Quick Tech Update (Patreon)

I have a bit of a tech update for y'all, something that's rather crept up on me unexpectedly. I've been meaning to write about bits of this sooner, but you know what life is like sometimes. Grab yourself a beverage and a comfy seat, this is a longer than usual post.

DAZ x WP Guru

First of all, thanks to everyone who dropped by the recent live stream on the official DAZ YouTube channel! It was a lot of fun to do, and the turnout was incredible. Judging by the comments and chat, viewers loved it and there's a real hunger for more. I hope we can turn this into a regular feature, and I'll let you know more as soon as I have details. 

DAZ had originally contacted me a couple of months ago to produce the first webinar for the Season Pass holders, and it too was a blast! It was all about 3 point lighting and how to setup delicious looking portraits. I'm hoping we can find a way to make it available to more viewers either via YouTube, or as a download from the store. Fingers crossed! 

I'm super excited about the opportunity to bring 3D know-how and good times to a larger audience. For me, that's what life is all about, and these streams bring together everything I'm passionate about: DAZ Studio and other 3D apps, live content production, graphic design, 3D technology and people. All from my walk-in closet come sound booth (and now YouTube Studio). 

I'm bringing this up because during the DAZ stream, my computer decided to restart without notice after an hour and a half. There's a chapter point if you want to watch it, quite funny actually. Although I didn't lose any work thanks to frequent "save your scene" reminders, it does hint at an underlying issue with my main desktop machine.

Turns out that when I tried to do some finished renders of that scene for the DAZ Gallery as I had promised (see attached pictures), the same issue happened several times in a row: klonk, restart. "Kernel power issue" says Event Viewer. This is likely related to my ageing power supply that even with 850W is no longer able to sustain the necessary peak power requirements for my dual CPUs and GPUs. 

The New Desktop

Thankfully I had already ordered a backup /replacement for my current Z800 workstation, namely a Z840 with an 1125W PSU, better thermal design, capable of running faster Xeon processors, an additional slot for a potential third GPU, native USB 3 and PCIe 3 support and all the rest of it. It can even boot from m.2 drives, which is a nice bonus. 

I've put the latter together from various bits I've ordered from eBay and stress-tested the system for several days on a long Carrara animation render. I thought it fascinating to watch the 48 threads render in parallel, so much so that I streamed it to Twitch as an Always-On "art stream" accompanied by ambient chill music. Interestingly it attracted a lot of unique viewers, more so than my occasional "regular" streams on the same platform. 

I liked the Z840 so much that I've ordered another model from the same seller in Wisconsin, with exactly the same specs, but sadly it had an issue with the first PCIe slot (random video flashes and instabilities). Heavy-heartedly I've sent it back - they even paid for return postage. 

My original plan was to use the new Z840 "at some point in the future", because I trust that you know just how much hassle it is to organise the content on a new system to just the right level of working detail to be comfortable with. I thought I'll take my time and have two working systems in parallel, then transition when I'm good and ready. 

Looks like that plan has just been pushed forward a bit. My current Z800 is still very much operational, it's just that the priority for getting the new system up and running is more important than I thought it was. I'm waiting for a bit more RAM to arrive, but I might get started on installing apps tomorrow. 

The Streaming Rig

I have a separate computer that takes care of streaming and recording what I'm doing on/with my main PC. This setup allows me to produce videos quickly and efficiently, and I've come to rely on this setup to maximise my productivity. A 10 minutes video literally takes 20 minutes to record and perhaps an hour to edit, which is fantastic compared to the time it took before I had a Stream Deck. The second PC is a vital part of my current production workflow.

I did three streams over the weekend, all of which were important enough that I deferred various upgrades on my that computer. Up for grabs was the new OBS 27, a new NVIDIA driver, and of course the "new feature update for Windows 10 20H2" (what an unbelievably terrible name that is indeed). 

So Sunday after the last stream, I selected "Update and shut down", then took a couple of days off, thinking everything was going to be just fine the next time I need the machine. 

Today I wanted to share a great trick with you on how to bend an object and deform it with a character, when I noticed that my streaming PC was not responding anymore. Turns out the latest Windows update went wrong, making the whole machine non-operational. 

Sadly there's no easy way to uninstall such updates. I've tried my best for a couple of hours, but it looks like it'll need a complete re-install to turn my rig into the reliable partner it once was. 

The streaming/recording PC is a Z600 with a GTX 970 , two Xeon x5675 CPUs, 24GB or RAM and a good bit of storage. It's never had an issue since taking on that role, but the last fresh Windows installation is several years old - and these things happen. 

Creative Output

I therefore find myself in a situation of having to take care of two full PC builds this week, unexpectedly so, without much time for content creation (be that educational/fun videos or 3D ventures). This means I won't be able to share the amount of videos with you that I usually produce.

I'll keep you posted on the progress of whipping everything back into shape though. I have redundancy on almost everything, so it's just a matter of thinking outside the box again and put pieces into different boxes while impatiently staring at the screen for several hours.

Having said that, I did manage to put the above collection of renders together over the last few days. Some were in preparation for the stream, others happened afterwards. 

Not only did I do stills, I also worked on all the graphical elements for the stream, like the title sequence: it's a 1500 frame Blender Render, partially rendered with Cycles X on one of my GTX 970 nodes. There was also the holding loop, graphical overlay and music loop. I even managed to squeeze in a few articles on the WP Guru website in between. Never a dull moment ey?

Have a wonderful week, and if all goes well I'll see you Saturday at 10am EST for a round of Subnautica on YouTube. 👽