GI Rendering Speed - FPrime is how much faster than LW?

#21

I’ve been using FPrime sense it’s official release and still love it. Tough to get around that interactive previewr, and I still enjoy the ability to continually refine an image. But I too have seen it’s short comings sense I’ve been doing more animations lately (arch-viz) and have turned to using Kray for interior stuff (amazing results and speed), and recently LW’s native engine for the exterior stuff. I really really like the cache radiosity for animations introduced to 9.5…wonderful!

Megalodon, you said you use FG in LW for animations, the down side is that it doesn’t support cache for animtions, do you still find it faster then MC with cache? Using FPrime and Kray, I’m very inexperienced in optimizing MC in LW.

I’ll be looking forward to see what you guys offer. :thumbsup: But how soon is soon?

#22

As soon as I have some time I would love to setup (and help to collect)a BRAND NEW series of
free benchmark scenes for Lightwave radiosity, and have a dedicated thread for them.

In my opinion most of the radiosity test are based on static images, and they are becoming a bit outdated.
Most modern machines allow for faster radiosity rendering, and that means that
we could do more Global Illumination tests with scenes that have moving elements.

Also we could set up a series of common testing requirements (machine info/ radiosity settings screenshot) to assure repetable test and repeatable results on OTHER machines.
-R

#23

Sounds like a good idea Robert.

#24

Here are some of the examples I was thinking of:
[ul]
[li]WINDOW MEDIUM ROOM (Camera Panning left to Right) SAMPLE[/li][li]LARGE OPEN AREA BUILDING[/li][li]BUILDING EXTERIOR[/li][li]FLAPPING FLAG[/li][li]WALKING CHARACTER[/li][/ul]We could rencer 30 frames at 640 x 480 , Classic Medium

I would love to hear your ideas guys for good test scenes…

#25

If you can show some pics as reference, I might be able to help.

#26

I would normaly recomend using primitives, but I think most machines can handle scenes with some meat on them. Besides they could help to point out real life unseen problems.

Here are some of the enviroments I think we could use…

[ul]
[li]WINDOW MEDIUM ROOM (Camera Panning left to Right) SAMPLE SAMPLE[/li][li]LARGE OPEN AREA BUILDING (Camera moving up) SAMPLE SAMPLE[/li][li]BUILDING EXTERIOR (Camera Zooming in) SAMPLE SAMPLE[/li][li]FLAPPING FLAG [/li][li]WALKING CHARACTER (360)SAMPLE[/li][/ul]

#27

The problem with that is that the updated render engine in 9.5 actually allows much lower settings to be used to achieve the same quality.

As an example, I rarely set AA above 2 and use adaptive sampling to smooth things out. Also 9.5 has a radiosity mutliplier which is usually sufficient at 50% or less. There’s also interpolated reflection blurring, new lights…etc.

9.5 has so many improvements that a lot of people aren’t using. There’s no point throwing a scene at it with the same mentality as when 9.3 or even 8+, 7+, 6+ were released, you won’t notice any improvement.

#28

Good point.
And that is why this new thread would help A LOT…
You could show to the people sample renders with your settings.

what we could do with the scenes it just provide
the scene and the objects

and the user takes it from there.

We could call the thread…
The Render Lab…
-R

#29

Neat… :slight_smile:

any realtime AO and SSS ?
(high on my wishlist : )

…give us a sneak-peak :slight_smile:

#30

We haven’t done too many animations - primarily arch-viz stills - which is where we still use FPrime. Our animations were basically made in pieces - the billiards room, the lounge, the pool area, etc. - and each were made on one machine and not renderred over a network. Using FG (IMO) was just as fast as setting up in MC - just quicker rendering and flicker-free. I have yet to really get into 9.5 and test out its caching system - hopefully soon though. Considering how fast LW’s render engine is progressing, I’m REALLY looking forward to LW10.

And we DO have Kray - but again, just haven’t had the time to really get into it either. I like Kray on interiors, but then recently we haven’t done too many of those either. Too many plugins/packages to learn/master. I need 48 hours in a day! :slight_smile:

#31

Yeah I’d love to see a sneak peak at your new real time previewer Sensei. :slight_smile:

#32

I will stay tuned :wink:

#33

Here you go.

http://www2.trueart.pl/Products/Plug…_Preview_3.mov

#34

You are joking right?

The only noticable difference between the preview and the OpenGL was the shadows. Unless we’re talking about realtime radiosity previews I don’t think Worley’s got anything to worry about yet.

#35

Mjeah, could be allright for previews though… soft shadows would be great.

thing is, you could export the fbx animation to a game enigine instead and get much better result, and realtime AA. Ambient Occlusion too.

#36 
    Renders should be compared to LightWave F9 render, not to OpenGL.. If there are differences then there is some unsupported feature or mistake in code.. OpenGL doesn't have bump mapping, translucency, ray-traced shadows and ray-traced reflections, does it? :)
    [http://www2.trueart.pl/Products/Plug-Ins/TrueHair/Graphics/TrueHair_Reflections.png](http://www2.trueart.pl/Products/Plug-Ins/TrueHair/Graphics/TrueHair_Reflections.png)

  That video was not meant to be showed to public.. I am tring to show one feature in one video f.e. 1st video is showing lighting with point, distant and spot light types, zooming in/out, resizing, camera picking up, 2nd video is showing basic surface attributes, like color, luminosity, diffuse, specularity, glossiness, translucency.. 3rd is showing ray-traced shadows, colored light shadows, handling multiple lights. 4th video is showing multiple parallel renderer windows working in the same time, different views from different cameras.
#37

BTW, global illumination and ambient occlusion are just shaders… Basic implementations can be done in less time than recording video of them… :wink: Especially ambient occlusion is very easy to do, it’s just casting rays in all directions, ignoring those that exceed limits, and blending remaining ray distances together…

#38

Comparision between TrueHair, latest Kray Internal Beta, and LW v9.5:

Render times of this particular scene are:
TrueHair 4 seconds
LightWave 4 seconds
Kray 25 seconds

#39

Interesting TrueArt, with potential. More then one previewer open is pretty cool. But I’d really be curious to see how it stacks up with GI though.

#40

Agreed.

I understand what you’re saying about the raytracing but the examples so far don’t look much different to the OpenGL view. Soft shadows and the new lights (IES especially) will be good, full compatability with the current nodes will be great and GI will be excellent.