What Hardware Should I Get to Render Animations?

[Craiggerbird]

Hi everyone,

I'm making my first game and will be rendering my first animated scene in the next few weeks, but I suspect that I should probably get some new hardware to comfortably render animations before that happens.

Right now, I'm using a GTX 960 with 8GB of ram, and renders are taking a long time, but it's okay because I set them to batch render overnight. I'm concerned that that's not going to work too well when it comes to animations, though, so I think I'll probably want to get some new (used) hardware.

In your opinion, what should I be looking for in terms of graphics card if I want to comfortably render animations? I'll probably buy a used graphics card since they tend to get really expensive new. And RAM. Should I be looking at 16GB at minimum?

Any tips or advice is appreciated!

 

[MissFortune]

Making a game with a 960 is either A) going to take a very long time, B) test your patience, or C) both. I mean, you could probably do it with 960. There's a few devs working with 10 series cards (Snoop being one, or used to be at least), but it's not going to be fun. Once again, you could probably theoretically do animations with a 960, but you're going to need the patience of a saint to get through it. That's working under the assumption the rest of your hardware doesn't pay a price for it, too.

What's your budget? Unfortunately, the market for used and new GPUs is brutal, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Under normal circumstances, I'd say try your luck with a used 2060/2070 Super, but you're still looking at anywhere from $650 up to $1200. Even worse? 1660s aren't all that much cheaper. That's going to be what decides your GPU, it seems. It do needs to be Nvidia, just in case you weren't aware. As for ram/memory, 16GB should be enough. 32GB would futureproof you for a little while, though. Just go with what you can afford. You'll see minimal differences with ram with Daz between 16 and 32. The important part is the CL and Mhz. CL16/18 and 3200/3600 should be more than good enough for almost anything.

 

[Craiggerbird]

First of all MissFortune, thanks a ton for all the information you just provided me with! I was worried that I wasn't going to get a response from anyone.

I think I can spend $750-$850ish on a GPU. I've looked at the 2060/2070 Super on gpu.userbenchmark.com and have tried to make that as kind of a benchmark for what I'm looking for since you mentioned those graphics cards as something that would work.

On the site, it says that my GTX 960 has an Effective Speed of 33.7% and the GTX 2060 Super a speed 99.8%. I've tried to look for cards that have similar Effective Speeds as the GTX 2060 Super, and it looks like I could get some similarly fast cards, like the 1070-TI (Speed of 98%), in the $700-$850 range.

 

[NG Creative]

First of all MissFortune, thanks a ton for all the information you just provided me with! I was worried that I wasn't going to get a response from anyone.

I think I can spend $750-$850ish on a GPU. I've looked at the 2060/2070 Super on gpu.userbenchmark.com and have tried to make that as kind of a benchmark for what I'm looking for since you mentioned those graphics cards as something that would work.

On the site, it says that my GTX 960 has an Effective Speed of 33.7% and the GTX 2060 Super a speed 99.8%. I've tried to look for cards that have similar Effective Speeds as the GTX 2060 Super, and it looks like I could get some similarly fast cards, like the 1070-TI (Speed of 98%), in the $700-$850 range.

Also look for the number of CUDA cores. More the CUDA cores, faster is the render.
If you have a single GPU containing 4000 CUDA cores at a price and a combination of multiple GPU's gives you more number suppose 6000 at the same price and vram is same then 2nd one is better option. But also need motherboard which is compatible with both GPU's.

Also there is an option of Filament render engine in Daz studio. Where render time for a render is 0 seconds. But needs to learn how to use that. Results are not equal to iray but if you're not much into photorealism then it's a good option. So in filament 4-5 second animation can be rendered in 1 minute at 30 fps which contains 120-150 frames at 1080p quality. Iray will take hours or days for that.

Here are some of my renders using filament
https://f95zone.to/threads/just-a-journal-ng-creative.98793/

I may do a tutorial on filament about some tips on f95 in future.

 

[Craiggerbird]

Thanks for the help, NG Creative. I just asked a more specific question on this forum to see *exactly* what specifications I should be looking at in a graphics card and if older cards with a high number of CUDA Cores (e.g., the 1080-Ti) are just as good at rendering as the newer cards with the same number of CUDA Cores (e.g., the RTX 3060).

I know about the Filament option on DAZ and have been using it to pose characters before converting to iray, but I never considered using it for a final product. You do a great job of making it look nice! Your Rousse scene looks especially good to me.