Are you currently experimenting with accelerating V-Ray with GPUs? Cause I have seen a few demos of that around the web.
The issue that I want to bring with this is that I think that a new different term should be used when talking about super fast GPU rendering. The thing is that I have seen the term real-time used all over the web to describe the newer fast renderers like Bunkspeed Shot or for many other GPU accelerated renderers and I think that it is a misnomer and I have seen that that is confusing many people in graphic forums.
We know very well that real-time rendering means many frames per second for fluid animation and interactive manipulation and this is not it and by far. Now it is being used to describe a frame that even with GPU acceleration takes at least several seconds to complete and I think that that is inappropriate.
Even if in this demos the person is interactively changing the scene as soon as that person changes the position of the scene one bit the rendering restarts and it takes many seconds after that to create a rendering that has final quality. This is of course far faster than before but this type of interactive manipulation is not creating several completely finished frames per second as in 3D games to suggest the use of the term real-time and it is confusing people cause I have seen this several times already in forums.
My suggestion to you rendering companies or groups is to use the term Near Real-Time or/and the acronym NRT to describe this new type of super accelerated rendering. So we would have Pre-rendered for the older type slower renderings Near real-time for this new type of super fast renderers and leave Real-time for game/3D editing type (Direct 3D, Open GL) rendering.
I think that if we do that people are going to be less confused about this new type of technology and it would help end a lot of the confusion that too many people still have about this. :roll:
NRT ? that sounds a TAD constructed tbh. For the record Chaosgroup doesnt call VrayRT Realtime. It’s called an interactive rendering system. Quote from the Product page:
Overview
Created with the busy and rigorous 3D artist in mind, this topnotch raytracing technology allows immediate interaction between the user and the virtual environment. V-Ray RT follows the user’s actions while working on the scene and automatically and progressively generates a photorealistic preview of the scene. It is designed to improve and fasten the artist’s work on the Texturing and Lightening stage.
General
The V-Ray RT interactive rendering system has many advanced features; here only some of them are listed. Note that all features are subject to change without special notice.
I find iterative or interactive a way better matching term then “Near Realtime” wich feels kind of meaningless to me
If it is really Real-time and done at about several frames per second then it should be called real-time but if it is the other way around (several seconds per frame) it should be called Near real-time instead.
But also many people talking about this newer type of renderer in You Tube videos mention the term real time including in VRay videos. The term Interactive doesn’t sound so bad but that doesn’t mean that near real-time is that meaningless cause it is very straighforward and honest. It means precisely that it doesn’t render in real-time speed but close to or near real-time speed and some renderers out there are rendering very, very fast enough in my opinion to be called that. I mean the term as a term in between pre-rendered (very long rendering times) and real-time like in 3D games.
If your company wants to called it interactive that’s OK, after all it is your idiosyncrasy but what I don’t want is to see people around calling these new type of renderers real-time cause thas is not correct and it is a lie or at least big exageration and I’m seeing this done all too often already all over the web and I think that that should change.
I believe Vlado clarified this last month or so, RT is taken from the word Interactive. I could find the post if necessary, but, really what’s the point anyway? ChaosGroup is gonna call it whatever they think will make it sell the best and distinguish itself in this growing market of GPU assisted rendering.
Anyway, I’m not speaking against this type of renderer, on the contrary I like these new technologies a lot, I definitely don’t mind more performance for a renderer. Who minds that? I’m just trying to help shed some light on some things that I see some people confused about in different graphic forums. Well anyway thanks for the help.
When marketing a technology, you want the name to be endorsing, not diminishing. “Near Real-Time” psychologically suggests that it is inadequate for “Full Real-Time” which we all understand is still a ways away in terms of computing power. Interactive Rendering technologies provide what is claimed and the expectations are set to a commercially achievable level.
What sounds more appetizing? “These Potato Chips are Low in Fat!” or “Some Fat Remains in these Potato Chips!”
Mr. Davison over there seem to be taking things a bit too far. I could have answered this quite a while ago if I wanted but I didn’t until know because frankly I wasn’t in a rush to do so. I stand behind what I believe (in everything) and I still think that my ideas have merit despite said person and his jokes. Sometimes simply, they are misinterpreted but that happens to everybody.
If you think that I’m alien to the concept of PR you are very, very much mistaken cause to begin with my father worked for several years in different public relations firms (many of the largest here in Puerto Rico). And I worked with him for several years in things related to the subject and that is just to begin with and won’t go about many more things that I understand about it that are way, way deeper and far more reaching than the mere understanding that most people have about the subject.
I could enter a hot debate here about PR and this or that about it but I won’t because one clear thing that I realized is that discussing these things in forums that belong to some companies is futile sometimes. What I do I do it for the benefit of other people not just for personal satisfaction and I could get into the nitty-gritty of what I’m trying to convey and why I defend it but I won’t because it would take to long to explain in a forum like this and I think that even if I took the time to do so it could be a waste of time anyway.
As a way to clarify this post, Here is a hypothetical conversation between an employer & a prospective employee at a job interview
Employee Hi …my name is jamie…
Employer - …ohhhh your a jamie…actually i think you should call yourself a James instead, as it has an upper class ring to it…or maybe a jay…that’s a sort of a funky modern version…you know real hip!
Employee - [looking rather perplexed] umm..ok…
Employer - So your applying for the 3D Viz job… Oh well then your definately a jim [looking very pleased with him self] all our 3D guys are called jim , as we found that calling them Jamie, james or jay just didn’t sound right…didn’t have the right ring to it, and it didn’t represent the 3D viz side of our company very well
Employee - [looking rather annoyed] Excuse me Sir …Do you want to know if I am any F$@king good at this job or not!!!
-------------------------------------------------
To make your life easier PixelOz…this is NOT a place to discuss the name of anything nor the PR behind it…it is a place to discuss HOW things work, & what’s wrong with it when it doesn’t work & how to improve it.
You can give Vray RT a new name…but I can asure you it WON’T make it render any faster…and it won’t make any NEW features suddenlt appear.
And I can assure you that that’s all that 99.9% of the people care about…faster renders & more features
and I’m not trying to be rude to you either…just telling it how it is…without the glossy PR attached
In the first place my comment wasn’t about PR cause this conversation did not started as that it started about a normal discussions about the merit of a technical term and I mentioned those things in my previous post cause some people over here started to comment about this subject in a way that obviously suggested that I was ignorant and/or stupid and I guarantee you that I’m am neither.
Earlier in the thread mr. instinct had already been fairly explicit and clear without saying things in such a way but these guys on the other hand took another route and I can read between the lines but I didn’t even had to do that cause they were fairly explicit and with most people if they are treated like that in any forum they are going to point it out just like I did.
Just remember to take everything here with a large amount of humor attached… and DON"T take anything too personally, as that is just a waste of time anyway.
Going back to your original post, your problem was with renderers calling themselves real time, right?
Which ones do this?
Besides that, I dont think this is a big deal at all. Anyone who does 3d knows exactly what people mean when they say real time rendering - the word ‘rendering’ at the end is distinction enough between this and actual real time.
Maybe “RT” does stand for “interactive” officially, who cares. IMO “RT” is definitely meant to suggest the idea of RealTime rendering, otherwise why not call it VRayI, VRayIT, etc. I do think the name is just right though (i.e., VRayRT), it is a real time rendering engine in that I do not need to press “render”, it updates the image as I’m modifying setting, materials, etc. Just because it takes a few seconds doesn’t change the point that it is updating it in real time and i don’t need to “apply” those settings to a new render.
We know very well that real-time rendering means many frames per second for fluid animation and interactive manipulation and this is not it and by far. Now it is being used to describe a frame that even with GPU acceleration takes at least several seconds to complete and I think that that is inappropriate.I know very well that any of the current realtime rendering engines (VRay, FinalRender, Fry…) mean the image is updated when I change the scene and it takes a little while for the image to clear itself. If you could try any of the current games on a system from approx 1999 (say something running a nvidia tnt or tnt2 and DX5) you’d hardly call it real time. Just because at the time, game developers were very cognizant of keeping the poly count, textures, fx, etc down to a minimum in order to maintain acceptable frame rates doesn’t make these old systems any more or less “realtime” than the newer ones. For VrayRT, there’s no luxury of pruning the scene down or reducing textures (rendering the complex scene is kind of the point) so rendering times and the frame rate will suffer a bit. It’s still realtime.