Underpowered Japanese PCs

[Saulkar]

Hello there Escapist! Time for a weird one.

So anyways, without doing any research at all I noticed a trend.

On Deviantart I can easily find a plethora of extremely talented 3D artists with amazing renders and I kept hearing how great stuff was on pixiv so I decided to take a casual stroll around and immediately noticed something odd. As a 3D artist with ten years of experience (and perpetual creative difficulties) I immediately noticed all of the hallmarks of working with an underpowered PC:

1. No GI
2. No Radiosity
3. Fireflies
4. Noise
5. Single/No Subdivision Iterations
6. Low Resolution Textures
7. Hard Shadows
8. Overuse of AO

And these are only the ones off the top of my head. The reason however that I do not believe a lot of these people are beginners is because they clearly understand scene layout and composition, colour usage and negative space, superb rigging and posing, some animations are uncanny in their realism, a clear understanding of anatomy and edge-loop deformation, and many WIPs (Work In Progress) to show that they actually made most of what you see. That and they have been posting for years. Oh sure, there are some amazing 3D shots but they are either not the norm or the search algorithms are screwing me over.

Before anyone asks, I am double checking the characters they type in and their profile locations to make sure that they are Japanese (or at least pretending). Now, why am I assuming that it is a matter of underpowered computers and not some other factor such as a work-life balance that slowly sucks the soul until there is nothing left but a hollow husk of a human that can only reaffirm that it truly still exists by brief creative bursts in their highly limited and coveted spare time... AHEM! The reason being is well, I have heard numerous jokes on both the INTERNET and in person that they love their computers small and underpowered (citation on that last one). I can see them being small due the highly limited living space many urbanites find themselves in Japan but Mini-ITX computers smaller than a shoe-box can hold full sized components with adequate cooling and such.

So what is it? Is software and hardware so much more expensive over there or is there just not as much focus visual artifacts when rendering CGI over there and totally not a factor of highly limited and coveted spare time?

DISCUSS!!!

 

[NPC009]

All I know is that PCs in Japan are the territory of hobbyists and enthousiasts. Most people are used to using their phones (Japan's Galapagos phones have been ahead of the functionality curve for the longest time) for things like e-mail, browsing the internet and so on. Computer use in schools is low compared to the west, and many offices cling to outdated hardware because older generations refuse to adjust (faxes are still a thing in Japan). PCs and laptops also tend to be relatively expensive, partly because of low demand. Plus, there's not much pushing PC technology forward. For instance, PC gaming in Japan is not really a thing. Some gamers use a PC/laptop to play doujin and indie games, and those tend to have extremely low system requirements.

 

[Saulkar]

All I know is that PCs in Japan are the territory of hobbyists and enthousiasts. Most people are used to using their phones (Japan's Galapagos phones have been ahead of the functionality curve for the longest time) for things like e-mail, browsing the internet and so on. Computer use in schools is low compared to the west, and many offices cling to outdated hardware because older generations refuse to adjust (faxes are still a thing in Japan). PCs and laptops also tend to be relatively expensive, partly because of low demand. Plus, there's not much pushing PC technology forward. For instance, PC gaming in Japan is not really a thing. Some gamers use a PC/laptop to play doujin and indie games, and those tend to have extremely low system requirements.

Interesting insight. I actually forgot the points about their advanced smartphones and primitive office environments.

 

[Baffle]

The newest version of 3DS offers network rendering in the cloud, they should try that. Older versions might offer it too, I just downloaded the new one because it's free for students. I'm trying to learn to use Blender. And it really is very very trying.

 

[Saulkar]

I'm trying to learn to use Blender. And it really is very very trying.

Believe it or not but I have used 3DS Max for 10 years, Maya for 1.5, Lightwave for 2, and Blender for 8, and while Max has the most complete and powerful modeling toolset out of all of them Blender is by far the fastest to model in! You just need to give it time.

P.S. I use mainly Maya with a Side of Max (and Zbrush) for my daily work.

P.P.S. I wonder how effective cloud rendering really is. Just uploading it would by trying for myself as one of my characters consumes 4 gigs of data. 3.4 of it is texture files, now explode that to a whole scene.

 

[Baffle]

Believe it or not but I have used 3DS Max for 10 years, Maya for 1.5, Lightwave for 2, and Blender for 8, and while Max has the most complete and powerful modeling toolset out of all of them Blender is by far the fastest to model in! You just need to give it time.

I'm not even at the hobbyist level to be honest, mostly I like playing with the physics engines. I started in Lightwave but moved to Cinema4D as that was the only package I could get a course on. Then I went to Blender because I felt I should learn something I could keep up to date (that is, it's free - my copy of C4D was starting to show its age in terms of lack of features).

Now I'm a student again I thought I'd pick up 3DS, but to be honest I haven't got the time to learn all the things I'd like to in all the packages I'd like to (also trying to learn Revit).

Considering it's free, Blender is awesome. It just takes a while to get used to the way it works. It doesn't have the most friendly UI I think, and the reliance on shortcut keys makes it difficult to know what commands are actually available. I love the sculpting tools, even though I'm shit with them.

I'm not sure about cloud rendering - I think it's just a bolt-on to force a subscription-only approach for the software (and I hate that).

 

[Saulkar]

and the reliance on shortcut keys makes it difficult to know what commands are actually available.

I actually really love blender for that though I totally understand where you are coming from in the sense that it limits what you actually can visually determine the capabilities of the software.

One easy way is to press CTRL-E for edge commands, CTRL-V for vert commands, and CTRL-F for face commands with W dealing mostly with special commands and U dealing with UVW unwrapping commands.

Since I started out with GMax and then seamlessly migrated to 3DS Max I already was familiar with a plethora of 3D modeling techniques and tools that I would google in order to find out how to accomplish in Blender which is how I discovered most of them and adopt a hotkey based workflow in any program I use.

I'm not sure about cloud rendering - I think it's just a bolt-on to force a subscription-only approach for the software (and I hate that).

No doubt, no doubt at all.

P.S. Most commands can also be found under the View-Select-Add-Mesh menus and thus one can easily see what is available what what their commands are. I also just remembered that pressing Shift-A will bring up the menu to spawn just about anything and CTRL+Tab+ 1 2 or 3 will allow you to quickly switch between Verts, Edges, and Faces.

 

[Laughing Man]

I am sure their is some sort of long standing import tax on non native electronics hardware as well which makes non home grown tech stupidly expensive. Given that the majority of the tech inside PCs is made / owned by American companies that may explain the lack of up take in PCs, it would also explain why Sony and Nintendo (home grown console makers) tend to do quite well there while MS is all but ignored.

 

[Baffle]

Snip

Thanks for the tips. Today I learned not to tick the 'Square samples' box - it was a long, slow, lesson.