xnormal AO renders

travisdreams

a question ive always had in mind is what makes AO bakes/renders take so long? and what could i do to improve my PCs performance to increase the speed of my bakes?

it concerns me when my pc starts venting like a jet when baking AOs xP

Bek

CPU speed is the most important factor I believe, unless you're using a gpu based solution obviously (for memory xnormal openRL doesn't bake AO)

Alternatively you could try Knald to generate AO from your nm, which will only take a few seconds.

tigg

Using GPU baking with xnormal will decrease the render times *dramatically*. Bakes that used to take upwards of an hour happen in under a minute. Just change the renderer dropdown from "Default Bucket renderer" to "Optix/CUDA Renderer (alpha/experimental". I can't remember if I had to change any options in the plugin manager.

jogshy

AO takes so much time because lots of rays ( ==billions ) need to be traced.
For instance, a 2k x 2k map with 4x AA and 256 ao rays(medium quality) takes exactly

2048 x 2048 x 4 x 256 = 4,29 billion rays.

The best way to accelerate that is:

1. Get a better CPU or overclock your existing one.
or
2. Use the Optix/CUDA renderer with your GeForce card.
or
3. Use the OpenRL renderer with a Caustic Graphics's RT2 card ( or use the new improved OpenRL's CPU mode that xn3.18.2 optimized ).
or
4. Render per-vertex AO using the xn's tools and then render an AO map with interpolation enabled.

ZacD

for Optix/CUDA is any CUDA card supported?

jogshy

ZacD wrote: »

for Optix/CUDA is any CUDA card supported?

Yep, but you'll probably need FoceWare 3XX drivers.

travisdreams

oh man this is alot of good information, i didnt realize i got these replies, thanks alot guys!

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

As a little tangent, when you can't realistically increase the speed of AO bakes (can't buy new hardware, etc), it's a good idea to try to remain productive while they're happening. Bake your normal and material masks first, for example, and set up your base materials in PS while the AO is still chugging. Minimize time spent doing nothing waiting for a bake

ZacD

Or do bakes when you have stuff to do, like make dinner, take shower, sleep, etc.

Also always do lower rez low quality ones to make sure the settings are okay. a 256x256 will show you if you have any major errors.

ghaztehschmexeh

I find that turning down xnormal's process priority keeps my computer from locking up, allowing me to keep working.

EarthQuake

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel wrote: »

As a little tangent, when you can't realistically increase the speed of AO bakes (can't buy new hardware, etc), it's a good idea to try to remain productive while they're happening. Bake your normal and material masks first, for example, and set up your base materials in PS while the AO is still chugging. Minimize time spent doing nothing waiting for a bake

ZacD wrote: »

Or do bakes when you have stuff to do, like make dinner, take shower, sleep, etc.

Also always do lower rez low quality ones to make sure the settings are okay. a 256x256 will show you if you have any major errors.

ghaztehschmexeh wrote: »

I find that turning down xnormal's process priority keeps my computer from locking up, allowing me to keep working.

Yes, to all of this.