If I bought a CRAY super computer will CA be faster?

[DavidKing]

We bought a server with 64 Gigs of Ram & 8 Cores "weighs 95 pounds with a blower on the side for heat!"

I have found that Chief behaves in a strange way when the Model or Design is not clean... But if you want a fast computer then I would do this. Buy a small server with plenty of ram, get an expensive video card that can handle a massive amount of Polygons, attach multiple rack mount processors that you can use for Rendering, this way you access multiple processors when you need it. We use 4 rack mount processors when we render a large image! It takes less then an hour.

Remember this, when you render an object you can get a bounce that will not stop for a long time. For example: The color white in the real world is actually not completely white. If you created a Home or Box with perfect white floors, ceilings and walls your rendering will take forever to finish because the ray trace will just keep going back and forth within the room!
Make sure that your materials will only bounce rays for so long or you will create that issue... We have learned this, if you render a house from the inside then try and remove everything behind you from the scene.. this way the Ray trace will bounce around a few times and then exit the scene out the back. AND NEVER USE A PURE WHITE COLOR. the objective is to get the ray tracer to bounce and then exit the scene.. this will increase the rendering time 500%.

Here is another problem, Chief uses a version of Pov-Ray that they created for Rendering. We found that this is a waste of time because you have to render then re-render; and re-render until you get the image correct due to lighting issues. So we use a Program called Maxwell Render, This is a ONE PASS rendering that allows you to manipulate the lighting when done... The images turn out so real that we have homes that are printed on a 36x36 sheet of Photo-Paper! Every client that comes in and looks at the images asks us were the house was built "so they can drive by and look at it"... We tell them "it's not real it is just a 3D Rendering."
You cannot tell the difference between a real Photo or Maxwell.

If you want to stick to one computer then I would buy a Video card that can handle a large amount of Polygons.. That's your first problem... if your happy with the chief Rendering engine then have a computer built that comes with a massive Motherboard and then load it with 32 G's of ram and 12 cores... make sure you can update the processors also so that the computer is current for 3.5 yrs...

[lbuttery]

Chief uses a version of Pov-Ray that they created for Rendering


David:

CA threw POV out and created Phoebe from scratch - or so they say...


Lew

[Larry5]

Of course it will be faster. But too fast that it doesn't really matter. A normal high level pc would do. Lets try to practical here.