Have you tried V-Ray (RT) GPU ?

[LeePuznowski]

We've been using it in production for about a year now. My workstation has 2 x titan X and we also have a small farm with 8 more and another workstation with 2. Most of the work is for tv infomercials (ie. technical animations) so it's not high level film work. The projects generally have mid level CAD files (20 + million polys) so there aren't any problems with the RAM (12 Gig). Startup time on some scenes with larger CAD files for RT GPU Activeshade is a bit long, but works. Although I'm generally happy with the updates and stability, the latest version was not a good version for our setup as there were fundamentally bad bugs which required us to downgrade to 3.5 (I've reported the bug in another thread).

[Anthonyyg]

Hi Blago

I tend to use the IPR more so because I find it:

1. Starts quicker particularly loading maps and geometry.
2. Has less issues with materials.
3. Better stability - I have one model that always crashes with V-Ray RT no issues with IPR I should send it to you for analysis.
4. I don't have to change between renderers it's just one click on the production renderer.
5. Works well with forest pack imho.
6. I feel it's a truer representation as V-Ray RT is using limited rays for GI and Trace depth - I appreciate I can change the settings.
7. For large models I don't have to worry about graphic card memory limitations.

I have a single Nvidia GTX 970 (3GB) in a I7 5960x @ 4.2GHz 64GB workstation 3dsmax 2016 with V-Ray 3.60.03

[jironomo]

We have been playing with RT gpu for about 6 months now. There is so much potential but just a few small things are holding us back from making the switch permanently. We are a visualisation studio doing a lot of archviz and product viz and the following things are crucial for us:

1. Displacement. Would be great if this could somehow be handled better on gpu.
2. Forest pack tint map support. Need this for grass and some plant shaders
3. Forest pack edge mode. For nice clean grass edges.
4. Grow fx not fully supported in gpu. Need interactivity when adjusting grow fx models.
5. A few more render elements. Wirecolor in particular... but I think this is coming in the next release?
6. Alpha layer. Need to be able to assign alpha contribution to objects.
7. Translucency. 2 sided material translucency maps don't work in gpu. Also translucency in vray mat would be nice.
8. Environment fog.
9. Stability. Get quite a lot of crashes when using RT active shade mode.

Basically I reckon Rt Gpu is the future and we are super keen to switch to it asap but just need support for a few more features. So I would love to see you guys just concentrate on getting all the features of vray adv onto Rt gpu.

And in answer to your actual questions Blago: We use 970's for viewport and 1070's for gpu rendering (but will soon update to1080ti's for the greater vram and speed), render speeds are fantastic compared to cpu (external shots more so than internals) and even better now with hybrid rendering.

[Fat Tony]

I have 2 x 1080ti and i didn't intent to use GPU engine in out production pipeline yet since we have bigger scene for archviz so i knew it will be limited.

But i did some tests nevertheless and indeed pretty much whatever was mentioned in here i experienced also.

- displacement is clearing our slowly
- even on light scenes i couldn't load many time because of displ
- still some features don't work (i am comparing to CPU where everything works as expected, i know it is different engine but still i end up going back to CPU) some gradients, vray mesh clipper, caustics, env fog and such
- unable to render scenes and animations just by switching from ADV to RT. i am aware again that it requires different approach but it still gets me, that even simpler and smaller scene usually require a lots of optimizing
- one bug or issue (that i will report) is that i am loosing g-cards connection randomly, all of the sudden it stops reading them for what ever reason. I will look into it and when i learn more i will also report it if it is not HW issue.
- i had 960ti for viewport and 1080ti for render and all worked great, now i have 2x1080ti and running on low priority and i notice lower interactivity (like noticeably lower)

I would love to continue on Vray RT, cause it really is more fun and all, but unfortunately i cannot really use it still in pipeline.

Dont know if this helps but this are my thought so far,
cheers

[JezUK]

I've written about my RT GPU experiences a few times now as it had a big positive impact on how I now work.

My last big project I had to be done very quickly, and the timescales didn't allow anything else in my set up but to go for RT - and RT (GPU) was a God send.

I have 4 x 1080ti's, and saw my render times reduce from 26mins (Adv CPU) down to 6mins (RT GPU).

The only thing I found annoying from the whole RT process, and this is a small thing was the VRay Log messages would zoom through very quickly with no ability to scroll back through them all afterwards - it was as though I had access to only the last 100 lines or something (so could not ever see what any warnings or error were about - I was having to take screen shots using my phone !).

Some of the warning messages too could have been more informative, giving more clues which materials (names) were an issue (i.e exactly where maps were being used - as 3DS Max doesn't have terribly easy ways, or existent ways, of finding materials easily).

RT GPU has really changed the way I work so much that it is now my renderer of choice.

PS - I did try Hybrid, but found in my case (4 x 1080ti's and 1 x 5960x) that adding the CPU slowed my renders - surely 'more hands to the pump' ought to be a speed improvement ?

[francomanko]

Does max RT GPU render instances?

[dimension3plus]

Hey guys,
I'm using RT GPU Hybrid for 2 Month now. Speed is really amazing. I changed my hardware to 2xGTX 1080ti 11gb (no VRAM problems at all). Most renderjobs are four times faster now. Doing archviz, interior and product renderings.

My wishlist is similar to the one from jironomo:

1. Displacement. Would be great if this could somehow be handled better on gpu.
2. Forest pack tint map support. Need this for grass and some plant shaders
3. Forest pack edge mode. For nice clean grass edges.
4. A few more render elements.
5. Alpha layer. Need to be able to assign alpha contribution to objects.
6. Translucency. 2 sided material translucency maps don't work in gpu. Also translucency in vray mat would be nice.
7. Message windows scrolls to fast. Can't see the warnings.
8. More mapping types for my vray hdri skydome.
9. User interface for render settings is confusing. Why couldn't we keep the same structure as in Vray Adv?

Best regards
Olaf

[piotrus3333]

dedicated 1070 for rendering (RX460 for viewport) here. this is my "hobby" machine at home so no real, production work experience so far on bigger GPU settups.

about VRay GPU:
- impressive memory efficiency
- I would say way more stable than regular IPR
- still a lot of missing features (recently missing VRayClipper in mesh mode was a hassle, few months ago animated VRayFur not updating from frame to frame was plain deal breaker)
- no lightcache in Active Shade mode

[AlexP]

Using 4 x Titan X (sometimes 12 x Titan X with DR) and the issues are size of scene, and lack of features compared to Adv.
Works great for single models but then there are some major differences between adv and RT that you can;t always look dev using RT and then render with Adv.
(I know they are different, and expect some differences, but there are a few huge differences that make it difficult to translate)

[BBB3]

Vlado, Blago,
One question: Given your insistence that V-Ray GPU and V-Ray Adv. are two different renderers and that you don't intend for V-Ray GPU to converge towards Adv. (referring for instance to the big differences in how GPU handles procedural bump), are you suggesting users should transfer entirely to V-Ray GPU for production? It strikes me that one of the most frequent complaints here is how much the output of both renderers differs, which suggests most people are using or would like to use V-Ray GPU as a preview render for Adv. (or won't use it at all if it doesn't work as such). Are you saying this is the wrong way to think about it?

[thanulee]

Well, also a legitimate question here is:
Whats the solution if a lot of people's scenes do not fit in their cards memory?
The majority owns up to 12gb ram in their cards and still have issues with that (we talking here gpus over 1k euros each, its not a light investment).

[AlexP]

Vlado, Blago,
One question: Given your insistence that V-Ray GPU and V-Ray Adv. are two different renderers and that you don't intend for V-Ray GPU to converge towards Adv. (referring for instance to the big differences in how GPU handles procedural bump), are you suggesting users should transfer entirely to V-Ray GPU for production? It strikes me that one of the most frequent complaints here is how much the output of both renderers differs, which suggests most people are using or would like to use V-Ray GPU as a preview render for Adv. (or won't use it at all if it doesn't work as such). Are you saying this is the wrong way to think about it?

Good question. Would like to be using gpu for quick iterations and previews, and then adv for the final render on the farm.

[JezUK]

For me, I cope with it mentally by thinking of V-Ray RT as a completely different renderer (like it was an Octane or something)- which of course it's not, but for my mind, I prefer to think of it as such. That way, I can accept that it gives different results to Adv. (which I accept).

Were I to show my clients the differences between CPU Adv and RT GPU then they might (with a critical eye) say they prefer the Adv. images. But by not showing them those, they are impressed with my turnaround speed thanks to RT GPU *and* the images I present them

[thanulee]

For me, I cope with it mentally by thinking of V-Ray RT as a completely different renderer

Yep, totally acceptable as long as all features are on board. I m looking forward to switch to gpus in general.

[JezUK]

Yep, totally acceptable as long as all features are on board. I m looking forward to switch to gpus in general.

But that's the point I'm making - thinking of it as a completely different renderer, one which doesn't have all the features of VRay Adv.

But for what it does, and how quickly it does it (and how familiar it is for me, thereby not having to learn a whole new piece of software), it is unbeatable - in my world