Reasonable graphics card for Carrara
homey_jay
Posts: 44
Hi,
I'd like to buy Carrara 8.5 but I'm currently using a Quadro NVS295. I tried the Carrara 8 before and found that my card would not provide any real time rendering in the Assemble section (I think thats what it was called!) and everytime I wanted to see what something looked like, I'd have to do a full render to see it.
Are there any reasonably cheap cards that provide good real time rendering (textures & lighting) performance in the Assemble section of the program? Im on a very limited budget so I know my options will be limited!
I'm sorry if I'm mixing up terminology here - it's been some time since I had the program!
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There are NO graphics cards which provide real time rendering in 3D software. ...It doesn't work that way
What provides "near" real time rendering is a software "Render Engine" which can work with your Graphics card's GPU and it's Video ram
the scene information is loaded into the Graphics card's RAM, and the graphics card's GPU, processes the information.
in most cases, the scene will render very quickly, but it's important to understand that the "rendered image" is still being refined in a process which recalculates and updates each pixel.
Don't expect to render a feature length animation in the same amount of time that it takes to watch it.
There is an Octane render Plug-In currently being tested, which should be released soon,.
Octane can use your graphics card to provide "almost" real time rendering.
Most 3D software still uses Open GL to provide the Preview, and uses Open GL plus your system RAM to render the image.
This isn't likely to change since the process isn't reliant on any specific hardware or OS.
You should be able to Pick up something like a GT610 with 2GB DDR3 quite cheaply
then you'll need to buy the Render engine "Octane"
plus the Plugin for Octane renderer for Carrara. .. as soon as it's available.
There's also Lux-Render, and the Carrara plug-in for that...
Lux isn't real time rendering,. but it's another Unbiased render engine,. like Octane Render
Carrara has an "Area render tool" in the assembly room , (looks like a small camera)
you can use this too to see what an area of your final render will look like.
There are also Open GL display options in the Interactive renderer settings which can help show the scene lighting etc.
Hope that makes sense, and explains some stuff.
You can find some nice bargains on Ebay, as long as you don't want the latest and greatest.
As to which is best, the more high end the better, not just for Carrara but for all your applications (Video editing, Image editing. etc)
I should add that in my opinion GPU rendering is a bit of a dead end for photo-realistic rendering, unless your happy to reduce your models to the status of a games model (reducing texture sizes to 1024x1024 and you may end up decimating your models for complex scenes). This is because, as 3Dage pointed out, the scene (geometry and textures) are copied to your Graphics Cards memory for rendering.
So, until 16-32 GB is standard you'll end up having to work round the limitation. As an example, in Blender I can render a un-altered nude Victoria figure no problem, but add a costume and attendant textures and there's not enough memory on a Nvidia GTX 580 with 1.5 GB of RAM.
Of course the Carrara developers could go for a CPU/GPU hybrid, where the time consuming light ray calculations are off loaded to the Graphics cards many cores, but we can only hope!
Eyesee (Jedi Tea Master - Can I render you a cup of tea Sir?)
Thanks guys
I don't do any animation or figures. All I do is rendering commercial products - bottles, tubs and containers for clients.
I have a two monitor setup so the card needs to have either 2 X DVi or 2 X Display Port.
What I need is to be able to get a reasonable real time preview of the object and lighting before using the render room in Carrara. I remember that I could do a quick area render but with my current setup, that used to also be very time consuming.
I have always used an inexpensive nVidia GS series card for low budget. I recently upgraded to a higher end card and noticed no difference whatsoever in Carrara.
Your Quadro should be fine, especially if you need it for your CAD software.
Here is a thread regarding the future release of Octane for Carrara, which will grant real-world, real-time rendering much more toward what it seems you're looking for. They discuss various graphics set ups in there as well.
As for what you have now, try messing with the interactive render settings to get as close as you can to something you like to see while you work. As you can tell by my example, I have fairly modest settings, as I don't need a lot of detail, but since my card can handle it, why not... right? For more intense scenes, I'll even switch to Gouraud mode instead of textured. Note how, in 8.5 Pro, we can crank our resolution all the way up to 16,384 x 16,384 resolution. this will bring up a warning.
Like 3dage says, Carrara doesn't behave that way. We work in low res and render the result. That's just the way it is. When the Octane plugin becomes available, you'll be able to keep an Octane view port open on one monitor and work in the other, and the render will automatically update as you work.
Here is a Video Demonstration of Octane in Carrara
I remembered people commenting on 3D Preview improvements, but I didn't see it until I upgraded my computer. It's all OpenGL based, so you won't get anything extra from Nvidia cards (but if you eventually want to integrate Octane Render you will want CUDA which is only Nvidia). Before I had whatever was part of the motherboard, but now I have ATI and the 3D Preview is impressive....
I've later seen reviews that go back and forth for this card, but I love it. It's fast and extremely quiet.
It's an XFX R7 260X Double D (Double Dispersion), which takes up two slots with two ginormous fans.
nVidia supports OpenGL, it's OpenCL that we get with ATI, I believe, all of the latest of each are supported in this card.
Since Carrara uses OpenGL, and that's all it ever uses the video card for, I always looked for good OpenGL support when buying a video card. So my cheap solution was a GeForce GS 570 Fermi, which was very cheap, but did the job admirably. But I don't think it supports OpenCL.
As I was installing the card, I was very pleased to see how well the card appears to be made, with the inclusion of giant copper tubing and a very solid build. When I built my computer, I tried very hard to keep standards up as I was forced to keep the cost down. The motherboard is Military Class, the PSU has gold rating and high standards, good fans, great case, etc., so this card fit in really nicely with my beast.
Darten,
Noticed on the Octane Demo video, that there's no textures and they're using a Nvidia Titan Graphics Card.
There's also no mention of having to change shaders to those used by Octane, unless the plugin's got the conversion covered. The one for blend doesn't.
Would be more impressed if they'd had two or three fully clothed DAZ characters and a more middle of the road graphics card, rather than the fastest one available.
Ignore this post - got further into video ... Very impressive... Nice to be proved wrong.
Looks like Rosie's going to have a very impressive Dragon chasing her soon!
Eyesee (Jedi Tea Master - Cup of Tetley's this time I think! :roll:)
The video I linked to applies textures to the Millennium Dragon 2, and show a little about conversion. At the end, mentions that there's still a lot of work to be done. But that was released a while ago. I never did watch the 20 minute demo in the first post.
But I agree... would be nice to see such middle of the road tests with a scene that could be a bit more of a strain.
Oh... by the way, it's Dartan, not Darten - Pronounced: dar TAN beck
a name I got from my nephews when they were just little squirts ;)
Apologies. :red:, Me and my dyslexic fingers again.
Your nephews aren't going to start emailing me are they? Thought Amy Fisher had for a while back there!
My nephews are cool... I was thinking that Carrie would be pounding on you for the Amy Fisher comment, though! LOL
That's a thought I DON'T find unappealing. It's the avatar you know. :)
Perhaps you should go to her then. Tell her that you accidentally called her Amy Fisher in a post, and that it is your opinion that she should stomp you for it ;)
Oh... but you must wear the helmet when you do! :)
Okay...the helmet is awesome. Quick off topic question: Do you like Star Wars? (Just trying to find out if I'm the only SW fan here)
EDIT:
My daughter hates SW, but loves Clone Wars so much she bought all five seasons! Go Figure!
HI homey_jay :)
I think you're slightly missing the point here,.
Buying a "render engine" such as Octane, Plus a Plug-in for Carrara (when available) ...Plus a Graphics Card which the software can use to provide "near" real time rendering,. ....and then use Carrara's built in Render engine" to do the final render. !!
Normally You would use the "real time" rendering system,. to create the final image.
There's also the fact that using a different render engine, also demands that you use a slightly different shader system (specific to that render engine),. whether that's an Automatic conversion (approximation) of your Carrara shaders, or new shaders you've created for the new rendering system.
So, switching between rendering engines, in your work-flow, isn't generally a good idea, since each rendering engine handles lighting and shaders differently.
for example, Carrara has built in lights, whereas Octane has NO lights, but can use a daylight system, or environment maps (HDRI) or it can use Mesh objects with shaders,.. to emit light. (almost like Carrara's "anything glows" feature. .. but much better :)
If you had a complex multi light scene, built in carrara, then simply switching to Octane to render this scene, may not produce the same results.
You should look at the Demo's and example video clips of the different rendering systems available, to get a better idea of how they work, and how you can work with them,. this should also give you an idea of the costs involved.
Hope that makes sense :)
Love Star Wars,
Like you, I think it was great family entertainment and never set out to be a great work of literature (or what ever the cinematic equivalent is), just stonking good princesses and knights set in space FUN.
I do think that it was a giant leap forward for the science fiction genre though. And set up the road for the likes of "Blade Runner" and "Aliens" series (Do wish someone would give Riddley Scott a bigger lighting budget!)
EDIT: By the way, took on board SOMEONE'S recommendation and I'm watching Clone Wars at the moment - Even less free time for 3Ding sheesh.
Eyesee (Jedi Tea Master - Can an atom think, have a directed will [He thought with the atoms between his ears])
Yes. I agree with 3dage. While Octane has the ability to render using the Graphics card, right before your eyes, it is a different render engine that requires a whole new way of thinking - a whole new way of setting up your shaders.
I don't use other render engines for just that reason. I really enjoy Carrara's render engine and all of the amazing settings it has that allow us to get what we want. They really did a good job of giving us a lot of access to many features, and it's a great engine!
Beyond the engine, though, but still related: I love the Carrara texture room and I love the Carrara lighting system. Those three things (Engine, shaders, lighting) continue to keep me from using other opportunities.
Why do you need such a highly detailed preview in the workspace anyways? This is a screen shot of my OpenGL interactive render (the way this scene looks without rendering it using the render engine, using the above, low settings in the Interactive Render settings.
eyesee,
You'll love it! More to come... and then there's Rebels coming this fall! :ahhh:
Thanks to all!
Please correct me if I'm wrong:
What you're saying is that in the viewport / assemble room, Carrara uses OpenGL exclusively to manipulate models and shaders etc.
Does this mean that I should be looking for a video card that has a really fast Open GL performance or does Open GL performance come from the PC's CPU - (in my case a Xeon W3520 @2.67GHz)
There are loads of video cards but they all seem to concentrate on games performance and as far as I can see (and what's been said), very little of that is important!
I understand that the final render is important but in my specific case, it's really handy to just look at the effect of lighting on my simple models (usually tubs, pillpots, boxes etc with labels and textures) before the final render.
Would this type of video card be overkill for what I need?
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-OC-DisplayPort-PCI-Express-R7950-3GD5/dp/B00CRNRSLW
Think different...
A few months ago I went through an epic rendering experience of TaniaGomez and in the time I was tweaking with free version of Thea Studio. I lost many hours and actualy days rendering a very demanding picture in Carrara 8.1.1 only finding them crashed in the mornig. So I tested the scene in Thea with good results and eventually bought it for promotional price at that time and made my work. I've found there a viewport rendering solution responding on every change in shader, lights and rendering properties. Setting lighting and shadows patterns when rotating HDRI dome with instant rendering result visible on monitor was a shock to me. Additionaly more than 20 rendering presets including unbiased, biased and even the one using both CPU and GPU cores together gave me a lot of opportunities to test my ideas with different render engines using real camera settings. I tested my projects and found that pictures rendered in Carrara in hours where rendered in minutes in Thea. Of course it is not fair to compare 32 bit Carrara rendering capabilities with 64 bit Thea rendering times. I cannot accept this kind of comparison. Nevertheless I could do the job without investigation what is wrong with my scene in Carrara.
Now I get back to Carrara and make my modelling and initial scene setup, leaving shading, lighting and rendering to Thea with the help of obj export format. So I have developed my own pipeline now.
I like Carrara very much. It full-fills all my modelling needs. Helps a lot with sketching my ideas. I know that it renders much faster in 8.5 64 bit version but I did not tested it yet. I wait for the next 9th version to upgrade it to 64 bit.
So when you really need to see what is going on in your scene with photographic detailing go for other software. But try to think it over again because 3DAGE and Dartenbeck are right: there is no need to have a photo view of your work all the time while modelling or scene set-up. I worked for a long time with Carrra and haven't found it is always necessary.
There is no software equivalent to machine computing capabilities though. If you want more from your software give it more both cores and RAM to work with.
Greetings
Marek
Most graphics solutions, even those that come built-in to some motherboards, support OpenGL. So like I've said earlier, you might not notice a change in Carrara's working environment after buying that card.
One of our members bought a GTX 600 series and said that the performance of his view port was noticeably better than before. Perhaps I didn't notice a change because the card I replaced, while being a cheaper GeForce GT 500 series card, was still a good card for OpenGL stuff. I got that card for less than $80 at Newegg. This one was around $150 and there was no improvement. But I'm sure it's a lot better for gaming and things like that... just not Carrara.
EDIT:
...and, Yes... if you can actually see specs on how well a card handles and runs OpenGL, and know that one is better than the other, then that will be what will improve Carrara's view. But not so much in how detailed it is, but more about how smoothly your navigation is.
I saw a big difference before/after. Just being able to load larger Preview textures made probably the most difference.
The "lighting" under Carrara's preview is not perfect. It really doesn't show you how it will look, and bump is crazy looking and Spec is so-so... I mean compared to my own final render. It helps, but it is not anything like seeing the actual final render.
Octane's huge speed boost is about one-specific area: near realtime IBL environment lighting. As many people have pointed out, a scene at night, or indoors that does not use a sky light doesn't have the amazing GPU speed boost. Scenes with "fake GI" in Carrara can render very fast (2 minutes vs 2hrs for global illumination - same scene in one of my side-by-side comparisons). YMMV
It's difficult to take any online examples and say "this is a universal truth" because you typically do not know what other things the artist has done to optimize or cripple their scene. I'm not poo-pooing Octane or any other advance in rendering, but knowing how to set up regular lights is still going to be necessary whether you are using a game engine or raytracer or GPU-enhanced gizmo from the future. "Photorealism" is all about the lighting. Having a program that does that work for you (when it can) is amazing, but unfortunately no program will do EVERYTHING for you.... Dimension Theory has a tutorial on Youtube that talks about converting those gorgeous high-pixel HDRI to low-res blurry hdri - the lighting results look BETTER and rendertime is a fraction what it was before.... A number of game engines are also touting this "amazing" new fast IBL, but once you think about how it is being done (probably converting the hdr to low res and blurry) it doesn't feel like such a mystery..., kinda makes me question the validity of spending $2000 on a GPU "just" to get faster GI.
While I have been putting up all the tutorials on Cafe, I have been struck by some of what I felt to be the "wrong answers" stated in some of the tutorials.... But I'm not trying to be judgmental, it's just a reminder that you can be a guru at modeling but lousy at lighting..., or you can load up a scene with enormous texture maps that are going to negate any efficient lighting tricks you might use.... There's always a learning curve, and experience is worth more than bitcoins...
And this ^ statement, is IMHO the real reason individuals generally cannot produce work at the level of Pixar or Dreamworks... It's not the renderfarms (yes obviously that helps) or the amazing software, it's being able to hire specialized experts for each aspect of the production. With ALL scene elements optimized the workflow becomes night and day....
...and there's a classic example. Perhaps the reason that "I" didn't notice a difference is because I'm still using the same settings as I did before... or perhaps even both cards are fairly equal at rendering OpenGL on my system. Hard to say.
I mainly wanted you to know that spending an awful lot of money on a graphics card might not get you anything better. I saw that you are using a Quadro. Back when I started building computers, they didn't have low value Quadro cards. Just high and higher and highest - starting at about a grand or more. I didn't realize how much that has changed now - so... I apologize if I sounded misleading.
When I used to play games on my computer, they weren't the really high-end graphics game of their day. But upgrading my graphics card was huge. Absolutely huge. Now the thing that takes the greatest advantage of GPU on my PC is Dogwaffle Howler's GPU optimized raytracer: Puppy Ray. Since I didn't notice a huge difference in that either, perhaps my GT 570 Fermi was nearly as good as this one in regards to this stuff.
If I were shopping for a new card right now, I try to look at where I'm going - not just Carrara, but with everything. Carrara is the main thing used on my machine. I have this laptop and another for other things, like surfing the web. I bought this laptop for Carrara mainly because it was dual core (back then quad was way out of my financial reach) and that it came set up with a dedicated GT 240 GeForce card, which would crank on my OpenGL.
When you're trying for a better preview quality in Carrara, it's a tough call.
Yeah..., I think... it's not really about overthinking it, LOL. Get what you can afford, and try to remember there are a lot of ways to get better results than *just* throwing money at the issue....
When I said before that the Preview lighting is meh... I realized (as I am trying to render some last minute animations for my show tonight) that yeah, actually, I was swinging the lights around in the preview in realtime and I could tell where the shadows were going to fall in order to make the (women doing naughty dances) body contours stand out and etc. "Sculpting with Shadows" - isn't that your tutorial Dart? Haha. I just wanted to admit that yeah, it was working as intended, and definitely sped up my workflow.... The figures and shaders are allready set up, so it's not about that fine detail work, it's about blocking the camera and (quickly) pivoting the light rig into place.... On my old computer I would have had to spot render, move, spot render, move.... Then get lost in thinking about it, deciding I need some real renders to compare, etc etc.... Just being unsure..., it can blow your confidence and concentration.... Part of it is that I need the renders done for tonight, but a BIG part is that I can tell how much shadow is (sorry for the mental picture) making her bewbs look more sexy.... Yeah, that's a timesaver.
I would say that any reasonably high end gaming card is more than enough for running Carrara - or most anything else. My gtx 580 runs Maya just fine.
More important by far is learning how to work within Carrara - run the Remove commands, hide geometry you aren't using, group and jump in, do sub-assemblies in a separate scene then import into the final, and don't try to run all day without restarting the application.
And that last one is something you just need to get into the habit of. Maya gets flakey after a few hours, and costs 10 times what Carrara does - just save, quit, and restart from time to time.
I have found converting geometry to primitives in a seperate copy of the file speeds up renders a lot. small amount of work, but im talking about stills here not animations tho geometry that doesnt move in a animation benefits in render time if its converted.
Y'know, I think we're going to need some screen shots to get a better idea of how you use the scene lights preview to paint Bewbs™*- I mean paint with shadows to define Bewbs™*.
*Bewbs™ is a registered trademark of Wetcircuit.com. All rights reserved.
HI :)
I'm not sure if i'm over-thinking this problem, or under-thinking,. or just thinking about bewbs again..
A quick look at the Spec's for the Quadro NVS 295, shows that it supports Open GL 3, and Direct X 10
although it's marketed as being suitable for "Business" applications, it should also be capable of providing a reasonable preview of a scene in carrara.
maybe more information about what the user is seeing / experiencing would be helpful.
I'm also not sure that Radeon is a good choice, depending on what (third party) render engine you plan to use, whether that''s Lux, Octane Thea etc... Most of them seem to support Open GL and Nvidia cards,. rather than Open-CL with Radeon,. .. but I may be wrong there.
I'm currently using an Nvidia GT 610 with 2GB which I picked up for £40 (while it's performance isn't exactly ground breaking,.. it does the job)
I'm also using Octane renderer (standalone), and I'll get the Carrara / Octane plug-in when it's available.
Well, I'm actually waiting for Carrara support to tell me which is the cheapest way to buy Carrara 8.5. I need to know if it's cheaper if I join the Premium Club (or whatever it's called!) and then buy it but no one's replied yet!
As soon as they do (or I get an answer from anyone), I'll buy it and then I can report back with any issues with 8.5.
I used to have C8 last year - I purchased it and then had hell with the thing not working properly. I asked them for help and they never even bothered to answer, so after many days of struggling, I had them refund the transaction and deleted the software.
I do remember that when I used to shift the camera position in C8, textures and and shading would take ages to refresh. Rendering would be fine but endless tweaking of the camera position with 10 seconds to preview got old REALLY fast!
I love my Carrara 5 but it's getting very, very old now and TrueSpace (what I'm using now) is horrendous.
Hopefully, this time, they'll actually bother to reply. I don't really want to rely on the forums for help all the time, although I've found you guys super helpful!
When upgrading my system I bought GTX 660 OC card with only 2GB memory. It made much faster response to click in Carrara on heavy poly and complex materials scenes. Before the buy I had an effect of click response delay when rotating, panning or dollying scene. It was very frustrating. Now it is OK.
I've tried it in free Octane render with simply exterior scene and it rendered fast.
In Thea Studio and 3D-Coat it works excellent and using 3DExtention mouse together with graphic tablet seems to be the best solution I could ever dream of.
3d graphic is a really demanding field of art. I learned it for a year and a half and I have found that sitting in front of a monitor watching tutorials for many days, reading every issue of 3DArtist every month completely, reading few books on modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering haven't been enought to feel myself easy on every subject of this art. I work in C8.1.1 for 18 months and it is OK. I've printed the manual and every time I'm stucked I read it once again. There is no easy way. Just work. Hope you will be back to Carrara new versions because IMHO it is the most friendly 3D app I ever found. Though it isn't perfect and I had to learn other apps too and every time I am back in Carrara I think I understand it a bit better.
Enjoy your art making whatever the app you are using.
Marek
Hi homey_jay,
Just looked in the shop and the current club prices for Carrara 8.5 are:
Standard Edition - $149.95
Pro Edition same as none club price - $285.
Thanks!
For some reason, I thought that the Platinum Club membership allowed someone to have an extra discount when buying Carrara. Guess that's not the case!