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  • New Build for AE and C4d – Need GPU Advice

    Posted by Daniel Burch on December 30, 2013 at 2:21 pm

    Hey everyone.
    I recently decided to freelance from home and now I’m in need of a faster computer.My work consists mainly of Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, Premier, and Cinema 4d. I’m getting more involved with C4D but my renders are slow and working inside the view port with even medium poly counts is a nightmare.

    I’ve built what I know of so far here: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/2sFC4

    I haven’t added a graphics card yet because I don’t know what to get. I heard NVIDIA GTX is great for video editing because of the CUDA cores but could care less if it becomes useless in C4D. So I looked at the FirePros (w7000) because I need a card that will give me 3-6 monitors. FirePros seem to excel at that as well as C4D, but no word on how it works with After Effects. Now I know After Effects uses CPU and RAM to render but what about when I’m not rendering, but just trying to get fluid playback in the view port at full resolution? Is that GPU based at all or is it still all CPU?

    So I’m a little overwhelmed with this situation and need some help.
    Can anyone give me some advice on a card?

    Daniel Burch replied 12 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Walter Soyka

    December 30, 2013 at 5:13 pm

    The GPU is not enormously important to most regular After Effects work. Any modern card will give Ae all the GPU it needs for its OpenGL-accelerated drawing of the UI.

    If you use the ray-tracing renderer in Ae, then you want an NVIDIA card with CUDA because it’s significantly faster. If you’re not using the ray-tracing renderer, then an ATI card will be fine.

    Walter Soyka
    Principal & Designer at Keen Live
    Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
    RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
    Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

  • Daniel Burch

    December 30, 2013 at 5:19 pm

    Thanks for your reply Walter. Great to hear.
    I plan on using C4D for anything 3D related. I haven’t upgraded to After Effects CC yet but hear it has C4D Lite incorporated into it somewhat. Does that involve AE ray-tracing at all?

  • Walter Soyka

    December 30, 2013 at 5:45 pm

    [Daniel Burch] “I plan on using C4D for anything 3D related. I haven’t upgraded to After Effects CC yet but hear it has C4D Lite incorporated into it somewhat. Does that involve AE ray-tracing at all?”

    Yes, Ae CC includes C4D Lite, which is a feature-reduced version of C4D. It also includes CINEWARE, an Ae plugin that allows you to render C4D passes directly inside of Ae, and allows you to pass light/camera/3D data back and forth between the two apps.

    Neither of these features have anything to do with the Ae ray-tracing renderer, which was a new feature introduced in CS6. A CUDA card won’t make your C4D renders any faster — unless you use a third-party renderer like Octane.

    Walter Soyka
    Principal & Designer at Keen Live
    Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
    RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
    Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

  • Todd Kopriva

    December 30, 2013 at 5:47 pm

    Here’s more detail about what the GPU is used for in After Effects:
    https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/05/gpu-cuda-opengl-features-in-after-effects-cs6.html

    ———————————————————————————————————
    Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
    After Effects quality engineering
    After Effects team blog
    ———————————————————————————————————

  • Daniel Burch

    December 30, 2013 at 5:49 pm

    Great, thanks Walter!

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