Anybody heard of this?
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I've been interested in the idea of web-cloud-computing for several years... now to see it done with GPU instead of CPU is a pleasant surprise, and looking very very promising... too bad it's got to be done in such a proprietary manner
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Ok, after checking the official site and FAQ:
-This iray engine has been created by Mental Images, the Mental Ray guys, and is a whole different beast from MR's photon mapping mode. It is a whole new rendering mode.
-The description they give in the FAQ reads exactly like the description of an unbiased render method, which would explain how it can be easily scaled to several GPUs.
-Instead of using programmable shaders for the materials, it will use something called BSDF/EDF, which after a couple of Google searches seems to be some sort of standard for storing physical material properties.
-It will be available next month with Mental Ray 3.8
-It will be made available as an SDK from first quarter 2010 so independent software developers can integrate it in their own programs, but the FAQ hints that there can be "earlier versions on case-by-case basis".
-This Luminova Conductor for SketchUp must be one of these special cases of someone who has already got their hands on the SDK. As of today there is no info on this product on Luminova's website so I guess it's still in very early development.
-About the performance relative to MR's Photon Mapping engine, the FAQ says:
@unknownuser said:
when coupled with a modern NVIDIA GPU, iray should be able to produce renderings with a heavy emphasis on full global illumination and subtle light effects substantially faster than the current mental ray software renderer executing on a single desktop configuration. In cases where general global illumination effects are not required, the current mental ray software rendering mode may continue to be faster and more flexible.
-And now for the ugly part:
@unknownuser said:
While all CUDA-enabled GPUs are supported, iray’s memory requirements will make NVIDIA Quadro
, QuadroPlex and Tesla systems for workstations as well as Tesla server units the platforms of choice in most situations.So say goodbye to your dreams of using your GeForce-line card for rendering complex stuff.
-And to end with a nicer tone:
@unknownuser said:
While iray requires NVIDIA GPUs for interaction and high-performance, products such as mental ray with iray will continue to support all platforms that our customers require and for which their developers see a sufficient market. When running on a system that lacks compatible NVIDIA GPU resources, iray will operate as a CPU-based renderer, albeit significantly slower.
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it looks like Modo's preview window.
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@ecuadorian said:
-And now for the ugly part:
@unknownuser said:
While all CUDA-enabled GPUs are supported, iray’s memory requirements will make NVIDIA Quadro
, QuadroPlex and Tesla systems for workstations as well as Tesla server units the platforms of choice in most situations.thatll be the catch, then.
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@ecuadorian said:
... It is a whole new rendering mode.
It may be new for Mray, which is biased, but it's not "a whole new rendering mode" he says in the video that it's using Monte Carlo
plus now Mray for Max has been having "realtime" previews most recently, so again not all that "new".... -
and.. what about for people with ati radeon video card?? (for me.. with c2duo p9700 2.8 4gb ram and 4670 mobile??)
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As far as I know (remember), there is a fairly good real time preview in Vue as well. May not be "fully fledged" though.
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@fletch said:
@ecuadorian said:
... It is a whole new rendering mode.
It may be new for Mray, which is biased, but it's not "a whole new rendering mode" he says in the video that it's using Monte Carlo
plus now Mray for Max has been having "realtime" previews most recently, so again not all that "new"....Could you point us to any existing render engine specifically made for Sketchup that can do that stuff real time?
To my knowledge, this is pretty new and unseen before now.
The only real time 'previewer' I saw before is the new Vray (unfortunately not the SU one and I don't see Asgvis developing the Sketchup bridge for it as their development cycles are very very slow...yawn) -
I meant, iray is a whole new rendering mode for Mental Ray.
We'll have to wait and see how it performs on cheap nvidia GeForce cards. If I need to buy a $2,600 nvidia Quadro FX 5800 card to see an improvement over CPU unbiased rendering, then forget it. Unfortunately, there is so little info about the development of the SketchUp plug-in at the moment that this thread appears as the first result for me when I search for: Luminova Conductor. I'm inclined to think that Luminova was not ready to make an announcement but CGarchitect spilled the beans. Or is it a marketing ploy to create some buzz?
Anyway, the good news is that iray will be included in the next version of Mental Ray to be released next month, so we should soon start to read some real-world reviews of it from MAX users.
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CGarchitect updated the page that contained the video (now removed) with the following statement:
@unknownuser said:
UPDATED OCTOBER 23, 2009 (We were told at the GPU confernece that the previously embedded video demo was in fact a prototype version of iray for SketchUp. We have now been told that while this application is being planned, the video did not actually show the use of iray.)
So it was just a mock-up after all? How cruel...
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@ecuadorian said:
...I'm inclined to think that Luminova was not ready to make an announcement but CGarchitect spilled the beans...
sounds like it
if it wasn't using irender, then what WAS it using?
that sounds fishy...
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