[FR- EN] NVIDIA Optix release 2.0 is out

[Wася]

It was in beta, and now it released
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/optix-home.html
on of the most important things - it does not need Quadro, and only Quadro

[Thomas]

Very restrictive in terms of hardware...

[Wася]

"G80 and later"?
Oh, please, Thomas.
GeForce 8800, 8600, ...

[Thomas]

oups, I miss read, I understood quadro and only quadro
Does it work on ATI ?

[Wася]

That was exact restriction of v1.

About ATI - I don't thik so, and I doubt it will someday.

Actually it is not full-featured renderer, like, say, Octane. It's a toolkit.

[jbshorty]

Originally Posted by Wася

...it is not full-featured renderer, like, say, Octane...

Hmmm... no dispersion, no sss, no displacement, no instancing, no merging objects into a scene, no saving/loading or duplicating materials... I don't consider Octane as being full-featured either... So far I'm not terribly impressed by all these GPU engines. And why they are claiming to be "unbiased" when they are obviously taking many shortcuts? They should describe themselves as "progressive" renderers but not as unbiased... Anyway I would prefer a GPU-based Biased engine such as VRayRT to render in a few seconds compared to Octane's few minutes...

Sorry for the OT... I also don't like this idea of developing for GPU by brand. As far as i understand, CUDA is just a bit of software to help you distribute jobs across massive amounts of GPU cores. Right? Can't this all be done in OpenCL so that customers can use any GPU? I believe VRayRT is built on OpenCL. They chose to take the more difficult path and i think VRay customers will greatly benefit from it. And now Caustic Graphics has introduced OpenRL (Real-time cross-platform, CPU/GPU/RTU-aware shading language) which is yet one more option for developers. I would like to see more engines get away from GPU monopolies...

shorty

[Wася]

furious as usually

Octane has many other restrictions, and the biggest one is that due to the render is written on CUDA there is a big problem with opening shader API (actually shader would be written on CUDA also). And you may forget even about minutes if only you do not have powerfull video card.

I just meant OptiX as compared to Octane is not renderer at all. And maybe someday mental ray will use OptiX. Just a thought.

I aslo want to say I'm not sure OpenCL would exists if not CUDA. It's just standard for doing same things.
And special for you, Jonah - latest CUDA SDKs support OpenCL as an option. My guess - OpenCL would be something like OpenGL nowdays. There is OpenGL standard, there are OpenGL extensions, and there even exists standard for building OpenGL extensions.
I hope that fact will bring a peace to your heart.

However, I don't think OptiX will work on ATI cards just because NVIDIA has no reason to do it. They give this GPU-accelerated ray-tracng engine for free, it's a way to sell their own equipment, so why them help ATI?

[Wася]

http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/SIGGRAPH-2009-CHAOS-GROUP-GPU.shtml
"This demo currently uses CUDA, but Chaos Group is looking to possibly port to OpenCL"

[jbshorty]

ahem... "...V-RayRT will be out in fall and available as a free addition to V-Ray in a service pack for both Maya (on all platforms) and Max for Windows. It's based on OpenCL..."

looky here

At work, we use VRay for Rhino (among others). So if Chaos ever release VRayRT for Rhino it will be an instant purchase for us. But i won't hold my breath for it...

[Wася]

so, they've spent last year productively

[Wася]

That's for you, Jonah
http://www.luxology.com/tv/training/view.aspx?id=536

[jbshorty]

in his own words... "meh"... Not nearly as interesting to me as the vids shown last year by Caustic Graphics. However, as much as I love using Brazil I am also discouraged at the recent silence by Caustic. The only announcement for Siggraph was their NNF (no new features) policy for Brazil, and a switch to focus all resources towards Brazil for Developers. This essentially signals the end of Brazil as an end-consumer product . Not sure where this leaves me as a Brazil user. Hopefully the Rhino team will continue development of Brazil and have the raytracing cards hooked up in the future. Rendering does not have me too excited these days. It seems there is disappointment coming from all sides...

[Wася]

Originally Posted by jbshorty

It seems there is disappointment coming from all sides...

aging, maybe?

[jbshorty]

no, the problem is them. Not me!