New user question

[OPEN_RANGE]

I just started checking out Vantage. Pretty cool!

I have a large house model with a lot of Forest Pack vegetation surrounding it. The entire scene would not import due to my lower end RTX GPU. I hid all the FP objects and then the house model imported very fast and very nice.

I have rendered out two primary views (two vray cameras) for the client. One from NorthEast and the other from South West. I have the vray sun in two different locations for this. I manage it by having Sun for NE at 0 in the time slider. Then I move the slider to frame 10, turn on Auto Key, move the sun into the position for SW. Then I render NE view at frame 0 and SW at frame 10.

My question is how to best manage this in Vantage. I want to rotate around the model with OK sun position. The Vantage scene opens up with sun in NE and then If I rotate around I can also move the animation slider and the sun moves but only as far as previously set frame 10 in Max.

I'm looking for advice on how I might better set up/manage the sun position for use in Vantage when I screen share with architect and client. Rendering of the two views from Max attached for reference.

Thanks for any advice.

[T0ofic]

live link is the way to go my friend.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks. I'm unclear how live link would help me manage the sun position though. I don't want to have to toggle back and forth from Vantage to Max while sharing my screen with clients for presentation.

It's working OK now with after rotating the view, then moving the slider in Vantage to move the sun. BuT if anyone has a better way of doing this I would be keen to know it.

[OPEN_RANGE]

I’m adding another question. I’m kind of lost on what video card I might add to better use Vantage.

my system will allow for a second gpu/ video card. I am not finding any advice on what might be best. The project above os typical of my work. Is there a RTX video card, under say $1K US, that would allow me to effectively have all the forest pack stuff included in my scene (shown above).

[npg]

We avoid telling users precisely what to buy, because it is not an exact science. We have a good idea of which GPUs are faster relative to others, but how well it will work for a certain user depends on their specific scenes. If we were making a game where we make all the scenes we would know the exact performance on different pieces of hardware. Also, it's currently a very unfortunate time for buying GPUs as cryptomining caused a huge inflation in prices and reduction in stock.

You mention a *second* GPU. Keep in mind that Vantage will *not* have double the memory at its disposal if you add a second GPU. Each GPU keeps its own copy of the scene in its local memory. Adding a second GPU should increase framerate, but by how much -- it depends. It has been discussed in other forum threads.

[Phillip Miller]

While we avoid recommending manufacturers, it's easy to recommend the GPU generation, as the recent Ampere cards are nearly twice as fast as the previous generation of Turing cards, so they are a very safe bet for being the fastest for Vantage.

Then, within a given GPU generation, GPUs will scale in speed fairly linearly according to their CUDA core count and their clock speed, and it's the core count that grows as the cards get larger and more expensive. Memory is then you other consideration as it limits how large your scene can get. Other than those factors, there is no difference (for Vantage or V-Ray GPU) between GeForce, Titan, Quadro, or Tesla GPU brands.

A second GPU will give a speed boost, but not nearly 2X. A second (or third) GPU also gives you the flexibility to keep just one dedicated to Vantage so your the rest of your system can still use the other for graphics.

Hope that helps!

- Phil

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks to you both. That is helpful. I understand you would not recommend a specific GPU. I'm seeking more general guidance...if possible.

I think the scene I posted above is fairly typical of my requirements. As I said it loads and works in Vantage quite nicely, as long as I leave out the Forest Pack objects.

I checked the Summary Info from within Max. It shows 8,460,000 faces. Physical Memory usage = 15115 M / 65442 M and Virtual Memory usage = 22771M / 75170 M. Please forgive my lack of knowledge but I'm not sure how to interpret those nubmers to determine how much RAM a GPU would need for the scene to "fit".

Interesting when I delete the Forest Pack objects the numbers don't change that much. 8,401,000 faces. 15092 / 65442 and 22548 / 75170. Regardless, the scene will not load in Vantage with the FP objects included.

Thanks again for your help.

[npg]

You are looking at your CPU RAM which is not very important for Vantage (users typically have enough of it, it's more than GPU RAM). Virtual memory is not relevant.

What you should be looking at is the GPU memory usage in Vantage, shown in the lower right corner as VRAM (from Video RAM). Or alternatively use some system monitoring app like GPU-Z or the Windows Task Manager (GPU dedicated memory). Note that external monitoring apps will show total usage including that of other 3D apps, while Vantage only shows its own usage. If you get the insufficient memory error in Vantage, try the option to disable "safe allocations". It might work if your scene is only slightly bigger than the "safe" size.

Regarding Forest Pack - the small difference in faces and memory should due to object instancing. Vantage also instances these objects, so I'm not sure why it failed to load them. Maybe you were just very close to the memory limit.

Btw a trick you might try is to set a low render resolution like 540p *before* loading the scene in Vantage. This will free up a bit more memory. And unless you're using live link, close other 3D apps to free as much GPU memory as possible. Even your browser could be using some!

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks that's very helpful info. With no other programs running, and Vantage at 540p, without FP, Vantage shows VRAM 1.28G. The task manger shows GPU usage bumping up to @ 12% when rotating the view/ zoom/pan.

Still with no other programs running, and resolution set to 540. The scene will not load with the FP objects included. Choosing "disable safe allocations" does not seem to help.

It seems I need to add a gpu. I will need to figure out which GPU will cover my needs but not overspend. Likely will also wait a bit for the supply/price issues to stabilize.

Thanks again!

[Phillip Miller]

Given that your card has 6GB of memory, and your scene is just taking 1.28GB before trying to load the FP data, the FP data would seem to be taking 5GB or more all on its own. As a test, you could just try loading half of the FP scene, and if that loads, you should be able to calculate how much memory the full scene would take - and how large of a GPU you will need to be getting to handle it.

Kind regards,

[vladimir.nedev]

Still with no other programs running, and resolution set to 540. The scene will not load with the FP objects included. Choosing "disable safe allocations" does not seem to help.

Can you send me the scene, so I can take a look ?
My e-mail is in my signature, you can upload it somewhere and send me the link.
I will need all the external files, like vrmeshes and bitmaps.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[OPEN_RANGE]

Vladimir, thank you for your kind offer. I am just now seeing your reply to this topic. I never got an email notice or notice in my forum message center that you had posted a reply. I can still send you the file, I would just use Max archive to zip everything up. It may not be needed though, see below.

More testing. I was able to get the scene to load in Vantage with almost all of the Forest Pack objects. The only thing I left out was the foreground sage and juniper bushes seen in the NE image with the drive/entry. I also had to have "Limit to Camera Visibility" enabled for the FP native grass.

The scene loads in pretty quickly and can be displayed at 1080 without error message. At 1080, Vantage shows I am using VRAM = 4.06 G.

So I am at the limit but this is working real well all things considered. It is a great help for my current project and I'm glad I took ad-vantage (pun intended) of the generous free trial period to dive into it. Really very simple to get up and going with Vantage, at least for my purposes.

Now I have to determine which video card to get as an upgrade so I'm not so close to the VRAM usage limit.

I understand that Vantage will not access multiple GPU's. If I keep the RTX 2060 that I have and add another more powerful GPU with more VRAM, will Vantage be able to know which card to use?

Thanks!

[vladimir.nedev]

I understand that Vantage will not access multiple GPU's. If I keep the RTX 2060 that I have and add another more powerful GPU with more VRAM, will Vantage be able to know which card to use?

Vantage can use up to 2 GPUs.
You can choose which GPU(s) Vantage uses on the command line.
One of our next releases will also have a "device select" dialog in the UI. It has already been developed.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[npg]

Note that if you use two GPUs the smaller one is the limiting factor. Their memory pool is not cumulative, each one holds a separate copy of the scene data.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks to you both for your ongoing help.

Nikola, for sure i do not want to add a second more capable GPU but then have Vantage remain limited by the less capable RTX 2060 6G that I currently have.

Am I correct in understanding Vladimir's info above that, thru the command line or soon thru a UI in Vantage, I would be able to add and assign a second more capable GPU as the one Vantage would use? (the MB in my system has room for another GPU to be added).