Cad/3dsmax rendering

[Agent_Mull]

When you render a cad/3dsmax animation, is your cpu or gfx card doing the work. b/c i was just thinking that in my cad class, they have 1.8ghz machines w/ 16mb on board nvidia gfx, and they have some animations that take like 72 hours to render.

Imagine how fast it would be on mine w/ 2.147ghz processor and a 9600xt. 72hours to 5.

The cad drawings are detailed, but i mean hl2 looks more detailed and its rendered in real time.

[Krusty]

As far as I know* rendering only taxes the cpu. Viewing your models before rendering uses your video card.

*As far as I know means that I definately know this is the case for Lightwave so it is likely the case for 3dsmax.


So if you want fast render times, get a fast cpu. If you want to see what you're working on in action, get a fast video card.

[ashenfang]

There is a big difference in Compiling and rendering.

Or Real Time rendering and Comiled rendering.

Cad/3DSMAX/Solidworks/Poser ect. Do real time rendering when compiling a finished animation or drawing. This is why it takes so long to make the finished product, and why it needs beefy processors and specialty video cards.

Half life 2 is being rendered from a compiled product. The instruction sets do not change hardly at all. Its simply drawing an already rendered product on your screen with some instruction sets added depending on player input. This is where the "engine" becomes involved. All of the animations/textures/movements ect. are already compiled and pre-rendered into the engine. The engine some simply "draws" them on he screen.

I know its confusing, and I was trying to explain it the best i could. I hope this helps.