CGI Geeks Here?

[Taw Makto]

I was wondering if / how many other CGI hobbyists we might have here. I work with Rhino3D all the time, and I've done a few rather simple (and very boring) animations in Electric Image. I've got Terragen 2 for when I have time to learn it, and I've had brief flings with a number of other CGI applications. I mainly use all of this to support my mad X-Plane flight simulation addiction, but I also enjoy creating spacecraft, and would ultimately like to use Terragen to create environments similar to Pandora. I had some paying work that recently concluded, and now I'm finally getting back to my little private jet design that will eventually, hopefully, be flown in a Pandora-like environment created in X-Plane. All very possible and do-able....and shareable too if anyone else is also an X-Plane flight sim geek.

[Sovereign]

Not wanting to shill myself, but this is the sort of stuff I'm working on when I have my desktop set up (I came home from college and had to talk my parents into letting me put it somewhere other than the basement). There have been significant changes to the ship since those renders--I'll try to post some.

I use Rhino (less now since I've figured out some basic 3ds max) and 3ds max 2011 x64. Rhino's 32-bitness ticks me off since it routinely runs out of memory with this ship (which is what forced me to learn 3ds max).

[Taw Makto]

Sovereign, that ship should be no problem for Rhino - you've got all planar surfaces. Sounds to me like you either need more system memory or your virtual drive might benefit from a tweak. I can offer suggestions there if you'd like.

And likewise not to shill my own work...

This is about an 82 mb file... 245 surfaces, 174 polysurfaces...how do those stats compare to your SSD?

[Sovereign]

There are no surfaces in my model. Everything is a polysurface. The gun-batteries are block instances (if the guns are separate items they take up over 1.5GB of hard drive space and thus take forever to load, I tested this because the max importer which reads Rhino files only imports the original instance of a block). All objects are watertight or as close to that as possible for the smoothest 3ds max import.

639 Block Instances
605 Polysurfaces
Filesize: 150MB
Typical Working RAM Usage: 1.5-2GB.

Rhino itself just gets slow as f--- when I try to do work. Out of memory occurs on render (not Rhino Render, but V-Ray).

<geek mode>
Intel Q6600 @ 3.2GHz
8GB RAM
300GB VR
NVIDIA 9800GX2 (512MB, 128sp)
2x750GB WD Caviar Blue 7.2k
2TB WD GreenPower 5.4k (no pagefile here)
Windows 7 x64
</geek mode>

[Taw Makto]

Gawd. I guess you've got a lot more going on than I realized, and plenty of system and smarts to support it! Do you really think a 64bit port of Rhino would improve the performance that much? I have some idea of the pain you're going through. I've got a model of the nuGalactica that bogs Rhino down most effectively. When I get that deep, I usually find getting the file excruciatingly organized in layers helps and speeds the workflow up nicely. Turning off layers I'm not using makes Rhino very nimble. Whenever the model is this intense, I'm aiming at Electric Image for rendering anyway - well outside of Rhino. I've got a project path from Rhino to 3DS to AC3D/UltimateUnwrap and into EI that I'm working on for texture support.

Sounds like you're using V-Ray as a plugin to Rhino, in which case you're extending the program code, but may not have the same memory management advantages as the core program itself. Is there any way to use V-Ray externally, I wonder.

<geek mode> NICE SYSTEM!! </geek mode>

I'm still running XP 32 bit. It's enough for my needs, especially since my paying work is a bit platform constrained. I usually save the highest horsepower system for running X-Plane too. I wonder what my Wonderbox would do for Rhino!? Such fun, PC's.

Anyway, I'm glad there's at least one other CG nut on the boards here. Hope there's more!

[Sovereign]

Rhino 5 will be x64 and "multi-threaded," though I'm not sure to what degree. The renderer in Rhino is already multithreaded but what CAD apps really need are multithreaded user interfaces. I know this because I've observed the usage of one core spiking when rotating, panning or manipulating objects (in either Rhino or max). Max x64 can handle over 20 million polygons on my system. I haven't modeled anything higher than that, and the 20 million was actually a result of very poorly optimized modeling on my part with this huge ship. Imagine each of those gun batteries being anywhere from 30k to 50k polygons since I forgot to run ProOptimizer. If God does CAD, He uses ProOptimizer, is what I always tell my friends, just because that tool is so awesome for cutting polycounts without affecting the look of the model.

Heck, 3ds max's default renderer is not multithreaded! V-Ray is, and Quicksilver is godly (GPU computing) but the latter doesn't support the lights I want for my engines.

This Electric Image--would you say it's fair to call it a competitor to 3ds max in terms of functionality?

[Taw Makto]

I would liken Electric Image to Lightwave, only not as popular.

http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/

Pricing is in the sub grand to grand level, while as you know 3DS Max is more in the Maya category...several thousands of dollars. I've tried Lightwave, but I like EI's lights and it's project manager. Once you get the hang of it, it's keyframe manipulation tools are excellent. Unfortunately I'm working on a PC, and it just seems like any time somebody ports something developed on a Mac to Bill Gate's operating systems, weirdness ensues. EI is a bit odd. But I own it legit, and don't feel like starting over.

Interesting to hear that R5 will be 64 bit capable. I guess Windows 7 is closer in my future than I realize, along with another box on the network. That would make six. But can you say...."render farm?"

ProOptimiser sounds neat. I can think of many uses for it, but unfortunately can't afford to invest in 3DS Max to get it.

[Apollo]

I'm a geek with drawing, but not CGI. Maybe CGI wallpapers, there the best. I do want to get in this field one day, somehow make my art alive to a certain extent. In that fact I'm an addict

[Taw Makto]

Apollo, you really hit the nail on the head there...when your art moves, it becomes alive. Then it's 10 times more powerful. I still get jazzed every time I import a 3D model into X-Plane and see it fly for the first time. While that's not really CGI like the movies, it is darn close these days!