"you may find it helpful to register in the Redshift3D.com
forums, afaik you´ll need to have
at least one registered license to get access to the
"Registered users only" forum area."
Just to clear this up. I'm pretty sure you don't need to
have a license to access the Registered Users section of the
Redshift forums.
DAN
On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Rob Chapman
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
A lot of good and informed points by all, just wanted to
add, this guy here, Sven, at
http://www.render4you.de/renderfarm.html recently became
the first official Redshift GPU render farm and have used
him already on a few jobs with very tight deadlines.
Essentially he has a rack of 7x Tesla K40st - so 1 node
is the equivalent of a 6x single 980gtx which I find is
pretty cost effective solution of adding a decent online
GPU render node, that works with hardly any setup if you
have a redshift scene ready to go
best
Rob
On 5 August 2015 at 11:56, Tim Leydecker
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Morten,
you may find it helpful to register in the
Redshift3D.com forums, afaik you´ll need to have
at least one registered license to get access to the
"Registered users only" forum area.
There´s a few threads there about Hardware, multiple
GPU systems and some user cases
of testing single gpu vs. multi gpu rendering plus
some Developer info about roadmaps and such.
Personally, I´m a big fan of Redshift 3D.
Still, here´s a few things to consider you may find
useful:
- Compared to Arnold, there is no HtoA or C4DtoA
equivalent, e.g. no direct C4D or Houdini support
- Compared to Arnold, rendering Yeti is not yet
supported in Redshift3D - it´s looked at, no ETA.
- Maya Fluids, Volumerendering, FumeFX e.g.
Fire&Smoke&Dust&such isn´t in Redshift3D sofar
- Multitasking, compared to CPU based multitasking
and task switching (e.g. switching between
rendering in Maya, Softimage while simultaneously
comping in Nuke and painting Textures in Photoshop
or Mari) may pose GPU specific limitations with
multiple applications fighting for a very limited GPU
VRAM.
Redshift3D can utilize system RAM for VRAM but there
can be headache when other, "dumber" apps go ahead
and just block VRAM for their caching. It´s well
worth running a good few hard tests in typical
workflow scenarios.
Maya, Substance Painter/Designer, Nuke, Photoshop,
they all offer one type or another of GPU caching or GPU
acceleration option. My personal feeling is, such
stuff never gets tested in real-world,
multiple-applications-running scenarios.
At a glance, it would sound easy enough to have
separate, dedicated GPUs run headless for rendering
and reserving one GPU
for viewport display and other apps but to be honest,
all this stuff is so new, even thought it´s great,
it´s still pushing grown
legacy workflows and boundaries and in doing so, it
may sometimes hurt.
My very personal suggestion is:
- a starter kit is just one GPU, optimally a Titan X
with 12GB VRAM.
- step 2, adding a second GPU, running headless,
reserved for rendering
- step 3, adding a third GPU, comparing speed to step 2
- step 4, price/performance balancing, comparing a
1-2-3 GPU GTX970 render rig with the above
Could be you find out you like to run 1 Titan X for
viewport display and multi-apps, and 2 GTX970 for a
render job.
Another thing.
Multi-socket CPU boards and PCIe slots. It seems
easier to get solid single socket CPU boards with
lot´s of PCIe slots.
Again, from my personal experience running a current
generation dual socket Xeon rig, it is annoying how
many CPU
cycles I see wasted away in idle in most of my daily
chores, except for pure rendering with Arnold or the
likes, I find
myself mostly having one CPU and even most of the
other CPU´s cores just not used properly by software.
I think a good sweetspot would have been to just go
for one fast, solid 6-core(budget) or 8core (current)
CPU, unless of course for a dedicated render slave...
Cheers,
tim
Am 05.08.2015 um 12:05 schrieb Morten Bartholdy:
I know several of you are using Redshift extensively
or only now. We are looking in to expanding our
permanent render license pool and are considering
the pros and cons of Arnold, Vray and Redshift. I
believe Redshift will provide the most bang for the
buck, but at a cost of some production functionality
we are used to with Arnold and Vray. Also, it will
likely require an initial investment in new hardware
as Redshift will not run on our Pizzabox render
units, so that cost has to be counted in as well.
It looks like the most priceefficient Redshift setup
would be to make a few machines with as many GPUs in
them as physically possible, but how have you guys
set up your Redshift renderfarms?
I am thinking a large cabinet with a huge PSU, lots
of cooling, as much memory as possible on the
motherboard and perhaps 8 GPUs in each. GTX 970 is
probably the most power per pricepoint while Titans
would make sense if more memory for rendering is
required.
Any thoughts and pointers will be much appreciated.
Morten
