If I'm not mistaken HDRI:s were created specifically for lighting in computer graphics initially. They do serve other purposes these days as well however.

People who use texture environments to light a scene use a HDRI most of the time since images with low dynamic range don't give good results. I ...

So the first Nvidia Maxwell card came out. It's not a very powerful card, but also not a very expensive one. The main thing about it is that the power consumption is insanely low. The reference card doesn't even require any additional cables and runs straight from the PCI-E port. The TDP of the card ...

An elephant balancing on a turtle's back!?!? Now I've seen EVERYTHING.

I take it you are not familiar with Terry Pratchett's books. First thing that popped to my head when seeing this render was Discworld. I wonder if it was intentional. :D

http://images.wikia.com/discworldroleplay/images/c/c5 ...

GPU:s are getting way faster than CPU:s My workstation has 2 quadro 4000:s and 2 6core xeons. I got an alpha license for Redshift render last week. 1 quadro 4000 and redshift seems alot faster than 2 x 6core xeons and mentalray. I tried RS at home aswell with my gtx 780 and... well if you want that ...

Anyone getting a GTX 770? I would like to see how it performs in octane.

I'm bumping this thread! (even though it's first one on the list)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27709072/HDRI_test.jpg

Here is a quick test with one of the CGskies HDRI:s. this one has a very high dynamic range. With normal gamma the shadows are not very visible and everything is a bit too blue. I used a 1.8 gamma in Octane. The gamma is reversed in Octane ...

I would try to evaluate the price on how long it takes to do the entire work and then charge somewhere around 40-70 euros per hour. The 3000 euros would give you about 5.5 - 9.5 workdays to finish the job. Does that sound reasonable?

Edit: the rate obviosly might change depending on the country.

Do you mean you are using a HDRI? How do you get real shadows with it?
Yes, the light coming from HDRI image.
The trick is to overexpose the sun disk in photoshop.
It's possible to correct the gamma of the HDRI image, but for value over 1.3/1.4, the color casting become too strong.
For some reason ...

Many composting software are starting to use GPU acceleration. Nuke 7.0 and after effects both have some GPU acceleration. The there are the new programs like Clarisse iFX (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMu9JRX7Pps).