bit_user :
kyotokid :
bit_user :
kyotokid :
...upgrading my CG work system
...
It's fine if you'd rather not, but I wonder if you'd like to share any links to your work.
It's not like I can reciprocate, so don't worry if not.
...here is some of my work over on DA.
https://kyotokid.deviantart.com/
Nice!
Sorry for the delay. I didn't want to visit DA from work, and then I forgot to revisit this thread.
So, what aspects do you focus on? Do you model any of the items from scratch, or do you focus more on things like scene composition?
...yeah DA can be pretty NSFW. Sometimes galleries make me wonder if not on DP (Daily Pr0n) instead. Not into that stuff at all.
I do little modelling as I cannot afford a programme like Modo. I have Hexagon but it is as unstable as a top heavy container ship in high seas. Couldn't get more than 10 - 15 min into a session before it either froze up or crashed (even on a 64 bit system). Daz3D (who bought it from Eovia back in 2005) is finally undertaking a major revision that should squash the bugs and bring it into the 64 bit world (it is still 32 bit and always felt that was part of the crash issue if you tried to use too many redoruce heavy processes like smoothing and subdivision). So I turned to using pre generated meshes however do a lot of materials and morphing/shaping adjustments.
My main interest is to tell a story, so not only composition but character expression and personality is important. As you have seen there is a sub gallery titled "Leela" who is a central character in a storyline I developed. The background is pretty extensive so I won't go into it here. I also just love to tell stories with pictures (always have since I was young).
I used to paint (oils and watercolour) and draw (you probably saw some of my last sketches I did in the "hand drawn" sub gallery) however arthritis pretty much put an end to that as it is very difficult (and painful) to hold a brush or pencil anymore (why I also cannot use a Wacom tablet). You may have also noticed the digression of line quality and lack of shading in several of last ones I ever did (by then I was downing Advil like M&Ms). Consequently I have almost no grip left in my writing hand and lost most of the deftness and steadiness as well. This is why when I was told about 3D graphics I became interested.
None of the programmes I use are very expensive (the aforementioned Hexagon [which is now free] was teh the most costly at 72$ during a sale ten years ago) and some like Krita, Inkspace, and Gimp are free. I also have an old version of Marvelous Designer (V.3) and would love to upgrade but need to save the zlotys for that. Never could wrap my brain around Blender (and I tried many times) as it's setup and UI is just too wonky for me. When it comes to doing something creative, I think more like a traditional artist/craftsperson than a technician and having to key in all my moves and adjustments just seems alien to me.
While CG art is more "technical" than drawing or painting, I find using a pointing device closer to feel more "natural" to me than a bunch of hotkeys like Blender requires out of the box. True a tablet would be even better to get that feel, but again, doesn't work for me so I have to compromise to a slight degree (I use an ergonomic trackball that takes the pressure off my hand and wrist).
When I came into Iray (Daz 3d integrated it into their flagship programme) It was a big wow factor. To have a professional grade render engine that was based on real world physics for lighting was like seeing that big prezzie with my name on it under the yule tree. However as I began to work with it, creating more and more complex scenes, I noticed one flaw, it was more optimised for GPU rendering, as on the CPU render times were agonizingly slow (even for relatively small scenes, those character "proofs" in my gallery often took 45 min to just over an hour and involved a lot of time consuming test rendering as well).
This is why I became so riled about how cryptomining causing GPU card prices to spike as I am now on a fixed income and was saving for a GTX 1070 when almost overnight, the price nearly doubled. 8 GB is the minimal for the work I tend to do (about 75% of which would stay in VRAM). That misty foggy British railway station scene with the 8 characters takes up 8.9 GB in memory. As I am limited in what I can do in post, I need to get as much out of the render pass as I can. Scenes like this are problematic in that I have characters in several different planes so layered rendering is not an option as I would have to paint in their reflections in the wet platform, something I no longer have the fine control to do.
So for myself, the more VRAM the better as once the process dumps to the CPU, even a million GPU processor cores would mean nothing. If someone dropped a A Quadro P5000 or P6000 in my lap I'd be the happiest person on earth. Well, in a way that did sort of happen as a couple weeks ago I came into a 12 GB Maxwell Titan-X for a very good price from someone who was upgrading his render system. Still working on finishing some other upgrades as well as shopping for a wired router to connect my two systems, but when everything is up and running my first test will be to render that railway station scene on the Titan (I'm running W7 Pro so no VRAM "robbing" like W10 does).
Interesting to note, just the other day I learned that Nvidia suddenly has all the 10xx founders series in stock after seeing "out of stock" for over two months. The long drought led me to believe that was the end of the line until the 11xx cards were released (whenever that would be) and we were stuck with the inflated prices until then. So when the deal on the Titan was made, I said nuts to waiting any longer and jumped on it. Yeah it's older tech but owned by someone who knows how to care for gear (he also builds servers and is working on a multi blade rack system for his render farm).
So for myself yeah "case solved" for now. though still very dismayed that a "get rich quick" scheme is making it difficult for people who just want to enjoy games or create art and don't have a D.O.D. budget to work with.
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