GPU-Based Renderers

Timidy

Are there a lot of materials available for GPU-Based renderers? Mental Ray and VRay both have so many materials and things you can use to make a nice render. Do you lose a lot by switching to a GPU-based renderer? For example, if you create a skydome using Mental Ray tools and you want to render it with a GPU based renderer, will everything in the shaders still work and render properly?

dzibarik

Check out Octane Render (Nvidia only) and Lumion. There are others but I don't remember titles.

Kroma!

Cycles in Blender (free!) is a GPU based renderer that uses CUDA cores to speed up renders.

You can see some of what's capable here [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaqYyBGbx-c"]Cycles Tutorial: Interior Rendering - YouTube[/ame]

Timidy

Hey thanks for the info dzibarik. I've actually heard of Octane renderer and read good things about it. I think it's actually what the artist who did Walter White used to render the art you see in the banner here sometimes. If it can create such high quality renders then it's worth checking out.

Thanks for the video Kroma!, never knew Blender was so robust. I'll have to see that video and maybe even check out Blender software. I use 3DS Max but I want to learn Blender at some point. I thought since it's free it wouldn't be as powerful but the demo videos I've seen of people using it are amazing.

dzibarik

I think this quite an exhaustive list (credit to runejw from modo forums)

Anyway NVIDIA's iRay, as well as numerous research papers on the subject have made GPU rendering easier to implement and outlined methods for avoiding former restrictions tied to limited RAM on a typical GPU card.
Octane, iRay, Thea, Maxwell Fire, Vray RT, Indigo, Furryball, Arnold, Redshift, Cycles - that's 10 renderers. modo/Foundry needs to "play catchup" or risk their market share.

bugo

furryball is real good too, all supporting maya shaders http://furryball.aaa-studio.eu/

Timidy

That's a nice list there dzibarik. I had no clue there were that many. I'm gonna have to check out the rest and see what they can do.

It's funny that a GPU manufacturer like Nvidia could create their own version of Mental Ray which doesn't use GPU to render but uses CPU instead. I haven't had much luck with Iray though, my render window crashes when I use it.

Thanks for the tip on furryball bugo, it looks like a really good option for use in Maya. I'll take a look.

So if one uses a certain renderer then one must also use only materials made for that renderer then right?

Gheromo

Theres relatively new renderer out there that has won hearts of most London VFX companies. If I remember right it was GPU based too. http://www.solidangle.com/

JohnnyRaptor

hmm, never used it myself, but im pretty sure arnold is an offline renderer.

You also have Keyshot for realtime rendering.

Also, Vray (and MR?) have realtime rendering options available? RT and iRay i believe they are called.

Timidy

Gheromo, it looks like the link you sent me are for the company that makes Arnold, which I've heard great things about also. I wish they would make it for Max but since I plan on learning Maya anyway, it's worth it to have a look, thanks.

JohnnyRaptor, yeah it looks like Arnold is the plugin made by Solid Angle which seems to be gaining a lot of popularity these days. Keyshot is something I just learned of a few days ago actually so it's funny you mention it. I hear it's great for vehicle and realistic scenery rendering. I get crashes with iRay, don't know if my vid card is enough to handle it (GTX 260).

JohnnyRaptor

ah you can do more than just vehicles and scenery,

heres a cool sample of a character rendered in keyshot

http://www.dominicqwek.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Imp_Beauty.jpg

Timidy

^ very nice render indeed! If it's a fairly fast renderer then its worth a look. It appears to have some nice materials inside it too, that example definitely has some sort of SSS going, thanks for the link.

Mayalicious

arnold is not a gpu renderer. It uses CPU and it is awesome