OctaneRender or V-Ray for rendering architectural interiors?

GI means global illumination. In the real world light bounce from one surface to the next, like light come trough a window and bounce from the wall to the next object and is bouncing again to the next one … . If the wall is white than approx. 80% of the light is bounced to the next object. If the wall is red, than the bouncing light is colored red.
The light coming form the light source is named direct light, the bouncing light indirect light. A full GI calculation takes the bouncing light into account, but it cost calculation power. AO is a fake and create a shadowing effect around each object but without coloring by the light. But there are some AO methods available where coloring by light is faked too.

Best read here or look around at the web: :wink:


Ok, let call it “fake GI” :wink:

Hi

For rendering with OCTANE with some normal rendering times (not
+24hours) youll need to buy at least 3 EVGA GeForce cards.

That is absolutely not true. Octane is incredibly fast, even on a modest single GPU system. Exterior scenes with daylight or HDRI lighting render the quickest. Interior renders take a little longer depending on how you have your emitters setup (and Otoy have announced that the next release of Octane contains significant speed improvements in this area). Even on my old GTX 550 Ti, I’ve never left a render going for more the 15mins. But it depends on the complexity of your scenes - and I’m a minimalist :-). Most of the sample renders I did for the plugin product page were a few minutes.

Having said that - there are people running 4-8 Titan cards in the PC doing Octane rendering, however they are using those setups to render animations rather than stills.

New to Rhino and running under bootcamp

I’m not a Mac person, so haven’t tried the Octane plugin with Rhino on Bootcamp - so try the demo version to see how it runs.

Also, I have a very big update for the Octane plugin ready and waiting for the next Rhino SR. It tightly integrates the Octane materials into the Rhino materials system, and presents a better and more intuitive workflow for assigning and editing materials. So if you try the demo version of the plugin (which I recommend doing), keep in mind that the Octane materials will become Rhino materials in the next release. The next release also has support for Edge softening, Curve piping, Shutlining, and Displacement.

Paul

Can you please provide a couple of examples of nVidia cards that fit this description?

Can you please provide a couple of examples of nVidia cards that fit
this description?

I’m not a tech guy - so there are people far better skilled to answer this, but my personal definition is…

Low-spec = GTX 550, 550ti, 660, 650, 750, the laptop equivalents, anything GT (so anything up to around $250)
Medium-spec = GTX 560Ti, 570, 660Ti, 670 + high-end laptop cards
High-spec = GTX 580, 590, 680, 690, 780, 790, Titan ($500-$1000)

I /think/ the Titan was in the order of 7 times faster than the 550Ti (this is from my poor memory - so do your own research!).

Paul

Also, regarding the comments on CPU verses GPU, the 2 advantages I see (aside from GPU being faster) are that 1) if you need more render power, you just need to add another card to you PC (not add a whole new PC to you farm), and 2) Whilst you are rendering on the card, there is minimal load on the PC, so you can do other CPU intensive things (assuming you have an on-board or second card as your display adapter).

Paul

1 Like

Hi! Paul!
Question, does OCTANE uses CPU power also when rendering or only GPU?
I read a lot on THEA 1.3 and there are very nice news on implemention CPU+GPU engine wich speed things nicely.

Again, Thanks for all the responses to this question. Most helpful.

Considering Octane, it looks as though an Nvidia Quadro K5000 for Mac is a best choice for my purposes but beyond budget at this time. (Card+Octane, Somewhat over $2k)
I find a lot of lemonish reports on the Quadro 4000.
Anyone know of V-Ray 2.0 for Rhino release? Any speculation?

So you would need to have one lowend graphic card for display, and let say 2x GTX cards for rendering. Thats 3 cards inside you case?! Cooling problems?
Can you answer may question on GPU+CPU rendering?

I think it could be ready this year, but it’s only a speculation.

For VfR GPU rendering interesting could be this benchmark:

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread.php?52415-GPU-benchmarks

I think a GTX580 could be a good solution for Vram, speed and price.

Will this Vray GPU be pure GPU or a hybrid (CPU+GPU)?
I realy dont see the purpose of Vray sudenly changing its core engine to either GPU or CPU?!?!
One question to Vray users, I remember there was an tutorial called "“V-Ray for Rhino interior training” the cost was around 50$
I cannot find this tutorial anywhere and I wish to buy it…

So you would need to have one lowend graphic card for display, and let
say 2x GTX cards for rendering. Thats 3 cards inside you case?!
Cooling problems?

The number of cards you use is entirely up to you. Some users are just using a single low-end card (for both rendering and as their display adapter). I use a single low-end card for rendering and my on-board graphics adapter as the Windows display adapter. Some users are bolting in 4 Titans plus a display adapter card because they want hi-def renders in under a minute for rendering animations. You’ll need to decide what’s right for you. If you have 4 Titans, you will indeed need to think about power supplies and cooling - but if you are spending $4k for the graphics cards, I think it’s reasonable that you’ll be spending a little extra to power and cool them. But I think the majority of users have a single card for rendering. A small number of users have 2 cards for rendering. And a very small number of users have 4-8 cards for rendering.

If you want to see the performance, try the demo. It’s fast!

Question, does OCTANE uses CPU power also when rendering or only GPU?

It is all on the GPU, so you can do other CPU intensive work on your PC. If you are going to do this - it’s a good idea to have a separate card (or on-board graphics) as your display adapter - that way 3d app open GL operations will not be sharing the same VRAM as Octane.

Considering Octane, it looks as though an Nvidia Quadro K5000 for Mac is a best choice for my purposes but beyond budget at this time. (Card+Octane, Somewhat over $2k)
I find a lot of lemonish reports on the Quadro 4000.

You’ll need to check the Otoy forums, but I thought the Quadro’s were not ideal for Cuda based rendering - better to get a GTX. There are a few Mac users over there (Otoy forums) who can help. Also, the OctaneRender for Rhino plugin has not been ported to the Mono version of RhinoCommon (yet) - so you’d need to use bootcamp. Again, if in doubt, try the demo.

Paul

a basic question:
Can the GeForce GTX 680 be used only for CUDA processing of Octane renders?
(I’d use existing Radeon card to drive the Apple Cinema display.)

It looks like Vray GPU will be GPU only. I havn’t seen any info about GPU+CPU.

@paulphysicalc
Thanx for you answer but knowing me I would definetly want to have 2xGTX for Octane.
Would I feel the lack of that one card that would be used only for display adapter (on board graphics)?
Is there anything available like external GPU so you dont have to stack your cards inside the case?
Tehnical question, if running a 3930K (six core) with 2xGTX580 cards, whats your PSU minimum power? 750W?

@Micha
I dont see the logic in that? I hope that ChaosGroup have their plans all set with Vray GPU engine. Presenting sudenly an GPU engine wich is totaly oposite from what you have been doing for 10 years, Vray CPU, without any plans for making a hybrid engine…!!!(?!/"/!&%#&!" I bet also that the rendering results are faaaar from beeing the same when using “regular” Vray or the GPU one.

Micha I wonder if you have any infromation on that “V-Ray for Rhino interior training”. Where can it bee found and bought?
Thank you!

Can the GeForce GTX 680 be used only for CUDA processing of Octane
renders?

On a PC - Yes. On OSX, I’m not sure - you would need to consult the Mac experts at the Otoy forums.

Would I feel the lack of that one card that would be used only for display adapter (on board graphics)?
Is there anything available like external GPU so you dont have to stack your cards inside the case?
Tehnical question, if running a 3930K (six core) with 2xGTX580 cards, whats your PSU minimum power? 750W?

If you get 2 cards, you can render on 1, display adapter on the other for general work - then if you need to render an animation, render on both. Or, you can throttle back rendering on the card you are using as you display adapter (in the plugin settings) if you are rendering with both cards. Stacking cards : you can get risers. How do you know you need 2 GTX cards for rendering with Octane? One might be plenty. Try the demo to find out. PSU: I vaguely recall someone was rendering with a 500W PSU with 2 cards and it gave issues rendering large scenes - so 750W might be safer. Again, check the Otoy forums - there are may knowledgeable people how can help there. Also - if you currently have GTX 580 - use them. But the 600 and 700 series are a better options - with more texturemap slots, lower power use, quieter.

Paul

@paulphysicalc

If you get 2 cards, you can render on 1, display adapter on the other for general work

So GTX580 for rendering and onboard graphic for display adapter Correct?

Stacking cards : you can get risers

Whats that? I dont uderstand you :frowning:

But the 600 and 700 series are a better options

Maybe but you can get the GTX580 for 200€ now

Does the graphic card memory only limit the textures beeing loaded in the scene or the imported geometry polygon count?

Thanx!

for what its worth, a quote from V-Ray sales today:
“2.0 is quite a ways away so upgrade prices are not currently available.”

I’m now considering the GTX 680 for Mac and Octane. However the 680 only has 2MB memory. So, if this isn’t enough processing power, I’d add a second 680. Any thoughts??

So GTX580 for rendering and onboard graphic for display adapter Correct?

Correct

Stacking cards : you can get risers

You can get extender cables so the cards sit outside your PC box. I wouldn’t worry about it unless you are building a render farm and wanting more than 4 cards in a single PC.

Maybe but you can get the GTX580 for 200€ now

The 600+ series cards are quieter, use less power, incredibly reliable, and allow you to have over double that number of texturemaps loaded. Whilst a GTX 580 would be quicker than a 660Ti (at roughly the same price???), you’d need to research if the increase in speed warranted the other disadvantages.

Does the graphic card memory only limit the textures beeing loaded in
the scene or the imported geometry polygon count?

Yes, polygons take up VRAM too. From memory, I got around 16 million polys into my 2Gig card. If you are instancing geometry, you will get far more polys in the scene (since only one copy of the polys are in your card)

I’m now considering the GTX 680 for Mac and Octane. However the 680
only has 2MB memory. So, if this isn’t enough processing power, I’d
add a second 680. Any thoughts??

It depends what “isn’t enough processing power” means? Whilst tweaking the scene and materials, you are moving sliders on-the-fly and getting immediate feedback in the Viewport, so whether you have a lot of processing power or not doesn’t matter too much. It’s really just for the end product render where it makes a difference. But yes, if one 680 turns out to not be enough, you could add a second (assuming your hardware supports that).

All this talk of multiple 680’s seems strange to someone very happy with a 550Ti :slight_smile: But if I was rendering for a living rather than coding, that might be different.

Paul

But how would you connect your GPU to the motherboard?

Heres a comparisson of the GPU

Those 660ti are 50% slower then 580!
670 seem nice. I can get thema also for around 230€ and they are 20% slower then 580.
Maybe not that great investment only the ram advantage.
But I would definetly want to see a scene that fully loads the 1,50GB of RAM just to ahve an idea what scale are we talking aboth.

for what its worth, a quote from V-Ray sales today:
“2.0 is quite a ways away so upgrade prices are not currently available.”

Very sad.
From all softwares we named here I also think that ChaosGroup put Vray4Rhino as the last stand.
All other plugins get faaar more attention.