When will the OpenCL GPU render be supported for V-Ray - Sketchup

[Peter.Chaushev]

Still nothing I presume. And not even a peep about any plans or?

No announcements so far. As previously mentioned, the moment there is a change in the situation, we will make sure to make it known.

Kind regards,
Peter

[savage309]

The OpenCL standard has different implementations. The one in macOS can’t compile our source code, there is not much that we can do.

Best,
Blago.

[MadDuke]

No announcements so far. As previously mentioned, the moment there is a change in the situation, we will make sure to make it known.

Kind regards,
Peter

No offense but. This is borderline quite simply rude and unprofessional. I don't expect to be given a date like 31st of September. But I do expect to at least get the info if the V-Ray for Sketchup has any plans of including AMD GPU hardware or no. And if so, is it a long term plan (1-2 years) or something else.
A polite, modern and forthcoming info would be to explain why there isn't OpenCL implemented in V-Ray for Sketchup since it's available for 3DSMax... but considering these vague on liners I don't expect an answer to this question.

Also, implementation of something this can take a long time. So it's not that hard to give an answer like. Not in development / In development / Last mile...

[sirio]

The OpenCL standard has different implementations. The one in macOS can’t compile our source code, there is not much that we can do.

Best,
Blago.

May I ask how other GPU renderer are able to use OpenCL GPU rendering regardless if it runs on Windows or MacOS? I'm not a developer so there's a lot that I don't understand about software coding, but my feeling tells me that since OpenCL is used by less people compared to CUDA and MacOS is a very small subset of your total user base then it doesn't worth developing software for that platform. If that's the case I'm perfectly fine with that, there's nothing wrong choosing to not develop for a specific platform if the income from that are very small, I just think is more honest and professional to tell users about that legitimate choice rather than "we can't do anything about this", especially when less talented developers managed to do that successfully. This is not a critic to your work, I respect that, it's just that users deserve some clarity about developers choice and software roadmap

[savage309]

There are no commercial GPU renders that can run on OpenCL on macOS as far as I know.
There are very few that do OpenCL even on Windows and Linux. I can't name any commercial OpenCL GPU raytracer even for Windows and Linux out of my head, but I am pretty sure there are such.

My home-made raytracer runs on OpenCL on the three of the platforms. It is not really useful though, since it has very few features. When you add sufficient amount of features, some compilers just give up.

The compiler for us is just like the render engine for you. If a certain render engine can't render more than 100k polygons for example, this will be a problem for you to build complex scenes.

Best,
Blago.

[sirio]

There are no commercial GPU renders that can run on OpenCL on macOS as far as I know.

Thanks for your answer
Indigo and Prorender are the first that comes to my mind but I've seen other as well, I'm sure they can render more than 100k polys
What about Metal? I've seen some engine are starting to successfully develop for this even when they have difficulties implementing OpenCL version of their renderer, is this something are you looking into or is just very far from your priority?

[savage309]

I gave the 100k polys as a metaphore for something else. Not that you can't render more than 100k polys ...
Yes, some programs can run on OpenCL on macOS just fine. As the V-Ray denoiser. V-Ray denoiser GPU support is made from the very same team that makes the V-Ray GPU render btw

We don't know how to make the macOS OpenCL compiler not crash when it tries to compile our OpenCL source (the same OpenCL source runs fine on Windows and Linux). Simple raytracers that we have written just for tests also run fine on macOS OpenCL.
Of course, we have reported bugs about those macOS compiler crashes.

All we can say about Metal is that if it turns out to provide solutions for any of these problems at some point, we will look at it for sure.
We, as software developers want our software to run on as many platforms as possible. V-Ray GPU can run on CUDA on 3 OSes, on CPU in hybrid mode on 3 OSes and on OpenCL In 2 OSes.

Also, just in case - make sure to test the render speed of V-Ray running on CPUs vs the render of your choice running on the GPUs on macOS.

Best,
Blago.

[sirio]

I gave the 100k polys as a metaphore for something else. Not that you can't render more than 100k polys ...
Yes, some programs can run on OpenCL on macOS just fine. As the V-Ray denoiser. V-Ray denoiser GPU support is made from the very same team that makes the V-Ray GPU render btw

We don't know how to make the macOS OpenCL compiler not crash when it tries to compile our OpenCL source (the same OpenCL source runs fine on Windows and Linux). Simple raytracers that we have written just for tests also run fine on macOS OpenCL.
Of course, we have reported bugs about those macOS compiler crashes.

All we can say about Metal is that if it turns out to provide solutions for any of these problems at some point, we will look at it for sure.
We, as software developers want our software to run on as many platforms as possible. V-Ray GPU can run on CUDA on 3 OSes, on CPU in hybrid mode on 3 OSes and on OpenCL In 2 OSes.

Also, just in case - make sure to test the render speed of V-Ray running on CPUs vs the render of your choice running on the GPUs on macOS.

Best,
Blago.

Thanks for your answer Blago no need to test Vray CPU against GPU renderer(any of them), as I said I'm not interested in GPU renderer for myself since there's no way my medium/large scene can fit on cards RAM. I'll look into this when GPUs will have at least 32GB of RAM for cheap(realistically in 2022 or beyond), until then Vray CPU is by far the fastest/cheapest solution for my work, the only alternative is Corona but it's still on beta for my platform and it's missing a few critical stuff I really need. That being said I wish that if/when GPU rendering become a viable solution for me, I'll have more options for my platform

[MadDuke]

I gave the 100k polys as a metaphore for something else. Not that you can't render more than 100k polys ...
Yes, some programs can run on OpenCL on macOS just fine. As the V-Ray denoiser. V-Ray denoiser GPU support is made from the very same team that makes the V-Ray GPU render btw

We don't know how to make the macOS OpenCL compiler not crash when it tries to compile our OpenCL source (the same OpenCL source runs fine on Windows and Linux). Simple raytracers that we have written just for tests also run fine on macOS OpenCL.
Of course, we have reported bugs about those macOS compiler crashes.

All we can say about Metal is that if it turns out to provide solutions for any of these problems at some point, we will look at it for sure.
We, as software developers want our software to run on as many platforms as possible. V-Ray GPU can run on CUDA on 3 OSes, on CPU in hybrid mode on 3 OSes and on OpenCL In 2 OSes.

Also, just in case - make sure to test the render speed of V-Ray running on CPUs vs the render of your choice running on the GPUs on macOS.

Best,
Blago.

Hi,
you mention that OpenCL ray tracer can't work normally and that there is no software to support it. How come then even V-Ray for 3dsMax has an option for AMD and OpenCL?
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...p+V-Ray+RT+GPU

"

• AMD GPUs: RT OpenCL on AMD works only on AMD GCN 1.2 (or newer) GPUs with driver 16 (or newer) using V-Ray 3.40.01 or newer. Polaris architecture or later is recommended.

"

How come not on Sketchup?

[savage309]

3ds Max is Windows only.
Problem with OpenCL is primarily macOS (the OpenCL compiler there can not handle our code). Apple announced at this year WWDC that they are deprecating it and that developers should stop investing in OpenCL for macOS - https://developer.apple.com/macos/whats-new/
There are problems on other OSes (performance is not as expected, lacks features that CUDA has, but at least worked), so V-Ray GPU OpenCL even on others OSes has always had not the user experience that we wanted.

Best,
Blago.

[MadDuke]

3ds Max is Windows only.
Problem with OpenCL is primarily macOS (the OpenCL compiler there can not handle our code). Apple announced at this year WWDC that they are deprecating it and that developers should stop investing in OpenCL for macOS - https://developer.apple.com/macos/whats-new/
There are problems on other OSes (performance is not as expected, lacks features that CUDA has, but at least worked), so V-Ray GPU OpenCL even on others OSes has always had not the user experience that we wanted.

Best,
Blago.

Well yeah. But what is (technically) stopping implementation of OpenCL for Windows.

Concerning Apple and OpenCL, no comment honestly. They don't sell (and won't) their devices with nvidia GPUs so I don't get that strategy but, I don't use it (OS X).