Corona render speed

[tomislavn]

Of course the GPU solution has been much worse than it was supposed to be but that is not because
the software behind it but because the Nvidia's greed...

...But the greed finished him IMHO we should be seeing real time 1080p frames totally clean by now with GPU... and that is not the case...

Cheers!

Well, I would say that it is not only nVidia's fault. I think there is a much bigger picture behind all of this - its all about business after all.

You must remember that CPU rendering is a huge business and I don't think it is going away anytime soon (even though GPU's could take over quite easily if you compare the raw processing power).

[lacilaci]

Well let me say that octane and iRay were a game changer, but not in the sense the said.

The change was people choice of unbiased or nearly unbiased over old biased techniques that remained unchanged for years.

Of course the GPU solution has been much worse than it was supposed to be but that is not because
the software behind it but because the Nvidia's greed.

How much time passed since we got the 580? It is the best rendering card behind the Titan, the problem...limited RAM, the other problem... They don't share CUDA... The other problem... ATI don't want to integrate CUDA...

MAXWELL architecture was suppossed to be astonishing for rendering, and the initial feelings is that it is a bit faster tha before... A bit... And Corona blasted any GPU with the good old CPU so...

So the GPU rendering solution may have not been bad... But the greed finished him IMHO we should be seeing real time 1080p frames totally clean by now with GPU... and that is not the case...

Cheers!

Well, if I understood correctly, after fermi the aim for nvidia was to make gaming gpus less powerhungry and more effective for game engine rendering.. So the result was making gpus better for gaming but not so much with other stuff.. so yeah 580 should still be a monster for rendering with let's say iray even today (if the scene fits into vram) 

And just as gpus develop further so does cpu.. The longer you see the gpu rendering development the more it seems that for most people are cpu renderers better value and more valid choice overall. If no revolution in gpu development will happen then it will simply stay that way.

Not saying that you can't do fancy stuff with gpus... You can if your work pays for it and fits within those limits gpus have.

[Ondra]

(even though GPU's could take over quite easily if you compare the raw processing power).

Why didn't they then? I've been hearing this line for the last 5 years, that was enough time IMHO. Are all GPU renderer developers just idiots? Or do they know how to take over the multi-million $ market, but don't want to?

[tomislavn]

(even though GPU's could take over quite easily if you compare the raw processing power).

Why didn't they then? I've been hearing this line for the last 5 years, that was enough time IMHO. Are all GPU renderer developers just idiots? Or do they know how to take over the multi-million $ market, but don't want to?

Maybe it's because they would crash the money flow that CPU industry has. I mean, theoretically, when you compare a CPU with a GPU - GPU is way faster with computations. Then again GPUs running at 100% over longer periods are still way less reliable (temperature, quality, lifespan) then CPUs.

[Ondra]

Maybe it's because they would crash the money flow that CPU industry has. I mean, theoretically, when you compare a CPU with a GPU - GPU is way faster with computations. Then again GPUs running at 100% over longer periods are still way less reliable (temperature, quality, lifespan) then CPUs.

oh, so it is a conspiracy? Give me a fucking break...

theoretically, when you compare a CPU with a GPU - GPU is way faster with computations

"Theoretically" is important here. If you get down to any practical algorithms outside of what GPUs were originally designed for, the difference suddenly vanishes.

[tomislavn]

oh, so it is a conspiracy? Give me a fucking break...

Everything revolves around money nowadays, so it wouldn't surprise me :)

[Ondra]

false. I wish I was on Intel's payroll to not use GPUs... :D

[tomislavn]

false. I wish I was on Intel's payroll to not use GPUs... :D

Okay, "almost" everything, with "almost" as an important word! :D

Anyway, to make it short - I cannot see GPU-s bypassing CPU-s for rendering purposes in close future (for whatever the reason). Let's talk Corona now :)

[boumay]

I am still using 3xGTX780's in my home i7 rig for some product shot renderings using Bunkspeed suite and which I cannot do in Corona

Can you post some tests? And, please, interior scènes with reflections and réfractions, and quite a bit of geometry complexity would be a good thing also.

[Juraj]

While it's true Keyshot and other mostly IBL based renderers are fast, so is fast Marmoset, and other real-time tools :- ) Material shading is simply easier to compute then full complex scenes. GPUs currently in CGI production mostly speed up calculations that are already fast/simpler in nature. (But I didn't try Redshift yet so take with slight grain)
Where Corona's speed shines, is where others don't, and that's complex scenes with intricate GI which is both fast and accurate. It completely wins on this field, and that feature alone is what makes is attractive.

[Captain Obvious]

(But I didn't try Redshift yet so take with slight grain)

Redshift is basically... V-Ray on the GPU. It's got similar settings, similar setup, similar algorithms. Light cache, irradiance cache, adaptive anti-aliasing, etc.


It's much faster than Corona (with a decent GPU, at least), but it doesn't produce as nice results.

[tomislavn]

Can you post some tests? And, please, interior scènes with reflections and réfractions, and quite a bit of geometry complexity would be a good thing also.

I have absolutely 0 interior or any arch-viz stuff ready for Bunkspeed. I am using it for jewelry, watches, mobile phones and sometimes cars rendering. You know the simple and fast stuff. Open the model inside of it, apply materials from the library and render 500-1000 passes in a minute - send it to a client - done. Not to mention that turntable animations are done in like maybe half an hour.

I was doing a photorealistic render of a diamond ring for one client a few years ago and he wanted a turntable animation of it as well. I wanted to die using V-Ray for it and it was the only render engine that had the ability to produce quite nice diamond look at the time. It took like an hour per frame. Then I have discovered Bunkspeed :) and it was working insanely good and fast on my GTX 580 at that time. Still using it for similar things nowadays.

All my arch-viz stuff is either V-Ray or Corona. It would take too much time to convert those scenes to Bunkspeed and re-apply all the materials. It is just not worth it, Bunkspeed wasn't made for it anyway.

[Captain Obvious]

Bunkspeed is literally just iray packaged up in an easy to use interface. If you want to get an idea of how well it would perform rendering interiors, then just set up an interior to render in iray inside Max or whatever.

(spoiler: as evident by their architectural gallery, results aren't great)

[tomislavn]

Bunkspeed is literally just iray packaged up in an easy to use interface. If you want to get an idea of how well it would perform rendering interiors, then just set up an interior to render in iray inside Max or whatever.

(spoiler: as evident by their architectural gallery, results aren't great)

Of course, but it still gets me to the point of setting up the lightning from the scratch and re-materializing everything. Cannot be bothered for a non-sense comparison :)

The best case scenario would be to use Corona for everything, but I just can't yet.

[juang3d]

Captain Obvious what do you mean with results aren't great? you are referring to render time or to final result?

I love Corona, but iRay delivered pretty neat results for me until I started to work with Corona, the bad thing about iRay is that it's GPU so to get a good farm you have to spend LOTS of money, the other bad thing is that is being developed by nVidia and it's evolution as a render engine is SLOOOOOW and it's evolution inside max is SLOOOOOWER if it can, and the other bad thing is that it's GPU so it's limited by the GPU Ram... so mooooore lots of money...but speaking about visual quality, that gallery may not be so pretty, but it's more in the artist hand than in the engine hand, you can see not-so-pretty renders made with Corona also, so I think in the majority of the cases is in the artist hand, at least when we speak about Corona or iRay.

And BTW; yes, Bunkspeed is iRay inside a different GUI and they are limited by the Nvidia development speed, they evolve faster than iRay inside max, but they are equally limited to what Nvidia delivers :P

Cheers.