Currently LuxRender only supports 2.79 so not sure it will work in 2.8 but the instructions are not hard to follow and can be found Here

Lobo3433

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There is a test build for Blender 2.8, but it's still very experimental and you shouldn't install it on a production copy of Blender. I would download another instance of Blender 2.8 in ZIP format, then place it somewhere outside your Blender Foundation folder. Then you could install the experimental build of LuxCore there. Here's the link:

BlendLuxCore v2.2Beta3

Remember, this is entirely experimental so don't expect too much stability.

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Thanks for sharing the info LuxXeon have you checked out the Free octane plug in for Blender from what I hear only limitation is that it will only work with on graphic card not multi-card set ups

Lobo3433

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Lobo3433 posted at 1:42PM Tue, 20 August 2019 - #4359922

Thanks for sharing the info LuxXeon have you checked out the Free octane plug in for Blender from what I hear only limitation is that it will only work with on graphic card not multi-card set ups

I was just about to make a post here about that! Yes, I've downloaded and installed Otoy's free-tier version of Octane render for Blender 2.8 but haven't really tested it out fully yet. One other downside to it is that it requires a custom Blender build, so it's not really an addon in the same way as LuxCore or other plugin render engines are. The download includes the Octane Server files and a separate, custom build instance of Blender which they supply. So what this means is that to use Octane for free in Blender, you'll need to install another instance of Blender just for the Octane addon, which Otoy includes in the download. The most current version they had availble when I last checked was Blender 2.8 rc3, so not even the stable build release of 2.8. I'm not sure if that is how it's always been for the Blender Octane addon, but that's how it is for the free tier.

Other than that, I did have some trouble at first with the Octane addon recognizing my RTX 2070 card but once I enabled the addon in preferences and restarted the custom build, it finally picked it up. Rendering was fast, but I can't say it was much faster than Cycles in the latest version of 2.8 when I use both the RTX 2070 and also the CPU together. Octane doesn't support using the CPU in addition to the GPU, but that's not really a big deal. Sometimes the CPU can bottleneck your GPU if your card is very high end but your CPU processor isn't up to the task. Also, I noticed Octane doesn't seem to support pre-existing materials or environments in the scene. I had to totally rebuild a scene with Octane shaders and environment before it would give me a proper render. Another thing is that in order to use it you need to be connected to the Otoy servers with your login info. I don't know for sure, but I don't believe it will work offline.

I still have yet to take it for a true and proper test drive and compare render times with the same scenes in Cycles, but I used to work with Octane in 3dsmax so i thought I'd give this a go. So far, I'm not overjoyed by the experience. I think I might invest in the E-Cycles addon instead, which by all reviews has an incredible reputation. E-Cycles is a very optimized version of Cycles when using CUDA GPUs and promises up to 10x the render speed performance on the same hardware. Of course, E-Cycles is not free and also requires a custom build download, which I'm not entirely thrilled about. User reviews seem to claim it's even faster than Octane on the same hardware though.

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Thanks for the info I was and still leery about needing to create an account with OTOY and using a custom build of Blender I am funny that way plus for my current learning style Cycles and EEVE seem to fulfill my needs plus I am still using a GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPU RAM 6 GB I plan on upgrading later this year to an RTX card have not decided on which on since I find it a little bit surprising that my GTX 980 has 2816 CUDA Cores and most of the new RTX I have seen do not come with that many CUDA Cores so still saving my pennies till the right one catches my attention

Lobo3433

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Lobo3433 posted at 9:53PM Tue, 20 August 2019 - #4359953

Thanks for the info I was and still leery about needing to create an account with OTOY and using a custom build of Blender I am funny that way plus for my current learning style Cycles and EEVE seem to fulfill my needs plus I am still using a GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPU RAM 6 GB I plan on upgrading later this year to an RTX card have not decided on which on since I find it a little bit surprising that my GTX 980 has 2816 CUDA Cores and most of the new RTX I have seen do not come with that many CUDA Cores so still saving my pennies till the right one catches my attention

Yeah, the GTX 980ti is second only to the GTX1080ti and Titan XP in the number of CUDA cores. However, when it comes to CUDA enabled render speed, there's more to consider. Each CUDA core also has a base and boost clock speed, as well as bandwidth speed. For example, the GTX 690 and the 780ti both have more CUDA cores than your 980ti, but the 690 only has a base clock speed of 915, and the 780ti has clock speed of 875. Your 980ti has a base clock of 1000. So if you do the math on all these cards, your 980ti would outperform the 780ti, even though the 780ti has more cores. Another thing to consider is memory. There's a big difference in performance between a card with only 2 to 4gb of Vram compared to a card with 8gb of Vram. Remember you can't render what can't be loaded.

As far as RTX is concerned, most of the RTX line is going to outperform the older GTX line when you consider many of the variables, including the newer Turing architecture. The Turing architecture does things that the previous generations of GPU's didn't. It takes advantage of multiple types of specialized processor cores, including the accelerated use of new RT cores, which GTX cards do not have. It's true that currently there aren't many games or software applications which are programmed to use the RT cores yet, but it's coming to Blender soon. They are working on it now. See this link: Accelerating Cycles using NVIDIA RTX.

This means that very soon down the road, we will have another option besides CUDA in Blender. An option which they have already tested to make Cycles perform even better than CUDA cores alone. So, soon the question isn't going to be how many CUDA cores we have, but rather which RTX card has the most RT cores. Granted, neither CUDA nor RT is useful right now in Eevee, but somewhere down the line raytracing will also find its way into Eevee, and at that point RT cores will matter there too. So I think the investment in RTX from GTX is a good one for the near future. Regardless what gamers are saying about the value of an RTX card for games, the real impact and benefit of RTX will make itself very clear to people in the VFX and 3d graphics industry perhaps even before 2020.

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Thanks again LuxXeon again you have given me more information and explained things that makes it register more clearly in my head I knew I would be upgrading to RTX but honestly was focus on just the CUDA core so your info now adds another dimension and clears some things up that will make researching and shopping for an RTX much more effective in the long run. I usually wait till around the holidays when making a big ticket item like cards or major hardware upgrades is the best time to get the best possible deal thru my resources lucky to still have connections from my IT days lol

Lobo3433

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It can get complicated to decide on the best bang for the buck when it comes to GPU rendering. Especially with Nvidia the way they put out so many different cards with different clock speeds and memory specs. Just keep in mind that CUDA clock speeds and memory bandwidth play a huge role in rendering performance of the card along with core count. All the RTX cards have double the effective memory speed (14 Gbps) and use the newer GDDR6 standard. Memory bandwidth will help when you're trying to push large scene renders to the cores with lots of texture information. Some GPU render engines will offload scene textures and geometry to the CPU when the Vram memory limit is reached, but while this is good for getting things done it could slow down the render.

I would probably stick with the GTX 980ti for a while longer. At least until Blender comes out with the Optix enhanced rendering for RTX. By that time, the new RTX Super cards may come down in price and you'll get a great deal on a card.

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Thanks I will keep that in mind I know when I built this system I took memory capacity for the whole system as a top priority and took full advantage of 64bit allowance of being able to pack it with as much memory as I could afford at the time of building it so I could do as much as I may want with out running out of memory

S Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 64.0 GB

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPU RAM 6 GB 2816 CUDA Cores

Lobo3433

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So far my meager 980Ti is still doing the job, so I'll keep it for now. Maybe I can convince the hubby to let me get an RTX card come income tax return time (even though I really should have a new computer before I get a new card)...lol. But even with the 980 Cycles doesn't run too terribly bad (tho I will admit I haven't really pushed it very far yet) and Eevee runs pretty darn good :). The computer I have now is similar to Lobo's specs, tho I have two 8-core Xeon's (older procs) for my 64 gigs of ram ;).

2 8-core Xeons at 2.60 ghz

64 gigs of ram

980Ti @ 6gb and 2816 Cuda

Forum: Blender

Subject: add on's