Feature: strip render?

[simmsimaging]

I had a bit more time to play with Octane tonight - really impressed by the feel of the images. Something about them reminds me of the early days of Maxwell - that nice light distribution. Good job on this so far.

I'm sure this has occurred to you already, but wondered about the possibility of implementing a batch/strip render function as a way around the RAM limitations of video cards. If you set up a scene as you like it but are capped at, say, 3K and need 6K finals, then having a function to automatically cut the shot into 4 pieces and render them sequentially at higher res would be ideal. You'd need a shift lens type function added to the camera, but that probably isn't a deal breaker is it?

This could, in theory, remove all practical size limitations of Octane even on modest cards, and not significantly alter the workflow, nor require any added rendering 'modes'. Is it something you have considered already?

b

[James]

I think radiance said that this would be harder than it seems, as when MLT is implemented each render will have different brightness, so you would have trouble matching up all the rendered segments once complete.

[Sam]

Also the scene has to be loaded in memory.
You can't just divide the geometry in strips

But doing multi-pass for specifics elements could work in some way

[gristle]

I think radiance said that this would be harder than it seems, as when MLT is implemented each render will have different brightness, so you would have trouble matching up all the rendered segments once complete.

I wonder if the same applies to rendering out an animation. Some flicker, like using interpolated radiosity.

[simmsimaging]

Also the scene has to be loaded in memory.
You can't just divide the geometry in strips

But doing multi-pass for specifics elements could work in some way

Yeah, that was pretty obvious, but from what I gathered Octane was pretty efficient with the geometry so final res would be more of a bottle neck. Clearly there will be scenes that are too heavy either way though. Not sure how multi-passing would be much help though. For some things it would be okay, but you'd lose the the complex interplay of light between objects if you they were not all in the scene together. Did you mean something else by that?

b

[Sam]

I was thinking for example like in video games when you have a skybox
You got the level with plenty details, and behind that you have a 3D skybox with all the environement

Indeed for some things you loose the light bounces between objects but in some case you don't notice it

[simmsimaging]

I was thinking for example like in video games when you have a skybox
You got the level with plenty details, and behind that you have a 3D skybox with all the environement

Indeed for some things you loose the light bounces between objects but in some case you don't notice it

I see, thanks for explaining. That approach is probably not going to be of much use for my work unfortunately. My bottle neck will be high res as everything we do is for print, and 5-6K is a typical/normal res for us. Usually geometry is not too bad, as we're generally not building complex scenes full of stuff.

b

[Sam]

5-6k should work in Octane
Its all about the geometry you have in your scene
And for 5k to 6k I think you use pretty high-res textures ?
Octane is also another way of working, by optimizing everything
It has a good side, you learn to work with optimized setups and at the end you gain on render time.

I wait myself for the next GPUs with more memory (like 6GB)

[simmsimaging]

5-6k should work in Octane
Its all about the geometry you have in your scene
And for 5k to 6k I think you use pretty high-res textures ?
Octane is also another way of working, by optimizing everything
It has a good side, you learn to work with optimized setups and at the end you gain on render time.

I wait myself for the next GPUs with more memory (like 6GB)

For sure, if GPU based engines can get the kind of results (details and light quality) of a CPU based engine it will be well worth investing in a next gen card. I'll see how Octane handles the 5-6K res, but you are right, hi-res textures are a bottle neck. I tend to use a lot of 8K maps, and at this point I have not even been able to get one to load in Octane.

b

[Sam]

Well Im not sure but to calculate how many MB you need per resolution of the output render
You need to multiply the number of pixels by the number of bit-per-pixels and translate to MB

8k maps should load, that's maybe an Octane alpha bug, you can upload the map here or PM Radiance with the map so he can try to see why the map doesn't load. I know I got problems loading a 144MB HDR file in environement, but the file was like 12k per 2k or something. I think currently the limit is 8096 px square, but im not sure

If your texture is 200MB and your GPU is 1GB it should load

Also you can load greyscale as float images (1/4 the size in MB)
Let's wait for the 6gb FERMI cards