Loklo Media 3D Animation Blog

So After watching some Autodesk videos on Youtube, I played with some mirrors and colored mirrors in Max/V-ray to have a little fun last night.

Would you believe that the following four images contain only 5 or 6 primitive objects?

I thought they could be used as desktop backgrounds for anyone interested. Download the 1920×1080 versions here: http://loklomedia.com/files/HD-colored-backgrounds.zip

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I did another little comparison using V-Ray this time to see the performance of the 1090T vs. q9550.

See the pics:

Ignoring the first frame render time, as that includes Max startup, I took the average for both:

Pholus (q9550 @ 3.4GHz with 6GB DDR2) – 8:36 (m:s)

Kraken (1090T @ 3.8GHz with 8GB DDR3) – 5:02

Kraken is 41.5% faster in this case.

If you remember this post, it’s not quite as fast as the i7 2600, but for the price, it’s ok, and good enough for now. IF you look at the render times for frame 1402 on the old post, you’ll figure out that render settings are slightly different, and so is the render time – therefore not a valid comparison, but good food for thought.

Here are the pictures of the assembly of “Kraken” – the 1090T.

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I rendered the hummer benchmark scene (http://www.evermotion.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46777) on both my overclocked q9550 and overclocked 1090T, and the results are in: approximately the same per core speed, but since it’s 6 cores vs. 4, the AMD is faster.
Q9550 @ 3.4GHz with 6GB DDR2 ram: 7:44 (with render bucket size changed to 32, and order changed to hilbert)
1090T @ 3.6GHz with 8GB DDR3 ram: 4:34 (32/hilbert).
I will be doing more comparisons, and overclocking the 1090T to 4.0GHz (It wasn’t stable with my initial efforts)… so stay tuned.
The cheap MSI n430 GT video card has a faulty fan, which is going for RMA… and the Mobo won’t boot without video, so It’s turned off for now.

I’ve got an AMD 1090t (6-core) CPU and related parts coming soon, and will be overclocking it – probably to 4.0 – then comparing to my q9550 which is OC’d to 3.4GHz.
It won’t be here until the end of the week, or maybe next week…
I’ll let you know how it compares with vray, mental ray, and scanline renders.

So I’ve been able to borrow a core i7 2600 based computer to help render a project, and I must say I’m impressed!!

My main workstation is an Intel q9550 overclocked to 3.4GHz – you’ve probably read my other posts about it. It’s decent, but aging.

I compared render times between my three computers plus the borrowed i7 – wow!

See the results for yourself.

Now, raiju64 is my slowest computer – I bought it on a budget, used. It’s an HP media center, with an Intel quad q6600 running stock at 2.4GHz. The Banshee machine is similar, but custom white box, and overclocked – q6600 at 3.0 GHz (I think… it might be 2.97… can’t remember). Pholus is my workstation, mentioned above running a q9550 at 3.4GHz (400×8.5). These are all fast computers, and would blow the average home computer out of the water. But for 3D rendering… their strengths (or weaknesses) shine.

I could replace Banshee and Raiju both with a single i7 2600 (or 2600k if you build yourself) for around $850 CDN. That’s worth it, if you rely on yourself for rendering. It’s a worthy investment.

Compare frames 1407-1409 – Raiju + Banshee’s total render times for two frames is 18:59, and Predator (the i7) rendered a single frame in 4:11 – I can render 4 frames on the i7 in the same time that two machines take to render a single frame each. wow! I know what my next purchase will be!! Save power on the utility bill, get results quicker, and have bragging rights to a fast computer.

Now, this is in the consumer/prosumer level – if you have a bigger budget, you would likely consider building a system with dual 6-core intel Xeons to really blast through the renderings. I’m not there… yet.

I’ve decided that if I’m to do more product reviews and tutorials, then I need a little more funding – so please consider donating to help out with more good blog entries