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Messages - Nejc Kilar

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1126
[Max] General Discussion / Re: DR over VLAN
« on: 2016-03-09, 22:15:32 »
Well I figured that for filesizes of around 200mb it might be able to work but anything beyond that... I think Juraj mentioned that even 200/200mbit might be too slow for establishing a reliable pipeline when it comes to using it for region renders and fast previews. Getting people cutoff from the internet isn't that big of an issue since we don't have that many people and some of us work in different timezones which is also why we are looking into  these types of solutions - also, fiber is usually a good sport as long you have a mbit or two to spare.

You raise a really valid point and I'm glad you are pointing these issues out since apparently you have a lot of experience with it.

When it comes to precaching, I was thinking about looking into the dropbox sync and how that could help. You mentioned it can be super problematic in terms of it being reliable?

1127
[Max] General Discussion / Re: DR over VLAN
« on: 2016-03-09, 13:32:59 »
@SairesArt

Well thanks again, that was super useful to read! Actually the plan is to eventually go 200/200mbit on fiber but right now the 100mbit option appears to be the more realistic one.

Basically what you said makes sense, that it takes about 80 seconds to launch the render on the render node, but what we would ideally be aiming for is to have the ability to do fast region renders as well (think of it like your normal in office DR). For final frames it really doesn't matter if we need to wait 80 seconds or 10 minutes because the sheer computer power would make a difference despite a slower start up time.

What I get from all of this that it is definitely doable but with a few downsides. I totally get your drift about 100/5 connections, they are cool if you need to download stuff but very uncool if you need to upload a bunch of stuff as well. Laughed hard on how you explained it though :)

It would appear you are starting yourself a little net of enslaved PCs to me :P Hah! I am trying to do the same ;)


1128
Gallery / Re: Almost There
« on: 2016-03-08, 18:14:58 »
Man, I really like this piece, kudos! Not sure what else there is to say, I mean it is not the most realistic piece but the style really blends with the PP and everything... Awesome stuff!

1129
[Max] General Discussion / Re: DR over VLAN
« on: 2016-03-07, 10:21:21 »
Hello again,

Just a quick follow up question regarding this topic. Does running DR over VLAN over a 100mbit fiber line work fast enough to allow for constant usage and not just for final frame rendering? I am asking this because doing the math something like a 300mbit internet connection should be way better.

Anyone care to share? :)

1130
Hardware / Re: Render nodes opinions
« on: 2016-03-07, 10:15:46 »
I think there are quite a few companies that use Seasonics components in their PSUs - I am unsure whether they get top grade components or are they binned in a way? It might also be that Seasonic charges a premium price due to their history and quality :)

I do agree that PSUs are super important in every build and most people just tend to overlook them. A good PSU can also potentially save you from a an unstable electric current or other network "malfunctions".

1131
Well, I think we all hit a wall sooner or later so...

I think it is looking quite nice already but as always there is room for improvement. My first suggestion would be to start playing around with the lighting, create a bit of a mood (sunset, midday, early morning) with the shadows that depend on the strength, position and direction of the sun.

If you feel like going for this neutral lighting type of look then I think spending more time on the reflections might be the first thing to go. Now, you don't want to make things reflective like it just rained but just putting a barely visible reflection and breaking it up with glossiness / reflections maps might make it a bit more interesting. The trees especially might look a little more cool with a little more glossy reflections on the leafs - I might be wrong though.

Also, for this types of renders you can play around in your image editing software a lot (PS for example). You can consider adding chromatic abberation, clarity and maybe even some LUTs.

What I think you could also use is a bit of a stronger bump or displacement on those tree trunks. Maybe the composition would be slightly more interesting if the wood area behind the house would be a bit blackened out by the shadows.

For material creation you have so many resources online that its kind of hard to start listing them all - you can check evermotion tutorials, viscorbel's website, grant warwicks lessons, I mean the list just goes on :)

Sorry if this isn't too helpful but I just wanted to sort of start you off. I think checking out some How To tutorials might give you a good idea on how to advance this.

Hope someone else chimes in too :)

Keep it cool dude, great stuff!

1132
Hardware / Re: Render nodes opinions
« on: 2016-03-05, 21:18:09 »
Noctua U14S is the preferred choice for dual setup. I think it's possible to actually fit two bigger towers, but kind of pointless.

I think Fractal is now using improved versions of their fans in Case, so those are pretty good, but Noctua A14 and Noiseblockers from BlackNoise (the very best fans on earth) are better and more quiet.


Thanks again! I've been keeping tabs on some of these models but when it comes to my personal workstation I don't go into those high end super quiet setups :)

With regards to the LGA 2011 Core CPUs, it is kind of odd. I just checked the BOX versions for a few of the Core CPUs that fit LGA 2011 and it does appear they come without a stock cooler. Surprised I am! On the other hand though the rest of the "consumer" grade CPUs do appear to still receive them. Also, AMD has just pushed a great stock cooler on one of their FX packages...

1133
[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Grass scattering
« on: 2016-03-05, 20:57:10 »
Yep, works a treat in the diffuse channel.  It's easy to set the number of polygons used for the each blade of grass, leaf, petal etc.  You then just use that number to vary colour/texture every x polygons.

Thanks! I haven't tried the R17 yet but the variance shader seems quite fundamental for arch vis :)

1134
Hardware / Re: Render nodes opinions
« on: 2016-03-05, 18:38:04 »
First of all, thank you all for your responses. I gathered useful information from each and every post :)

The storage tip is totally on place although we are still undecided on that since we are thinking of possibly having a dropbox synced on a render node - we have some internal reasons for doing that actually and it is a long(er) story.

@SairesArt
Thank you for your feedback and I really like your point about the GPU route. The way we are thinking now is that we won't be relying on GPU rendering for quite a while so we are putting that on the side, for now.

@Juraj_Talcik
Yes, we are building just one node but we are still unsure of the funds we will have so I kind of wanted to present the team with three hopefully very solid options for each price range.

I take it that for single CPU solutions (with a bit of an OC) the 5960x is the prefer solution while the Xeons are more cost / performance efficient when paired together? Definitely something to keep in mind :)

With regards to  cooling, I actually had a chance to use a few different manufacturers in my time but to keep it under <20DB under full load is something I never really invested much thought into - the render node will be in office so that is quite an important factor to consider. Would you care to tell me which models do you prefer in this case?

And the PSU tip, that one I already knew, thanks ;)

1135
Gallery / Re: A modern kitchen
« on: 2016-03-05, 10:59:23 »
@filippo.previtali

Thank you, kind Sir :)

1136
[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Grass scattering
« on: 2016-03-04, 23:05:52 »
Deffo worth checking out forester as well. http://www.3dquakers.com

It's very tightly integrated in C4D and has excellent cloner options and a load of in depth tutorial videos.   There's a thread over at cgsociety about it as well, seems to be pretty highly regarded.

I've always hated grass but I get on alright with it now and it plays nicely with the variation shader as well.

slightly offtopic question but does the variance shader work with Corona for things like grass and leafs?

1137
Hardware / Re: Render nodes opinions
« on: 2016-03-04, 23:05:03 »
On my opinion 12-core Xeons are the best choice in price\power balance. We are using X5650 they are chap and easy to find.

For example here in LV you can by one used for aprox 600 EUR un Z800 tower and with somwhere around 24 gb of RAM and with some quadro 2k gpu.

Forgive me for being uneducated but aren't X5650 6 core, 12 thread CPUs?

1138
Hardware / Render nodes opinions
« on: 2016-03-04, 16:27:20 »
Hello everyone,

We are trying to build up a bit of a render farm for ourselves and I'd really appreciate your opinion on our hardware choice. I've been following the hardware trends a lot but lately I got a little lazy so I am unsure whether we are going in the right direction with this. Let me say this again, your opinion is really welcome.

The general idea is to prep a render node that will help with rendering out the final frames (mostly Corona, no GPU rendering yet) . Our workstations spec from 4770s, 4790k and a 12 Core Xeon so we are looking something to complement that existing hardware.

These are the three builds that we came up with:

A)
CPU: Intel Core i7 5960X Octa-Core 3.0GHz (3.5GHz TurboBoost)
Motherboard: Asus
Memory: 32GB Kingston DDR4
Cooling: ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling System for 2011 Socket
Video Card: None yet
Storage: 1TB 7200RPM HDD
Power Supply: 650W Corsair RM650

B)
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2960 v3, 12-core @2.6ghz (3.5ghz turbo) with HT
Motherboard: Asus X99-A
Memory: 64GB Crucial DDR4
Cooling: Phanteks PH-TC12LS + 2x Side Fans 120mm
Video Card: nVidia 960 GTX
Storage: 2TB 7200RPM HDD
Power Supply: 750W EVGA Supernova

C)
CPU: Dual (2x) Intel XEON E5-2687 v3, 10-core @3.1 GHz (3.5ghz turbo) with HT
Motherboard: ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS
Memory: 64GB
Cooling: Dual ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling Systems
Video Card: None yet
Storage: 1TB Seagate Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSD / HDD)
Power Supply: 850 Watt Corsair RM850

As you might have noticed these are kind of segmented into price tiers, depending on how much money we will be able to spend. What would be really cool is if someone could tell me if these are efficient, good quality builds by themselves. I'd hate to see us overpay for a CPU that is not considered to be too helpful or if for example the 2960v3 is less bang for the buck compared to say a 2967v3 since those two are in a similar price range.

Thanks! :)


1139
Gallery / Re: A modern kitchen
« on: 2016-03-03, 18:35:50 »
@selant

Hello there! Thank you for the kind words ;)

The floor being used here is actually not a multi-texture but is instead just one texture applied to the single floor plane. I got lucky with this one as the bump map that I derived from the diffuse texture was exaggerated at the right places to create that believable gap look in between the planks.

As for the reflections ... Well... Again, I derived those from the main diffuse texture and what I did was I plugged it into a color correction node, set it to black and white (monochrome) and tuned that into the reflection glossiness slot.

I just rechecked and it appears I didn't plug anything into the reflection map slot but I would suggest you play with that as well as it might give you some really interesting looking effects. What I normally do nowadays is I try putting a slightly darker version of the glossiness map into the reflection map slot.

Of course that in itself is pretty basic. For some wooden floors you can try mixing and matching different dirt textures either in the reflection or the glossiness slots but in general I always use some form of the original diffuse texture in a black and white version in on of the slots for the reflection / glossiness - just to make the reflections "play nice" with the grain shapes. If there are specular textures already provided with the diffuse textures then I like to incorporate those in as well. Layer / Composite maps can really help here.

I hope it helps! :)

1140
[Max] I need help! / Re: Studio shadow catcher / reflection
« on: 2016-02-27, 09:30:50 »
@mikenz, If I get what you are trying to do then just use the background override in the Scene environment tab under Corona render settings :)

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