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GPU RENDERING for Carrara has Arrived!!! - Thanks CASUAL!

3dtoday3dtoday Posts: 0
edited February 2013 in Carrara Discussion

Hey all,

Amazing programmer, Casual, very kindly heeded my plea to export Carrara scenes to Blender Cycles {GPU} render engine.
This is a first, and fantastic news!

He plans to make the script more elegant upcoming { his scripts that I have tried have very nice interfaces},
so it's a little raw at this point. { I don't think animation is enabled yet } But he demonstrated it works.

Blender is a fantastic application, with high powered tools, and a great new renderer Cycles. And of course
it's free { and improved constantly }. Blender Foundation has produced many well known movie shorts. { Sintel, Elephants Dream, and Big Buck Bunny } I suggest you search for those on youtube - they are very good. There's tons of free tutorials on youtube as well, to get you started. Blender has a very active community to help you get up to speed as well. I think Carrara / Blender make a great
combination!

I'm not sure how easy it is to get the scripts running. You might install the Daz to Blender versions first, to get
you up to speed. { which has a tutorial as well} I havent tried them yet.

LINK TO CASUALS { early version } script.

Thanks Casual!!!


http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2877/P150/

DOWNLOAD THE NEWEST BLENDER 2.66 HERE

http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

Post edited by 3dtoday on

Comments

  • 3dtoday3dtoday Posts: 0
    edited February 2013

    Here are some nice cycles renders.

    http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/10/rfinal2.jpg

    http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7549/opelgt.png

    http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=205863&d=1354931707

    note sure how to make them show here?

    Post edited by 3dtoday on
  • mullhull_7c51bfb544mullhull_7c51bfb544 Posts: 46
    edited December 1969

    Thanks 3Dtoday for the update and Thanks Casual for your dedication to making 3D art better. the two programs should work well together you are right Blender is quite powerful and well supported

  • Kodiak3dKodiak3d Posts: 223
    edited February 2013

    I'm speechless. Really, this is great. Stunning, actually.

    In fact, this may be better than any announcement DAZ has to make about Carrara this month.

    Is the pic of the deer with Carrara hair?

    Post edited by Kodiak3d on
  • wetcircuitwetcircuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Don't think Carrara hair would transfer. It has to export as an OBJ.

    Renders are stunning! But what is wrong with Blenders website? Is it me? Is it Firefox?

  • RoygeeRoygee Posts: 2,247
    edited December 1969

    Holly - looks like a temporary problem with the site - i'm using Chrome and also can't access it. Downloaded the latest Blender version a couple of days ago, no problem:)

  • Curved DesignCurved Design Posts: 61
    edited February 2013

    3dtoday said:
    Here are some nice cycles renders.

    http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/10/rfinal2.jpg

    http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7549/opelgt.png

    http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=205863&d=1354931707

    note sure how to make them show here?

    Here is a link to a great overview by Andrew Price of the Cycles "UNBIASED" render engine, to me even better than the GPU rendering is the natural lighting support as shown in his video.

    http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/introduction-to-cycles

    Here is also a link that has info about what GPUs are currently supported.

    http://www.systemagnostic.com/faqs/

    Post edited by Curved Design on
  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    holly wetcircuit said:
    Don't think Carrara hair would transfer. It has to export as an OBJ.

    Renders are stunning! But what is wrong with Blenders website? Is it me? Is it Firefox?

    you can get Blender at cnet .

    http://download.cnet.com/1770-20_4-0.html?query=blender&platformSelect;=&tag=srch&searchtype=downloads&filterName=platform=Windows,Mac,iOS,Android,Webware,Mobile&filter=platform=Windows,Mac,iOS,Android,Webware,Mobile

  • ManStanManStan Posts: 0
    edited February 2013

    Well lets see that DAZ content in it.

    Yes it's easy to say something can be done, it is quite another matter to actually do it.

    I can't do this, no reason to try, only works with Nvidia GPU and mine is ATI.

    Post edited by ManStan on
  • tylerzamboritylerzambori Posts: 79
    edited December 1969

    Kodiak3D said:
    I'm speechless. Really, this is great. Stunning, actually.

    In fact, this may be better than any announcement DAZ has to make about Carrara this month.

    Is the pic of the deer with Carrara hair?

    I'm speechless too. It sure is better than any announcement DAZ may make.

    YAY!

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Posted news at http://carraracafe.com/?p=2660

    I personally use Portable apps, which quickly installs Blender, GIMP and Inkscape, besides all those other needed apps like Firefox and so on: http://portableapps.com/

    Tried to export the included Christmas tree scene to obj, it generated a 3GB obj file, not all scenes will work in Cycles...
    Gave up with the apartment export to obj and dae, need to learn basic Blender skills first.

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    ManStan said:
    Well lets see that DAZ content in it.

    Yes it's easy to say something can be done, it is quite another matter to actually do it.

    I can't do this, no reason to try, only works with Nvidia GPU and mine is ATI.

    Cycles worked with CPU too, it actually renders everything in default CPU mode, while GPU fails when you run out of video memory or use some advanced functions.

    Go nuts!

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    A screenshot of mcjteleblender Daz to Cycles of V4 or V5:
    http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?252243-Daz-Studio-to-Blender-2-62

    Another, says that it needs a little tweaking in Blender:
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2877/P15/

    Another Daz v4 to cycles, with tips on scene setup:
    http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2857039

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Great news, the first early version of the script is now online, a lot left to do though:
    Download and Tutorial: https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts2/mcjblendbotspecial

    Rendering Carrara Scenes using Blender Cycles—- Some time-saving tools !
    www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17967/

    Since Carrara users also want to render scenes in Blender/Cycles i wrote a blender-python script
    which uses the same services as the Daz Studio version : a kit of blender python scripts named mcjBlendBot )
    Later in 2013 i’ll probably improve on this since the results are not as good as the Daz Studio version

  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471
    edited December 1969

    I did a Cycles portrait with Casual's stuff in poser a while back. The results were great! Only problems was the material/texture limit in cycles. Haven't checked to see if that was overcome yet? If not, you get some bright pink materials, where it ran out of memory.

    Portrait.jpg
    576 x 695 - 291K
  • wetcircuitwetcircuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Wow! Looks really nice! Is the background the only light source? IBL?

  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471
    edited December 1969

    Yep, it was the only light source. I'm not good enough with Blender to know how to use more lights ;-) The only thing I tweaked based on Casual's settings were the eye material.

    This was without using an image for light (and was still working on eye settings), not fully baked...

    file_486912.jpg
    384 x 451 - 45K
  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    3doutlaw said:
    I did a Cycles portrait with Casual's stuff in poser a while back. The results were great! Only problems was the material/texture limit in cycles. Haven't checked to see if that was overcome yet? If not, you get some bright pink materials, where it ran out of memory.

    All GPU renderers have the same conceptual problem, once you run out of graphics card memory, you are screwed.
    New graphics card ship with at least 2GB so it is becoming less of a problem.
    The "fix" is that Cycles can run in CPU mode as a normal renderer, using regular RAM, but then you get the usual slow rendering.

    Nice render btw.

  • 3dtoday3dtoday Posts: 0
    edited May 2013

    3doutlaw said:
    I did a Cycles portrait with Casual's stuff in poser a while back. The results were great! Only problems was the material/texture limit in cycles. Haven't checked to see if that was overcome yet? If not, you get some bright pink materials, where it ran out of memory.


    thanks

    Post edited by 3dtoday on
  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471
    edited December 1969

    Sure, here it is. I cobbled it together. I'm not a great script writer, but it worked. You need the mjcteleblender framework. of course.

    http://3doutlaw.com/home/?page_id=631&did=17

  • 3dtoday3dtoday Posts: 0
    edited May 2013

    3doutlaw said:
    Sure, here it is. I cobbled it together. I'm not a great script writer, but it worked. You need the mjcteleblender framework. of course.

    http://3doutlaw.com/home/?page_id=631&did=17

    thanks

    Post edited by 3dtoday on
  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    A blend file and tutorial about material nodes for Cycles has been posted at the main thread for the Daz script, this is also useful for the Carrara script. Indirect progress I guess. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2877/P195

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,624
    edited December 1969

    3drendero said:
    3doutlaw said:
    I did a Cycles portrait with Casual's stuff in poser a while back. The results were great! Only problems was the material/texture limit in cycles. Haven't checked to see if that was overcome yet? If not, you get some bright pink materials, where it ran out of memory.

    All GPU renderers have the same conceptual problem, once you run out of graphics card memory, you are screwed.
    New graphics card ship with at least 2GB so it is becoming less of a problem.
    The "fix" is that Cycles can run in CPU mode as a normal renderer, using regular RAM, but then you get the usual slow rendering.

    Nice render btw.An even better, new solution.
    AMD is now making a quad processor that has two Radeon Video cards (384 or so Radeon cores) built right into the cpu, so you no longer need a graphic card. Downside being that you have no options for a graphics card. Upside being that you can utilize system RAM for graphics. I'd imagine.
    I use an eight core Zambezi AMD cpu. I love it. I'm wondering if those 380+ Radeon cores would work as cpu cores for multi-thread apps? I don't know such things, but would love to find out for sure.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,624
    edited December 1969

    3doutlaw said:
    Yep, it was the only light source. I'm not good enough with Blender to know how to use more lights ;-) The only thing I tweaked based on Casual's settings were the eye material.

    This was without using an image for light (and was still working on eye settings), not fully baked...

    Ouch!
    That looks nice! Yikes! What hair is that?
    I don't feel that this represents a higher grade render than what Carrara can do, by any stretch at all. But it does show that you have talent. especially considering that it appears that this is still pretty much a preliminary (test) shot.

    Serious though. I'm really glad that this stuff is working for those interested. I may look into it further when I get time. Currently, there's no way I'd have my graphics card render instead of my cpu. As well, there's no way I'd take my stuff outside of Carrara to render - as I've never yet had a better experience rendering than what I've done in Carrara. Yet the more options available to each and every artist, the better.
    I've yet to try Blender, except for a quick one or two week stint several years ago, before I bought Carrara. So I've really been intrigued by seeing some examples of what folks have been doing with it lately. It looks amazing! The only thing keeping me from trying it right now is time. So it will eventually make its way to my workstation - but in the meantime - I'm still that happier than ever Carraraist that you all have come to know.

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