hi !

 

Just a little (or not) question because some says that LuxRender use Cuda to render.

firstly i'd like to know if it 's true or not ?

And, i need to know if rendering my Poser Pro 2010 scene (animation with character) using Pose2Lux will make me save time and money than buy a new hardware.

on youtube, i didin't find out any video of rendering process using luxerender passing througt pose2lux, so i'm wondering if the time i could invest into this render process will be benefits or not. What do you think about it ?

 

Thanks for help and advice.

 

Best Regards

 

Mike

Quote - ...Just a little (or not) question because some says that LuxRender use Cuda to render.

firstly i'd like to know if it 's true or not ?

Not true. In the current version luxrender can use OpenCL which has a similar functionality to cuda, but it is not the same. In particular, with most benchmarks OpenCL performs worse than cuda (but still faster than without any), but has other benefits. There is a renderer called "Octane", which makes use of cuda, perhaps you confused the two?

Quote - And, i need to know if rendering my Poser Pro 2010 scene (animation with character) using Pose2Lux will make me save time and money than buy a new hardware.

Most likely not. Reasons for using luxrender might be plenty, but rendering speed is not one of them, although there are some special cases where it can be faster than Firefly. Besides, luxrender is a memory hog, so all in all you hardware requirements are usually higher than for other renderers.

Quote - on youtube, i didin't find out any video of rendering process using luxerender passing througt pose2lux, so i'm wondering if the time i could invest into this render process will be benefits or not. What do you think about it ?

You get a higher image quality and have to spend less time on lighting, materials etc.; you have to pay for it with longer rendering times and higher memory usage.

millighost is correct about Octane. I already have dual NVidia 9800 GT's, so no hardware was necessary for me (at least not yet).

After playing with the demo for about a month, I purchased a license, and lemme tell ya, the licensed version has a lot more features than the Demo.

There are the things that slow it down right now (it IS still in Beta), like a LOT of transparencies, and having light emitters (indoor lights, etc), but all in all, it's still WAY faster than any of my Poser renders. I've never had a 10 hour Octane render lol

In my gallery, my most recent images were done in Octane, and I think I put render times on some. Like the Poison Ivy one, with all the leave transparencies, took about 15 minutes.

So my suggestion would be download the demo and mess around to see if it's right for you. Only problem is that it does require a GeForce or Quadro with Cuda or Tesla technology.

Quote - , but all in all, it's still WAY faster than any of my Poser renders. I've never had a 10 hour Octane render lol So my suggestion would be download the demo and mess around to see if it's right for you. Only problem is that it does require a GeForce or Quadro with Cuda or Tesla technology.

 

your words are petty attractive to me !

 

how faster do you think octane is it ? any factor idea on poser ? 2x faster ? 3x faster ?

it could be very interesting to have a both render preview and time to make an idea.

 

i have a nvidia quadro, fx1700, an old one, but with cuda support, so i will look closer on octane.

Well, the rendering time will vary by what video card u have and if you have multiple ones as well. But the difference isn't 2X or 3X faster than Poser.... It's closer to 10X - 20X faster.

The attached image took 3 minutes or less to render(as it was test shots of the Arc). And when I am saying render times, it's basically when I hit the Stop button, as Octane will keep rendering until it reaches assigned pixel depth or you stop it when it looks good to you.

Does Octane work within Luxrender, or on its own?  Is there a software to export from Poser to Octane?

Actually, all you do is set up your scene in Poser or wherever, and export everything as 1 OBJ, then import that into Octane. Set up materials, and let it do it's thing.

How does one "set up" materials in Octane?

Well if you watch any of the tutorials on the website, they explain the Material selector tool, and it works similar to Poser's. Then you set it as a Diffuse, Glossy, or Specular material, and edit the rest of the options after that.

ok to answer.

Faster?

at this time no. Poser's Firefly is most of the time (unless you are rendering layered transparencies) is faster, but it's a different style of rendering to begin with. 

as to the CUDA / OpenCL question. CUDA is Nivida's own technology where as OpenCL is a technology akin to OpenGL, supported by ATI/Nvidia. eg, Octane can only run on Nvidia cards at this time, as it's CUDA only. 

as to memory hog, I personally have had no issues with memory and Luxrender on a 4gb machine.

(personally, I view unused Ram as wasted Ram. it's there to be used, so use it.)

I don't recommend Octane Render.  I got cut off

from getting any upgrades a year ago, merely because I

questioned Terrence Vergauwen's honesty.  So he did

some dishonest and cut me off from what I paid for.

 

Nobody is mentioning the fact that Luxrender now has

snallluxgpu, as I understand it. To really answer the OP's

question,  a real look at render times after this addition

is needed. To simply tell him that it's way slower may not

really be telling everything. 

Attached Link: thea versus octane

Also, take a look at the URL I jsut attached, at post #6 by Christapeze.  Wow, Octane render doesn't look so hot....

Unfortunately you posted a link in which we'd need to register to view... Which I will never register with some random website just to view a link someone posted.

If you wanna make a point, post a direct link on a site that doesn't require us to sign up.

Quote - Unfortunately you posted a link in which we'd need to register to view... Which I will never register with some random website just to view a link someone posted.

If you wanna make a point, post a direct link on a site that doesn't require us to sign up.

 

Allright, sorry about the registration thing.

 

But I will lask you, why is it you "forgot" to mention that luxrender now has gpu rendering? You have not provided any proof at all that Octane is faster.  I would recommend to the OP that he talk to the people on the luxrender forum to get a better idea about how fast it is now. 

 

I find it hard to beleive that Firefly is faster than luxrender with smallluxgpu. I would take that statement with a big grain of salt.

Ok, I guess I'll hafta run a little experiment with screen captures. I'll set up a scene in Poser, and export it to Lux and Octane, and render it, and see which renders faster. It'll be the only definitive proof since testimonies aren't adequate enough.

But I have used the GPU accelerated versioni of Lux, and will be using it in this experiment, but it's always been slower than Poser in my experience, but does have better image output.

I shall return later with videos showing render differences.

Attached Link: smallluxgpu preview

> Quote - Ok, I guess I'll hafta run a little experiment with screen captures. I'll set up a scene in Poser, and export it to Lux and Octane, and render it, and see which renders faster. It'll be the only definitive proof since testimonies aren't adequate enough. > > But I have used the GPU accelerated versioni of Lux, and will be using it in this experiment, but it's always been slower than Poser in my experience, but does have better image output. > > I shall return later with videos showing render differences.

 

It might be better if a more, er, disinterested party would do the test comparison.

 

And in hte meantime, while I seardc hfor more info, I'm attaching a link to a preview of smallluxgpu version 2.0.

Ok, I've never used the SLG, I've only used the OpenCL version of Lux.

But upon readin about SmallLuxGPU, what caught my eye was:

Quote - Currently (as of January 2011) SLG isn't under development because the current focus is on integrating GPU support to LuxRender. As the program is experimental and was never intended to be a finished product you may run into problems in the beginning, in that case please refer to the forum and this Wiki.

It does look impressive in speed compared to the OpenCL version, but is it right to compare something that was an experiment and is no longer under development against something that is under development?

I may be slightly biased in some perspective, but if something works and is faster, I'm not one to disregard it. I would definitely use SLG, and it would give me a reason to do more in Blender...

Hell, i may download it anyways just to play around since it does look promising.

Attached Link: Paq Wak gets his license revoked for complaining about a bug

> Quote - Ok, I've never used the SLG, I've only used the OpenCL version of Lux. > > But upon readin about SmallLuxGPU, what caught my eye was: > > > Quote - Currently (as of January 2011) SLG isn't under development because the current focus is on integrating GPU support to LuxRender. As the program is experimental and was never intended to be a finished product you may run into problems in the beginning, in that case please refer to the forum and this Wiki. > > It does look impressive in speed compared to the OpenCL version, but is it right to compare something that was an experiment and is no longer under development against something that is under development?

Of course they were going to stop development of smallluxgpu and integrate it into luxrender.  So what?  Given that smallluxgpu 1.6 is what is currently integrated into luxrender, (correct?),  and that smallluxgpu 2.0 will be, I don't see the problem here.

 

Quote - I may be slightly biased in some perspective, but if something works and is faster, I'm not one to disregard it. I would definitely use SLG, and it would give me a reason to do more in Blender...

 

I've attached another reason to disregard Octane to this post, and I don't see a problem with non-members seeing the thread.  Paq Wak complained about a bug that "radiance" couldn't fix, so "radiance" revoked his license and refunded his money.  He was better off than me, I didn't get any money back.

 

Quote - Hell, i may download it anyways just to play around since it does look promising.

 

And the next version of smallluxgpu, as a part of luxrender itself is going to have MLT. 

also necessary to compare updated luxrender with updated FFRender (paid beta to be released soon).  if somebody has done poser figure animation in pose2lux/luxrender, we'd be interested to see it.

And Mitsuba? Now it works with AMD CPUs.