CineRender Alternatives

[toman311]

Hey everyone,

To do renders at my office, we currently use CineRender in ArchiCAD. I'm quite happy with the quality of the renders, but to do the renders, we have to do them in ArchiCAD. The problem with this is that the renders lock up the computer so that nobody else can work on it. This process time length varies, but the recent render we did took almost 3 hours. No one at the office can sit around for 3 hours (for obvious reasons), so we work around this by starting the render before one of us leaves and when we come back in the morning, the render is done. This process is okay, but we would like to do renders more liberally so we don't have to push doing photoshop adjustments all the way to the next day. Plus, that's if the render turned out okay.

So, I have been exploring alternatives. I figured we could export to Sketchup and use one of Sketchup's rendering software. I haven't gotten it to work with Kerkythea because of an error message.
We don't want to spend a lot of money on the render engine, yet we obviously want good renders too. We also don't want to spend money on a new ArchiCAD license, which would be dedicated to rendering only. That doesn't make sense either.

So, my question is...
Does anyone have any other ideas for work arounds from having to run rendering through ArchiCAD? That way someone can work and render on the same computer. Or, does anyone have any suggestions for good quality, yet reasonably priced Sketchup rendering engines?

[mikas]

It could be Cinema 4D. You can purchase it a lot cheaper than a full ArchiCAD. There are differently priced versions available for your needs. The two top end products do offer team-rendering; for 3 rendering nodes, or for unlimited number of rendering nodes. That last one means you could use all of your office's machines to render one scene.

I have used C4D studio for this a few times. I have gotten something like 5 times speedups with renders with 5 rendering nodes.

With this approach there comes some extra work, like setting up the team network, and saving the job for cinema 4D from ArchiCAD, opening the job in Cinema 4D and getting it running appropriately. It's quite easy overall, but there are a few considerations to bear in mind. Team render does not support everything there is to it, like some irradiance cache combos.

But yes, I think it could be a viable option to consider. I think there is a one month trial available still for Cinema 4D.

And cinema 4D does have that render queue, which might come handy sometimes. And animations are a lot more configurable than the ones achievable in ArchiCAD. Though I have only tested and scratched the surface with them, so please test it first by yourself.

C4D has a setting to limit the number of cores used, so you can adjust the workload, if you want to use your computer to other work also at the same time when you are rendering.

The rendering engine is the same as in ArchiCAD, very good. Only versions of the engine vary a little from time to time between AC and C4D, ArchiCAD being a little late with them. I don't think it's a big problem. C4D supports the old versions all the time.

[Barry Kelly]

Are you sure you can't continue working?
I don't do a lot of renders but it is only the initial phase that stops you from working.
Once the actual render is under-way you should be fine.

From the reference guide ...
Is opening a second copy of Archicad an option?

Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

It's probably less the fact that you can't continue using the computer after the render has started, rather the fact that the rendering is consuming the majority of the computers resources and hence continual work becomes highly inefficient. The OP's signature doesn't indicate a vast amount of resources...

Is there a setting somewhere that sets the amount of resources released to CineRender?


Ling.

[mikas]

Yes I agree, I can use my Mac or PC when ArchiCAD is rendering in the background. I can surf, I can email, write text and what not. But I can't continue any serious AC based work involving 3D modeling, and that means almost all of my work. I can do some 2D details if there is any meaningful 2D to do at the moment of that said rendering.

Unfortunately there are no means to control the CPU resources given to cinerender. It would be a welcome feature, I think.

I have solved this in a couple of different ways already:
- with standalone Cinema 4D + limitless teamrender with several cheap but powerful enough machines
- with floating AC network licenses to use for renderings when they are not in use by another worker

I chose Cinema 4D mostly because of the same rendering engine as in ArchiCAD. It's good enough for me/us, and the renders have the same look and feel that they come out from ArchiCAD.

The other reason in favor of Cinema 4D was it's other features it's got. Animations and MoGraph and Expresso. I have to admit that I haven't used those much, though. I'd like to, but not enough time to play and learn with them.

I think the most basic version of C4D costs something around 1000 currency units. The amount varies a little depending if it's $,€ or £, and the VAT differs a lot too. You get one rendering engine, which is the program itself.

The Broadcast and Visualize cost something like 1700 and 2300. They offer 3 simultaneous rendering nodes both of them.

The Studio costs around 3000 western units, and it gives you a limitless number of rendering nodes.

I just bought a cheap used (and changed my signature) Z800 dual processor unit to serve as a render node as it’s main job. It can be used for whatever else too of course. Cinebench gives me 1558 points. My Z400 single proc gives me ~800, like my two Mac Pros do. I can use them all at the same time now if there is a job requiring lot of horsepower. That gives me great savings of time.

I would conclude, that you might do well with only one node, aka C4D Prime, and a powerful machine to crunch the numbers, or maybe with Broadcast or Visualize with 3 nodes to even speed things some more.

I haven't tried SketchUp + VRay combo. I am sure it would give you a good value too.
SketchUp 700 + Vray 500 = 1200 payment units, if I remember the numbers approximately right.

Nowadays there are a limitless number of rendering engines, and there are really good ones. I believe there might be a couple of better ones than what cinerender is at the moment. I prefer cinerender because it’s kind of free for me with ArchiCAD. And it gives good results, though it gives it with that more tedious way, way of CPU processing, not GPU.

Cinema 4D has got this new Pro Render feature. I tried that too shortly, but it’s not mature yet for production. Maybe this year, or maybe next year. It’s (Pro Render) really good for almost instant previews though. In a second or two you know what’s it gonna be like, and go to your further adjustments.

Please see attached my quick tests today with a simple AC-RH-GH practice model. I commented with white text my used render nodes with each run. Render time is reported by cinema itself.

There will come some serious benefits with speed using team render when all CPU resources are used as efficiently as possible by the team render software.

You will need a good wired network though (1Gbps preferrably). I used a wired 100Mbps network for this test. Wi-Fi is going to be troublesome according to my tests at least.

Ok, sorry for the long post. You have a lot of choice nowadays, as we all do, and that's great.

edit. added a zoom up from the results and used machines

[toman311]

The problem is that the render takes a while to prepare. According to what Barry Kelly referenced, that's the time where a person cannot continue using ArchiCAD.

The problem when I try to render, I can’t really do anything. My whole computer slows down by a lot.

What Lingwisyer said pretty much describes my problem it seems.

Maybe the option is to upgrade computer parts to be able to render better with what ArchiCAD comes stock with first.

Oh, and thanks for the replies! Sorry it took me so long to response. From some reason I didn't get any e-mail alerts telling me someone replied to my topic.

[toman311]

Does anybody have any suggestions on what needs to be upgrading?

I'll look into it myself, but it would be nice to hear some other thoughts on the matter.

[Anonymous]

What hardware and OS are you running ARCHICAD on? Processor, RAM, video card and storage all significantly affect rendering performance.
Scott

[Barry Kelly]

sboydturner wrote:
What hardware and OS are you running ARCHICAD on? Processor, RAM, video card and storage all significantly affect rendering performance.
Scott

It is all in toman311's signature I assume.
I am not a tech guru but it all looks a little old.
To me the 8GB of RAM would be the first thing to upgrade.

Barry

[Erwin Edel]

8GB is very low, ArchiCAD will run out of RAM quickly when rendering and I think it will start writing to drive and this will indeed slow things to a crawl. I'd recommend 16 GB to be productive, it is what I have at the moment and works fine. If you are investing for the future, maybe go up a bit.

Also take a look at your rendering settings, the out-of-the-box preset scenes are quickly very taxing, especially if you are just rendering for a quick presentation to client and not for the glossy advertorial in some shiny magazine.

Also look at the size of the render. I allways go for a 195x135 mm image at 300 dpi. This still prints fine fullsized on A4.

I've written on several topics some quick tips and tweaks starting from the 'fast physical exterior' render scene. The i5 processor will have impact too. My aging Xeon processors still seem to out perform more modern i5/i7 processors when it comes to quick renders.