Computer Requirements for Blender Internal Animation (CPU)

Hello,

I’m creating an animation, actually there’s 1.000.000 tri polygons, and render starts to be really slow…
When I play the preview animation (clay render) to see if everything is ok it turns around 4 fps… :frowning:

So! I’d like to know what should I buy :

  • I use Blender Internal Render (no cycle) so it’s the CPU!
  • I’d like to render my animation fast (5 min animation shouldn’t take more than 1 day to render)
  • My computer should easily handle around 3.000.000 tri polygons

I’d like to play actual games with my computer too (GTA5, FIFA15, …)

Max 1.500€

Is it possible?

Thanks! :slight_smile:

The next versions of blender will be greatly optimized in the viewport, so your current computer might handle a few million tris way, way (way) better than now. (try the current builds and they are already optimized a little)

As for the render, you could use a renderfarm such as http://www.qarnot-computing.com/
I’ve tried the free trial, and I’m pretty conviced… it’s cheap, and very green!

That way you might not even need a new computer, based on your current specs you could upgrade your GPU or RAM to handle modern games (?)

But really, it depends so much on what you are rendering, it’s impossible to say if you can render 5min animation in one day. And current CPUs only go so high for a reasonable price.

You are going to have to be realistic wrt your expectations: to render 5 min video at 24 FPS in one day means rendering a frame each 12 seconds which would be quite the challenge for any setup. My son included some animation in a film project last spring and frames rendered in about 15 to 25 minutes each (960 x 540 pixels); needless to say the animated scenes were kept to minimum, mostly establishing shots although he did use a couple of them as backgrounds for green screen shots.

Note he used build in my signature and an i7 iMac in parallel. Scene was complex enough to make viewport slow to a crawl on the iMac but the GTX 970 worked nicely.

Best of luck!

Cheers

Could you share the current PC hardware configuration you have, and how much faster you pretend to be your new PC?

Ok, here’s my config : (Tell me what you think)

OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.1GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 4078MB RAM
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 430
Display Memory: 2762 MB
Dedicated Memory: 979 MB
Shared Memory: 1782 MB

Playback speed is (usually) GPU dependent…

  • I’d like to render my animation fast (5 min animation shouldn’t take more than 1 day to render)

Cant predict your rendertimes… but off one machine that would be 12 seconds a frame, something you probably wont be able to do with just one computer unless your scenes are very simple

  • My computer should easily handle around 3.000.000 tri polygons

Render wise or playback wise?

I’d like to play actual games with my computer too (GTA5, FIFA15, …)

games usually are GPU dependent.

Now based off your current config i would do a couple of things…

As the cpu is pretty old try and find a second hand CPU, something like a i7 2600

Memory Wise throw 2 x 4gb sticks in it and it will be 8gb of available ram.

GPU, throw a GTX980 in it.

You may need to also upgrade your psu.

All of this shouldnt be more then 1000 eur

Well, you say you are interested in Blender Internal, so I would recommend you go for the best processor you can buy.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html

So, you build your new PC around the best CPU you can, with at least 8 GB of RAM (16 GB would be ideal). If you buy an Intel processor with integrated graphics (better if it is HD 4600, as the i7-4770) you could be using your new PC while you save money to buy a good video card later. So what you have to buy initially would be:
PSU (at least “real” 650W, to prevent problems with the graphics card you buy later).
Processor with iGPU (intel integrated graphics)
Motherboard
RAM
Hard Disk?
Case ?

I have an Intel i7 3770 (HD Graphics 4000). You can share some Blender internal scenes and I could do some testing for you (render time and fps playback).

Sorry if I’m pretentious with your budget, but I have no idea of cost in euros, not even in US dollars.

By the way, I had a GT 430 and is not a bad card to use until you can buy a new one.
Now I have a GTX 960 ssc 4GB (much better than a GT 430), and to be honest viewport and playback performance have not improved much. It is as if Blender could not use the full power of the hardware. But that is changing, it is expected in future versions that viewport, playback and simulations improve a lot.

Thanks, everyone!

YAFU :
Well, I think it’s one of the best thing to do… Actually I only need to animate my characters, I did the 2first minutes of the animation, I could send you what I’ve done…
The render time could be faster if I bake the scene… Though I never done that and I don’t know if I could (Characters move, even the lights move! (There’s spot light like in a Arena).

I’ll send you a PM