Forum: Bryce


Subject: Metacreations and multiprocessor systems

trimegisto opened this issue on Jan 16, 2000 ยท 3 posts


trimegisto posted Sun, 16 January 2000 at 9:40 AM

Hey guys! Don't you think that Bryce should be able to use multiprocessing and multithreading? I used NT4 and I'm now using Win 2000 RC2 on a dual PIII system but bryce stil takes an enormous amount of time in complex scenes. Compared to 3DS MAX the speed of the raytracing engine is really low. I know, bryce is quite cheaper compared to MAX but I just wish I could take full advantage of my system in both programs. Comments?


Anthony Appleyard posted Tue, 18 January 2000 at 3:06 AM

When we get into ray traciing, I wish they had kept up eith developing the "Connection Machine". That was a special CPU that could do the same thing to up to 256*256=65536 values at once. Just what we would need for fast accurate rendering, including even radiosity.


niknatas posted Wed, 09 February 2000 at 6:18 PM

I know Posers 4's rendering engine is not Multi-threaded, and my suspisions are that neither is Bryce 4's. However, a multi-proc system should help you some. Win2K and NT 4.0 should load balance the rendering thread onto one proc, and operating system threads (or other program threads) onto another. A Windows application can only take advantage of multiple processors if the app is written multi-threaded. Metacreations is great, but not multi-threading the rendering engine is a crime. And I don't think the implimentation would be that difficult. (Not near as difficult as writting the ray tracing engine, anyways). My guess it that they try to share as much code as possible between the Mac version and the Windows version. And multi-tasking on the Mac operating systems works quite differently from the way Windows does it. It's a damn shame. -Nik