I just want to share an update. I’ve been doing more rendering and working with lights lately. I would say that if I knew I would have been doing this earlier, I may have bought a better laptop (I’m using a carefully selected gaming laptop that would retail for around $1,100 USD - I’ll post actual specs upon request).
Rendering and ray tracing are a bit slow. Realistic and Rendered view styles really slow down when I start adding more than one or two lights. I can definitely still work like this but my productivity would have been much higher if I spent an extra, say, $400 USD. But… to be honest, visuals aren’t even my field. I bought Rhino for the 3D modelling but it’s just proved useful in other areas as well.
Here’s the other topic so you can get an idea of what I’m working on:
Ordinarily, I model concrete high-rise buildings (including underground parking). Even if the model gets a little large I don’t suffer much performance loss. But even just a small room with physically-based materials and lights… lag starts to come into play. Food for thought.