Messages

46

Hardware / Re: Workstation configuration

« on: 2019-06-25, 18:10:04 »

No, go with nVidia. For few reasons:

- AMD doesn't have competitive cards are now. The very upcoming range is slightly competitive in mid-range segment (against RTX2060) but not priced any better at all.
- But neither has nVidia made worthwhile improvement in almost 3 years. RTX have barely perceptive improvement outside of actual ray-tracing, for which only the top model (RTX2080ti) is any good for, on all others it's wasted.
- Intel Denoiser is much faster than Corona ones, but still much slower than Optix by nVidia (and eats huge amount of memory). Optix is instant..it's fraction of second, it's seriously cool during IR.

Buy card with at least 6GB of VRAM, ideally 8. (But I've seen some 1080ti with 11GB go as low as 400 Euro...but unless you plan to also do Unreal Engine you don't need it). 3dsMax doesn't care much if you have 1050ti or 1080ti...nothing will be faster in viewport. But the moment your scene in viewport runs out of memory (lot of polygons and textures shown in full resolution), 3dsMax will become extremely slow. You will go from 50 FPS to 0.5 FPS. Graphic card memory is just as important as system memory, even for pure CPU renderers because you still need viewport.

Best thing right now is to buy some older 10xx generation from nVidia, ideally from someone second hand and save money massively for really good performance.

Scoring very cheap Threadripper on market or auction would be good if you plan to upgrade. But don't forget to spend the money of powerful board in that case. MSI MEG and Asus ZenithAlpha are 500-550 Euro right now...which is lot, but worth it.
The other x399 boards will be useless for Zen2 Threadrippers because of their weak VRMs.

I was literally typing a message to tell him to wait for your words of wisdom lol. But that would of been my advice as well. The nvidia denoiser to to valuable to give up for interactive rendering. Here in the states there were 1080tis on sale for $600 yesterday and 1070 for $350.

47

Hardware / Re: Workstation configuration

« on: 2019-06-22, 23:14:37 »

Exactly ! And not just direct sales, you can go on local e-auctions/e-bazaars and buy them unopened or very shortly used for very nice prices.

I purchased an openbox item for the first time and I was a bit worried about it, but I found the x399 Taichi on sale + $100 off for open box and when I opened it up, Every package still had the sticker on the plastic bags. The box was literally the only thing that wa open. Guessing it was returned caused they ordered the wrong socket.

For a quick overview of my budget build, I used some of my old parts to save money and I had no need for my old i7 3770 and its components.

TR 1920x = $279
Taichi x399 = $200
Gskill Trident Z 32GB(8x4)  3200Mhz = $233 (this stuff is down to $179 now) If I had a bit more for a budget I would of got 64GB 16x4
WD Blue 500gb M.2 Ssd = $70
750w PSU = $138 (My old PSU didn't have an extra pin for the taichi's mobo)
Noctua NH-U14S TR4 = $80

Oddly enough that put my build at $1,000 exactly. The 2920x alone is $600. The 9900k was above $500 at the time of my build as well.
I used my old Case, GPU, platter drives, and Windows 10 lets you transfer you key to your online login so didn't need to buy a new key.
There are some incredible savings for gen 1 TR out there if you have the patience

I also sold my old components on ebay for around $250. Which puts me about $750 for my low end workstation.

I was planning on upgrading to the 3950x later this year... but they moved that to the Ryzen socket, so now I'll have to wait and see if my budget allows for an upgrade to the zen 2 Threadrippers =/

48

Hardware / Re: BenQ PD3200Q DesignVue 32 inch?

« on: 2019-06-22, 22:53:04 »

We're using 125perc. scaling and 3dsMax 2016, which doesn't yet react correctly (HighDPI mode is from 2017). It's perfect.

People with sharper eyes could even get away on 100perc. of 32" 4k, it's not that dense (in age where 13" Laptops have 4k.. and even phones).

Indeed 32" is too wide, and I use two of them but vertical 25" on one side. The whole setup is too wide and bit unpractical but I always found I like to have identical panel on one side and found 32" to be sweet of spot of size in the middle so I just tolerate the one on side.

Any particular reason for running max 2016, stability? I'm noticing with the new windows 10 updates Max 2019 is now crashing, which i never had issues prior to the update.

I know what you mean by wanting two identical panels, When I move my mouse over to the 2nd monitor there is a dead space that it wont jump over due to the resolution difference. If it was at the top of the screen it wouldn't be noticeable but for some reason its at the bottom. In the future i'll probably pick up the 2kd PD, just to stick with similar monitors and resolutions. The price jump to 4k is a bit out of my budget which is something to consider @lupaz.

49

Hardware / Re: Workstation configuration

« on: 2019-06-22, 05:47:16 »

If your going to buy a threadripper to hold you over till zen 2, the zen 1 TRs are going on sale left and right in the US. I picked up my 1920x for $279, thats less than half the price of the 2920x. I've seen the 1950x sell for cheaper than the 2920x as well. This would probably vary on which country you are in. You could buy a good x399 Juraj suggestted and drop a 1920x/1950x in and upgrade to a new TR whenever they come out. It would save you a fair amount if you just intend to upgrade the cpu it anyways.

50

Hardware / Re: BenQ PD3200Q DesignVue 32 inch?

« on: 2019-06-22, 05:36:50 »

Our tiny studio uses 6 BenQ PD3200U, the 4k version

How is the scaling of font at 4k? On 2k my text feels a bit smaller, but not to the point where i need to increase the size of scaling.

I purchased the BenQ GW2765HT a couple months ago, on a tight budget this was one of the few Monitors that was 2k+ IPS under $300. Huge step up from my old Asus FHD TN panel 24" monitor. Sadly after 2 weeks i tried to wipe off what look to be an eyelash off the screen, only to find they were dead pixels. RMA'd it back to Newegg who refunded me the money since they no longer had it in stock. Manage to find it on Amazon for the same price but during the time difference amazon started charging taxes to most States in the US. Ended up paying about $30 (even had $20 in gift cards) more in the end but going back to my old monitor for that week, I couldn't believe the visual difference.

Filtering for monitor resolution and Panel isn't easy to do on some stores, which makes finding Monitors a bit difficult. Both the monitors you guys list I don't recall seeing. Had I seen PD2700Q that has calibrated colors for $50 more, I would of pick that up instead. But the monitor I did get I am very satisfied with and BenQ will have a repeat costumer. 27" is the sweet spot for my desk setup, I found 32" to be too large to fit on my desk properly with 2 monitors. 

All you ever seem to find in reviews for monitors is people using them for "GAMING". I'm surprised no one complains about the monitor not having RGB or something like that lol.

51

Hardware / Re: Threadripper Builds

« on: 2019-06-16, 23:54:14 »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE97qIGhV0Y&t=1930s
Talking about no market for the rumored 64 core zen 2 threadripper. Figured everyone browsing this topic here would suggest otherwise.

52

Hardware / Re: Threadripper Builds

« on: 2019-06-12, 08:40:31 »

The 3950X will be much better CPU than 1950/2950X Threadripper as long as the chiplet communication doesn't end up being secret bottleneck (As we already know from practice, Corona Renderer doesn't mirror more common multithreaded apps like Cinebench).
The Cinebench overclocked on air score is amazing, beyond 4000 points. You can't even get close to that with Zen1 Threadrippers. And yeah, CPU lanes, bla blah...look at the whole platform, it's already taken much more seriously by vendors than X399 sadly.

And what is trully tragic, you can already buy much better X570 boards for workstations than X399 has. There will be more 10gbit Workstation boards for X570 than X399 has in all those years.

So right now I wouldn't hold breath for Zen2 Threadrippers being around the corner.

I could only find a cinebench r15 water cooled pic of the 3950x @4300 something. My 1920x can only manage 2700 on r15.

There's going to be plenty of x570 boards for sure. From what i've read over on the amd reddit the prices of some of the x570 board will be in the ballpark of the x399 mobos. If only july would get here sooner so we could see some 3900x benchmarks and uses.

53

Hardware / Re: Threadripper 2990WX

« on: 2019-06-11, 20:38:03 »

All in all, looking really good. They probably could have pushed the price lower but they do need to make some money after all these years :)

If you compare this to their 2950x on the x399 platform, this does come out cheaper with cpu/mobo/ram/cooler by $100-$200 depending on which motherboard you get. Ohh and your most likely going to better performance on the 3950x with pci gen 4 and faster memory for future use. To me it seems like the 3900x & 3950x's competition is their own threadripper lineup 2920x & 2950x.

Wondering where this is going to leave the threadripper platform for zen 2? Are we only going to see 2 models 3970x & 3990x? Don't get me wrong those are gonna be some monsters of a cpu but the starting price for those threadrippers will be $1k+ based on the current ones.

54

Hardware / Re: Threadripper 2990WX

« on: 2019-06-03, 16:55:08 »

The next Ryzen makes every single Threadripper outside of 2990WX obsolete.

Nooo my 1920x that I just bought! I did purchase the cpu/mobo for less than what the 3900x will cost alone though. Just a guess but it would look like the threadripper xx20x model number would be dropped like they did with 1900x for 2nd gen. Which would leave just a 3950x, 3970x, & 3990x (3950x maybe not if the 16c Ryzen is a thing). Was really planning on upgrading to a 3000 series towards the end of the year, hopefully they are still in line with the other TR releases, as this makes a great workstation.

Now if only we could look up builds for workstation and never see the word "Gaming" in reviews and comments.

55

Hardware / Re: Is this workstation still decent? Anyone using one?

« on: 2019-03-26, 15:46:08 »

I'm in close to the same situation as you. Recently i've been doing some work making 3d models here and there, nothing full time. Built my current computer back in 2012, i7 3770k, 16gb ddr3. I've be looking at new cpu's for a few months now, today while browsing I noticed that the AMD Threadripper 1920x is on sale for $279.... it will be here in 2 days no. I still need to pickup a Mobo and some DDR4. But for the price I'm still into less than a New/Used computer.

The benchmarks for the 1920x are slightly better than the X5650. For me, I'll just be picking up the CPU/MOBO/Memory and use everything else that's in my current computer. In the end i'll be around $600 into the Threadripper build (I'll also sell my old stuff to make the cost be even less for me). The sale on the 1920x ends today.

Also keep in mind that the Threadripper has ddr4 and can be upgraded to the 2nd gen Threadrippers. (possibly the 3rd gen coming out later in the year?)

56

General CG Discussion / Re: After Windows update Max UI reset and can't be saved

« on: 2019-02-02, 22:23:15 »

I spent a bunch of time on google seeing if anyone else was having these sort of issues and I thought it was just me! Since the last windows update I am now able to set default apps (Wasn't able to do this for 2 months). But as you mentioned a bunch of settings seems to be set to something that you CAN NOT change.

3ds Max:
Incremental increased are not set to 1" increments (was 0.1").
Import/Export always jumps to some random folder on my backup drive.

Photoshop:
Every time I use the perspective warp tool the tooltips come up.

Substance Designer:
Doesn't matter what resolution I set on the startup, the documents always end up being 4k

Marvelous Designer:
Home screen always shows even after checking the don't show on startup button multiple times.
It also also loads the same project, so i have to clear the avatar and garments.

57

[Max] General Discussion / Re: An idea for Corona-subscribers

« on: 2018-12-24, 19:28:33 »

I don't subscribe every month but I have built up $150 worth of rendering points from rebus farm. Used it a few times, its a pretty good deal we get for free.

58

General CG Discussion / Re: Prices for exterior 3d Visualization

« on: 2018-12-23, 03:24:51 »

I'll write you on these over the weekend, after years I've developed what I consider quite healthy approach and both us and clients are satisfied with the system.
Good that you ask this early in your career, you'll save yourself the painful hassle of figuring it out :- ).

Though I wish bigger studios would sometimes talk more openly about this. There are some articles on cgarchitects but they mostly just skim and say something smart to look cool instead...

Interesting in hearing this as well. I've searched the net for prices and a lot of places seem to charge based number of images. Seen a few that charge based on Meters squared, which seemed unusual.

59

Gallery / Re: Practice, practice, and more practice

« on: 2018-04-30, 22:06:37 »

I've been saving photos on Instagram with the intention of recreating similar/mood renderings of them. Started off with a simple one first.

60

General CG Discussion / Re: Smooth Animation - Need Help (3ds Max)

« on: 2018-03-29, 20:23:14 »

I rendered out an image sequence overnight.

Set the "Pass Limit" to 1, Set your resolution somewhat low as well, and render out your sequences. It won't look pretty but it will let you see your Camera speeds/angles and if anything is out of place. This should really speed up the process of you testing out things.