Will superfly render engine, using graphics card, see multiple graphics cards cuda cores like Octane Render?

If I understand your question ... in the superfly render settings there is a drop down list to choose your card or source.

He's asking if it can employ multiple cards simultaneously, like Octane Render. Sorry I don't know the answer.

Thank you for clearing that up bagginsbill.

I think Superfly will automatically see all CUDA-enabled cards; if you have a lesser card you wish to use only for driving the monitors, open the nVidia control panel (nVidia Control Panel, 3D Settings, GPU cores) and disable CUDA for that card. Then Superfly won't perceive it as a GPU.

See all? We are pretty sure without this thread it sees them. Will it simultaneously employ them all (use, execute on, perform a render with) so as to outperform just using one at a time?

Here is a thread about CYCLES, not SUPERFLY, that confirms that CYCLES is capable of using more than one GPU at a time.

Is this true of SUPERFLY? If so, how does one go about choosing more than one at a time? (I have NO GPU and cannot test, nor did the manual clarify the matter.)

Link to CYCLES thread regarding multiple GPU

Here are the salient points from that thread regarding Cycles:

"The more GPUs, the more tiles being rendered simultaneously, so two GPUs will cut rendering time almost to one half. Other than rendering, only one GPU will be used for calculations and to refresh the screen. The memory accessible for rendering is going to be limited to that of the card with the least memory."

I, too, would like to know, in case I want to buy some cards, whether buying two cards gets me a faster render or not.

I recently made my child's last college tuition payment. I may be able waste some more money on my hobby. So, I would like to know what is the best way to waste my money. For example, it may be that two "weaker" previous generation GPU cards may outperform a single "latest" generation card, while actually costing less.

Here is a youtube video that explicitly demonstrates Cycles rendering with a GTX 560 (time 1:09), a GTX 460 (1:22), and then with both (just 39 seconds).

More info on Cycles

Here the author tests up to 16 GPUs (!!) which reduced a 10+ hour CPU render to just under 16 minutes.

i currently use 2 gtx titan x cards for rendering , both seem to show up within poser cycles options drop down menu underneath each other along with my cpu and then right at the bottom it says gtx titan x (2x) , I would assume this setting would take advantage of the cuda cores on both cards ?!

On my primary work computer, I currently have a K2200 and a K6000. Superfly does give me the choice of either or both. I am not sure how it will work with 3 or more cards, but that dropdown looks like it will get really complicated, really fast.

Aha! See the manual said NOTHING about that. So either they extend the menu with all 2^n combinations of GPUs you have (which if you have, for example, six, would by 64 combinations) or they just add one menu choice that represents "Use All".

Seems really odd to not just pop up with a list of checkboxes.

bagginsbill posted at 10:13AM Tue, 22 December 2015 - #4245289

Aha! See the manual said NOTHING about that. So either they extend the menu with all 2^n combinations of GPUs you have (which if you have, for example, six, would by 64 combinations) or they just add one menu choice that represents "Use All".

Seems really odd to not just pop up with a list of checkboxes.

I couldn't agree more. There is a reason it is a list of checkboxes in the advanced render settings in DS for Iray.

Note the current high end Motherboards can handle 3-4 Graphic cards at full speed.

What i do is use Manage 3D settings in the NVidia control panel. In the base profile under CUDA GPU's you can select which cards to use for GPU rendering. If a card is turned off, it will not appear in the Poser GPU selection

wimvdb posted at 8:35AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245338

What i do is use Manage 3D settings in the NVidia control panel. In the base profile under CUDA GPU's you can select which cards to use for GPU rendering. If a card is turned off, it will not appear in the Poser GPU selection

If a card/multiple cards is/are turned on, you still have to select them in the render settings in Poser, or you default to CPU. Depending on the scene your card selection is likely to change. From what was said at the webinar, and personal experience, if you exceed the Video Ram of the card(s) the render crashes. So you will have to pick and choose based on what is in your scene, your tile size, and your particular video cards. What may work in one scene, may not work in another.

bhoins posted at 5:02PM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245403

wimvdb posted at 8:35AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245338

What i do is use Manage 3D settings in the NVidia control panel. In the base profile under CUDA GPU's you can select which cards to use for GPU rendering. If a card is turned off, it will not appear in the Poser GPU selection

If a card/multiple cards is/are turned on, you still have to select them in the render settings in Poser, or you default to CPU. Depending on the scene your card selection is likely to change. From what was said at the webinar, and personal experience, if you exceed the Video Ram of the card(s) the render crashes. So you will have to pick and choose based on what is in your scene, your tile size, and your particular video cards. What may work in one scene, may not work in another.

I have no clue why you quoted me

Hi there

Yes Poser Pro 11 will see all multiple CUDA enabled cards,in my case I've tried multiple combinations like Titan X with GTX980Ti and two GTX780 and Poser has seen all cards without the problems on friend PC(he have PP11 on his PC,but we are tried my GPU to do few test renders)

Just bit of caution,tried to render my old scene where I've lots of props and lots of 4k maps with several V4 fully clothed etc and I've got CUDA error/crash,I think this has been down to the how is CUDA implemented,how to say,in other SW you can assign which is main GPU and which will be as second assigned,because this error has been "not enough memory" on GTX780 which is only 3GB,but I rendered with GTX Titan X with two GTX780,strange thing,but works

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

wimvdb posted at 11:40AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245406

bhoins posted at 5:02PM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245403

wimvdb posted at 8:35AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245338

What i do is use Manage 3D settings in the NVidia control panel. In the base profile under CUDA GPU's you can select which cards to use for GPU rendering. If a card is turned off, it will not appear in the Poser GPU selection

If a card/multiple cards is/are turned on, you still have to select them in the render settings in Poser, or you default to CPU. Depending on the scene your card selection is likely to change. From what was said at the webinar, and personal experience, if you exceed the Video Ram of the card(s) the render crashes. So you will have to pick and choose based on what is in your scene, your tile size, and your particular video cards. What may work in one scene, may not work in another.

I have no clue why you quoted me

Because simply turning cards on or off in the NVIDIA control panel is a partial solution at best. Poser doesn't read that, it just makes a list of available cards, and you still have to specify what cards the render engine will use.

bhoins posted at 9:38PM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245420

wimvdb posted at 11:40AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245406

bhoins posted at 5:02PM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245403

wimvdb posted at 8:35AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245338

What i do is use Manage 3D settings in the NVidia control panel. In the base profile under CUDA GPU's you can select which cards to use for GPU rendering. If a card is turned off, it will not appear in the Poser GPU selection

If a card/multiple cards is/are turned on, you still have to select them in the render settings in Poser, or you default to CPU. Depending on the scene your card selection is likely to change. From what was said at the webinar, and personal experience, if you exceed the Video Ram of the card(s) the render crashes. So you will have to pick and choose based on what is in your scene, your tile size, and your particular video cards. What may work in one scene, may not work in another.

I have no clue why you quoted me

Because simply turning cards on or off in the NVIDIA control panel is a partial solution at best. Poser doesn't read that, it just makes a list of available cards, and you still have to specify what cards the render engine will use.

Poser reads that information and only proposes the cards which have CUDA enabled for GPU rendering I have a quadro and 2 titans in my system. The quadro has its CUDO GPU usage disabled. Poser proposes only the two titans for rendering

wimvdb posted at 4:06PM Thu, 24 December 2015 - #4245426

bhoins posted at 9:38PM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245420

wimvdb posted at 11:40AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245406

bhoins posted at 5:02PM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245403

wimvdb posted at 8:35AM Wed, 23 December 2015 - #4245338

What i do is use Manage 3D settings in the NVidia control panel. In the base profile under CUDA GPU's you can select which cards to use for GPU rendering. If a card is turned off, it will not appear in the Poser GPU selection

If a card/multiple cards is/are turned on, you still have to select them in the render settings in Poser, or you default to CPU. Depending on the scene your card selection is likely to change. From what was said at the webinar, and personal experience, if you exceed the Video Ram of the card(s) the render crashes. So you will have to pick and choose based on what is in your scene, your tile size, and your particular video cards. What may work in one scene, may not work in another.

I have no clue why you quoted me

Because simply turning cards on or off in the NVIDIA control panel is a partial solution at best. Poser doesn't read that, it just makes a list of available cards, and you still have to specify what cards the render engine will use.

Poser reads that information and only proposes the cards which have CUDA enabled for GPU rendering I have a quadro and 2 titans in my system. The quadro has its CUDO GPU usage disabled. Poser proposes only the two titans for rendering

Yet you still have to specify what cards to use, all this accomplishes is to remove potential cards from Poser's list. Exactly opposite of what the OP asked about. It doesn't save a step, though it might cut down on the clutter in the drop down.

Reading this thread i'm still not sure whether or not superfly uses multiple cards for rendering or not. If I have 2xTitanX and 1x980Ti, will it use all three of them for rendering simultaneously ? Anyone have a definitive answer ?

ghonma posted at 12:43PM Sun, 27 December 2015 - #4245792

Reading this thread i'm still not sure whether or not superfly uses multiple cards for rendering or not. If I have 2xTitanX and 1x980Ti, will it use all three of them for rendering simultaneously ? Anyone have a definitive answer ?

Yes

ghonma posted at 10:19AM Wed, 30 December 2015 - #4245792

Reading this thread i'm still not sure whether or not superfly uses multiple cards for rendering or not. If I have 2xTitanX and 1x980Ti, will it use all three of them for rendering simultaneously ? Anyone have a definitive answer ?

Yes. Under render settings, tell Poser what cards to use in the drop down.

Rookie question here. Great Thread.

Looking over the Graphic card models in this thread, they can be pricey and snagged up by Data Miners.

Some of the "older"/ "tuned down" cards can be bought for less (Along with a multi card tower), but is there some firmware/driver compatibility or Minimum requirement to use (With benefits)? Example, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti can be gotten readily, but are they going to be compatible (drivers,etc) to handle the Superfly renders?

IS there a Driver/software version/ Chipset I should look for to disqualify a card from the list?

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I would assume that Superfly does support GTX 1050 TI. However I think the biggest issue with GPU rendering is memory limit, if the card doesn't have enough it wont really matter how fast it is, as it will simply fail and give you an error that its out of memory and not render. If you want to render faster a new CPU might be worth a look.

I have been told that AMD Ryzen should be quite good at it, while still being fairly cheap.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3230369/components-processors/core-i7-8700k-review-prices-specs-benchmarks.html

Here is an article about it, which also include a blender render test, which I post here as well.

You can also take a look at the newest ones, AMD - Threadripper and Intel - Core I9, so it might be worth looking further into CPUs, rather than GPU rendering as cards with a lot of memory is fairly expensive and because these CPU's especially AMDs and Inter Core I9 packs a lot of cores.

Maybe if your lucky some have tested it here or know a bit more about it than I do.

I posted the results of some render tests with cpu and gpu here https://forum.smithmicro.com/topic/4178/graphic-card-for-poser-which

2nd post Sorry can't be bothered to type them out again!

3D-Mobster posted at 3:45AM Tue, 07 August 2018 - #4334104

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I would assume that Superfly does support GTX 1050 TI. However I think the biggest issue with GPU rendering is memory limit, if the card doesn't have enough it wont really matter how fast it is, as it will simply fail and give you an error that its out of memory and not render. If you want to render faster a new CPU might be worth a look.

I have been told that AMD Ryzen should be quite good at it, while still being fairly cheap.

But Poser won't see AMD cards, will it? On my old computer, with an AMD card, it never gave me the option of using GPU at all. Now, with my new computer and intel, I can happily do GPU rendering.

Not sure, I fully understand you, But the list I linked are for CPU (Processors, which can be Intel or AMD primarily) and not graphic cards. In regards to graphic cards are you sure that its not ATI vs Nvidia? They are the ones making almost all the GPUs? Sort of like AMD vs Intel when it comes to processors? Usually, at least as far as I know, the processor shouldn't interfere with whether you can use your graphic card for rendering or not. That would surprise me a lot to be honest. But I might be wrong, is it a known problem that using an AMD processor screws up the graphic card in Poser?

I believe it is being suggested that you consider using cpu rendering instead of gpu rendering for Superfly. The point being since rendering Superfly is the only time poser puts heavy demands on the gpu, if you do a mixture of sf and ff renders, you might be better off economising on the graphics card and looking for a better processor.

Nails60 posted at 1:22PM Tue, 07 August 2018 - #4334303

I believe it is being suggested that you consider using cpu rendering instead of gpu rendering for Superfly. The point being since rendering Superfly is the only time poser puts heavy demands on the gpu, if you do a mixture of sf and ff renders, you might be better off economising on the graphics card and looking for a better processor.

Yes :) CPU rendering have some benefits such as no memory limit, so you are more likely to be able to render a big scene than you are with a GPU, unless you get one with a lot of memory, like 6 or 8 GB at least that would be my biggest concern.

I haven't been able to find some good tests, comparing CPU vs GPU rendering, meaning how good a graphic card would you need to match a certain CPU and what are the price differences etc. In both cases you have to be sure that the rest of the computer can also handle a new CPU or graphic card so other things might have to be upgraded as well.

But anyway I don't know what is best, but was merely something to consider :)

TrekkieGrrrl posted at 10:57AM Tue, 07 August 2018 - #4334291

3D-Mobster posted at 3:45AM Tue, 07 August 2018 - #4334104

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I would assume that Superfly does support GTX 1050 TI. However I think the biggest issue with GPU rendering is memory limit, if the card doesn't have enough it wont really matter how fast it is, as it will simply fail and give you an error that its out of memory and not render. If you want to render faster a new CPU might be worth a look.

I have been told that AMD Ryzen should be quite good at it, while still being fairly cheap.

But Poser won't see AMD cards, will it? On my old computer, with an AMD card, it never gave me the option of using GPU at all. Now, with my new computer and intel, I can happily do GPU rendering.

CUDA is Nvidia technology only. AMD supports OpenCL (as does Nvidia)

If I have understood it correct, its because Poser doesn't support OpenCL which is what AMD (old ATI) uses. And doesn't have anything to do with whether you use an AMD or Intel processor right?

Correct. It's GPU only.

3D-Mobster posted at 8:15AM Wed, 08 August 2018 - #4334349

If I have understood it correct, its because Poser doesn't support OpenCL which is what AMD (old ATI) uses. And doesn't have anything to do with whether you use an AMD or Intel processor right?

No.

Poser does support OpenCL.

Most external render engines use CUDA, because GPU computation has been growing faster than CPUs (Thanks Intel!). AMD has been working on an equivalent, but that is one of the few places that they are still behind the curve.

I own a Nvidia 2080 TI and all I get is a black screen when I render in Poser. I have set superfly in the option settings for the proper video card. Any ideas how to fix this? Just updated my video drivers today and no help. Poser suggests turning of branch path tracing and setting pixel samples to 30 but same result.

tlapier posted at 9:08PM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345720

I own a Nvidia 2080 TI and all I get is a black screen when I render in Poser. I have set superfly in the option settings for the proper video card. Any ideas how to fix this? Just updated my video drivers today and no help. Poser suggests turning of branch path tracing and setting pixel samples to 30 but same result.

SF does not currently support Turing based cards. I've posted about this issue over at the SM forums and they said they'd "bring it up in a meeting" which basically means that if you don't have an older Maxwell or Pascal based card, you're not going to be able to render using the GPU with 20XX cards.

This is very helpful. Thank you. I guess it sometime is not good to be on the bleeding edge. :-)

Also, it's my guess that they will not patch this and instead introduce it into the next version of Poser.