Rendering many lights with Mantra is much faster in 16.0.537

[goldleaf]

 

For anyone rendering scenes with mantra, and have lots of lights, there have been some amazing optimizations that showed up in the last few days.

The scene has 528 disc lights with varying colors:

• 16.0.504.20
  • 11m 51s (no active radius)
  • 8m 29s (active radius 3)
• 16.0.535
  • 3m 28s (no active radius)
  • 3m 13s (active radius 3)
• 16.0.537
  • 1m 18s (no active radius)
  • 1m 9s (active radius 3)

I haven't had a chance to try it in 15.5, since the scene was built using several H16 nodes, but if anyone else gets the chance to compare against 15.5, that'd be cool!

Edited March 7, 2017 by goldleaf

[Mandrake0]

Wow that is a crazy speedup. Can you release the test scene? 

[goldleaf]

Here's the scene, and a quick how-to:

• https://vimeo.com/207214689
• http://blog.cerebero.com/post/158088992098/light-instancing-for-mantra
• https://d.pr/APrK

(attached to the post, since droplr is blocked for some folks)

instancing_lights_files.tar.gz

Edited March 7, 2017 by goldleaf

[galagast]

Holy smokes! Here are my test results:

• 15.5.717
  • 54m 21s (no active radius)
  • 40m 56s (active radius 3)
• 16.0.504
  • 34m 44s (no active radius)
  • 19m 19s (active radius 3)
• 16.0.539
  • 3m 21s (no active radius)
  • 2m 43s (active radius 3)

I just downloaded the latest daily build, the jump in render time is incredible!

My system specs:
OS: Win 10 x64
Proc: Intel i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz
Memory: 32GB
Video: GeForce GTX 560/PCIe/SSE2

@goldleaf: What's your system specs?
I attached the H15.5 file I converted from your scene

mantra_instancelights_bldgs_H15.5.zip

[goldleaf]

Thanks so much for the conversion @galagast that's great! Here are the specs for the system I ran those tests on (totally forgot to include/mention that before, thanks!):

• Linux Mint 18.1
• 2x Xeon X5670 @2.9Ghz
• 96GB RAM
• GeForce 1060 GTX

I also updated the original post to clarify they were disc lights, not sphere lights.

Edited March 7, 2017 by goldleaf

[goldleaf]

That's interesting how much Active Radius made a difference on your system! I wonder what was behind that? Single proc vs dual proc? Or maybe the operating system?

[Atom]

Here is a Redshift conversion of your test scene. It comes in just over a minute at 1:21 using the 1070GTX.

 

redshift_instancelights_bldgs_H15.5.hiplc

Edited March 7, 2017 by Atom

[el_diablo]

Haha, and we were fighting this for years now with 100+ lights in the scene. It always seemed to me that optimization of active radius would mean a world of difference, as it seemed falloff didn't exclude lights. This will be a game changer for our project if we switch to H16.

[goldleaf]

Thanks @Atomthat's great! Does RedShift allow variations when instancing lights?

[Sepu]

@goldleaf you mean variations like this ??  This is juanjo (developer) image. 

 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Sepu

[goldleaf]

Yep, that's what I was curious about! Glad to know it's in there! Thanks @Sepu