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GPU Rendering


Anthony Neary

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I came across an article a little while ago that mentioned C4D was moving to incorporating PreRender GPU powered Rendering capabilities.  Do we know if this will come down the pipe in to VW?  I thought I had seen a timeline of end of this year for C4D.  Should we expect a VW update around that time to update the engine inside VW?

 

Or is this all heresay at this point? :P

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

From the info I've seen so far, it looks like that capability might have been implemented as its own engine in C4D, not as part of the Physical renderer from them that we use. I'm mostly going off of the UI bits in videos like this:
 



Checking with the engineers now. But make no mistake: I want this incredibly badly.

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No it is an external render engine, like VRAY4C4D, integrated in C4D.

But it uses open standards and is free (?)

Modo will integrate Pro Render soon too.

 

They also needed to add a PBR material system for Pro Render.

(Finally, thank god)

And it is integrated in their Viewport as a Preview.

 

 

I am really excited about Pro Render.

Finally GPU (+CPU) Rendering on OS X + AMD.

 

But it will not be included in the cheaper C4D Prime Version.

You'll need at least Visualize, Broadcast or Studio version.

Edited by zoomer
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11 minutes ago, JimW said:

From the info I've seen so far, it looks like that capability might have been implemented as its own engine in C4D, not as part of the Physical renderer from them that we use. 

 

Correct. This is not included in our license with C4D out of the box. I can't tell whether it would be available for VW or when but I can say for sure that it will not be an update outside of our release cycle. 
So no, VW 2018 will not have it. :|:( 

 

Edited by Selin
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
6 minutes ago, Johan de Groot • LYVR said:

Is there a best GPU card for VW? AMD or Nvidia?


At the moment, no there isn't one or the other that is superior, we generally only implement features that will function regardless of your GPU brand. For the time being GPU brand wont affect Renderworks renderings in any way.

 

6 minutes ago, Johan de Groot • LYVR said:

Also the egpu looks sweet, will

this benefit for VW?


Things are looking really good from this end, Windows and Mac now both support eGPUs natively more or less and new testing internally here on eGPUs is occurring (I may or may not constantly poke and prod the QA team to try out new hardware the instant I see it released ;) ). It may be a much less expensive way to keep older hardware viable for longer, or to upgrade mid level hardware to high end without having to replace an entire machine. Very promising.

Moving this thread to the wishlist so that I can upvote it.

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10 minutes ago, Johan de Groot • LYVR said:

ProRender is VW internal engine?

 Radeon ProRender is AMD's GPU based rendering engine. Maxon integrated it into Cinema 4D.

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AMD talks about balancing GPU and CPU.

AMD Pro Render is Open(!)CL based.

 

Open means it may run on Windows, Mac and Linux like OpenGL.

Opposed to proprietary solutions like Metal (Mac only) and DirectX (Windows only)

 

It is faster on AMD GPU because AMD (and Apple) always supported open systems

like OpenGL and OpenGL while NVidia preferred to push their proprietary CUDA System

which is quite popular among developers (like for Rendering and other GPU tasks)

If NVidia really would fear that developers jump from CUDA to openCL they would force

OpenCL driver development in weeks to push it on AMD level.

 

 

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On 23.8.2017 at 0:24 AM, zoomer said:

AMD talks about balancing GPU and CPU.

 

At least in C4D it is (currently ?) either GPU or CPU.

Not both at the same time.

 

 

It is said to not support Physical Sky/Heliodon but need a standard SKY with HDRI,

somehow for me it seems to work quite ok with Physicaly Sky.

Also it works for me with standard C4D Materials.

 

Vice versa, the Pro Render PBR stuff, works ok in C4D OpenGL and Render.

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^ Not sure if I really want Pro Render in VW after testing.

 

It is nice for a fast Preview that will show material definitions and brightness.

But I am not sure if I will use an unbiased renderer for final rendering.

It will take some time until you will get a noise free image.

Can't imagine that for Viewport Renderings.

 

And if I use another final renderer like RW/C4D,

the Pro Render Preview may be different from final result.

 

But I really would like PBR Materials in RW

(But not that cluttered like it happens in C4D's Material Manager since new

Reflection System and even more with Pro Render Materials now)

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2 minutes ago, zoomer said:

^ Not sure if I really want Pro Render in VW after testing.

 

Honestly I'm greedy and want both, the super fast preview of GPU based renderers and then (ideally) the ability to split off to something similar to TeamRender to run the final render style so that all my machines can chug along on the same project while I enjoy a drink or three.

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That may be different with 4 NVidia Titans opposed to my outdated 2 D700s

but I get similar results just (biased) CPU Rendering my Quad View's perspective Window.

(Don't know why C4D's Render Preview Marquee option is so bad and slow)

Not so fast for a fast first look of course.

 

Or better with Modo's or VRAY's progressive CPU Preview, that also resembles

the final Render look.

 

OK, as a Mac user I have also no access to current CPU's

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On ‎02‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 11:59 AM, zoomer said:

^ Not sure if I really want Pro Render in VW after testing.

 

I'm not a C4D user, my only experience with rendering is within VW itself, so I'm not exactly sure what you mean about there being a difference in quality between a CPU render and a GPU render.  I would have assumed the GPU would have been able to create the same quality as compared to the CPU.  Honestly I have no idea how computer graphics rendering works under the hood though.

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A CPU can do quite complex instructions, a GPU only simpler instructions but faster.

That is in general useful for things like Rendering, KI and such things.

But all that support for features like a noise shader and such often isn't so easy to implement

for a GPU, if at all, or has to be re-done in a completely new way.

That is why GPU Renderers often don't have all features you were used to or not at that time.

 

From what I heard from people familiar with GPU Rendering, Renderers like Octane are known

to be very fast and AMDs ProRender more on the slower side so far.

 

Biased vs. unbiased means that an unbiased Renderer will do the physical calculations like

in reality like ProRender or Maxwell. Biased Renderers like VRAY or Modo cut off calculations

here and there where it does not have much noticeable impact on the Rendering result.

So these are less accurate if you will but mostly much faster.

 

Someone from VRAY said, it is not very hard to write a good Renderer,

but it is very hard to program a good Renderer that works in production and is also fast.

 

Edited by zoomer
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