Changing over to GPU Rendering - Conversion Advice?

[BKE]

I am changing over to GPU rendering. Has anyone else made the conversion? What challenges have you faced? I have a high quality render farm. I am in the Midwest U.S. - what have people found to be a good avenue of selling the CPU based render farm to invest toward the GPU system? Thanks!

[Morne]

errrr? I wouldnt use GPU rendering as final production render. More like quick "good" previews.
Lot of things still isnt supported on RT - unless you mean some other GPU rendering engine?

[BKE]

errrr? I wouldnt use GPU rendering as final production render. More like quick "good" previews.
Lot of things still isnt supported on RT - unless you mean some other GPU rendering engine?

It seems that Chaos is continually adding abilities to RT. In the meantime, it seems that Octane Render will get me by. I welcome any additional insight/comments!

[vlado]

errrr? I wouldnt use GPU rendering as final production render. More like quick "good" previews.

Surprisingly, many people use it. It is true that many things don't work yet, but even those that do can get you a final render (if you think about it, the GPU engine now has more features than we had in V-Ray 1.0, and people used that ). For the next service pack, there is even more functionality included and it's also even a bit faster than before.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morne]

For the next service pack, there is even more functionality included and it's also even a bit faster than before.

Best regards,
Vlado

Then you'll have to change the name from RT to IT - Instant Time

[Alan Iglesias]

BKE, I'm not sure how familiar you are with RT/GPU, but before changing over to it for all rendering, I would make positively sure that it can satisfy all of your current rendering needs.

To do this you should run extensive tests to see if RT/GPU will do everything you need it to do - say, like building or converting a scene typical of your current work environment and seeing how well you can render it in RT/GPU. This is what I have been doing recently and yes, it takes a while, but after some testing you will have a very good idea of what it is and is not capable of (and also give you a chance to figure out workarounds if needed) and whether or not you should make the plunge.

I can tell you this: When I do render final shots (and animations!) in GPU it is definitely the most fun I've ever had in 3D. Besides being very fast, PPT takes away all of the GI biasing and image sampling concerns and the shots look very, very pristine - no lack of details because of limited light scattering!

Personally, lack of support for Color Correction, some blend/composite maps and materials, some procedural textures, and render-time displacement have been the biggest issues for me, but your mileage may vary. As Vlado says, 2.4 will be released soon and make RT/GPU even more useful so I'm very much looking forward to that.

Best of luck to you,

-Alan

[vlado]

Personally, lack of support for Color Correction, some blend/composite maps and materials, some procedural textures, and render-time displacement have been the biggest issues for me, but your mileage may vary.

Color corrections and mix maps work fine in 2.4; render-time displacement you can sort of substitute with the Displace modifier (though it's not quite the same thing). For the procedural textures, I'm curious to know which ones you find useful. We coded the Noise texture, but it slowed down the GPU code a bit more than I would have liked (even if it was not actually used), so for the moment it's disabled.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Alan Iglesias]

Hi Vlado,

Yes, I'm very much looking forward to the Color Correction and mix maps improvements in 2.4. ...And I have recently done some work with the Displace modifer and RT GPU. No, it isn't the same thing, but yes, it can work pretty dang good if you beat on it hard enough.

Unfortunately, the procedural map I use the most is, in fact, the Noise and noise-derived maps. With GPU I have been using various large noise bitmaps that I created in Max before-hand. They work just fine, but just not as convenient as having them done on the fly of course.

But it's not a deal-breaker for me, and speed is king in GPU, so if the noise map is slowing everything down, I can continue (and will advise GPU users I know) to use the pre-rendered noise bitmaps. I'll have quite a collection of them before long!

Thanks for everything,

-Alan

[BKE]

Hi Vlado,

Yes, I'm very much looking forward to the Color Correction and mix maps improvements in 2.4. ...And I have recently done some work with the Displace modifer and RT GPU. No, it isn't the same thing, but yes, it can work pretty dang good if you beat on it hard enough.

Unfortunately, the procedural map I use the most is, in fact, the Noise and noise-derived maps. With GPU I have been using various large noise bitmaps that I created in Max before-hand. They work just fine, but just not as convenient as having them done on the fly of course.

But it's not a deal-breaker for me, and speed is king in GPU, so if the noise map it's slowing everything down, I can continue (and will advise GPU users I know) to use the pre-made noise bitmaps. I'll have quite a collection of them before long!

Thanks for everything,

-Alan

Thank you, Vlado & Alan for the things to consider - and to look forward to!
Best,
Brian