light. The other option might be to use a rendering program that can distribute the job over multiple processors. Do test renderings during the day and batch render at night.

Guy

[hand471037]

Another tip: Revit is rather slow when it comes to Rendering. For whatever reason, Accurender isn't very fast, and other Rendering software will run faster on the same hardware.

There are things you can do to speed things up some, like learning what settings and materials type take the most time to render & improving your hardware.

But if you wish to offer this as a service, and want to be efficent, you may wish to look to other rendering engines that are able to get decent to great results in less time. You'll have to deal with the import-export factor, which can be a time-suck, but with modeling in Revit and rendering in a better rendering package you might be able to be much faster that either Revit alone or Viz alone.

There are a couple of options available, from fast GI rendering engines that quickly 'fake' light (like Brazil) that can produce renderings very quickly that look great to setting up a render farm with a few machines.

One guy I know who does a lot of Viz/Max work professionally uses two high-end Dell machines that are more or less evenly matched in spec. He then has a KVM switch so that when one is busy Rendering, he can flip over to the other and keep modeling.

There are stand-alone rendering servers too, where you can hand it a job and have it quickly render it and send you back the photos. These range from the way-expensive to the DYI Linux box.

However I've found that the lack of an import-export factor and the speed in which you are able to edit things in Revit makes for more time to spend tweaking the lighting and materials to look better. I've gotten way better Renderings out of Revit than I have Viz or Truespace because of this alone. Even tho the rendering time and ability might not be as efficent as it is with some other product, there are more factors involved. An hour re-mapping materials vs. an hour in photoshop- which do you think will make the project look better?

Who cares if you export to Viz to do a better rendering, if your time is used up in the import-export process resulting in weaker-looking renderings?

[pashley]

I thought of the "rendering farm" idea because we have a bunch of machines that are not being used - P3 or P4s 1-2.4 Mhz stations with 768 Mb RAM. Just sitting idle. Problem is I don't physically know how you connect them to work together - or know what programs can do that. I gather Accurender in Revit can't take advantage of linked machines?

Also, what file type would you export Revit to to pull into other programs?

[hand471037]

To hook all the machines together, you either need rendering software that does this job for you (in other words, you install a copy onto each machine, and then follow it's set-up documentation to set up the 'farm') or you need 'clustering' software that allows all those machines to operate as if they were one machine with many processors- so you could run any multi-threaded process and have the group act like a low-grade supercomputer.

For the first solution, there are several commercal rendering softwares that do this, and some open-source rendering software that can be made to do this.

For the second solution, you're gonna have to either spend money on clustering software, or you'll have to get Linux/BSD savvy and make a Beowolf cluster. Not something for the faint of heart.

Either way, they will all have to be networked together, and the faster the network the better. Look at Brazil, the latest versions of VIZ & MAX, and Renderman for some off-the-shelf render farm solutions.

There are alos render farm companies, where you can send them your work and they will render it on their farm...

As for what you'll use to dump the model out of Revit, well, that's where this breaks down, for you can only export DWG/DNG/DXF currently, meaning you'll have to rework the file some in some 3D software that can talk to these network rendering tools.

give us 3DS (with materials) export!