Render engine update in Rhino 9 WIP

Serengeti (Rhino WIP) Rendering WIP
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Rhino 9 WIP has received an update to its render engine Cycles. This brings it from the Cycles 3.5 version to Cycles 4.4, spanning 2.5 years development time by the upstream Cycles team.

Lots of changes have happened to the workings of the render engine, which meant a lot of care has gone into adapting to these. Due to the amount and complexity of changes there are likely still issues with results and stability while using Raytraced or Rhino Render that haven’t been addressed yet and may adversely affect your work with the WIP. We are working on ironing these out in the coming time, it is however a good moment to bring the current work into the public to broaden the testing scope beyond the files and ways currently worked with.

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21 Likes
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This is great!

To provide increased completeness, can the Intel OneAPI code be repaired this time?

I know there is a YouTrack for it at the moment. Even on the forum, I am starting to see a few integrated chips with Arc mobile series graphics.

I was looking at a few Mini PCs recently while considering changing to Linux, and there are a few with these increasingly good Arc GPUs.

Anyway, I am looking forward to giving it a try.

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Thank you!

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Anything new and shiny we should test out?
I don’t follow the Blender development, but I did look through here and looked at the changes back towards 3.5 and it seems like steady, nice, small improvements.

Update:
Test 1:
I opened the newly installd wip and opened a file and hit Raytraced. (Rhino was in OpenGl and the image just turned black. No errors, no info about kernels compiling.)
So I made a new file and turned to Direct3D and swapped to Raytraced and now I get a cuda warning:

RTX 2070 on windows 11.
I’ll investigate some more.

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Test 2:
I did have “use start resolution on from an earier wip testing (but that didn’t work, but had forgotten to turn it off) So I did now, and resat the start resolution too, and then when I tried Raytraced Rhino crashed.

Test 3:
Rhino obviously needed to be started again and now it works fine!
It handles meshes so much faster and there is something about the image quality that has improved. Nice stuff!

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Test 4:
Tested Start resolution = True again, and image turned black.
Swapped to rendered, turned start resolution off and tried setting a different value for the start resolution none the less, because I am messing around, and sat that to 2. Turned on Raytraced and Rhino crashed again :slight_smile:

Test 5:
Restarted Rhino, checked the settings, start resolution was still 2, so I though what the heck and started Cycles, and black cuda error again. Reset to default and restart Rhino and now I am stuck with black viewport. Going to update drivers they were quite old.

Test 6:
New drivers, restart and still black or cuda or somethimes work if file is super simple. So there are some bad stuff going on. I would not be surpriced if it is some compiling going on in the background, but I get no notifications. I can send you this sub-d Dino file for testing inhouse if you like. (tomorrow)

Switching to Rendered is glitchy too. Often loosing colors or objects. (direct3d now)

Test 7:
Did a factory reset of Rhino 9 and tested another file (simple single, big mesh) and that worked fine. Opened the Dino and black again. So now I can not get that file to work. Hid the exterior and tried to render the interior alone, but then Rhino crashed.

And the banding HAS to be fixed for Rhino 9. I give you no excuse for letting this pass during Rhino 7’s development, all the way through Rhino 8’s and now even into Rhino 9??? Come on. I mean, blaming the pipeline guys for Rhino 7 is OK, but not during Rhino 8 and definetly not for Rhino 9. Just make a flippin image pipeline pass filter thingo that kicks in on render iteration 10 or something. You are plenty smart enough to figure something fast and easy to mentain thing. (Or get on the other devs back and don’t get off until it’s fixed)

The only reason I stress this is that Raytraced IS our eyes into the final render, and if those eyes are wrong (ref showing banding where there is none) then the purose is not fully met.

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PS! Post done, done testing for now.

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a feature list or improved functions list would be most helpful in testing

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My Rhino crashes pretty quickly in Raytraced mode.

Not sure if this is any useful

RhinoCrashDump.3dm (60.3 KB)

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Yes, agreed, support for Intel GPUs is becoming pretty important as the AI insanity has made Nvidia desktop cards, both new and second hand crazy expensive.

Cheers

DK

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I had initially enabled OneAPI support, but a crash in SYCL 8 that I haven’t figured out yet forced me to recompile Cycles for now without it until resolved.

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Thanks for this update it’s needed and welcome.

I’m curious to see the log of news.

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@nathanletwory
I did some testing again today.

Test 1
Copied the model to a new file.
That worked so the geometry seems fine.

Opened the file again and deleted the rectangular ligth and the emitting cube and started Raytraced and that worked. Added a rectangular light while running and that worked, but after copying it and rescaling the copied rectangular light I was going to adjust it’s intensity, but then Rhino crashed again. Still no crashreports on the crashes.

I monitored the GPU memory usage and it was stable on around 2 out of 8 GB (dedicated and 0.2 GB of shared).

Test 2
(Existing file, just delte lights and add two new rectangular ones)
Repeated the process and poof away it goes. I could adjust the setting once, but not twice.

Test 3
Testet one more time, swapped to OpenGL and same thing.
But now before I got to the settings, just as the mouse leaved the windows.

It’s almost like it is GUI triggered on moving to the object settings.
So it seems like it happens when trying to, or right after adjusting the intensity Rhino crashes.

Dunno if that helps, but shout out for the file.

(Test 4: Did careful changes and turned off Raytraced before any change and it worked for 5 changes, but then it crashed none the less. Makes it feel like it only handles x iterations (because of a memory leak or something))

OK, NOW I am done testing and reporting for this build :wink:

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i cant render at all in the recent wip. rendering initiates but never shows anything. left the computer running did my thing came back, nothing. not in a new file not in an old file. i tried switching to cpu then back to metal, no result. not sure if recompiling ever did anything for me but i tried that as well.