GPU rendering on commandline

[Fredrik Averpil]

I'm exploring the possibilities of utilizing the GPU for commandline rendering.

I see that the -rtEngine option is available for vray standalone, but what about when rendering through Maya's batchrender, can it be done?
I'm talking about rendering via "Render -r vray .... scene.ma"

Also, if using the -rtEngine option (we would use CUDA), can this be combined with the -distributed option?

[vlado]

I see that the -rtEngine option is available for vray standalone, but what about when rendering through Maya's batchrender, can it be done? I'm talking about rendering via "Render -r vray .... scene.ma"

No, for the moment it is not possible. We will be working on this.

Also, if using the -rtEngine option (we would use CUDA), can this be combined with the -distributed option?

It should work, yes.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Fredrik Averpil]

Hi Vlado,

No, for the moment it is not possible. We will be working on this.

Allright, that's great news!

It should work, yes.

Even with progressive?

[vlado]

Even with progressive?

Yes. Depending on the scene you might need to tune the rays per pixel/bundle size to get better performance with DR though, especially if the scene renders fast and the slaves generate a lot of data.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Fredrik Averpil]

That is really impressive. How come you haven't pushed this feature harder in your marketing?

[vlado]

That is really impressive. How come you haven't pushed this feature harder in your marketing?

I don't know; isn't it a very specific use case?

Best regards,
Vlado

[ricoholmes]

Using it on a daily basis here and thanking the gods of looming deadlines. It works, works fast and is becoming our go-to method.
I'm with Fredrik on that line of thought. You should definitely hilight the ability, i get the impression many are unaware its possible.

[Fredrik Averpil]

I don't know; isn't it a very specific use case?

Best regards,
Vlado

Well, I'm going to need to run some tests before I know how specific this use case is and exactly how useful RT+DR would be for us... but I'm thinking we could use our nVidia K5200 equipped workstations to create a "GPU farm", which could potentially churn out previz and/or highres packshots quite fast (relative to our CPU based render farm) and leave our regular farm available for animation/final rendering jobs.

I don't know if these numbers are right but someone said those K5200s could theoretically be 14 times the speed of one of our regular render farm blades on a single product image... (seems quite exaggerated to me though and extremely loosely based on whatever)

[vlado]

If you are rendering animations, why don't you do regular frame by frame rendering?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Fredrik Averpil]

If you are rendering animations, why don't you do regular frame by frame rendering?

We do - we wouldn't use GPU/DR rendering for that.

What I mean is that GPU rendering is considered to render certain scenes much faster than traditional CPU rendering. So if you take 10 machines and tuck a good GPU inside of it, it could compare to 15 or 20 (or more?) regular CPU based render nodes. But for stills, you'd have a little bit of a problem (perhaps) to combine the power of those machines when rendering just one single image since the GPUs are not in the same box. But using RT+DR you could probably combine the power of these 5 GPUs and get quite nice render times, I presume?

[vlado]

OK, yes that's true, for still images DR is the only way.

Best regards,
Vlado