how to get Bump textures to work?

[FooZe]

I'm not entirely sure what is going on here but if you are getting better performance and stability with SLI enabled then leave it that way.
Octane can still use both GPU's when SLI is enabled - it's just recommended to disable it.
If you are getting random crashes then something is probably going on with your system - check that the cards are not overclocked, have enough cooling and you have a power supply with enough wattage for them.

If you want to double check if your cards are performing ok then try CUDA-Z http://cuda-z.sourceforge.net/
It will let you check the performance of both cards (separately) and you should be able to find someone on the web who has posted stats from thier 460 (or similar) to compare to.

You could also try seeing what Ms/sec you are getting with the same scene, first with one card then the other, then combined.
The speed should pretty much scale linearly (Ms/sec for both = Ms/sec of card1 + Ms/sec of card2).

Cheers
Chris.

[godsgifttoearth]

i've been steadily increasing the complexity and number of objects and textures in my test room. i now seem to be getting a lot more noise.

any tips on the kernel settings to reduce this. this was done with PMC, the exact settings i can't remember, 64000 samples, 1.5x buffer. alternatively can someone point me in the direction of an in-depth explanation of what each of the settings do.

thanks

[mib2berlin]

Hi godsgifttoearth, indoor scenes are always a hard thing for any raytracer.
You could try a portal mesh as "glass" in the window.
Look in the manual Chapter 5.8, 6.5 Portal Materials.

Cheers, mib.

[FooZe]

Another thing some people do is to actually render the scene with direct lighting aswell and then blend the two in post processing (since direct lighting produces less noise).
But you may find the portal will be all you need here.

Cheers
Chris.

[roeland]

What does the environment map look like? Does it contain a sun image?

--
Roeland

[godsgifttoearth]

the portal seems to help, quite clever the concept is.

need to find a few hours to let it completely render out and see if it clears up better. could also be my textures are overly ambitious for the simplicity of the scene.