Renderotica

Hello Everyone,

I'm new here. I'm belgian, french talking, and I use computers since the 80s. I plan to make a erotic comic with Daz, and I need to upgrade my computer. But I'm not the rich one, my budget is max around 1500€.

I want to use Photoshop too, so I think I need at least 64Gb ram, and I already have a GTX1060 6Gb. After that, I don't know. What would you recommend ?

I7 or I9 ? 1T SSD M.2 ? More, less ? Windows 11 ? Something else ?

Thank you - Gwen69

Originally Posted by: G315t

Hello and welcome neighbor (I'm from Germany) 

Basically the most important thing in my opinion is to have a graphics card that has much Vram, because the DAZ Studio textures and meshes are loaded there. If you have larger scenes ( which you probably will have as a comic creator) working in the scene will be very slow if you have not enough. You can save VRam if you set your viewport to for example smooth shaded instead of texture shaded. 

I don't know exactly how much you will need, because I usually only create poses and not very complex scenes. My RTX 2080 with 8GB is fine for me. 

Also if you use the Iray render engine you probably need more GPU processing power and not CPU because you will want to render on GPU only and not on CPU (rendering on CPU would make your PC unusable until the render is done (in my limited experience) Im an old returning user, and worked in Poser back in the days. DAZ Studio is new for me too. 

For post processing you don't need that huge amount of system RAM. I use Photoshop and right now I only have 16 GB of System RAM which is enough for me. 

 

Have fun creating 

 

Thanks for your kind reply.

Yes, we are neighbor (unfortunately, I don't speak german at all). I know a little about your country, I love Berlin and I like very much the baltic cost. I know less about the south however, but I think there are some very nice place there too.

The video card I can recuperate, a GTX1060, have 6Gb vram only. This is less than your RTX2080 (and it have a lower GPU too). I know it's weak, but I'm screwed with that, because a better video card will suck up all my budget. So I think I'll go for a two times upgrade, and I'll buy a new video card later.

I never used decent 3D tool like Poser, Daz or Blender, but I did already some work with Sexvilla. It's way cheaper, and it was a good solution to give it a try, and to see if I like (and I dare) creating such erotic story. Well, I like (and I dare), so I'm looking for more.

My actual computer is 8 years old. It's a I5-3330, that I upgraded to 16 GB ram, the max its motherboard can go. Photoshop is still slow, too slow. Maybe it's because I use a lot of resources. I create big pages with many thumbs, and many effects, so I need more ram. 32Gb would be enough, I think, but 64Gb would be more secure.

The main questions I have are about the processor and the hard disk. You say that CPU don't count a lot for Daz, and I think you're right. Main work is done by the GPU. But I have read somewhere that when the GPU is overloaded, the CPU take it. So it could have sens to put some money in a better CPU. The difference between I7 and I9 is not that big. It would be way cheaper than a new video card.

After that, there are the hard disks. How much are they important and what sizes ? I imagine that textures and many other things stay on disk and are uploaded "on the fly". Thus, the speed transfer of hard disks is critical. But I'm not sure about it, and I do not know how much very fast hard disk space would I need.

On amazon, they are selling 1Tb SSD M.2 disks for 100$. I could afford two of them. But there are also 2Tb SSD M.2 for ~300$, which is a more expensive solution, but more comfortable too. Or maybe it will be better to have a 1Tb SSD M.2 and a big classical HD. I'll need backup anyhow.

And last question, what about Windows 11 ? Is it okay with Daz ?

Thanks again - Gwen69

Hi Gwen --

In my experience, the installation of an SSD made the biggest difference in rendering and production.  Faster than any hard drive, quiet.  Get the biggest one you can afford (1TB or larger) as you'll quickly fill it up with 3d assets (models, props, etc), pictures and scenes.

Originally Posted by: Gwen69

Originally Posted by: TheBitterGent

Tough times these days in the markets.
Most should go into the GPU (NVIDIA if your doing DAZ Iray) but you will also want the rest of the system to to be able to keep up with it.
I want to say 8GB VRAM is min but you might could get away with 6 with small, light poly scenes, settings adjustments, and patience.
Power, CPU (8 core), RAM (16gb min), Motherboard and Cooling. HDD Hard drives can be used cheaply to archive scenes and backup assets libraries (I have 2 10TB in Raid) but the main running library and system will be much faster on at least 1 NVME (Gumstick) SSD to start of I would say min 2TB for system running Windows 10+. Get a mobo you can upgrade on in the future.
You can use the site pcpartpicker.com to build a system out or check compatibilities.
If your super apprehensive about building your own computer, look for prebuilds with NVIDIA RTX30 series cards and intel CPUs. (but you gonna be looking at aprx $5000)

As to the Photoshop, I would highly recommend Serifs Affinity Suite of products (Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher) Each can be purchased for $50 each (or less if you get during a sale (Spring, Fall, Holidays)). They will have what you need for 3d comic work and you'll own for life vs the Adobe always pay subscription.

Get into it and test your systems limits first and see what you need and ROI as you go. Unless your worried about market volatilities and further price hikes, then start planning and build responsibly.

Hi Bitter Gent,

I know about computers. I did a big burnout, but I was a C/C++ coder and I use computer since the 80s. I can't work anymore, I love comics from childhood and I want to give a try making something erotic story myself.

I didn't know about NVME. It seems really better than ordinary M.2 for working 3D. Using the PCI express sound definitely a good idea. Of course, it's more expensive, but not that much. It looks I could get a 2Tb SSD PCIe 4.0 NVME M.2 for less than 400$

About video card, I think I'll wait the market get back to more reasonable prices. 6Gb is low, definitely, but upgrade to 8Gb don't worth the money.

Affinity Photo looks great !! I just have read the official advertising site and I have to investigate a little, but it could be a very good tools for me. And, yes, cheaper. They have smart objects, powerful layers and text tools... all I need.

One last question... what do you think about multiple video card mother board ? I could buy a mobo that allow me to put multiple video card in the future. But, it doesn't seems so interesting since each video card have to store all the resources in its vram. Vram doesn't stack, and that reduce most of the interest.

Thank a lot,

Gwen69

Hi Gwen,

The M.2 "Gumsticks" are gonna be marginally faster (broadly I think it measures something like 5-15% depending on user workloads) than the 2.5'' SATA SSDs.  Faster system start, updates, downloads, assets and scene loading, uploads, and basically system and storage responsiveness overall.  

I dont run a dedicated rig and I originally got 1 1TB M.2 as overall system storage and well Windows 10 pro, my applications, and after really starting building on my assets library, well it filled up rather quickly. Not that DS takes up that much space, or even my scenes (slightly accessorized pinups with image plate backdrops mostly). However, the renders even just images at 8k, edits downsized to 4k, high-rez textures, and product backups there was no way. 

So, I have a custom rig, now 3 years old. I7, GTX1080Ti 12GB VRAM, 32gb (2x16gb DDR3 ram) clocked at 3.5ghz, 1 1TB M.2 on board system drive, 1 2TB M.2 on board DAZ Library dedicated drive, 2 10TB 3.5'' SATA HDDs (in RAID in case 1 goes down) for Purchased/Freebie DL Product backups, Personal Products, scene/image storage, and general archive.

SIDE NOTEs: Yes there is a ton of freebies out there, watch for quality (peeps gonna hate, but avoid POSER stuff), and overall at this point I would say avoid anything DS predating Genesis 3 at this point exception maybe for non dforce clothes back to Genesis 1. This will save you storage, time, and headache. Also, If brand new take a moment to learn the DS file system (ie: data, People, Props, runtime) before going deep into the freebies. I spent many hours cleaning my library up after diving deep into freebies too fast.... also 7Zip is your friend!!!   And yes screen grab or save pdfs of your purchases, and if at all possible, backup your purchased product zips, product pages, and main and promo images. You might have access to the zip files later but their detail pages have been known to change, give update breakages, or outright vanish from the stores.

The GPU is gonna be the heavy lifter in your rig. The newer cards are faster for a snappy viewport and renders and the VRAM will be how big or heavy you can make your scenes. I would say in this market a GTX1080 12gb VRAM will get you the size for scenes but it'll still take patience. I would recommend skipping the 20 series cards as theres not enough bang for your buck and 30 series being 2x faster, still needing the 8+ GB VRAM (and as assets are getting better the minimum continually grows). IF you can get one. High poly hair and dforce sims are a still a major drag on my system, and if it didnt take a Go Fund Me and a guy in a trench coat to get a RTX3090Ti I'd be on it. 

My very limited understanding on dual GPU motherboards is Daz Studio dosent really take advantage of them unless you run them in SLI. People running dual cpu rigs will use them to work in 2 instances working and rendering if they don't have a 2nd dedicated render rig. The newer cards dont run SLI and when some gamer build hackers forced SLI on 3090s they even ran slower. You're better off with one large card especially when also considering the power usage. Speaking of which you'll definitely want a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and remember frequent saves, nothing worse than having a huge complex meticulous scene vanish to the nether because the power went out suddenly, DS or system crash.

For smaller card tight resource budgets. I've heard you can avoid some memory leak by saving, then restarting daz and loading scenes fresh before rendering. You just dont want scenes too large that they roll you over to cpu rendering because its multiple times slower.

I would say just stay focused on creation and production. Believe me when I say you can spin your wheels forever finding freebies, chasing deals, contemplating niches, products, or marketing strategies.

Throw some crap on the wall take some criticism and then improve and keep throwing better and better crap on the wall till people say wow that's not crap. And if you like it who cares what they say.

Like Michael Jordan and Shia Labeouf said, "JUST DO IT!!!"

Edited by user Tuesday, January 18, 2022 2:29:23 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: Gwen69

 

Okay. I thought use old characters for mass peoples, secondary figurant and so on. The "NPC". But it's maybe not a so good idea.

 

You COULD and even moreso if you are doing toon shaders. Its just that their 3Dlight textures predate IRAY for figures and their compatible assets  (Clothing and Hair) are so low res now for anything resembling photo real at mid distance unblurred you're going to be texturing alot.  If you are texturing and shading in Blender then maybe this dosent effect you as much. The old stuff can be auto fit easily to the new figures but not the other way around without convertors. Poses are also very incompatible before G3 because changes to mesh and rigging. So if you are using old figures for backgrounds then you are going to be using money, storage space, and time completing them and upgrading them to bring them up to snuff. Resources that could going into newer figures and assets (which I would add invest in Morphs morso than characters, unless they are somehow game changing or phenomenal). The old clothing isnt dforce ready either so getting a thing like dresses or baggy clothing to drape and fall for poses means time tweaking dforce and running sims. Shoes, I try to stick to solid base matching Shoe to Figure.

Pick some stuff up if they are free or like less than $2 to see if it works for you (their should be lots of G2 stuff being dumped from the daz store soon) low poly hairs might be good for you to use as well but I would get a universal hair shader product to help with quick retexture and coloring across all of the old hairs.

Thats just my take on it  

Their are some other tricks like instance scattering and billboarding for mass peoples.