Interesting Luxology video on GPU rendering

[lycium]

http://www.luxology.com/tv/training/view.aspx?id=536

Respect to Luxology for sticking their neck out to debunk some of the hype surrounding GPU rendering!

With the performance aspect addressed maybe someone wants to look at the unbiased-ness of the GPU renderers out there; for one thing, having a surface albedo > 1 (to "simulate light sources") without the scene brightness exploding - energy is gained, not conserved, at every bounce - must surely rule out any claims of physical correctness.

[Godzilla]

We've always said that Octane and such 'unbiased' renderers were biased - no?

[dakiru]

Interesting video! Indigo is very capable of CPU rendering today and I am curious of what you guys will bring in future

P.S. Very nice option of communication with a wider community. I am quite sure that a lot of people would like to hear you "live" from time to time.

[Soup]

Good video, quite comprehensible

[neo0.]

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, guys. That was with a 12 core CPU. Im sure if you had a CPU with 90 cores, the gpu would look awfully meager, by comparison, but most people have 4 core cpus.


Still, I do agree with their motto : faster = easier. As a long time user of indigo, I will have to say that speed is Indigo's biggest weakness. Interactive rendering is obviously a long way off for indigo, but in the long term I think that should be the eventual goal for indigo. Still, until then , any speed gains would be greatly welcome. In the video, we see several modo renders that only took 30 seconds. OK, I don't have a 12 core spu, but it would be great if indigo could complete simple direct lighting + less than 200K poly scenes in around 15 mins.

[pixie]

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, guys. That was with a 12 core CPU. Im sure if you had a CPU with 90 cores, the gpu would look awfully meager, by comparison, but most people have 4 core cpus.


Still, I do agree with their motto : faster = easier. As a long time user of indigo, I will have to say that speed is Indigo's biggest weakness. Interactive rendering is obviously a long way off for indigo, but in the long term I think that should be the eventual goal for indigo. Still, until then , any speed gains would be greatly welcome. In the video, we see several modo renders that only took 30 seconds. OK, I don't have a 12 core spu, but it would be great if indigo could complete simple direct lighting + less than 200K poly scenes in around 15 mins.

You can get 8 easily and affordable these days... overclock it a bit and presto, beside you'll get a faster computer than does more then 3d rendering

[Headroom]

, but it would be great if indigo could complete simple direct lighting + less than 200K poly scenes in around 15 mins.

Yup, that would be nice. But not at the expense of doing away with:
- mesh lights
- IES lights
- aperture diffraction
- MLT Bidir
- Light Layers
- network rendering
- Heck I don't know where to stop

These all add complexity, which in case we were not aware of it already, we could have learned from Mr. Peeblers video.

Don't get me wrong, I have a beta license of Octane on my Windows machine at work as well and I like it. However, It is just another tool and a recent project, a studio lit product visualization, was easier to do in Indigo for several of the above mentioned reasons.

They are just different tools. Maybe you need to start looking behind the usual marketing blabber that seems to be very dominating in this very competitive market and analyze which one of these "tools" is better suited to the projects you do.

If what you stated defines your projects then you may be better off with another renderer.

Back to the video, I'd have to agree that the comparison hardware wise was rather silly. A 12 core BOXX box (don't remember if the elaborated on the amount of RAM) is a lot more expensive then a 4-core machine with an Nvidia 480GTX.
Using a 4-core BOXX maybe equipped with a current high end Nvidia Quadro 6000 with 6gig of memory would have been more appropriate. Again - Marketing and not only in that section

Other than that I found the video informative a and it clarified a few misconceptions.

[lycium]

Yeah the hardware choice was kinda inaccessible to many... it would have been nice to compare, for example, an i7 920 with a GTX 470 (budget-conscious power user) against Core 2 Duo with a pair of GTX 480 (GPU-crazy power user), which are roughly comparable in cost.