CoolColJ's test pics thread

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zeitmeister
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by zeitmeister » Tue May 25, 2010 8:18 pm

Hehe, actually, I haven't been in any pool there. :(























Just preferred the sea... :lol:
Cheers, David



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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Wed May 26, 2010 12:49 am

So I tried keeping all values between 80% of RGB max for white max, and 20% of RGB for black at the minimum. ie between RGB 51,51,51 and 204,204,204

I guess that means the same for any colour, have no single RGB colour channel outside of the 51-204 zone?

Rendered much better. 20% RGB black looks grey, but renders black. Indigo's MLT is still attracted to the white areas though.
im1274773360.JPG
So what I learned with Indigo's MLT, darker colours don't render caustics as quickly as brighter surfaces.
And with all things equal, the more complex the surface colour scheme is the slower it also renders. MLT also does not like irregular surfaces.

Here's another variable, the Sun position has a major influence on how quickly caustics appear!!

I set the sun relatively low, and put in typical pool complex tile pattern, which I know renders caustics slower than a pure white surface. Looks fine underwater
im1274780097.JPG
But above the surface, at 300+ samples, the pool surface and cube is just not lighting up all that well...
im1274782674.JPG
Now I set the sun to near Noon position, up high in the sky and suddenly all the caustics render really fast! Samples per second is also lower. At only 230+ samples it has way more caustics than the above lower Sun render.
im1274790580.JPG
So it seems Indigo has a hard time finding the sun to render the caustic when there are complex surfaces, irregular water surface bending the light rays and the sun in a low position.
Keeping the Sun around the 10 to 2 o'clock position can make you a happier person :)
Off course to would be nice to use a lower Sun position, hopefully Glare will one day have a solution.

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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Wed May 26, 2010 7:54 pm

I tried Bidirectional Path tracing again while taking a nap. Rendered up to 1600+ samples, and it was a big fail :)

Everything above the water looks photoreal, but the underwater rendering looks out of place, no light transmission :P
im1274832930.JPG
1600+ samples
Curently doing a comparison between MLT and Bidirectional MLT, and there seems to be quite a big brightness difference between the 2 modes, and between path tracing as well

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suvakas
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by suvakas » Wed May 26, 2010 8:59 pm

What a firefly party. 8)

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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Thu May 27, 2010 8:24 pm

suvakas wrote:What a firefly party. 8)
They would probably turn into caustics, given enough rendering time, especially under GPU acceleration :)

had some strange results rendering the scene with MLT vs Bidirectional MLT.

BMLT is more effecient on paper, but it runs at half the speed of basic MLT. So while it is more effecient and can resolve more details better, it's not 200% more effecient, so for the same render time, it's still more noisey than basic MLT, but it does render some areas better, and doesn't have all the weird multi-coloured splotchy artifacts that basic MLT throws around rather randomly. But the next build of Indigo is supposed to get rid of all these MLT artifacts, so that might tilt the balanced towards basic MLT for most scenes...

Interestingly enough, there are speckles of caustics on the underwater object in both.

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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Sat May 29, 2010 1:40 pm

Flexing a bit of CPU muscle - seems to be a little quicker than my Pentium 4 2.8c @ 3.1ghz :lol:

Wanted to see if the render above with Bidirectional path tracing would improve with more time, nope not too much at 5000+ samples :twisted:
im1275094651.JPG
Bidirectional path tracing

I had an itch I couldn't stop from scratching anymore so I made a dash down to the local store and grabbed a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R, i7 930 CPU, 2x6GB DDR3 1600mhz XMS3 Corsair kits that are end of the line, so were going for cheap, $243AUD for each kit!
My dad had an unused brand new ATI Radeon 4670 which I now have, and all temporarily running in my old Pentium 4 Antec Sonata case and with Corsair HX-620 power supply, which was a bitch to get it installed in last night!

Currently still using 32 bit XP, so only 3.5 gigs can be seen. I only have 1 kit installed, because it seems the 2nd kit was causing issues the first time I tried it, need more testing after a motherboard Bios update. 12 gigs is overkill for me, but since it was relatively cheap, why not? :)

I have a Antec P183 case and CP850 power supply on order, along with a Noctua NH-D14 monster CPU heatsink, and a bunch of quiet Scythe Slipstream fans and Scythe temp controlled fan controller

Even with the stock crappy Intel heatsink and fan, I managed to run it fine at 3.1 ghz (stock is 2.8ghz ), but the CPU temps soared into the 80+ degrees territory when rendering. Knocking the CPU voltage down from 1.14 to 1.08, dropped the temps like a rock and I could still put it up even further to 3.3ghz, and the temps never exceeded 70 degrees. This is a nice chip and I'm not running it on the limit either. Me thinks 4ghz 24 hour stable can be had when the rest of my new setup arrives. Intel are underselling these CPUs, but the motherboard must obviously help, it's a known good overclocker 8)
Last edited by CoolColJ on Tue Jun 01, 2010 1:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.

StompinTom
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by StompinTom » Sat May 29, 2010 1:47 pm

CoolColJ wrote: I had an itch I couldn't stop from scratching anymore so I made a dash down to the local store and grabbed a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R, i7 930 CPU, 2x6GB DDR3 1600mhz XMS3 Corsair kits that are end of the line, so were going for cheap, $243AUD for each kit!
Oh yeah. Just stroll down to the store and casually buy pretty much the computer I've been slowly putting together piece by agonizing piece.

Haha that's sick, though. How is it working for you?

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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Sun May 30, 2010 3:23 am

StompinTom wrote:
CoolColJ wrote: I had an itch I couldn't stop from scratching anymore so I made a dash down to the local store and grabbed a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R, i7 930 CPU, 2x6GB DDR3 1600mhz XMS3 Corsair kits that are end of the line, so were going for cheap, $243AUD for each kit!
Oh yeah. Just stroll down to the store and casually buy pretty much the computer I've been slowly putting together piece by agonizing piece.

Haha that's sick, though. How is it working for you?
It was a last minute decision to grab all the gear late Friday, so I can play around with it over the weekend :)
Like all rush jobs it was a headache and a half... took me a good 5-6 hours before I got it up and running after numerous glitches and oversights, crashes and reboots! Installing the new system over an old Windows XP made things a bit too complicated with a lot of drivers off the MB CD not activating the relevant hardware. Had to manually figure it all out. If you go and download all the drivers and programs from the Motherboard website beforehand and put them on the HD or USB flash drive then it will make things much smoother. Especially the LAN drivers, otherwise no Net access!

Anyway all 12 gigs of ram work properly now, no issues at all. I thought the first time I put them in, they may have been kits that were not compatible with this motherboard when using more than 6 gigs. Setting the ram to standard, instead of Turbo or Extreme in the bios settings was the key, and figuring out the standard ram speed was 1066mhz...

Doesn't feel too much different in Windows XP with my Pentium 4, but the sheer speed when activated is pretty massive, and better multitasking. The HD is the main bottleneck, need an SSD :)
I just installed Windows 7, and love the way it looks, a lot more fun than XP, but I feel so lost and helpless, without all my programs and stuff in XP. And you need a massive monitor with everything taking up so much space on the screen! :(
Still have both in dual boot. I dunno maybe XP 64 bit is better for me....

Anyway Indigo does run faster in Windows 7 64 bit, I get 560k s/s with the Caterpilla test scene, and 538k in XP, 32 bit.

same scene rendered with basic MLT at something like 9100+ spp. I was getting 650+k s/s. Some speckles of caustics on the underwater object. You can see some areas like the pillar bit, just aren't explored all that well even at such a high SPP
And plenty of splatty artifacts

MLT settings of Large Mutation Probability of 0.33 and Max change 0.004
im1275125954.JPG
MLT
With Bidirectional MLT, with SSS and CauchyB disperion in the water. 6783 SPP. S/S is half the rate of basic MLT, so I don't think it's well optimised. Bidirectional Path tracing isn't half the speed of basic Path tracing...
More effecient off course, but that underwater object will take ages to light up! The SSS and dispersion cleared up fairly quickly, much to my surprise :)

MLT settings of Large Mutation Probability of 0.4 and Max change 0.008
im1275124112.JPG
BiD MLT

ieatfish
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by ieatfish » Mon May 31, 2010 1:04 pm

4.0 GHz is easy on almost all the i7 chips. You're going to want a better GPU for the next version of Indigo, though. :) Maybe a Cypress or Fermi? Where did you pick up all your parts? I'm assuming MC or Frys unless you have a great mom and pop store nearby.

I'm really liking your water scene. You do realize that now I'm going to have to go mess around with a similar scene too? Thanks a lot... :p
Intel Core-i7 @ 4.0 GHz | GTX 580 | 12 GB RAM

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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Mon May 31, 2010 5:57 pm

I got all my parts from a small local computer store - pretty cheap prices. I located them in a price bot engine
The rest of the gear I am ordering from an online e-tailer that has more specialised stuff

I've decided against the P182 and CP850 Power supply idea, and will go for the Silverstone Fortress FT02 (positive pressure style case, with heat venting up, so no rubbish gets sucked in through the case cracks, like the usual case designs) and a Seasonic MD12 850w PSU. The case is basiclly the same as the Raven 2, but with better HD enclosures and the results speaks for themselves at the bottom of this page - cooler and quieter, more expensive though :)
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1002-page7.html
Important for someone who wants to run CPU and GPU at high clock rates for long periods of time, and at a very quiet sound level

The video card I have is a stop gap, borrowed from my dad, until I decide what to get. Not really happy with any of the Nvida cards, but it seems the ATI are not really suitable for Cuda and OpenCL is slower... I'm after a powerful card that doesn't draw too much power and can be made to run really quiet...
Still if an ATI card is at least 4x faster under GPU acceleration than the my I7 alone, then that would still rock! :D

I can't get enough of water renders 8)

BTW as you can see from the last 2 renders, the MLT Max Change does have a big effect on hard to reach caustic detail. The default vale of 0.01-0.008 is good for quick previews, as they cover the whole scene fairly quickly, but lower settings down to 0.003-0.002 get into the finer details better, but stay splotchy/smudgey for a lot longer, and rely more on the large mutations to smooth the scene out

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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Sat Jun 05, 2010 1:49 pm

I finally got the rest of the parts for my PC build. The case is superb, rock solid build quality.

Well I bumped my PC up to 4 ghz, slight increase in Vcore CPU voltage, to 1.18 vs 1.13 stock, and a few other settings, and had to decrease the ram multiplier so they ran at 1186 mhz or so, instead of 1:1 with the bus speed to keep them stable. They are rated at 1600mhz, but because I'm using 2 sets of 6, 12 gigs total and running all slots, that changes things I think. Also using XMP memory setting in the bios as well

Ambient temperature is about 15-17 degrees celsius, and the results blew me away! I did these renders one after the other in this order, and temps never cracked 45 degrees and the whole system was really quiet, except for the stock video card fan :shock:

Oh yeah, check the samples per second 8)

Image
Image
Image

Then at idle afterwards!
Image

The fans never sped up at load, and the case feels cold to the touch :D
This Noctua NH-D14 and Silverstone FT-02 case is amazing. Plus the fact the Seasonic M12D 850w is sucking fresh air directly helps a lot too.
I'm glad I went for this case over the P183+CP850 combo

Just think an i7 980x at the same speed goes 50% faster.....
Last edited by CoolColJ on Sat Jun 05, 2010 4:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

ieatfish
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by ieatfish » Sat Jun 05, 2010 2:27 pm

Very nice results! I found those test renders one time, and haven't been able to find them again. Would I be a noob if I asked where they were? I upgraded from an AMD Phenom II 945 @ 3.6 GHz to my i7 @ 4 and the increase was great. Don't get me wrong, my 945 was a trooper and for what I was doing, it was plenty. Once I started rendering and video encoding more recently, it was definitely worth the upgrade.
Intel Core-i7 @ 4.0 GHz | GTX 580 | 12 GB RAM

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CoolColJ
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by CoolColJ » Sat Jun 05, 2010 4:50 pm

ieatfish wrote:Very nice results! I found those test renders one time, and haven't been able to find them again. Would I be a noob if I asked where they were? I upgraded from an AMD Phenom II 945 @ 3.6 GHz to my i7 @ 4 and the increase was great. Don't get me wrong, my 945 was a trooper and for what I was doing, it was plenty. Once I started rendering and video encoding more recently, it was definitely worth the upgrade.
LOL, in the Indigo Test scenes folder :lol:

ieatfish
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by ieatfish » Sat Jun 05, 2010 5:27 pm

:shock: Yeah, definitely failed that one. So I'm getting about the same samples/sec as you (which is to be expected with similar system specs). Now I just want them to pick me for the GPU beta. :D
Intel Core-i7 @ 4.0 GHz | GTX 580 | 12 GB RAM

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dag
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Re: CoolColJ's test pics thread

Post by dag » Tue Jun 08, 2010 10:07 am

i7 at 4ghz at 1.18 vcore at 45c full load? Impossible. Try Prime95 with CoreTemp with hyperthreading on. SpeedFan must be wrong.

1.18 volts and 4ghz is perverse. Can't be stable?? My 860 can't run below that on stock.

Edit It took a lot of testing but we finally found the sweet spot. 1.112v on the core and 3.8GHz. I think you'll agree that this is outstanding.

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