OTOY Forums

Besides Otoy talk at GTC, I'm really curious about this one:

"S6647 - Maxwell Render Meets the GPU
Juan Cañada Head of Maxwell Render Technology, Next Limit Technologies
We'll take you through the challenges the Next Limit team have overcome to create a GPU version of their highly acclaimed Maxwell Render engine. Maxwell Render was the first unbiased, spectral, physically based render engine on the market (2004) and due to its impeccable quality, serves as a ground truth reference for many. We'll reveal some of the technology behind our new GPU-based renderer, taking a look at both its advantages and limitations -- and you will of course be one of the first to see it running live! We'll show you how the GPU version has maintained the core qualities of the current CPU engine -- enabling users to create images from 3D scenes in a reliable and predictable way but with one key difference: faster than ever. "
https://mygtc.gputechconf.com/form/sess ... ay+Tracing


I switched from Maxwell to Octane 5 years ago because of the obvious speed problem, but always missed some Maxwell for Maya functionalities and its great quality.
Nice to see Maxwell might join the race again, competition is good.

two years ago someOne from Maxwell said they are bnot going to adopt GPUs, there's no plan.. after some time they start messing with GPU engines behind closed doors..now they are trying to bring this out - very curious t osee how much of their fatures are going to end up being transated & ported into GPU version..=) are we going to see another RT?

Well, 2 years ago they already had a prototype of GPU renderer seen at SIGRAPH, only for previewing purpose, they were not sure to extend it to the production renderer.

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/dt-exclus ... prototype/

But finally it seems they did the move, with the usual VRAM limitation for textures and geometry I suppose.
We'll see..

I think that Maxwell uses metropolis kernel. Let's see if Next Limit will implement a better pmc light transport renderer.

Presentation at GTC 2016:

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/20 ... render.mp4

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/20 ... render.pdf

Yes, Maxwell GPU is almost ready. (I'm on the internal testing team.) I just saw the NL guys last week and we were discussing the release, and the myriad complexities of bringing it to GPU. The driver-compatibility nightmare alone sounds scary as hell. Still, it's happening, and everyone's excited about it.

_Mike