Jason Posted June 5, 2006 Share Posted June 5, 2006 This is of interest for F-Prime fans because it shows that much the speed achieved by F-Prime is in the perception. Here is an interesting Stupid RAT Trick that shows some good work done by a renderman DSO. Hal Bertam's interaction RAT trick It would be lovely to have Mantra's IPR try to emulate this type of thing, don't you agree? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUsualAlex Posted June 5, 2006 Share Posted June 5, 2006 Hey Jason, is this the case of how brick-map in prman is used to speed such renders? Is the tbf format work more or less like the brickmap...? Just curious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted June 5, 2006 Author Share Posted June 5, 2006 Nope, as far as I've been told, quite simply his DSO keeps prman open to shoot rays into the scene and it sends back rendered samples to a viewer of his. It's just sheer raytracing going on, no acceleration with brickmaps or anything else at all. Is just a sparse pattern of rays being progressively re-rendered and refined in a clever algorithm which priotizes refinement in areas of high contrast first that give the feeling of very fast renders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyBlaze Posted June 5, 2006 Share Posted June 5, 2006 It could be done using the new features of PRMan13. If i understood it correctly, you can now render "brickmap-contents" as geometry in almost no-time. Bake it once, render again in a sec, no matter at which resolution or LOD . Sounds nice...i'd love to try/use it myself some time. Greets Chris P.S.: Oh, first post by me. I'm happy to be around all the helpful pros & Houdini-users here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUsualAlex Posted June 5, 2006 Share Posted June 5, 2006 Nope, as far as I've been told, quite simply his DSO keeps prman open to shoot rays into the scene and it sends back rendered samples to a viewer of his. It's just sheer raytracing going on, no acceleration with brickmaps or anything else at all. Is just a sparse pattern of rays being progressively re-rendered and refined in a clever algorithm with priotize refinement in areas of high contrast first that give the feeling of very fast renders. 28324[/snapback] Heheh. I just skimmed through his note and noticed me mentioned about that. Pretty cool trick all right. : ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 My memory of the presentation is a bit fuzzy now but I had the impression that his results were mostly impressive on the complex scenes because of his use of an entire renderfarm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted June 6, 2006 Author Share Posted June 6, 2006 My memory of the presentation is a bit fuzzy now but I had the impression that his results were mostly impressive on the complex scenes because of his use of an entire renderfarm. 28328[/snapback] I can imagine that a 140 CPU farm together with 140 Renderman licenses does probably make the most expensive renderer in the world (ouch!), but there is no denying the interactivity that he achieves on his laptop on a single license make it worth it's weight in gold. My feeling is that this sort of "cheat" gives a huge sense of liberation to an artist. Of course it doesn't play well with large-scale scene optimization essential to efficient production (shadowmaps/caches and such) but as a first stab for laying out the the initial lighting and shader settings for a setting it's invaluable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynbo Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I want it ..... Right Now! :-> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Overload Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 yea 140 cpu's is rather insane .. In a good way. Just wondering and I have been curious about this for a while... What size "farms" does DD have at their disposal? I was acutally thinking it was something in that ballpark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted June 6, 2006 Author Share Posted June 6, 2006 yea 140 cpu's is rather insane .. In a good way. Just wondering and I have been curious about this for a while... What size "farms" does DD have at their disposal? I was acutally thinking it was something in that ballpark. 28333[/snapback] In total, yes of course; far greater than 140 cpus. Something in the region of 10x that many. Of course it's quite seldom you'll get it all to yourself One of my personal records is rendering on 742 procs simultaneously. I was rendering a little short film that was between 8-15 minutes a frame and I got the entire thing rendered in ~40 mins. It was a very quiet sunday night on the farm and I took full advantage. Having 140 cpus on beck and call to render one frame is quite the achievement:) Do the math; 140 x $6,000 per machine + 140 x $5,000 per prman license... <whistle> Yay Mantra! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lisux Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 Yeah, it would be great top have some like this trick in the IPR so wa can speed up all the raytracing work. Maybe it could be implemented into the raytracing cache of the IPR so it allows incremental renders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
symek Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 It could be done using the new features of PRMan13. 28325[/snapback] It's written in Notes that it can NOT be done in PRMan 13 unless now. As I understand there is nothing special in that trick - I mean, no fancy technology outside pure PRMan is used, so mayby this is really possible in Mantra without BIG coding efforts... The sourcecode seems to be about publishing too... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Overload Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 Having 140 cpus on beck and call to render one frame is quite the achievement:) Do the math; 140 x $6,000 per machine + 140 x $5,000 per prman license... <whistle> Yay Mantra! Wow thats insane.... So is rendeirng on 742 processors...happen to have a clip of that one?..Im interested to see... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
symek Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 6000$ per render node!? Are you using SGI for rendering or what? I thought rendernodes are much cheaper then simple workstation and quite good one you can get for 2-4K$... also (not sure of that) but 5K$ is a price for first PRMan licenses. 140licenses wouldn't cost 140x5K, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted June 7, 2006 Author Share Posted June 7, 2006 6000$ per render node!? Are you using SGI for rendering or what? I thought rendernodes are much cheaper then simple workstation and quite good one you can get for 2-4K$...also (not sure of that) but 5K$ is a price for first PRMan licenses. 140licenses wouldn't cost 140x5K, right? 28386[/snapback] I'm kinda guessing about the 6,000 - I just assumed the fastest dual CPUs with 4Gb RAM with good motherboards each would add up like that. I'm talking pro grade nodes, not how-cheap-can-you-build-it nodes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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