Looking into Migrating From Radeon to FirePro/Quadro

[riley1389]

Hello fellow artists!

Currently I have a decent setup for rendering, however it's just not enough. I currently have an Intel 4770k, an AMD R9 290. But I'm to render a pretty complex scene mostly due to a necessary 5x subdivision of an already 28,000 poly model, twol other models, one with 600 polys, and the other a little under 10k. But I don't think that's really the problem, the scene is a very dark scene with only a single spotlight to illuminate that primary target, along with an altered version of the human skin shader that is in the MatDB, which seems to be an extremely complex material to process.

All in all, I've had the same image rendering at 1080x1920 (yes, it's portrait, it is meant to be smartphone wallpaper.) and it's been rendering for over 53 hours and there's still far too much noise. I've tried optimizing my scene as best possible by getting rid of some not absolutely necessary components, like I had a fog entity throughout the environment.

I'm really thinking that I might need to step up from Radeon to FirePro and/or Quadro graphics.

Now in saying that, does anybody have workstation graphics that can give me some information that will give me a general idea of the speed increase between consumer and workstation card performance?

[Zom-B]

No idea how you come up with such ideas mate

there is a very good chance that your issue is scene based.
A Example render and maybe uploading the (simplified) scene for people to check it out would be the best choice here!

FirePro & Quadro cards are rather slower then a common high end Gaming card, they are great in doing OpenGL, not OpenCL

High SuperSampling values doesn't slow down rendering at all, only maybe the quality of the Image in the first few minutes...
SS costs extra RAM, thats it!

[Oscar J]

Don't insist on GPU rendering just because if the high samples/sec rate you get. That's really just a number. For a majority of my studio scenes with complex materials and small lights, I use BiDir or BiDir with MLT.

[Polinalkrimizei]

They are right, simple pathtracing even with GPU support is not the way to go here. BiDir with all its recent speedups is really the most powerful rendering mode. GPU is still great for (daylight) outdoor scenes or some studio setups (env maps) though.
It is not always easy to find out if BiDir is better used with MLT or without for your scene. In my experience, in a relatively dark scene BiDir is way more effective in the "dark" areas, while BiDir MLT is pretty strong on lighter areas. Combining the two in post pro can make sense.
But considering your portrait with a complex SSS skin shader, I'd give MLT a try. Just keep in mind that MLT might not be able to produce a noise free image in some areas even after days and weeks of rendering... BiDir most certainly will, and often in much less time.
In general, MLT should be reserved for very special situations like visible caustics and SSS (fog, water etc.).
BiDir should be default.
Path tracing with GPU is unbeatable for direct sunlight and env maps.

And while we are at it, what about Pathtracing with MLT? Why is it in the menu? What advantages does it have over BiDir MLT in theory? I've never had a scene that could benefit from it...

[riley1389]

I guess I thought that because there was a guy with a Mac Pro getting ridiculous numbers, I guess I wrong :p

I appreciate the clarification on the pros of the different tracing modes.

So I think I will forego GPU acceleration in this case.

[aleksandera]

Forget the GPU. Set it to path with MLT ore BI. Go to sleep, whatever...
Learn how to resume a render...
I always love the result. It's always worth waiting

[aleksandera]

I'm taking back what I have wrote above. Here is a simple monster render; no sss.
Look at the render time. I think this is mature for animation.
Rendered on GPU (Nvidia 660ti)
Great job developers

[Zom-B]

I guess I thought that because there was a guy with a Mac Pro getting ridiculous numbers, I guess I wrong :p

Thats super scene dependent mate

So I think I will forego GPU acceleration in this case.

I also have a hard time seeing some SSS material in your scene... scale does mater a lot if you go for SSS, a 2m statue will look different then a 20m statue with the same material. Doublecheck your export settings here...
Only tip I can give ya for pure PT (like in GPU tracing used) is that the bigger the emitter, the faster you'll render!

P.S. really nice example aleksandera!