A little preview of our new PMC render kernel in beta 2.5

[radiance]

sounds good

Can't wait for V2.48 beta (Guess) next week

No, before you all raise your expectations, there won't be a release next week,
we will post a PMC kernel test build for enthusiasts to play with (not %100 optimized and not recommended for any commercial/dead line work), don't expect a full release yet.

It's just a little in-between like marcus' ray epsilon test build a few weeks ago.
Also, I'm not making any promises, so don't get angry when you are all around 'waiting' next week

Radiance

[necko77]

we can shake it, then you can bake it

[Jaberwocky]

sounds good

Can't wait for V2.48 beta (Guess) next week

No, before you all raise your expectations, there won't be a release next week,
we will post a PMC kernel test build for enthusiasts to play with (not %100 optimized and not recommended for any commercial/dead line work), don't expect a full release yet.

It's just a little in-between like marcus' ray epsilon test build a few weeks ago.
Also, I'm not making any promises, so don't get angry when you are all around 'waiting' next week

Radiance

You mean a sort of 2.47 EB ( Extreme Beta)

[Jaberwocky]

All joking aside.Stick a build on line as and when your ready Radiance.I'm sure we'll all be able to run it over a few tricky scenes to see how it performs and report back our findings.

maybe a few back to back comparisons. Rendering our scene's on 2.46B and then the PMC kernel to see the speed difference in clearing the fireflies.

[acc24ex]

Yeah, show us what you baked, so we know what to expect, we promise no one complains

[radiant]

man, i read this update i a bit late lol. [a reason to clean this place up lol]
Anyway awesome update and i cant wait.

Questions:

~ So PMC will be for scenes that demand alot of lights and such, does this mean that default renders will be slower? EG An hour? Half an hour?
~ Will path tracing be faster then PMC?
~ What use would path tracing be, when PMC comes in it would be obsolete wouldn't it?

[Jaberwocky]

man, i read this update i a bit late lol. [a reason to clean this place up lol]
Anyway awesome update and i cant wait.

Questions:

~ So PMC will be for scenes that demand alot of lights and such, does this mean that default renders will be slower? EG An hour? Half an hour?
~ Will path tracing be faster then PMC?
~ What use would path tracing be, when PMC comes in it would be obsolete wouldn't it?

my guess is this:

You will end up with 3 way kernel selection now:
1) Direct lighting - as before
2) Path Tracing - as before
3) PMC - the addition

PMC will be available to sort the Caustics and get rid of fireflies in a scene faster.EG it will concentrate calculations where they are most needed to clear the firefly's (if that's my understanding). So in some ways it will be quicker because you should effectively need less samples in a scene to clear it of firefly's and achieve the same result compared the Pathtracing mode.

I'm sure one of the team will correct me if I'm wrong on this.

[abstrax]

The test release will have 3 render kernels: Direct lighting, path tracing and PMC. To be able to use the PMC kernel, you need a graphics card with compute model >= 1.1 (see http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_gpus.html).

In terms of samples per second PMC is comparable to path tracing, it may be a bit slower or a bit faster, but the noise reduction in scenes with lots of indirect light and/or lots of glossy reflections is much better with that kernel.

To find out, which kernel suits your scene best, just try out the test release. In general: If the scene is mainly direct light and/or mainly non-glossy reflections, path tracing is probably best. If there is lots of indirect light and/or lots of glossy reflections, PMC is probably best. But you will see yourself

Cheers,
Marcus

[Sandrust]

Hey Radiance,
Is keeping path tracing as an option purely for backward compatibility or could there be scenarios where path tracing will be a better option than the new PMC kernel?
It's looking awesome, cheers
Steve

[radiant]

Just a trivial question.

Is PMC a modified version of the path tracing kernel or was written from the ground up