Fluid Ray - "New" BEST GPU renderer...?

Jonathan85

Hello, so by accident i came across "new" (then i found it its here at least from 2014) GPU renderer Fluid Ray:

https://www.fluidray.com/features/technical-specs/

Its markets itself almost like the new best GPU renderer out there... I didnt know such software even exists... I think one of their main selling points is that:

"Uses the system’s RAM – no GPU memory limitation – Can render scenes with hundreds of million of triangles and multiple GB of textures"

So... i know about Vray RT renderer, i know abotu Redshift and few others...

Up until now i thought the best GPU renderer is Redshift (is this still true?) but then came across of Fluid Renderer...?

What is it? Was i just taken for a ride by stupid PR bullshit? Or is it really a new serious player in the field of GPU renders...?

And no other GPU renderer lets u use your system ram (instead of just video ram) for rendering WITHOUT any significant hit in rendering time in comparison with rendering it all fully in VIDEO RAM only...?

oglu

If i find time im goin to test it.

But i dont have high hopes. It does use system ram it cant be that fast.
Edit: It isnt a GPU renderer. It does render on CPU.

Im more impressed with project Lavina. 
https://www.chaosgroup.com/lavina

Jonathan85

Project Lavina i have heard of :-), its like real time Vray engine right...? Something like Unreal for real time visualizations :-)...?

Im not sure about the Fluid Ray... i think if it was that good we would heard about it before...? But Maybe its a new version way better then the old one who did nice technological jump forward and the CGI world just didnt find about it yet...? (altought im not sure about that )

Jonathan85

BTW... so project Lavina is something like even faster, real time version of Vray GPU engine (Vray RT of hows it called)...? Could project Lavina from Chaos Group by described this way?

oglu

Vray RT is replaced by Vrayy GPU. 

Lavina is more a game engine. 

Prime8

At least from what I can see on the website Fluidray is not impressive, imho there are many better choices.
They even point out jewelry rendering so I thought caustics might by the sales point, but no.

Lavina looks more interesting indeed.

gnoop

I think Octane is way ahead of anything in GPU renders field

oglu

Otoy is just good in merketing blabla. I havnt seen anything impressive. Or met anyone using it. 

musashidan

This goes back to 2012 and is practically unknown. Says it all, really.

ant1fact

gnoop said:

I think Octane is way ahead of anything in GPU renders field

unbiased, yes
for biased, Redshift is king

oglu

There is no unbiased renderer. 
Its the slowest way to render if you are fast in it you are cheating. 

gnoop

I am using Octane ( Octane Blender version)  extensively as a texture baker when I need to bake a whole landscape into low poly shells.    it's absolute king imo when you need to render a grass field , gazillion of instanced geometry  etc.     And it simple like 2x2 .    

I also use Clarisse for same purpose and love it for its instant interactivity Octane is struggling to provide  but when it comes to final render/baking  Clarisse with her CPU only render takes ages of waiting. 

 

I tried redshift couple years ego (3d max plugin), besides of being crashy on heavy scenes   it didn't provide any true preview  interactivity on landscape scenes either.

Imo it's not important biased or unbiased. Octane has simplified diffuse shader I usually use. Could be considered "cheating" maybe . 

  Much more important imo how the render mange huge scenes on a limited videoRAM  and how it does AOVs .  Octane is pretty nice at that  with cool denoise passes and cryptomatte.

I have limited RedShift experience  so if somebody use it for huge landscape style scenes, background renders,  I would be appreciated for an opinion.

oglu

As Redshift is bound to nvdias Optix like Arnold and Vray it does have troubles if the Vram does ran out. On Redshift 3 the out of core tech does not work anymore with geometry. But if you instace your geo and use two big cards in a cluster you can render really huge scenes. 

But if you grab one of those new AMD Threadripper you outperform single GPU workstations. Specially if you need to render VDBs and unique geo.

It depends a lot on the hardware. 

gnoop

Thanks  Oglu.       I upgraded to 12 core 3900 Amd  chip last year . Should have been to  32 core one probably .   

  Almost instant   interactive preview  is still way better with Clarisse CPU render making it much more comfortable to work with.     Octane sometimes takes half a  minute at least to update  scene after geometry re-scattering . But then it's  just a few minutes to final picture.

Imo the  question is which of GPU renders provide more  responsive and accurate preview view-port render  while you are editing object placement  and materials at outdoor scenes.       Octane has done quite an advance in that regard too during last couple years.

Panupat

I am using Octane ( Octane Blender version)  extensively as a texture baker when I need to bake a whole landscape into low poly shells.    it's absolute king imo when you need to render a grass field , gazillion of instanced geometry  etc.     And it simple like 2x2 .    

I also use Clarisse for same purpose and love it for its instant interactivity Octane is struggling to provide  but when it comes to final render/baking  Clarisse with her CPU only render takes ages of waiting. 

 

I'm very interested in this landscape baking into low poly shell workflow! Can you elaborate or link me to some video demonstration/tutorial please??

kittinzaa

After take a look of their website gallery I would say too far from unbias or photorealistic.

Jonathan85

Panupat said:

I am using Octane ( Octane Blender version)  extensively as a texture baker when I need to bake a whole landscape into low poly shells.    it's absolute king imo when you need to render a grass field , gazillion of instanced geometry  etc.     And it simple like 2x2 .    

I also use Clarisse for same purpose and love it for its instant interactivity Octane is struggling to provide  but when it comes to final render/baking  Clarisse with her CPU only render takes ages of waiting. 

 

I'm very interested in this landscape baking into low poly shell workflow! Can you elaborate or link me to some video demonstration/tutorial please??

Yes me too, i was curious when reading it... What is it, what do you mean byt that phrase please?

gnoop

I meant basically that you can build hires hills/mountains/ cityscape,  scatter gazillion objects  and then make an extremely low  poly envelope with a few  fins here and there plus  UDIM unique unwrap  to bake your hi res landscape in.        Since your landscape is static and not going to move anywhere it even could be world space normals  every 3D soft is able to render/bake usually  or you could convert it to tangent ones in Xnormal or SD later if you are going to reuse parts in same scene.

Any 3d soft/renderer can do it.     Arnold , Blender , Octane with enough vram

It's kind of opposite approach to making dense mesh displacement  with dense in game objects scattering  that works for parts of landscape inaccessible in a game .  If done properly it looks better  than in game parts still keeping some 3d feeling or  you could just render  a background with a panoramic camera + AOVs and render layers.

ps. Sorry, I don't have any video link   but I guess it's pretty general thing really. 

The only hard part is to think out your low poly shell /fins  the way it wouldn't reveal its nature too obviously form different in game view angles , deciding  priorities , texel density play etc.  No rules here.