Thea render tech news

Coon Ra

http://www.thearender.com/cms/index.php/news/tech-news.html
It may be interesting for AMD graphic users as AMD utilises OpenCL instead of CUDA. Thus, this render is suitable for both main types of GPU. Thea render crew still has much to implement for GPU computing but even current progress is very good.

wowie

Interesting.

I do hope they also offer the biased mode for Presto. For GPU rendering, the fastest around is still Redshift3D. They do have plans for an OpenCL port, but that will probably come much later.

Coon Ra

Thea Render seems to be 25-30% cheaper than Redshift3D.

wowie

Coon Ra said:

Thea Render seems to be 25-30% cheaper than Redshift3D.

Maybe so, but is it as fast? And I don't mean Octane fast, I mean fast like render high quality 1080p at less than 1 minute fast. Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOvhtS7UWyg
40 seconds.

Another video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxVrkQPdq_Q

Coon Ra

To be correct in answer I'd have to render same scene as one used for city.
I just checked Thea supplied Escher.scn (it looks similar to the used city though has much less objects) - it took 3 seconds for 10-15 passes, 5 seconds for 30 passes, 8 for 50, 16 for 100 in Presto MC mode with DOF blurring at 1920x1080. A hundred passes for this scene is more than enough as it looks good at 50 passes. Units used for calculations are i7 2600k@4200 and one default Titan black.
I think you could test it yourself, as far as I remember Thea has a demo mode. Cannot tell for sure about limitations as I have Thea license.

Artini

Nice. Just wonder how these results would compare to the Indigo renderer http://indigorenderer.com/
Its simple version will be included with iClone 6 Pro bundle, that hopefully will be available in December.
http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/14-ic6_preorder/index.html

Coon Ra

Expensive.

wowie

Coon Ra said:

To be correct in answer I'd have to render same scene as one used for city.
I just checked Thea supplied Escher.scn (it looks similar to the used city though has much less objects) - it took 3 seconds for 10-15 passes, 5 seconds for 30 passes, 8 for 50, 16 for 100 in Presto MC mode with DOF blurring at 1920x1080. A hundred passes for this scene is more than enough as it looks good at 50 passes. Units used for calculations are i7 2600k@4200 and one default Titan black.
I think you could test it yourself, as far as I remember Thea has a demo mode. Cannot tell for sure about limitations as I have Thea license.

Not entirely sure what you mean by passes. Judging by the info on the official benchmark, seems like they're going by samples. One Titan is about four times a Xeon E5 2670. Not that impressive. Infact, the results from the forest test suggest its closer to 1:1. At least they're honest. :) I do like to know how well it does with indoor scenes lit by outdoor sources (physical sun/sky only)..

The other thing that worries me is that like most GPU renderers, Presto is still limited by the amount of local GPU memory. Of all the GPU renderers available, seems like only Redshift offer out of core rendering for both textures and (non instanced) geometry.

Coon Ra

The main idea of post was to deliver the message that someone not just declaring future support of OpenCL but already did certain steps in this direction. To me it is useless, as I do not use AMD hardware.
Octane is also declaring out-of-core feature for future. Same time they stand for no OpenCL support.

wowie

Coon Ra said:

The main idea of post was to deliver the message that someone not just declaring future support of OpenCL but already did certain steps in this direction. To me it is useless, as I do not use AMD hardware.
Octane is also declaring out-of-core feature for future. Same time they stand for no OpenCL support.

Actually, there's already a few OpenCL GPU renderers in the market. Of course, the most prominent is Luxrender SLG. There's also Indigo RT and Vray RT, though the latter will only work properly with proffesional cards. But SLG is probably the only relevant one since you can use it with DS.

If I remember correctly, Thea Render announced plans for an OpenCL fork a long time ago, before Presto was announced. But then they decided to forgo OpenCL and use NVIDIA's Optix for the GPU (Intel Embree for the CPU) when they release Presto. Now they're previewing an OpenCL fork. I personally find it quite an irony - now they have all those code base to troubleshoot. :) Would've been easier just to use OpenCL in the beginning.

Bendinggrass

These render engines are all new to me. Fascinating.

I believe I read not too long ago that there are plans for LUX render to be able to use video cards in a big way also.

Jonstark

Coon Ra, very cool news!

I'm a TheaRender enthusiast, picked it up a while back, and it's my personal favorite of all the unbiased renderer options. I bought back when I had a rig that was CPU only, as it was a pretty fast CPU renderer (fastest I could find for unbiased), but then when the GPU+CPU came out, well I actually upgraded my laptop to something that could run the GPU too. I'm glad the devs continue to forge ahead, even though I've got an Nvidia rig, and (at least for my current setup) OpenGL support won't do much for me.

Now if only there was a Thea plugin for Carrara! That would make me the happiest of campers.

Wowie, I hadn't heard of Redshift before, very interesting, although sales page states it is a biased renderer, and if so it won't fulfill exactly the same purpose.

I've tried Lux, Octane and Thea, as far as unbiased renderers; with my rig Thea is the fastest. I haven't tried Cycles because I don't know much about Blender, but I think that Cycles and maybe Arion are the other unbiased render choices out there that are within the price range of an enthusiastic hobbyist. Indigo looks quite good, but IMO is priced too high.