Arion: a Fryrender RT engine + GPU support. Coming soon

[cecofuli]

Ehy guy,

see this very interesting product.

http://www.randomcontrol.com/arion

Fry will be the real anti-VRay? And the development is VERY fast and very good...
I see in action this renderer and I'm very impressed about the quality, speed and tool.

What do you think?

[vlado]

We will see a lot of that coming this year; there is V-Ray RT on GPU, there is also the Octane GPU renderer, FurryBall and I'm sure many more will come. Writing a physically based GPU renderer is very easy. For example, back when we started writing V-Ray, we had to think very carefully about each traced ray - that's why there are different image samplers, irradiance maps and so on to reduce the render times, and each of these is quite a complicated feature to code. In contrast, with a GPU, you just throw all the rays at it, until it's done - and this is actually fast enough to be useable.

I have no doubt that Fryrender is a good render engine, but it will not be the only one

Best regards,
Vlado

[jacksc02]

Arion looks interesting but it sounds very inflexible (just like fryrender)

[instinct]

The featurelist makes me wonder why "No cheats, no fakes" is a feature...where i'd love to cheat and fake for artistic and speed reasons here and there hehe

[jacksc02]

why would you want to "cheat" or "fake" a "real-photo?"

[instinct]

Given the amount of retouching involved with photography these days....most ppl seem to want to :P

[yyk]

Arion looks interesting but it sounds very inflexible (just like fryrender)

What about interactive changes to camera, materials and lighting sounds inflexible to you? it also outputs various channels.. I dunno, I find this interesting development.

[rivoli]

The featurelist makes me wonder why "No cheats, no fakes" is a feature...where i'd love to cheat and fake for artistic and speed reasons here and there hehe

well, if you browse through the unbiased forums it seems quite a few people can't go on any more without that "feature". they actually think there's something degrading and miserable in all these cheats and fakes they see all around them, this overwhelming corruption of what light simulation is all about. so I guess that to appeal them "no cheats & fakes" it's a very strong selling point. go figure.

[vlado]

well, if you browse through the unbiased forums it seems quite a few people can't go on any more without that "feature". they actually think there's something degrading and miserable in all these cheats and fakes they see all around them, this overwhelming corruption of what light simulation is all about. so I guess that to appeal them "no cheats & fakes" it's a very strong selling point. go figure.

I find it strange, because it is easier to create a physically accurate renderer with no cheats, especially on a GPU. All the needed algorithms are well-known and researched, and there is nothing complicated about them (the reason you did not see a lot of this was that is was too slow to be useful). Cheating on the other hand, requires some more thought and careful thinking...

Best regards,
Vlado

[percydaman]

cheats and fakes will always be necessary as long as a renderer is incapable of giving you everything you need, and in a timely fashion without the use of said cheat/fakes. I see no change to this in the near future.

[cecofuli]

Oh, yes, but do you remember?

First: Radiosity, next Photon map, next Irradiance map, next LC, next PPT and now RT engine. And every time, more CPU or GPU power, more photo realistic image and less scene setup time.
Do you remember the good old procedure for the photon mapping (thanks Goncalo ehh) . Each light will be setup. In the future, for arch-viz, catalog etc... the unbiased, with very low setting procedure + good VGA or WS... it's the future.
So, cheat or not cheat, time is money. And, if we have more power in the HW, we can lower the time with this renderer.

And Chaos, with VRay-RT, VRay 1.5 (or 2.0) with GPU support + 32CPU core etc... + PPT follows this road.


PS: I think Photon mapping GI in VRay could be deleted ehh...

[instinct]

As an example a real chrome reflection might look bad (simply because reality isnt always what marketing wants). Now if you can't do fake reflections you end up doing extra layers or retouching = inflexible.
As for renderspeed. Yes we do have a lot more computing power. Have rendertimes decreased ? Nope, complexity went up....by MAGNITUDES, hence i dont see us all using so-called unbiased renderers for
everyday animation work in realtime. Esp given that they arent unbiased...just way less biased then fake methods heh

Regards,
Thorsten

[jujubee]

All these newer technologies makes me think about having to buy newer equipment - and it makes me cry...

[rmejia]

Well, to be fair, the "Fully unbiased (no cheats, no shortcuts)" is under Facts (information about the product), not features. Although it's all part of their marketing. Their 3ds Max page headlines "Turn your 3dsMax scenes into photographs", and some people buy into that. I've seen in the Autodesk forums for architectural software (Revit, AutoCAD, etc.) people in awe with the galleries of renders that look like photos. People with little or no experience in 3d renderings believe that with the software they will turn into Alex Roman. "You can give a man a Les Paul guitar, but that won't make him Eric Clapton". I've got no problem with faking it though, rather have the option than not.

All in all I am exited about the future of RT + GPU, but there are still many paths that the development road can take and after that there will be a new "next thing". It's good that there is competition, as that fosters innovation. I wonder what things will look like 10 years from now.

Edit: Just saw all the videos, I like that one can preview the render elements like Zbuffer, would be nice to have in V-Ray RT

[rivoli]

Cheating on the other hand, requires some more thought and careful thinking...

this is a very interesting point, never thought about it that way. everything unbiased it's sold telling you the exact opposite: it's all groundbreakingly revolutionary, technologically speaking. I guess one tends to believe the hype, after a while.