Hi guys
My company are in pre production of an animated series and we are thinking to use a GPU renderer instead of our beloved Arnold! So far Octane looks promising but I have some question and I will be glad if you want to help.
1- Do we need a GPU farm kinda thing or some workstations (under 5) with some SLI 980ti or titan is enough?
2- Our series is about 900 minutes, should I hope for an under two minutes render in 720p (with SSS, No displacement, No hair)?
3- Can I use Deadline for network rendering?
4- Can I use a demo plugin for lighting and a licensed version for rendering?
5- Can I have Zdepth and MotionVector for post processing?
We hope we can use this awsome renderer anyway
Thank you in advance
Animated series rendering choice
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1- Do we need a GPU farm kinda thing or some workstations (under 5) with some SLI 980ti or titan is enough?
Octane rendering doesn't use SLI, just use several card with no SLI.
Both solutions GPU network and GPU farm, are good , both at the same time are even better.
Also octane speed goes up linearly with number of GPU.
What should orient you is how you're going to deal with all this extra heat produced by all these GPU.
One important thing to think of, is GPU VRAM consistency.
Better to have the exact same VRAM quantity for all cards because 1 lower VRAM card will force all other cards to use less VRAM aswell in a render (this is a Cuda limitation).
Or maybe you can have a special Station/farm with very High VRAM to deal with biggest scene.
2- Our series is about 900 minutes, should I hope for an under two minutes render in 720p (with SSS, No displacement, No hair)?
yes
3- Can I use Deadline for network rendering?
don't know about that. But with Octane network rendering don't sure you need deadline.
4- Can I use a demo plugin for lighting and a licensed version for rendering?
I can't see why not, but maybe it depend on which plugin.
5- Can I have Zdepth and MotionVector for post processing?
Yes.
IMPORTANT : The only limitation you 'll have to deal with is geometry limited by Vram, exactly like Ram limits geometry for CPU renderer.
For example, GPU with 8 GB of VRAM can only render 70 millions of triangles,
1 GPU or 10 GPU this is the same, if the lower RAM for the used card is 8 GB you can only render 70 millions of triangles.
Octane rendering doesn't use SLI, just use several card with no SLI.
Both solutions GPU network and GPU farm, are good , both at the same time are even better.
Also octane speed goes up linearly with number of GPU.
What should orient you is how you're going to deal with all this extra heat produced by all these GPU.
One important thing to think of, is GPU VRAM consistency.
Better to have the exact same VRAM quantity for all cards because 1 lower VRAM card will force all other cards to use less VRAM aswell in a render (this is a Cuda limitation).
Or maybe you can have a special Station/farm with very High VRAM to deal with biggest scene.
2- Our series is about 900 minutes, should I hope for an under two minutes render in 720p (with SSS, No displacement, No hair)?
yes
3- Can I use Deadline for network rendering?
don't know about that. But with Octane network rendering don't sure you need deadline.
4- Can I use a demo plugin for lighting and a licensed version for rendering?
I can't see why not, but maybe it depend on which plugin.
5- Can I have Zdepth and MotionVector for post processing?
Yes.
IMPORTANT : The only limitation you 'll have to deal with is geometry limited by Vram, exactly like Ram limits geometry for CPU renderer.
For example, GPU with 8 GB of VRAM can only render 70 millions of triangles,
1 GPU or 10 GPU this is the same, if the lower RAM for the used card is 8 GB you can only render 70 millions of triangles.
Pascal ANDRE
Thank you Calus
Your notes is really helpful for me and I think it's the time to read the Maya plugin documentation now . But I have two more question for you if you do me this favor:
1- We use Maya as our base 3D software for animate and render and Houdini for VFX. So which is better? rendering with Maya plugin or standalone version. (it is a typical kid's character, environment story)
2- Is it true that we can use a vast online shader library of the Octane for our project? I didn't see the library yet. is it enough for an animation?
Thank you very much
Your notes is really helpful for me and I think it's the time to read the Maya plugin documentation now . But I have two more question for you if you do me this favor:
1- We use Maya as our base 3D software for animate and render and Houdini for VFX. So which is better? rendering with Maya plugin or standalone version. (it is a typical kid's character, environment story)
2- Is it true that we can use a vast online shader library of the Octane for our project? I didn't see the library yet. is it enough for an animation?
Thank you very much
That's a tricky question because:mosssi wrote: 1- We use Maya as our base 3D software for animate and render and Houdini for VFX. So which is better? rendering with Maya plugin or standalone version. (it is a typical kid's character, environment story)
- as you start with Octane it's not going to be easy to figure out the workflow without plugins for "Animate in Maya and VFX in Houdini, then shade and render in Standalone",
and
- the Maya plugin is currently on heavy refactoring, V3 is not out yet.
The last Maya plugin (V2) is very stable but has some quirks and none obvious workflows.
This is going to change after the refactoring but in my opinion the new plugin will need some time to become mature (but is going to kick ass eventually
).Roadmap for the maya plugin: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=53709#p271457
If you're going to need volume rendering quickly, you don't have a choice, you need to render in standalone.
But if you're not going to need heavy rendering tomorrow, I'd say to go first with one Maya V2 plugin for the moment and experiment with one standalone.
(better to have a good understanding of standalone to get the best from the plugins anyway).
Also there's so much options coming soon on the license side (monthly subscriptions, OctaneRender Cloud, OctaneEngine ...) better to go very progressively with this.
Well the online shader library is not that vast, pretty small if you compare for example with the Maxwellrender online library, but the shaders are really helpful for new octane users as a base.mosssi wrote: 2- Is it true that we can use a vast online shader library of the Octane for our project? I didn't see the library yet. is it enough for an animation?
Pascal ANDRE
Hi again
We decided on ordering Octane for Maya but we want version 3. So we should wait a little longer. Am I right?
And my main concerns are:
1- Multi patch or UDIM support in V.3. When we should expect and upgrade for that?
2- Expensive volume light in path-trace and pmc mdoe. Is there a hope to have a simple volume light in direct light kernel?
Thank you
We decided on ordering Octane for Maya but we want version 3. So we should wait a little longer. Am I right?
And my main concerns are:
1- Multi patch or UDIM support in V.3. When we should expect and upgrade for that?
2- Expensive volume light in path-trace and pmc mdoe. Is there a hope to have a simple volume light in direct light kernel?
Thank you