Interactive rendering

[3dio]

It is not mine to give recommendations, but i would keep the road-map Ondor defined a month ago.
Distributed Rendering is A and Z of everything.
Once we can spread the image over 5 machines (or 25 CPUs - or 100 GhZ) we can visually test and develop much faster. We can act and deliver our observations to the developer in quite different time terms then now. For each test now we lose precious time, and many problems don't get obvious because we don't have time to wait till end and break the render processes.
Btw, rendering industrial design or architecture, which is about 99% of exposed gallery images on this website, on one workstation - this is something from 2008. Today is 2013 and the work tempo has changed, both by customers and in gfx studios. Those who can deliver the work faster win the job, and i don't think it is our current advantage to render on one single machine. Please correct me if i am wrong :)

thanks :)
best regards

[lacilaci]

well.. there's no distributed rendering in arnold...

[3dio]

"well.. there's no distributed rendering in arnold..."

Hi lacilaci,

hm, an excellent, inverse, counter-argument! :) I have actually nothing to oppose.

Aside the fact Arnold is XX times faster. And aside the fact we should not start counting features Arnold has, and Corona does not. Comparing Arnold to Corona is definitely something you did not wont to write, this would discredit a lot of things. ps. I bet $ 1000,- they will have it in the future too.

I have one better argument: we need DR because Corona is not Arnold.

thanks
best regards

[Ludvik Koutny]

"well.. there's no distributed rendering in arnold..."

Hi lacilaci,

hm, an excellent, inverse, counter-argument! :) I have actually nothing to oppose.

Aside the fact Arnold is XX times faster. And aside the fact we should not start counting features Arnold has, and Corona does not. Comparing Arnold to Corona is definitely something you did not wont to write, this would discredit a lot of things. ps. I bet $ 1000,- they will have it in the future too.

I have one better argument: we need DR because Corona is not Arnold.

thanks
best regards

Any particular tests or research results to back up your claims?

[lacilaci]

"well.. there's no distributed rendering in arnold..."

Hi lacilaci,

hm, an excellent, inverse, counter-argument! :) I have actually nothing to oppose.

Aside the fact Arnold is XX times faster. And aside the fact we should not start counting features Arnold has, and Corona does not. Comparing Arnold to Corona is definitely something you did not wont to write, this would discredit a lot of things. ps. I bet $ 1000,- they will have it in the future too.

I have one better argument: we need DR because Corona is not Arnold.

thanks
best regards

"Aside the fact Arnold is XX times faster." that's already a relative topic, corona does GI caching which makes it a LOT faster in complex GI scenarios..

"counting features Arnold has, and Corona does not." ...but will, have faith in Keymaster's skills ;D

"Comparing Arnold to Corona" ..Just trying to make a point that DR(multiple machines/nodes on 1 frame) might not be as important to renderer's success as it is to yours... I'm not saing it's not important or something... But saying that it is somewhat alpha/omega of a renderer it's just.. nonsense.(MY OPINION)

"I bet $ 1000,- they will have it in the future too." ..of course we can speculate on that.. I believe they will adapt once corona starts taking over business :D:D why not?...

[Ondra]

they dont have it? Really? That is surprising. On the other hand, what is the point of DR if you are rendering sequences all the time anyway...

btw: try to keep the fanboyism to minimum (both sides)...

[3dio]

Any particular tests or research results to back up your claims?

Hello,

thanks for your inquiry, Rawalanche: i have replay it below at the end.

About the research details you requested, we are about to bring out 3 new Tools that should also work in Corona (or, we program them to be compatible with Corona). Since it is not of no concern for the public discussion, i have dropped you details in PM.


About your comparison request, it is empirically easy to replay:
- Rendering a indoor scene in order to get clean output for our xx element&shaders takes on MR/Vray/Frender/Iray/Cinema4D/etc in DR 1 Minute. In Corona, without DR 5 minutes.
I can shot a video of it if it helps to illustrate the speed difference during rendering with DR on 60 GhZ and one without DR on 12 Ghz, if you desire, but you know just as i do, that it will be the most senseless video of all time :)

thanks :)
best regards
igor posavec, 3d-plugin.com

[Ludvik Koutny]

Any particular tests or research results to back up your claims?

Hello,

thanks for your inquiry, Rawalanche: i have replay it below at the end.

About the research details you requested, we are about to bring out 3 new Tools that should also work in Corona (or, we program them to be compatible with Corona). Since it is not of no concern for the public discussion, i have dropped you details in PM.


About your comparison request, it is empirically easy to replay:
- Rendering a indoor scene in order to get clean output for our xx element&shaders takes on MR/Vray/Frender/Iray/Cinema4D/etc in DR 1 Minute. In Corona, without DR 5 minutes.
I can shot a video of it if it helps to illustrate the speed difference during rendering with DR on 60 GhZ and one without DR on 12 Ghz, if you desire, but you know just as i do, that it will be the most senseless video of all time :)

thanks :)
best regards
igor posavec, 3d-plugin.com

I meant the claims that Arnold is XX times faster than Corona. Sure, Arnold is probably faster in some scenarios than corona, but i am sure there are cases where it would be also slower. Mainly, even if there are some performance differences, i have some doubts it would be several times the performance, if we consider what an average VFX scene looks like.

Then again, if what you stated in your previous post is true, then Arnold does not have distributed rendering yet.

Lastly, i do not think that MR/Vray/Frender/Iray/Cinema4D/etc... renderers will achieve so similar results. I would especially like to see iray with distributed rendering, as i do not believe iray has that feature yet, and even if it did, you would be lucky to get clean interior scene with it under an hour, not a minute.

Of course i am not saying i am against DR. We often run into situations where (usually not very smart) client approves final renderings on the evening and wants to have three 7k print res images by the next morning. Then if you have 30 machines at your disposal but you can render only on 3 of them, because you have just 3 images to render, it can be a pain.

[vklein]

Interactive rendering is the key, not really DR.
Interactive rendering and seeing results on the fly while changing materials/lights/geometry leads to much faster workflow, saving manpower and nerves.
In 3dsmax and other 3d packeges you can split still renderings in stripes or blocks over multiple maschines without the renderer beeing able to do it itself.
It's not as perfect as real DR but do the work in 99%. Plus it's a lot easier to send to renderfarms. Everyone doing film/animation work (like we do) will render frames without DR on renderfarms.
Of cause speeding up interactive rendering with DR is highly welcome, but if I had to choose, I would always take interactive rendering over DR.

So please implement interactive rendering into the 3dsmax version, because in VRay it's real timesaver, and I wouldn't want to live without it anymore.
And please implement region rendering, so being able to choose a small part of the Camera View to render, concentrating the full CPU power onto a small part of interest.

[maru]

So please implement interactive rendering into the 3dsmax version, because in VRay it's real timesaver, and I wouldn't want to live without it anymore.
And please implement region rendering, so being able to choose a small part of the Camera View to render, concentrating the full CPU power onto a small part of interest.

Interactive rendering is already partly implemented.
Region rendering is implemented since... forever?

[Ondra]

interactive rendering is implemented, but is not stable. The part of 3dsmax API for it is particularly bad, so it will take some time to battle with it.

As for DR vs. interactive: I understand that you prefer one over the other, but, please, do not do the whole "everyone has exactly the same needs as I". Everyone works differently and therefore have different demands, so it is perfectly normal that you prefer something else. But, on average, more people consider DR the most important feature. Period.

[vklein]

Of cause I understand everyone has his/hers own opinion.
The perfect solution (in my eyes) would be interactive rendering and DR.
I am aiming at animation/movie productions with thousands of frames and not big stills (where DR alone is highly needed).
And naturally non biased renderer tend to render a looooong way, making DR a must. But damn, Corona is fast!

For setting up the materials/light Interactive Rendering is of huge use. Simply work with Vray with it's "Vray RT" interactive renderer and be amazed how it accelerates your workflow (much more than DR does, which Vray also does in perfection).

Please keep up the good work, I stumbled upon Corona a few days ago and coming from the very fast, production-proven and feature-rich VRay(used almost every render over the last 15 years) I am AMAZED of it. Still some things to implement, but hey it's ALPHA.
Again: simply AMAZED and surprised of how fast and beautiful it renders.

Just thinking of using Corona for a few smaller industrial-advertising animation productions (outdoor/studio scenes of electronics).
Never had a alpha-build of a renderer feeling so production-ready as Corona, keep up the good work.

[antanas]

So please implement interactive rendering into the 3dsmax version, because in VRay it's real timesaver, and I wouldn't want to live without it anymore.
And please implement region rendering, so being able to choose a small part of the Camera View to render, concentrating the full CPU power onto a small part of interest.

Well It's already there just not in corona's framebuffer but in default one or in common render settings and it works just like in other render engines, it is quite good alternative to interactive rendering so I'm backing up distributed one instead
p.s I somehow missed Maru's reply, but what's done is done :)

[ivolvestudios]

Hi All

I see benefits in both too. However, for our specific use though we generate high res stills as the majority of our work.
we render stills out to 6K and above for printing marketing brochures and site signage.

I've used Vray RT on projects aswell. At first clients reaction was 'wow' like everyone does. But after a while it felt
more like a gimmick. I saw my artists constantly changing settings just for the sake of changing settings instead of
really thinking about what they were trying to achieve first. For sure there will be a day in the future though where I reckon
RT type systems will become woven into the daily workflow. Definitely not there yet. Not even close IMHO.

Loving Corona so far. Rendered out an image the other day at 6K. 21 hours later it looked great but not as resolved (grain wise)
as I would have expected. The low res (2K) renders were beautiful. I'm sure it's cause I'm new to Corona still and haven't
gotten a full grasp of all the settings.

With regards to DR though, at work here I'd throw 15 computers at renders and get 6K images done in 30mins or less using DR with Vray.
I'm talking brute force with AA so sharp it will cut you just by looking at it too. Considering clients ask for changes AFTER they've been
approved and gone high res, having DR is an absolute life saver. Based on the kind of deadlines we face, DR can make or break us.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing DR implemented and interactive rendering to follow.

Just my 2 cents.

Sunny

[gabrielefx]

Hi Keymaster,

don't use Activeshade to overlay the Corona rt framebuffer.
I use Vray RT, it often crashes, Thea Presto 1.3 too, the same thing for Arion Live, none of these software run good in the Max Activeshade and if run they are sloooow.

The only one software that runs smooth in a proprietary framebuffer window is Octane for Max.

regards