Computer specs for rendered animation

[dgarcia]

Hello all

We have recently made a 5 minutes animation in WF4. We could not render the model because the computer was not good enough. We have liked the results and pland to do more animations in the future, maybe with Creo/Illustration (which we don't own yet).

We currently use S20 Lenovo Thinkstations, with 8 GB RAM, Windows 7 and NVDIA 2000

What are the computer specifications we should get? What is most important? RAM, Graphics card?

Best regards

Daniel García

[MartinHanak]

Daniel,

try to ask PTC Support, if rendering is multithreaded operation and is able to use all processor cores.

Martin Hanak

[Robert2]

also ask if it supports CUDA/ OpenCL, but i doubt it.

in that case, i don't think graphics is important at all.

[TomD.inPDX]

Typically processor speed is critical but a lot of things happen in the GPU with regard to rendering. I suggest contacting your VAR to get a consultation with a PTC developer that knows about rendering and which graphics card is being optomized for this operation. ATI and NVIDIA are on top of the list, of course, but they have specific product lines (chip sets) that maximize OpenGL. I've seen some implementations that utilized diual graphic cards that work independently. Not sure if PTC has done any work in this direction.

[Wheelsofsteel]

My experience with rendering in Pro e / creo has been poor.

One tip, when you are rendering , pull up your systems performance monitoring app and keep an eye on memory usage, it creeps up the longer the clip until it crashes around 95%.

Switch to 64 bit, add more memory, try to keep the clips short is what I found works best in Pro e/ Creo.

I find the rendering capacities in Pro e / creo is lacking behind industry standards.

We should have the option to send it to a rendering machine on a network to number crunch it.

I am currently using Daz3d to do mine. far more options, far better animation control, send to network capacities to render.

I export the componets from Pro e/ Creo as wavefront (obj) , import into hexagon, reassambly the model and than re export as wavefront (obj ) (pro e/Creo wavefront obj isn't right for daz3d for some reason ) .

I then import into Daz3d, far better animation control then in creo, support for external rendeing engines (luxrender, reality 2 ) so the job can be sent to a dedicated rendering PC or render farm to churn out.

I am in the middle of doing one now, I am planning to post a how too do it on here when I am done.

[gkoch]

Hello Daniel,

did one or more of the responses help you?

From my limited knowledge about rendering I can only contribute:

• Rendering is one of the few Creo areas known for multi-cores providing a significant performance improvement
• There are two render machines, the free, old Photorender and the PhotoLux, which needs an extra license (at extra costs). The way they work is probably different.
• At least for Photorender the key resource is the CPU. I am not aware of GPUs being employed for doing grinding works.

Gunter

[dgarcia]

Hello fello users

I forgot to mention we are in Windows 7 64 bits already.

I opened a case with PTC customer support. They tell me the most important is the graphics card. They tell me multicore is also good but not that important, so no multithreading here.

Thanks for all the suggestions and information. We will buy a new computer with a better graphics card and plenty of RAM and see.

Best regards

Daniel García

[gkoch · Accepted solution]

Hello Daniel,

this sounded strange to me and so I asked PM / R&D to get first hand information on the subject.

The answer is what I expected:

Photolux and Photorender are both using software implementation of photorealistic rendering and thereby will perform better on machine with more CPU cores. Their performance should be not effected by GPU.

When we talk about the regular graphics performance when showing the model (especially with realistic effects like transparency or mirror floor), then Creo has in fact mastered to speed up performance up to factor 30 by making intensive use of the GPU. However, rendering as in Photorender is done with higher accuracy and therefore requires the CPU. It also scales well with multiple CPUs.

So have fun with a better graphics board, but NOT with the expectation to speed up photorendering.

I'll take care we have this answer available in the knowledge database as well.

Gunter

[dgarcia]

Hello Gunter

Thanks indeed for effort to clarify this.

I'll make sure the new computer has a multicore CPU's (with a good graphics card, of course).

Best regards

Daniel

[TomD.inPDX]

Don't forget the fast core as well. Since you are using one core, the faster the better.