Rendering time vs Quality

I have been toying alot with PW2 and the higher settings vs the standard....of course the default settings are ok. Even turing on some of the mid-level settings (ie. indirect illumination, ray tracing, etc) there is a definate jump in the quality level that is rendered.

Now here is where I start to get antasy (sp) Every now and then I try to kill my PC and crank everythign up to the MAX....WHOO HOO...lets just say that I walk away, make some popcorn, watch Gone with the wind twice and at that point I look over at the computer and it is still "calculating indirect illumination" lol...I am exaggerating, but the bottom line is.....trying to factor in getting the most out of the settings. The picture quality seems to not have as big a jump from default to mid-level as from mid-level to Max.

I know the factors of haveing a better computer, hardware and all, but this is just more of a question of am I missing out on not using the highest settings?

Reply to
Arthur Y-S
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Here at work we just got me a Dell 650 3.06Ghz with 1Gig of ram. before this I was using a HP Kayak 800Mhz. Now you would think with this big of a jump it would be like night & day, but I still find that with the higher settings in Photoworks I'm still waiting a long time. NOT as long as the HP kayak but I thought with the latest & greatest I'd be smooth sailing but I guess not. I'd like to see that IBM computer "Big Blue" (you know the one that played chess with that dude and won) render a photoworks model and see the results in speed. I think as americans, we have become to accustom to wanting things immediatly and expect alot from the limited technology. I wonder if Solidworks would be improved if they supported dual processing?

Larry

Reply to
Larry Jedik

My dual Xeon 3.06Ghz with a gig of RAM takes a "long" time too. Much longer than PW1.

Reply to
Todd

We all know that PW2 takes longer than PW1, thats a given.....but dammm I would think that at least with a 3ghz and 1gig of RAM would be like night and day.

The program itself, from what I understand would not benfit from dual processors, but I think someone once posted that PW does...i dunno.

Reply to
Arthur

I have heard that the processing for SolidWorks is quite linear just the nature of the type of processing so it doesn't benefit too much from dual processors only about 10% or something. I think Rendering in PhotoWorks would also be linear. Although you would think that one processor could do the bottom half of the model and the other do the top half. (Ignorance is bliss)

Corey

Reply to
Corey Scheich

Photoworks does take advantage, at least according to task manager. I have not benchmarked so I dont know the time difference 1 vs. 2 processors.

Reply to
Todd

I run into this too. What I usually do is use the "Render Area" button and just do a tiny portion of the model. Most of the time you can see the difference right away (whether it's better, worse or no change) plus it's very fast.

On rare occasions I will do a screen capture and paste them into Corel Draw or something so I have a little history of what settings affect the rendering. I can also compare them.

Mike Wilson

PS:

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;^)

Reply to
Mike J. Wilson

Corey,

PhotoWorks2 (as well as PW1 if you enabled the option) are both fully multi-threaded applications and take advantage of Dual Processors. The rendering process is one that can actually be split up between multiple processors very easily. If you watch PW2 as it is working it renders little square regions of the image until the image is complete. If you have a dual processor machine it will split out 1 of these square regions to each processor. This is commonly referred to as 'bucket rendering' - each little square being 1 bucket. The full version of MentalRay (as well as many other rendering engines) can even distribe these 'buckets' to other machines on your network - this is commonly referred to as a RenderFarm - but that's all beside the point as PW2 doesn't have this funcitonality.... yet. Basically, rendering should be nearly twice as fast on a Dual processor system as a single.

-brian

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Reply to
PW_Guru

Hey guys,

Not to sound like a pain or anything, but is there a reason why you're turning these values up so high? You should really only turn up the settings to higher values if there are problems with your current image. If you are getting some Anti-Aliasing artifacts then turn up the Anti-Aliasing... if you're not, then it's just wasting processor time to sit there and get nearly the same quality image as you got at the lower settings. Likewise for indirect Illumination - Unless you are getting heavy artifacts, there is really no need to turn up the slider. The sliders have 'high' ends incase you need them for your particular image - every scene and every model is different, so the 'best' setting for your model is not always going to be the same.

I like to kick back with a few beers and a movie everynow and then while rendering too, but we all gotta pay the bills, and if there's negligable difference when turning up the settings I'd advise against it... :)

-b

Reply to
PW_Guru

Not that I make every image maxed out by any means. I am in agreement with what you are saying. Just wanted to see if I was really missing anything by not cranking up the volume. The time to quality issue was my real concern.

Reply to
Arthur

Is it just me...

or does PW2 (and maybe PW1, not sure) render a LOT faster if you "render to file" as oppposed to the screen? I havent done any actual benchmarks on this but it sure feels that way. I am rendering to JPG at 1024X768 with the highest quality setting.....

Todd

Reply to
Todd

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