WIP: The Baby Cheetah

some screenshots of my current project with goal to obtain photorealistic model the baby cheetah

Grooms

Yeti and Arnold or V-Ray motion blur bug fix

If you need to get a working motion blur using V-Ray or Arnold and you have had such problems:

V-ray (normal/with bug)

you need to make a few changes.
If you use in your Yeti tree any expressions with Position attribute (P) then you need:
For Yeti 2.1.xx
1. for all objects from which you get P attribute you need create texture reference objects;
2. replace all P on Pref
For Yeti 2.2
1. the same step as for Yeti 2.1.xx
2. P -> Pundef

If you have this bug and you use VRay, then render time increase approximately x3.3

nvoglv64.dll crash Maya 2017 - Solution to the problem

If during the rendering by Arnold (using IPR Arnold RenderView) your Maya dies and the screen blinks and you find such an error

 then you need to set for Maya app. in Nvidia Control Panel: 3D Settings\Manage 3D settings:

OpenGL Rendering GPU - << select your card in list >>
Power management mode - Prefer maximum performance
Vertical sync - Use the 3D application setting
Maximum pre-rendered frames - Use the 3D application setting

in my cases it was with Maya 2017 Update 4 and Nvidia driver version 385.41

if I correctly understood this is due to the fact that during the time of work in Maya, the video card resets the frequencies and operating mode to the minimum and when the load is needed to update the viewport the driver does not have time to boost the video card and as a result the library crashes.

If this did not help you then try these methods:

• Try to download and install other version video driver, but before install you need complete remove previous drivers and other utilities. For this task use Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) . Also check  and uninstall Vulkan Run Time Libraries. Then install Nvidia Drivers and in custom mode select only drivers and PhysX. Do not install any Ansel and GeForce Experience 

•  Other tips - change the Graphic device timeout in registry editor.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers

With the GraphicsDrivers key selected, on the Edit menu, click New, and then select the following registry value from the drop-down menu specific to

For 64 bit Windows
a. Select QWORD (64-bit) value.
b. Type TdrDelay as the Name and click Enter.
c. Double-click TdrDelay and add 8 for the Value data and clickOK.

or create *.reg file and paste content below

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers]
"TdrDelay"=hex(b):08,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

Intel Xeon E5-2683 v3 in Ringil workstation

My new workstation Ringil, created based on engineering samples Xeon E5-2683 v3. Some of the components I used from the previous computer and the current characteristics are - 2*Intel Xeon E5-2683 v3, Asus Z10PE-D16 WS, 2*32 GB DDR4 2133 MHz Kingston (KVR21R15D4/32) Reg. ECC 16-15-15-36@1066, SSD Samsung 960 EVO, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Aorus Xtreme Edition 11G‎ (on photo old GTX 680 4G). I plan to install more 64 GB RAM. Briefly, the machine is very different from the desktop, for our CG tasks a very profitable investment considering the price of such processors (~ $350). But as a user who used desktop computers for a long time, it is necessary to get used to the quirks of server-based motherboards, and almost insignificant (about 3-5%) overclocking on the bus of the processors themselves.
Link to the table of comparison some tests using Maya, Arnold, RealFlow, Zbrush and synthetic tests

After BIOS modification and all core turbo on (all cores works on 3GHz)

Arnold rendering (102Mhz*28):

Real power consumption: 

Idle ~300W, Rendering (2.75GHz) ~500W, Rendering and GPU (GTX1080Ti) full load ~750W

SeExpr Editor

Finaly! By my request awesome artist  Evgeny Grebennikov (Besha1) besha1@mail.ru  collected and modified SeExprEditor for Windows.
This is a standalone application and so useful who works with Yeti, xGen and other plugins which use SeExpr language

Download :    

Some articles ...

Nice article about eyes for CG guys ->>  http://www.chrisevans3d.com/pub_blog/lets-talk-eyes/

SeEXPR Noise Functions

Visual form some noise and random functions. More info see SeExpr doc

Ramps: