[numerobis]

something that made me buy fryrender ages ago...

first called RC4, then RC5 and then never released - and then sold as another product named Arion

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2841720/f ... 5_preview/

[bograt]

the "stand alone" version for 195€ is pretty useless. No plugins, only obj import. No network rendering and no animation support.

But the max version for 595€ looks quite nice, especially with unlimited node licenses.
(with this fast displacement and support for v-ray materials!)

But that it is for max and xsi only now is a big joke!

And i think i'll never again buy something from them - so many roadmap changes, abandoned products and bad customer suppport... i'm still waiting for my announced real time engine RC4

I think you are absolutely right, and come to think of it I asked about some other software they created (cant remember what exactly) and they never replied.
Its a shame because the software is amazing but it does not really work, I guess that's why the never really hang on to their software,
I guess that's also why they have not released any plugins for this release...
Well Next limit, I guess I will just wait for your real time engine

[dmeyer]

I love this marketing point from the Arion page:

Arion 2.0 can render an unlimited number of textures, materials or objects per scene, as long as they fit in the hardware memory.

So it can render an unlimited amount of textures and objects subject to the limit of hardware memory.

[Hervé]

[bograt]

I know, I thought that was a bit ridiculous, But instancing uses almost no additional memory apparently...
I use huge 16 bit texture maps so I have to say I was very disappointed by the texture memory limitations of gpu

[numerobis]

I love this marketing point from the Arion page:

Arion 2.0 can render an unlimited number of textures, materials or objects per scene, as long as they fit in the hardware memory.

So it can render an unlimited amount of textures and objects subject to the limit of hardware memory.

yes, this sentence sounds weird but besides the real memory limit there was a limitation in cuda that let you only use a limited number of textures and materials in a scene (was it 128? i don't remember...). i think they mean that this is no longer existent...

[PaZ]

beside Arion, you should also look iRay. It gives imprssive results in interiors, it's becoming a standard. It comes with max so no way for us LW users (but also cinema, modo, rhino, etcetc).

I love Maxwel, but i really feel GPU is fastly becoming the standard today, at least for interiors. Again, GPU memory usage is optimized and 2 GB on GPU are not the same of 2GB of classic ram. I see some very large scenes being rendered on GPU, and instancing on GPU is now a standard.
NL knows this and i think they're not willing to lose terrain in the market, so imho GPU investigation is a very high priority there these days.
Afterall it's a fact: latest Maxwell productions here was several 7000 pixels interior pictures, and they took simply too long to render. On any GPU engine they could take a fraction of the time.
I hope NL will surprise us soon. Best thing is if Maxwell got a GPU switch, so we can chose it for interiors and smaller works, and still use CPUs for huge scenes.

Paolo

[gadzooks]

Well if they do give maxwell the ability to use gpu rendering i hope that it will also allow us to keep using cpu as well. Asking companies to fork over more money to upgrade graphic cards just to be able to use their software is tall order in my opinion.

[PaZ]

yes, that was exactly my point. GPU is needed, but i hope it becomes an option you can turn off if you want use it with CPU only, like now.

Paolo

[l1407]

yes, that was exactly my point. GPU is needed, but i hope it becomes an option you can turn off if you want use it with CPU only, like now.

Paolo

the heat & watt are another problem of gpu

[dmeyer]

I am interested in fast workflow without limitations. If that includes GPU, cool, if not, oh well. Last time i tried Arion a year or so ago it was not substantially faster than Maxwell for final renders. VRAY RT is cool, when it works, and when your scene does not use any of the myriad functions it does not support.

[PaZ]

well, i dont know Arion, and i dont trust Randomcontrol anyway (and i'm a FRY+10 rendernodes owner).
But i know people which use iray. It's incredibly fast, I saw a demo and with 2 common GPUs preview is instant-render.
Speaking about rendertimes, an interior scene with HDRI lighting takes 3 hours on 8 GPUs, 5000 pixel wide. A similar scene takes more than 24 hours on my 9 rendernodes (all I7 960 +) to get to SL 18 or so. Quality is pretty much the same.
Look at Delta Tracing page on facebook to see how iray renders look: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Delta-Tr ... ts&fref=ts
Maxwell is the excellence in render engine arena, but i feel it can fastly loose terrain if NL doesnt come up with a solution for GPU. My two cents, btw.

Paolo

[rickyinmotion]

can we have a reaction from nextlimit team?

[Mihai]

I'm not speaking for the development team but I guess the reaction is the same - still too many limitations, both from a programming and hardware point of view and as already pointed out the speed advantage is not so clear for final renders.

[PaZ]

while i can agree about limitations, it has to be said GPU engines on the market do their work, anyway. And a welldone mixed solution should take away nothing from Maxwell as is now, but just give an option for those who need it - correct me if i'm wrong.
Regarding speed, it would be needed to make some deeper experimentation but you can take what i said above: iRay renders on 8 GPUs a 5000 pixels scene which takes more than 1 day to get clean on my nine I7 CPUs on maxwell. 8 GPUs costs averagely the same than nine I7, consume much less and render averagely 5x faster.
Anyway i started another thread about Intel Xen Phy, these may change the rules and would be nice to know if NL will support these.

paolo