RT GPU Production : Interior Archviz - BF/LC

[3LP]

Hi guys,

Since SP1 is out, I've been playing a bit with RT GPU as production render and though it could be useful if I showed how it came out.

The purpose of this exercise was only to gage how RT GPU was handling interior archviz both for Light Cache as secondary bounce and speed.
I slapped the scene together for the occasion in few hours only, it's not at all representative of what my usual output quality looks like.

Each camera sequence has been rendered with a single GTX 780 Ti with the following time limitation per frame :

Kitchen 1280x720:
Cam 01 : 40 min - MB:Off / DOF:Off
Cam 02 : 20 min - MB:On / DOF:On
Cam 03 : 15 min - MB:On / DOF:On
Link Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YgaFDjOGHM
Link to raw footage as QT Animation : http://wip.sbrusse.com/RT_GPU_Prod_Kitchen.mov

Bedroom 1920x1080 :
Cam 01 : 60 min - MB:Off / DOF:On
Cam 02 : 90 min - MB:Off / DOF:On
Link Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_YnvgRhLJ0
Link to raw footage as QT Animation : http://wip.sbrusse.com/RT_GPU_Prod_BedRoom.mov



These are the raw footage rendered, no post at all of any kind.

Hope this will enlight those who wondered how RT GPU would handle interior archviz.

Still for each cam :
Kitchen Cam 01 :


Kitchen Cam 02 :


Kitchen Cam 03:


Bedroom Cam 01 :


Bedroom Cam 02 :


Cheers
Stan

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

One of those lame questions but.

The 3d model of lady... where is it from ? ;- )

[theedge]

One of those lame questions but.

The 3d model of lady... where is it from ? ;- )

https://secure.axyz-design.com/shop/bwom0008hd2o01p11s

[Pixelcon]

Nice curtains!

[vlado]

Nice! This turned out way better than I thought it would

Best regards,
Vlado

[wxyz]

Beautiful job. Did you have to alter the materials for the axyz model?

https://secure.axyz-design.com/shop/bwom0008hd2o01p11s

[3LP]

Beautiful job. Did you have to alter the materials for the axyz model?

I think not, it was a model from our library that I just grabbed, we might have modified it to use it production though, not sure.

For those who wonder how still frames looks like for production :

Here is a 5k render of The kitchen :

http://wip.sbrusse.com/Kitchen_Cam_01_5k.jpg

I send it overnight so this took 10h40 to render, wight have been production quality ready way before that.
As you can see, it's noisless IMO.

For the purists and just for the sake of it, I let it render for 34h in total, so here are 3 steps (saved as *.VRimg as compression might mislead):

10h : http://wip.sbrusse.com/vfbHistory_20...3_41_263.vrimg
24h : http://wip.sbrusse.com/vfbHistory_20...5_04_912.vrimg
34h : http://wip.sbrusse.com/vfbHistory_20...1_06_670.vrimg

As you can see, pretty much no change beside in the ceiling in the top right side but not enough to be concerned of.

Any other wishes someone would like me to try out?

Cheers

Stan

[Pixelcon]

Did you find that any of the features RT GPU is missing made things difficult for you?

[3LP]

Well, yes for sure, few, mostly maps, and maybe a few plugins although plugins are less noticeable, specially in archviz interiors.

The most wanted map for me would be the bercon maps. Although they are loads of other once like multitexture/crossmaps/VP wall and tiles/etc.

For some, you can easily dodge the bullet by creating them in PS if needed, but the power of bercon si so huge.
Specially since Grant Warwick explained all his workflow in Mastering Vray where he makes heavy use of bercon maps.

Otherwise, the usual Vray renders slightly differently but that could be overcome by starting fresh and building up the scene only using RT, you will not even notice it's not handling things the same way.

Now that I think about it, I had a few issue with HDRI in domelight/environment of max and in Vray roll out (I should probably report that one as well). But I managed to make it work quite quickly in the end.

Maybe not a missing feature but I found that sending the scene to the GPU everything you press render, (who could be 10 times in a minutes if you're tweaking little things) is actually a pain. The production renderer starts straight, the gpu takes quite some time to transfer everything back and forward.

Thinking about it, having geometry/textures left in the gpu after render would be great, and only check what had changed and send only that when rendering again.
I guess you could just go for the activeshade in that case, but it's dual BF and you're loosing the massive advantage of LC.

Stan

[Pixelcon]

Well, yes for sure, few, mostly maps, and maybe a few plugins although plugins are less noticeable, specially in archviz interiors.

The most wanted map for me would be the bercon maps. Although they are loads of other once like multitexture/crossmaps/VP wall and tiles/etc.

For some, you can easily dodge the bullet by creating them in PS if needed, but the power of bercon si so huge.
Specially since Grant Warwick explained all his workflow in Mastering Vray where he makes heavy use of bercon maps.

Otherwise, the usual Vray renders slightly differently but that could be overcome by starting fresh and building up the scene only using RT, you will not even notice it's not handling things the same way.

Now that I think about it, I had a few issue with HDRI in domelight/environment of max and in Vray roll out (I should probably report that one as well). But I managed to make it work quite quickly in the end.

Maybe not a missing feature but I found that sending the scene to the GPU everything you press render, (who could be 10 times in a minutes if you're tweaking little things) is actually a pain. The production renderer starts straight, the gpu takes quite some time to transfer everything back and forward.

Thinking about it, having geometry/textures left in the gpu after render would be great, and only check what had changed and send only that when rendering again.
I guess you could just go for the activeshade in that case, but it's dual BF and you're loosing the massive advantage of LC.

Stan

Interesting information. Thank you!

[Guest]

There is flickering in the animation. More noticeable in the top left corner and wooden furniture of the bedroom scene.

Also in the 5k kitchen, I noticed the sink and plant pots are quite noisy. Unless that is how they are supposed to be?? RT GPU is certainly faster with LC but its still not quite there yet IMO as a production alternative especially when rendering 5k. In 10 hours I would expect an absolute noise free image. Or rather our clients would expect should I say ;p

[3LP]

Hey,
For the mats, I'm not sure, as I said, I slapped everything together in few hours, didn't really checked, might be the bump that's way over and who's giving that grainy look.
So with a bit of tweaking, I think we can get that render under the 10h easily.
Beside that material, the rest of the image is pretty noiseless IMO.

As for the render-times, I guess we need to put that into balance with the hardware.
For this exercise, I used a single GTX 780 Ti who is the same as a GTX980 priced at $550-600.
Also, keep in mind that it's BF, not IR.

For 10h of render for example, would you expect to have a noiseless 5k render on a i7-2600k or a dual xeon 2699 V3?
I know I'm pushing a bit the comparison here but a GPU is cheap, and you can easily get 4-6 on a board. (8 if you go for xeons but you're loosing the "cheap" advantage)
So even at $600, four of those GPUs will do this render in 2.5h for only $2.4k, that's the price of a cheap workstation.
I doubt you'll be able to get that render-time on a workstation worth $2.4k in only 2.5h.
If you add a bit, you could hit the point where you've under 1h/5k render for only $5-6k.

I could actually try out, swap back to usual progressive production render and send it with on my i7-4930k for 2.5h and see the noise, I'll let you know.

Cheers

Stan

[Guest]

We have i7 3930K workstations here. A 5k interior render is usually distributed across 2 workstations that finishes in 10 hours, rendering with BF/LC & HDRI lighting. So its an overnight job so the client has it in the morning. Sadly its not something I can post here to show.

I appreciate the cost differences here between GPU and CPU as its something I have explored myself. Until its a lot faster, I think the hassle of setting it up and making sure materials etc. are supported, its not job cost effective for us anyway to rely on GPU just yet.

[3LP]

Yep I understand completely what you're saying.
The exercice was to illustratate where the current developpment was at for the moment.

I've done the 5k render on usual production renderer for 3h to match the previous render with 4 GPUs.

http://wip.sbrusse.com/Kitchen_Cam_01_5k_CPU.jpg

Cheers

Stan

edit : Whoops just noticed I had the curtains hidden, this could lead in quite some time difference so I'll resend tonight with the curtains on to have a proper comparison.
At the same time, it will be a good exercise to see who both render engines renders differently.

[3LP]

Hey guys,

Here is the 3h render with the normal production render as progressive.

http://wip.sbrusse.com/Kitchen_Cam_0...U_Curtains.jpg

As you can see quite some more noise so it does show that 4 GPUs will be way faster than my CPU, maybe even two GPUs will already be faster.
Anyways, interesting to see the difference also on how thing are rendering out differently between the two.

Stan