Posting Computer Specs with Work:

Artwork Animations
1

I would be really nice if posters in this thread would include computer specs. And, maybe some information about render times per frame.

Not only would it help other animators but also shape any critiques. If a individual was struggling with 144 Cuda Cores obviously the critique might not be the same as for one of our animators using a GTX 980 Ti. After all one might be reduced to simply trying to get something resembling metal that will clear up reasonably well in a five minute render.

For anyone attempting animation the equipment suddenly becomes a overriding factor. In a way our Blender friends doing stills never deal with. Also it would give beginning animators a reference point as to what is possible with their equipment. To that end some information about what was baked would also help.

2

What are you talking about? Just upgrade the specs to the production standard recommended by Blender. Also, just create a render farm if animation is going to be a problem.

3

As someone who is a beginner animator I can reassure any beginner that this is nothing to worry about the kind of animation you can create and render as a beginner don’t require much in computing power and you can even do them as Opengl renders. It’s not about how pretty it looks it about how well it moves.

It doesn’t take much to render a bouncing ball, or a character walking, running etc most of my frames at the moment don’t take more than a minute to render, the take about 30 seconds to render.

Towards the end of the year I am planning to put all that I know into making a minute long parkour/free running style animation short perhaps my opinion will change then.

4

There’s various reasons why that isn’t always possible. Which is why there’s such a variety of machines. From power-houses, to rickety old buckets.

Some people feel ashamed, or at least reluctant, to post specs for low-end machines. Not that a person should feel that way in a civilised world. But it happens. And that too has it’s reasons for being. :slight_smile:

5

What are you talking about? Just upgrade the specs to the production standard recommended by Blender. Also, just create a render farm if animation is going to be a problem.

Somewhere there is some kid more talented then a six pack of the both of us who has a hand me down and can’t afford jack. And, this is what we have for them. Just upgrade or use a render farm. Hell they might only have electricity several hours a day.

tyrant monkey I have seen your work and it’s looking impressive as a methodical approach to learning animation. My use of the word beginning animator might have been a bad choice of words. I’ve been attempting animation for years and still consider myself a beginner. I’m sure quite a few animation friends on here might agree with that assessment sadly. : ) In a year what I’m saying might help when you start inserting a character into a interior say or even a archviz walkthrough using Cycles.

Macser, I copy what you are saying since in some threads the machine from hell does indeed seem to be some sort of status symbol. Then what Ton has repeatedly says comes to mind; “Blender is for artist” For that kid I’m speaking of bench test don’t tell him shit except his machine sucks and he already knows that. Whereas some real animation on a modest machine, albeit not spectacular, with machine specs could tell him far more about what might be possible with what he has.

6

After taking a look at my statement, it feels kinda arrogant. I must apologize for my statement. I guess since I had came across a luck streak of money with the ability to do that, it felt pompous. So with that, I’m sorry. What I will say is that you have to figure out the scale of your project and consider how complex it will be. Then consider upgrading. As theoldghost said it’s like a status symbol; just like having a huge rock on your front yard. Yeah, sure you have it, but who really gives a f*@&!

7

Personally I didn’t assume it was meant in a nasty way. Some things are obvious. Like a machine that simply can’t hack it. There’s nothing wrong with being honest. If the hardware is not up to it, there’s little option. Except getting creative with workflows until you run out of road. But even that will have it’s limit.

There’s nothing wrong with the idea of posting specs with projects. The issue might be getting everyone on board.
It’s probably a bit like getting people to post about how much they earn. :smiley:

8

From my experience there are many limiting factors which animators have to deal with, when I think about creating CG shorts. And I’m not talking about technical skills and knowledge about the theory of animation here. That would be another topic.

What I find the most frustrating part is the constant need to keep render times at a reasonable value. Maybe I’m not patient enough, but a whole night of continuous rendering for one second of animation at 30fps frustrates me. Yes I do open GL renders to iron out as many flaws as possible at this stage. And I do proof renders of several single frames to make sure that the look is consistent during the shot. But even then it often happens that I have to re-render, because I don’t like the result.

We have this awesome realtime viewport rendering on GPU, which is absolutely great for the development of materials and for look development and we have OpenGL preview renders. But for just one second of animation we have to wait countless hours.

There is a reason why some of us port their scenes back to BI and render in BI. And why others think about using real time render engines of game engines (yes, I know that cinematic trailers are often not rendered in the game engine itself).

And to be able to render one second of animation in the span of one night I have to make cuts on the visual quality. That’s frustrating also. Simplifying shaders, adding additional lights to help the render engine, accepting a certain amount of noise, trying to reduce the time for BVH building (yes, in big scenes this is sometimes half the time a frame needs to render), using backplates, using render layers and compositing are some of these workarounds.

I’m not complaining here, but that’s how it is.

So hardware capabilities are limiting factors, no doubt. And it would be really interesting what others use and how others feel about the points mentioned.

I’m rendering on AMD CPU FX 8350, 8 cores, 16 GB RAM, GTX 970, by the way.

Edit:
But the real point of the OP - if I understood it correctly - was, that the available hardware and the limitations coming along with this specific hardware should be considered when someone critiques in this section of the forum. That’s a good and valid point.

9

First off sorry about climbing up on the soapbox but I am retired with limited means not to far removed from the kid I was talking about. Only not half as talented. There is no doubt with some equipment animating any full scene in Cycles would be a exercise in futility. But, as tyrant monkey observed that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t study animation. And, we have BI which IMHO does a better job for some content. I meant the posting of specs as just a suggestion.

minoribus addressed what we all go through. And, he has worked way more ambitious projects then most of us. And, by the way he was experiencing that using a Black Titan at one time. I have not the talent nor technical expertise to attempt his ongoing project nor would my equipment be up to the task if I did. So of course picking a doable project in Cycles with the available equipment is part of what we do. And, doable would be a subjective call. I have a little ongoing project which I call doable with render times running from six to just under ten minutes for one scene. And, that is only possible by baking everything in sight with no glossy component.

I am also hoping for that streak of luck to update a GT 730 card which was a update from the GT 530 I started a project with. Well it would have been a upgrade except it came on a Windows 10 computer. : ) But, that is another thread. Thank you all for posting and I’m smiling here. Animators might be the whack jobs in the forum here. I defer here to minoribus recounting what we subject ourselves to. Hey, you have to love it to make the attempt.