AMD Earnings Soar on Exploding Ryzen Growth, Crypto Mining Craze

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InvalidError

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@bit_user back when I was on my Core 2 with 8GB RAM, my RAM usage was more like 15GB committed on 8GB physical with a 24GB swapfile spanning three HDDs to make swapping bearable. My HDDs were going nearly non-stop and that was the main reason I upgraded my PC back then. 16GB wasn't enough to eliminate swapping and I went 32GB a month or two later. Now, I'm rarely using more than 1GB of swap.
 

kyotokid

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...upgrading my CG work system to 24 GB and adding a Titan X that I was able to pick up. That should give me enough rendering power (Iray/Octane) to avoid going into swap mode even if the process falls to the CPU (which should be very very rare since the Titan-X is dedicated to rendering and I am not on W10).
 

bit_user

Polypheme
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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.
 

kyotokid

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...here is some of my work over on DA.

https://kyotokid.deviantart.com/
 

bit_user

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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?
 

kyotokid

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...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.
 

mihen

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I remember when I first tried Blender, I just couldn't get around to using it well. I gave it another try a couple years later and found it very intuitive. The main benefit I found with the program is that transporting files is very clean compared to other programs. Its also a very capable program.
If you want to give Blender a try again, I recommend trying to do some tutorials off YouTube first as it makes the process easier. Something from Blender Cookie is probably best. The Blender community is one of the best for learning.
One thing I noticed in your work is that the lighting does not do your scene justice. Using something like Blender's Cycle Render with HDRI maps would significantly improve the lighting.
 

I'm not sure that I'd use the term "intuitive". That would imply a person could pick it up and find it understandable without following some step-by-step tutorial. Blender's interface is pretty much the opposite of intuitive, ignoring just about every established user interface standard, and requiring lots of cryptic keyboard commands to operate efficiently. It might be efficient once someone is accustomed to the interface, but it definitely has a larger learning curve than most content creation tools.
 

kyotokid

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...many of the scenes in my gallery were done in 3DL which in the integrated version used in Daz does not support "real world" lighting. I am still learning how to work with Iray . Not about to pound my brain into a brick wall trying to deal with Blender's setup and UI. Unfortunately all the tutorials for that programme are video based and I have terrible retention due to short term memory issues. I need PDF or print based tuts that I can have open when working through a new concept rather than videos I need to keep rewinding and watching over and over and over again ad nausea.

Also not fond of using most HDRIs because they are fixed photo backdrops someone else created. I will use sky only HDRIs (as skydomes block out the Iray sun) but none that involve ground plane scenery.
 
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