2 replies to this topic

[Jason Bloomingdale]

Hi again friends,

 

So my computer is a limiting factor when handling renderings. I've got an old PC (i7-8700 @3.2GHz, Intel Integrated Graphics, 16G RAM, SATA HD [not an SSD], and all from 2020), and I know that it'll be replaced before the end of the year, since I don't meet the system requirements to effectively run Windows 11 and Windows 10 support is going over the rainbow bridge later this year, BUT until that time, I'm limited to DirectX 11 or the software ray tracer. I'm finding that DirectX 11 is generally 50 shades of dark, and even turning Ambient Light up all the way to 30, the only way to make things look even remotely realistic, in terms of lighting settings, is to also crank the headlight up, which means I might as well not even use ray tracing since it overpowers any actual light sources in the scene. The Software Ray Tracer, when set to Path Tracing, takes so long to complete its passes that the only way it's useable is to do a rendering exclusively when I'm about to go to lunch so that it can wrap up its paths (for context, I started one right before I started writing this, and it's still going with most surfaces still looking like I turned on channel 3 and forgot to turn on the Nintendo (where my Xennials at?).

All this to say, I know it's a long shot, but has anyone found a combination of settings that use DirectX11 and look decent without having to add so many artificial light sources that you drown out the actual lights in the model? I tried the TwinMotion route and my computer actually started weeping. I don't really have budget to get a better renderer, so really I'm just looking to see if anyone has any settings to maximize what I can milk out of my limited machine until I can at least be only a few years behind the times.

 

Side note: Everybody cross their fingers, toes, and eyes for me. I'm lobbying to have the next generation of office PCs here be equipped with actual dedicated GPUs so that we can use the tools we have effectively.

 

Update: I've answered an email, walked out of my office to have a conversation with a builder, dug back into the 3rd party options, answered another email, helped a customer, and came back and the software path tracer is still chugging along. Woof.

[Fred Russell]

Make sure reflections is unchecked,  that seems to speed the build up for me.

[Jason Bloomingdale]

Make sure reflections is unchecked,  that seems to speed the build up for me.

I mean, if I'm doing a ray-traced/path-traced rendering, reflections are a nontrivial part of what we're going for. Thus far, I think the only solution for me has been to fiddle with ambient lighting on individual textures in order to make them match up more with their real colors, which is insanely tedious and probably pretty unreliable because it's compounding the "color correction" that needs to happen from monitor to monitor. Alas, I just need to survive until the fall to get a better machine, haha!