New kid on the block (GPU Renderer)

[StompinTom]

GPU support is being worked on for Indigo currently

Awesome! And knowing the kind of tricks you can pull, I bet it will be quite the treat.

[Stinkie]

Awesome! And knowing the kind of tricks you can pull, I bet it will be quite the treat.

Quoted for agreement.

[neo0.]

Maybe CPU throttling too? So, you can choose to to use your GPU instead of your CPU or you could adjust the amount of your CPU that indigo uses with a slider bar?

[Borgleader]

Isnt there a priority setting already? or is that for something else?

[StompinTom]

Maybe CPU throttling too? So, you can choose to to use your GPU instead of your CPU or you could adjust the amount of your CPU that indigo uses with a slider bar?

We don't even know what the GPU will exactly be doing yet.

[patmania]

It seems that unbiased commercial renderers are polarized between New Zealand and Spain, its a curious thing...

to add to the curiosity, both Spain and New Zealand are on exact opposite sides of the planet http://www.antipodr.com/?addr=wellington&x=0&y=0...

[juan_irender]

It seems that unbiased commercial renderers are polarized between New Zealand and Spain, its a curious thing...

to add to the curiosity, both Spain and New Zealand are on exact opposite sides of the planet http://www.antipodr.com/?addr=wellington&x=0&y=0...

Yes, this is also true, maybe an unknown relation is playing here, hehe.
On my side (Spain) the curiosity is the overall lack of independent software development. Then, having here not one but two (and well known) commercial unbiased renderers is nothing but a surprise.

[OnoSendai]

It seems that unbiased commercial renderers are polarized between New Zealand and Spain, its a curious thing...

to add to the curiosity, both Spain and New Zealand are on exact opposite sides of the planet http://www.antipodr.com/?addr=wellington&x=0&y=0...

Hmm. tunnel through the centre of the earth perhaps??!!??

[neo0.]

I don't know much about hardware, so maybe some could could clarify.. What kinds of things can the gpu accelerate? Does this mean that we will be able to do real time tonemapping?

[lycium]

that's a complex question to answer, you'd need to know a fair bit about computer architecture and programming to get the full picture... but in a nutshell, gpus try to maximise throughput through parallelism, and cpus try to minimise latency through out-of-order execution, large caches etc. the two are converging though: cpus are becoming more gpu-like, and vice versa.

as an example, things like AI and data compression are better suited to cpus, whereas something like tonemapping (exact same computation applied to many many pixels, all fully independent) is ideally suited to gpu implementation - realtime tonemapping is totally trivial on modern cards (gf8 upwards).

[psor]

@neo0.

Since you've got a 8800 GTX which supports CUDA you should take a look at the Octane render demo.
It won't be as fast as on a 260 or 280 GTX but enough to give you a quick overview of what the
future will bring to your desktop. You can try Dade's SmallLuxGPU also as it's written in OpenCL.
Especially for people like "Stinkie" Octane can be a good solution as it might give a much faster
result as Indigo. And when I see his minimal artsy fartsy renderings I have no doubt about it.
Non the less there seem to be many ways to speed up unbiased renderers. Have a look at
the Thearender forum, especially in the Showcase section. ;o))



take care
psor

[Stinkie]

Especially for people like "stinkie" Octane can be a good solution as it might give a much faster
result as Indigo.

Sadly, Stinkie has an ATI card.

But let's suppose for a sec that I would be willing to get me an NVIDIA one. What would you tech-savvy lot recommend I put in my 2008 8 core Mac (which is running Vista)?

And would I be able to render my artsy fartsy thingies at, say, 4000 x 3000?

[psor]

From what I can tell I'd say yes. Mac OS X will not recognize a 285 GTX but if I'm correct you've a lot PCI-E slots in it
and so you could still use your ATI card for OS X while you can use both of them under Vista. When you get a 285 GTX
with 2GB of ram I guess the resolution you did mention should be possible. Better to ask at the Octane forum tho.

btw. have you tried the Mac version of SmallLuxGPU already? If not you should check it out. Keep in mind that you will
need the latest drivers with OpenCL support. In the end it doesn't matter which renderer to use. I just like to have the right
tool for the job. And thus I use different renderers for my needs. I've never been a fanboy of any software. ;o))



take care
psor

[pixie]

Sadly, Stinkie has an ATI card.

I just love when people start talking of themselves in the 3rd person!

What would you tech-savvy lot recommend I put in my 2008 8 core Mac (which is running Vista)?

OS X

[Stinkie]

Thanks for the anwer, Psor. No, I haven't tried SmallLuxGPU yet.

I just like to have the right tool for the job. And thus I use different renderers for my needs

As do I. And as soon I saw that Octane video, I knew it was a tool that'd come in very handy. Still, it's early days for the app, and I'd like to see where they head for a bit, before I buy.

Also, Ono mentioned Glare was looking into GPU acceleration. Might be useful to wait and see what comes out of that.

What would you tech-savvy lot recommend I put in my 2008 8 core Mac (which is running Vista)?

OS X

lol.