Rendering hell, yet again!

[Sean_Kelly]

This is driving me nuts, despite building a much faster system it still crashes repeatedly.
From the start of using version 7 (demo) this has been a PITA. As the model I was building became more complex my trusty old laptop literally ground to a halt, so much for Rhino working on an average computer. So I now have 4gb of video ram and almost 40 gb of internal ram and still it’s dragging it’s heels.
On my old laptop I was able to render a 3200x2400 legacy render using only a directional light in about 5 mins and get a reasonable result.

But on the new system I can still do legacy renders, but the whole point of the upgrade was to be able
to use the new Rhino renderer and get reasonable render times.
But it seems to take ages even before it starts to render, some times over 10 mins of the processor using 30 %, nothing on the GPU, then eventually it starts plodding though the samples.
I gave up on the models I was building (originally started on Rhino5)and started new ones to see if it made any difference. The new low memory models seem to render fine, time wise at least.
So here are 3 renders of the same file to compare.

Legacy, time 10.55 , plus another 8 mins before actually doing anything!

Rhinorender, time 11.20, 214 samples. WTF?

Prorender, time 11.30, 136 samples.

No idea why the Rhinorender failed so badly. The legacy looks poor. But the Prorender looks much better.

So I have continued with the Prorender but it only works on models under 200mb. As soon as I try one of the main models over 500mb it either locks up or totally crashes . Some days it’s crashed more than 10 times!
What makes it even more frustrating is the little models are coming out really well but the models I really need to finish fail repeatedly.

Prorender, 6.5 hours, 1500 samples.

Honestly, I feel like I waste 60% of my precious time with constant stream of failed fillets, failed booleans and failed renders. Just to give you some idea of the competition, this is what’s possible with the latest Z-brush. Am I wasting my time with Rhino?

All modeled in Z-brush and rendered with Redshift(that comes bundled free with a one year sub).

[JimCarruthers]

@Sean_Kelly

so much for Rhino working on an average computer.

That concept was dead with Rhino 6. People have been crying since before video cards actually did anything that Rhino doesn’t take advantage of 3D hardware, which was a deliberate decision so that Rhino would run on a potato. Since Rhino 6 it leverages OpenGL far more, and…there’s a price to pay for that.

@Sean_Kelly

So I now have 4gb of video ram and almost 40 gb of internal ram and still it’s dragging it’s heels.

A 4GB Vram card is frankly not gonna be adequate for GPU rendering. The scene has to be able to fit on the card, on top of everything else it has to do–plus you need enough virtual memory to be able to cache all that VRAM–and odds are a 4GB GPU won’t have much in the way of CUDA cores. I have an 11GB 1080ti–had 6 of them at one point but I don’t to video anymore–which dates back to about 2017, and I would consider it bare-minimum.

[nathanletwory (Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory)]

@Sean_Kelly

No idea why the Rhinorender failed so badly.

I’ve got no idea either. No file to investigate. Electrotelepathy is not a skill I have mastered, despite trying for decades.

@Sean_Kelly

I now have 4gb of video ram

4GB is not much of Rhino Render. And if this is not an NVidia card then it is going to hurt too. Currently best results are going to be had with relatively modern NVidia GPU - you’ll want to look for high CUDA core count and as much GPU RAM as you can get.

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

Sean, please run the systeminfo command in rhino and post the result here.

also If you’d be willing to post the file, i’d be happy to benchmark here on my system

[tay.othman (tay.0)]

@Sean_Kelly

almost 40 gb of internal ram

Sounds like you are mixing and matching memory modules. system info is important and I’d love to run your models on my system.

[Micha]

You did the Z-brush / redshift renderings at your limited hardware?

[Sean_Kelly]

I think I have found a solution to the renders. It’s not Z-brush but Blender.
I had seen a few posts here that have been rendered in Blender so I thought I’d give
it a go. There are a lot of options in Blender with materials and render settings that are going
to take a while to get used to but on the whole it’s pretty easy to get your models into
Blender and start tweaking material setting. One of the best things is that there are so many
users that there is a tutorial on almost everything in there. Also I found there is a huge selection
of plug ins, especially for materials. I think I payed about $30 for a Chip Walters material collection
that has a great selection of highly evolved materials. (check out the ground plane under the trike)
One thing I find odd is that the Rhino3d models get even larger in size after converting to meshes
but are handled much quicker. The opening of newly converted models takes ages, some times
over half an hour, but once it’s in every thing feels good. No long delays before rendering and the
render times are a fraction of what I was getting with Rhino (no changes to the hardware).
The two models that I was having the most trouble with were rendered with no hassle at all.
The first was the trike and now that looks much better.

This took 44 minutes and I think most of the time was spent on the ground plane material.

This one was 1h13m, but had rear lights on.

The next problem file was a concept for an electric dirt bike. Rhino crashed dozens of times trying
to render this, but no worries in Blender. Even with 8k environment maps.

One problem I did find a couple of times was odd parts disappearing. On this model a few bits of
text and the end of a headphone vanished. Just have a good check over the mesh before importing
into Blender.

Note the missing L on the HOLD switch.

This was done in 26 minutes, they were taking 5 hours plus with Rhino.

Lastly I wanted to show you my first modeling efforts in Blender, the essential doughnut (donut).

And a pair of head phones, about 2 hours modeling even with a cloth simulation!

This was a Derik Elliott tutorial if you want to give it a go.

So far I have been very impressed with Blender. It just works, as it should. Honestly, the trial version
of Rhino7 was like a night In the jungle. A bug fest. Numerous minor issues from shading to renders.
On a plus side the sub-d worked very well but compared to Blender it’s lacking tools.

For me Rhino excels at the Nurbs tools but struggles to convince me that it’s worth the £600 update
fee for tools that are available for free else where. If Rhino was to make a Nurbs plug-in for Blender
with it’s millions of users, It could be a huge potential market for Rhino. Seriously, if it could be
integrated I think you would find a lot of customers there.