I think I am done with GPU

[squintnic]

corona is only good for arch vis stills IMO
and even then its only the ones that look all white. try doing an animation with it and you will be crying.

vray GPU in my experience is only good for product and automotive, anything remotely complex and architectural and it falls over. without something like redshifts out of core it will continue to be throttled. GPU was meant to be good with volumtrics but the first scene i did with it fell over almost right away with unsolvable issues (as outlined with no solution on this forum)

hopefully the development will continue

[glorybound]

There have always been two schools of thought. Corona always maintained that they don't believe in GPU rendering and they have no plans for it. Others, like V-Ray, say that it is the future. I know people who swear by FSTORM, which is 100% GPU. I guess we have to find what works for our needs and use. it. For me, sometimes GPU works and sometimes it doesn't. I have found that even if V-Ray GPU works for my scene Corona will still render it faster on CPU. I have 72 cores and 128GB of RAM, so it depends on hardware, too. If you have a slower CPU and a faster GPU then the equation changes.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Hello Manuel

First of all, thanks you very much for the time and efforts spent providing this feedback! It's very important for us to have those details since they usually help us to improve the product.
Regarding V-Ray vs Corona choice, both render engines are great for archviz renderings and It's a matter of a personal preference to pick to right one for you.

In regards to the GPU rendering. I must say that the GPU rendering in V-Ray is actually much better in V-Ray Next compare to earlier versions. Almost every aspect of the GPU rendering is improved in V-Ray Next, including the stability, supported features, render speed, memory usage and etc. This is also confirmed by the number of the bug-reports we got from customers, the issues reported for V-Ray Next are far less than the ones for version 3.x or 2.x. Furthermore lot of users already are using V-Ray GPU as a Production render engine, not just as a tool for quick draft renders and they do not have many issues with it.

Of course no matter how advanced and polished is the software, there will be always some issues with it and it's important to let us know them. We know this took some efforts on your side as well on ours but the truth is that both sides should cooperate in such case in order to resolve the issue and improve the product. Sometimes it might look like the issue is common one and could be easily reproduced but believe me, there are many examples where particular issue appears in one environment but not in another.

That's why we are constantly asking for scenes, logs, dumps, assets and etc. Those help us to identify and issue and to resolve it, and the good news is that some of the issues are easy to fix, so very often you could find and fix in the tomorrows build. So yes sometimes reaching the support can actually help to meet the deadline of the project.

I must say that projects tend to break for CPU as well, so it's not something tied to GPU rendering only. In any case please involve us immediately when something breaks, the earlier we got the report the faster we'll be able to provide information why it crashes and eventually a fix or a workaround that may help you to finish to project on time.

Regards,
Svet

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

I think I will switch back to CPU and maybe switch to Corona too, at least I will do some tests, as I heard Corona is widely used in archviz, especially interiors and is faster (?) than Vray in that region. Not really sure, esepcially because I will lose the fast IPR, I am just very frustrated - especially after what happened next time.
Huge rant coming, braze yourself:
(mind you, I am not a newbie. I am doing this since 10 years and went under the hood of vray a lot of times. I am not a crack who understands everything, I am an artist; but I am speaking of enough experience and troubles to say these hard words)

GPU was praised as the next big thing and I held on to CPU for a long time, but Vray Next seemed like troubles from RT times back in Vray 3.6 were a thing of the past.
I was amazed at the speed, especially with IPR and it greatly improved my workflow. I (still a freelancer) invested in the beginning in a GTX 1070, then a 1080 ti, then two 2080 tis and in the beginning it seemed pretty good - me doing mostly product shots and automotive. But I noticed more bugs and that I had to restart Max more often if vray crashed - and it does crash more often than with CPU. But going into archviz ... boy, am I experiencing unstability to a level I never have with Vray.
I now have the habit of opening two or three 3ds max instances at the same time so that when vray gets another one of those "unhandled exceptions" or error 700 or whatever, I wouldnt need to wait to restart and load everything. I am frequently switching to nightlies and newest stable versions to see if things are improving, and sometimes they do, but they do not really.

Just like yesterday, I sometimes have scenes where suddenly everything goes downhill and nothing would render anymore, or rather sometimes even: IPR works, but production doesnt.
endering with a material override to troubleshoot leads to a total crash, as does with my full scene, but rendering parts of it is ok; Mind you, with the scene yesterday, max just crashed totally. I then have to restart, reload, deselect layers, start rendering to see if a certain object makes trouble. Funny thing is: sometimes layers would render fine, sometimes they would make max crash, sometimes rendering is ok, but canceling the rendering will crash max etc etc.
I spent 4 hours troubleshooting, updating vray versions, downgrading them, but to no avail. Other scenes rendered just fine. Then I switched to CPU and it rendered without any problem.

And this is not the first time. Sometimes I am fearful if I can meet a deadline because of unstability.
Obviously the scene will be sent to support, but that is not the point; the point is that in the middle of production I do not have time to troubleshoot or go to support to ask for help - it just takes too much time.

Probably it is not even Chaosgroup fault. I have the feeling that GPUs are an unstable thing altogether. Too many factors and constant driver updates probably makes it hard to code something as complex as vray for GPU.
I was really looking forward to Project Lavina, but this brings in another software that could mess up and make me work overnight again just to keep my deadlines.

After amazing rendering speeds and great IPR sessions I am really bummed out to go back to CPU...or even to Corona because I have the feeling that it is easier to use and gets better results for interiors faster...not sure yet.
Sorry for the rant. But now I feel...actually not better at all haha