“Comparison of next-generation renderers for architectural visualization” session report – Comparing and verifying renderers on machines equipped with AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO!

On Wednesday, March 27, 2024, the seminar “Comparison of next-generation renderers for architectural visualization” was held online.

ATA Planning/Nishikaji, a specialist in architectural visualization production, focused on the renderer performance of the HP Z6 G5 A Workstation, a machine equipped with the AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 7000 WX series processor, which has the amazing potential of up to 96 cores. Mr. Shun and Hitomi Tanemura of STUDIO55 generously disclosed everything from the latest circumstances regarding renderers to which renderer is suitable for the project.

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HP Z6 G5 A, a workstation equipped with an AMD CPU with overwhelming power

–At the beginning of the seminar, Mr. Hideki Ohashi of HP Japan introduced the workstation “HP Z6 G5 A Workstation” used in this seminar.

Mr. Hideki Ohashi (hereinafter referred to as Ohashi): This product is a model called “Z6 G5 A”, but the “A” at the end is AMD’s “A”, meaning that the CPU is equipped with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series processor. This CPU is a powerful CPU with up to 96 cores. This is the biggest feature of the Z6 G5 A.

■HP Z6 G5 A Workstation specifications
□Midrange model
CPU:AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 7965 WX Processor (4.2GHz-5.3GHz/24 cores/128MB/5200MHz)
memory:64GB DDR5 SDRAM (5200MHz/ECC/Registered/16GB×4)
Graphics: NVIDIA RTX A2000
storage:1TB HP Z Turbo Drive (Internal M.2 Slot Connect TLC NVMe SSD)

□Flagship model
CPU:AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 7995 WX Processor (2.5GHz-5.1GHz/96 cores/384MB/5200MHz)
Memory: 128GB DDR5 SDRAM (5200MHz/ECC/Registered/32GB×4)
Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada
Storage: 2TB HP Z Turbo Drive (Internal M.2 slot connected TLC NVMe SSD)

Ohashi: Other flexible expandability features include a main memory that can be expanded up to 1TB, a 1,000W large capacity power supply, and up to three graphics cards. In addition, this workstation is designed with attention to detail, including heat exhaust efficiency, quietness, and security features (HP’s unique Wolf Security for Business).

Exploring the optimal renderer for architectural visualization

Mr. Shun Nishi Kaji (hereinafter referred to as Nishi Kaji): Now let’s start comparing and verifying the renderers. My name is Kaji Nishi, and I am a CG creator who creates architectural visuals, perspectives, and visualizations for ATA Projects.

Mr. Hitomi Tanemura (hereinafter referred to as Tanemura):My name is Tanemura and I am a CG director at STUDIO55.

Nishi Kaji：We are in the same industry, but we are creators and directors, and our work is different. As a creator, I am in charge of producing CG perspective etc.

Tanemura:As a director, I work as a liaison between the overseas production team and the customer. My main job is to understand the customer’s requests such as delivery date and price, select a renderer that suits them, and coordinate the production team.

Nishi Kaji:The theme I will be talking about today is “renderer”. The choice of renderers is increasing every year. There is no shortage of topics in the architectural 3DCG world. However, when you’re involved in daily work, it’s hard to find the opportunity to compare all the renderers you’re interested in. So this time, we decided to pick up some of them and do our own verification.

Tanemura:I would like to introduce the renderer that I recommend as a creator, and the renderer that is appropriate for the project based on my experience as a CG director.

Verifying V-Ray and Corona on a machine equipped with AMD processor 96 cores

“V-Ray” rendering verification – Rendering time reduced by more than half!

Nishi Kaji: First of all, it goes without saying that V-Ray by Chaos. I think it can be said to be the gold standard in architectural visualization. I’ve been using it too. This time, I prepared this 3ds Max scene for verification. This shot has a camera angle that allows light and reflections to enter the room, while also reflecting the scenery outside the window, giving a sense of depth.

Tanemura:V-Ray is a renderer suitable for photorealistic perspective and delicate and precise still images.

Nishi Kaji: Another feature is that there are many settings available, and you can create detailed settings. Since it is a renderer with a long history, it has many fans, and I am one of them. Thanks to our long history, there is a lot of information on the Internet, which is helpful. Also, from V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max, Update 2 released at the end of last year, it also supports Japanese display.

Tanemura: It’s a renderer that is still evolving so that it can be used even by people who are not good at English. I personally like VRayToon. This is a plug-in that produces anime-like line drawings, but when layered effectively on perspective, the result is something between a sketch and a live-action drawing.

Nishi Kaji：Certainly, for example, when visualizing a facility where there are children, we are sometimes asked to create drawings with that kind of touch.

Tanemura:That’s right. When it comes to photorealistic functions, I think GI is especially excellent. I was really shocked to learn that from V-Ray 5 onwards, the irradiance map (one of V-Ray’s rendering engines and GI algorithms) has been deprecated and will soon disappear. but…….

Nishi Kaji: Nowadays, the trend is to recommend brute force.

Tanemura:I agree. Still, I think V-Ray is an excellent renderer. Are you concerned about rendering time? Recently, the number of excellent real-time renderers has been increasing.

Nishi Kaji:Now is the perfect time to test out the capabilities of the HP Z6 G5 A Workstation (96-core flagship model equipped with AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series processor). Let’s actually render this scene on this machine. The size is 2,667 x 3,000 pixels, the GI engine is Brute force, and the Noise threshold is 0.01. On a machine equipped with a 56-core CPU that I usually use,Rendering took 12 minutes 50 seconds. Now let’s try it out.

Tanemura: That’s fast…!

Nishi Kaji: (Pointing to the rectangle that indicates the area that V-Ray is processing) This is the first time I’ve seen so many of these squishes appear. On my PC, only about half of it comes out.

Tanemura：Certainly, it’s usually about half this amount.

Nishi Kaji:I think the quality and resolution will be lowered in the test rendering during production to save time. But in a test, when you say, “OK, OK! Now let’s go live,” and then increase the resolution and render, have you ever found yourself saying, “Huh? I made a mistake here.”

Tanemura: Yes, there is.

Nishi Kaji: There are some mistakes that can’t be seen unless the resolution is high, so lowering the quality during test rendering may actually take more time.

Tanemura:I have been using Irradiance map for a long time, and I had the impression that Brute force takes a long time, but this one is good.

Nishi Kaji: Even the parts that require heavy processing, such as the lighting and reflective parts of the glass, are progressing at great speed.It finished in 5 minutes and 44 seconds. It takes 6 minutes!You can render at production quality 10 times in an hour.

Tanemura: That’s amazing! I think we’ve come this far. In architectural work, there are many customers who have fixed delivery dates and costs, and who value both quality and time, so it would be a great help if the rendering time could be shortened to this extent.

Nishi Kaji: In order to improve the quality, it is necessary to refine it through trial and error over and over again. That’s why it’s shocking that the 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO processor can respond at this speed.

Tanemura:This time, you also borrowed another 24-core mid-range model from HP, right?

Nishi Kaji:yes. When I tried rendering there,10 minutes 14 secondswas. It was faster than the 56-core PC I usually use! Rendering speed cannot be measured by the number of cores alone. Considering the price range as well, the 24-core mid-range model can be said to be a product with quite high cost performance.

Model used

rendering time

HP Z6 G5 A Workstation flagship model (AMD 96 cores)

5 minutes 44 seconds

HP Z6 G5 A midrange model (AMD 24 cores)

10 minutes 14 seconds

Mr. Kaji Nishi’s business PC (56 cores)

12 minutes 50 seconds

Chaos’ second choice of renderer “Corona”

Nishi Kaji:Next is Corona, a renderer by Chaos like V-Ray. It’s a renderer that is characterized by its reasonable price and simple settings, but I haven’t used it much because I thought, “It’s from Chaos, so V-Ray would be fine.” What do you think of Mr. Tanemura?

Tanemura:I was also a V-Ray user, so I thought, “Is it a simplified version of V-Ray? Is there a need to go to the trouble of switching to Corona?” But recently, there are a lot of jobs that take advantage of Corona’s strengths. is. What I’d like to introduce here is an original piece I made for Corona practice.

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Tanemura: Corona has an asset library function called Chaos Cosmos, and I created it by combining assets from there. Chaos Cosmos also has materials, so it’s convenient and saves time. My PC doesn’t have very good specs, and it takes about 4 hours to render at 4K, but the resulting image is as photorealistic as V-Ray.

Nishi Kaji: Is this work also Corona?

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Tanemura:yes. This is a personal work by a creator who is a partner of STUDIO55, and is an award winning work of Corona’s official competition. He imported the data modeled in Revit into 3ds Max and used Forest Pack (a plug-in for 3ds Max by iToo) to create the surrounding vegetation.

Nishi Kaji:It’s very beautiful.

Tanemura:That’s right. When I saw this, I was shocked and thought, “Can Corona do this much?”

Nishi Kaji: Not only is it easy to set up, but the quality is also reliable.

Tanemura:I think Corona’s biggest point is that it’s “easy, simple, and easy to use.” V-Ray is quite difficult and it took me quite a while to get used to it. It is a wonderful renderer that allows you to express a wide variety of things once you learn it.

Nishi Kaji:I agree. What kind of work do you think it is suitable for?

Tanemura: Corona has a simple structure, so quality control is easy, so I think it’s suitable for team production. By the way, projects always come with time limits, and we use three things to control them: “Path Limit,” “Time Limit,” and “Noise Level Limit.”

Nishi Kaji:I see. In order to respond to the request to “deliver the best quality within a certain amount of time,” we decide how far the renderer calculations should go based on limits. It’s very suitable for architecture.

Tanemura:yes. Therefore, in the case of Corona, we often use “pass limit”, which is easy to balance quality and time. So, once I know the approximate amount of time it will take to render, I can count backwards and make plans by when I want to finish modeling, which is helpful.

Nishi Kaji: Corona makes it easier to direct.

Tanemura:I agree. That’s why I’ve been using it for quite some time. The usage rate also seems to be increasing, including overseas.

Tanemura:I think there are many people who think that V-Ray is the best, but Corona has its advantages. Personally, I use V-Ray when I want a finish that looks like a real photograph, and Corona when I want a slightly more relaxed look like in this work (below).

Nishi Kaji: Looking at the rendered images like this, it seems that although there are differences in taste, the quality is not much different between V-Ray and Corona. Corona was CPU rendered, right?

Tanemura:I agree. V-Ray has both a CPU and a GPU (V-Ray GPU), but Corona only has a CPU.

Nishi Kaji: Furthermore, the renderer requires a high-power CPU like the AMD CPU used this time. By the way, V-Ray uses noise, Corona uses time and rendering, and the control methods are different, so it is not possible to make a uniform comparison, but I got the impression that the same quality could be achieved with the same rendering time.

Nishi Kaji:This time I borrowed a machine equipped with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO processor and actually tried running the renderer, but I honestly felt that a high-spec PC, especially a CPU, is absolutely essential for 3DCG production.

Tanemura:When you actually see the power, you become convinced.

Nishi Kaji:That’s right. In this day and age, the democratization of 3DCG tools and the expansion of information on the Internet have made it easier for many people to come into contact with CG. Under these circumstances, I feel that CG creators are required to quickly deliver high-quality visuals to the world as professionals.

Tanemura:That requires a continuous high-spec PC and CPU.

Nishi Kaji:yes. AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX Series ProcessorI believe that the HP Z6 G5 A Workstation equipped with this is the best solution available right now.

Introducing recently popular renderers

GPU renderer “Twinmotion” with growing demand

Nishi Kaji:Next, I’d like to take a slightly different approach, but I’d like to introduce Twinmotion, a GPU-based real-time renderer whose name I’ve heard the most lately. This is a renderer specialized in architectural visualization by Epic of Unreal Engine. I also use it for video and VR production.

Tanemura：We don’t often have the opportunity to use it in actual projects, but it has become especially popular in the past few years.

Nishi Kaji:For ATA projects, video delivery is increasingly being created using Twinmotion. The production work is done by staff who are well-versed in Twinmotion, and from what I’ve heard, they say that it’s easy to use. Unreal Engine can create beautiful images, but it can be a little complicated. Twinmotion is very easy to use because it narrows down the functions based on the idea that “If it’s architecture, you only use this part.”

Nishi Kaji:I imported the scene I created for V-Ray earlier into Twinmotion and made it into a walkthrough video.

Tanemura:Can I take the V-Ray materials with me as is?

Nishi Kaji:Yes, the materials can be imported directly into Datasmith, and no special adjustments are required.

Tanemura:When delivering videos, STUDIO55 often uses Lumion. There’s a lot of talk about Twinmotion or Lumion, but we use Lumion because it’s good at handling huge amounts of data. This is because in the beginning of the architectural visualization project, the idea was, “We just need to build one building,” but as it progressed, we started to think, “After all, we need to build the surrounding area,” and “We want to create a bird’s-eye view, so we need to expand the surrounding area.” I want it,” and the number of requests often increases. That’s why I’m using Lumion from the beginning with the expectation that it will increase.

Nishi Kaji: Lumion also has beautiful visuals.

Tanemura:I agree. In particular, it expresses the sky and water in a natural and refreshing way.

Nishi Kaji:If anything, I think Twinmotion gives the images a more chic feel. In my case, I choose Twinmotion because it also makes exporting VR easier.

“shapespark” specialized in VR & Metaverse

Nishi Kaji:Next, I’d like to introduce shapespark, which is a bit unique and I’m not sure if it can be called a renderer, but it specializes in VR and metaverse production. Rather than explain, please take a look.

Nishi Kaji: Walk around the VR space using the keyboard, change the material and color of the floor and sofa, replace the furniture, and jump to the shopping page from the embedded URL. These operations can be performed in real time.

Tanemura: I especially thought the “virtual meeting” feature, which allows multiple people to access the site at the same time and meet in this space, was revolutionary.

Nishi Kaji:I created VR content for a university client at Shapespark, and during the production process, I invited the client into the space and had a meeting while watching the content. I felt that the level of content production has gone up a notch.

Tanemura: Creators and clients explore the same space and exchange opinions, working together to improve quality. It’s a tool that can be used in many ways depending on your imagination. Recently, VR work has been increasing at STUDIO55, but since VR involves baking textures, a high-spec PC, especially CPU power, is required.

Nishi Kaji: After all, the renderer and PC specs cannot be separated. By the way, the ATA Planning website has some content that you can experience, including the spaces introduced here. Please feel free to touch it.

ATA Planning XR Design Department Special Page

Nishi Kaji: Come to think of it, 3ds Max comes standard with the Arnold renderer. I’ve never used it for architectural visualization projects, but it’s a well-established renderer and the output is beautiful. Above all, the big advantage of using 3ds Max is that there are no additional installation costs.

Tanemura:I don’t often use it in actual projects, but I have practiced creating images.

Tanemura:I got the impression that Arnold is better at drawings that focus on objects rather than spatial visuals. Also, when I looked into it, I found that Arnold has a history of being used in animation and VFX rather than architecture, and seems to be more specialized in that field.

Nishi Kaji：Certainly, it was originally intended for anime and movies. However, there seems to be room for further development. By the way, how long did it take to render this?

Tanemura: This has a small number of models, so I was able to render it on my laptop in about 20 minutes.

Nishi Kaji:I see. Well, if it’s “HP Z6 G5 A Workstation”, it’s instant.

The benefits of advancements in renderers can only be enjoyed by high-performance CPUs.

Nishi Kaji: So far, we have mainly introduced renderers that are attracting attention in the field of architectural visualization, along with the capabilities of the latest workstations. This time, due to limited time, I could only give a brief explanation, but I actually wish I had about two more hours to talk about it more, there are so many stories about renderers and PCs (lol). .

Tanemura:In architectural visualization, you spend a lot of time working with renderers, so there are many topics to talk about. How did you feel after testing it this time?

Nishi Kaji:You have reconfirmed that the evolution of renderers and the evolution of PCs are linked.

Tanemura:I agree. I feel that the reason why renderers have evolved so much is firstly because CPUs have evolved, and then because PCs as a whole have evolved.

Nishi Kaji: So, this is not a story specific to architectural visualization, but I think that in 3DCG production, it is important to choose not only the renderer but also the PC that runs the renderer. Think of the renderer and PC as a set! I would like to conclude this seminar with this proposal. thank you very much.

Tanemura:thank you very much.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series processors are powerful partners for CPU renderers

–At the end of the seminar, Masato Sekine from AMD Japan introduced the appeal of AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series processors.

Mr. Masato Sekine (hereinafter referred to as Sekine):AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series processors adopt the “Zen 4” core, which is a step generation update from the previous generation 5000 series architecture “Zen 3”, and expand the number of cores from the previous generation’s maximum of 64 cores to 96 cores. It’s a powerful CPU. Additionally, the PCI generation, which is especially important for workstations, has been updated from PCIe 4.0 to PCI 5.0.

Sekine:Comparing the performance of the 5000 series and 7000 series with the same number of cores (64 cores), we have confirmed that the 7000 series has a 20-40% performance increase in applications in each industry. In architectural visualization, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series processor is a CPU that can greatly contribute to reducing work hours.

summary

–A variety of architectural visualization projects and renderers that fit each. In order to best meet the client’s requests within a limited amount of time, it is important to utilize workstations equipped with high-end CPUs and speed up iterations using the renderer. The “HP Z6 G5 A Workstation” equipped with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series processor will be a strong choice.

Inquiries regarding products

Japan HP Co., Ltd.: jp.ext.hp.com/info/contact-hp/contact
AMD Japan Co., Ltd.: biz.amd-heroes.jp/support