Is there a Chart/Grid/Spreadsheet for Rendering Engines...

Subtropic Pixel

...and what their CPU and GPU capabilities/requirements are?

So I'm looking for a chart or something that lists the capabilities of various render engines/plugins, the host software they work with, checkboxes for Mac and PC, Min/max number of CPU cores/threads, and GPU capabilities, as well as some comments as to strengths/weaknesses.

If such a chart does not exist, I would be willing to research and put one together. I just don't quite know where to start and of course I am not a knowledge expert in this area, so I'll need a little help.

Your thoughts?

Subtropic Pixel

This is still a pending issue for me.

I see now there is Lux and Octane with plugins, and both can run in a lot of hosts.

mark128

I am not an expert in the area. I don't know of any spread sheet available on this.

There are many types of render engines. The built in 3Delight render engine that comes with DAZ Studio is a Renderman compliant render engine. Renderman is a standard developed by Pixar for the interface between a 3D graphics program and the rendering engine. Pixar's main goal was to support network distributed rendering. Renderman render engines are considered 'biased' render engines. They do ray tracing, but they take shortcuts to speed up the rendering process.

The 3Delight render engine packaged with DAZ Studio will use all the cores on your processor, but it cannot be use for network distributed rendering. You can purchase a version that will do distributed rendering directly from 3Delight, but it is expensive. You can get one free license for the stand alone 3Delight. I believe it is now limited to using only 4 cores on your processor, but it will allow you to do renders from a batch shell rather than using the DAZ window. The DAZ window version will use all your cores, but does not support batch operation. Until recently this one free license was for a very old version of 3Delight that did not work well with DAZ, but it is now for a slightly more up to date version than comes with DS. I have done some experiments with it and it seems to work better with DS than the old version.

Lux and Octane are both unbiased render engines. That means they randomly create light rays based on the light sources in the image and trace them until they are gone. The biased render engines cut off this tracing fairly quickly to save time. Lux is an open source project and is free. Octane is not free. Octane can use GPUs that support CUDA (NVIDIA) to accelerate rendering. Lux can use GPUs that support OpenCL (mostly ATI, but some recent NIVIDIA).

I have Lux, but I don't have a graphics card that supports OpenCL, so I have only used the software version. One thing to keep in mind is that an GPU accelerated render is probably going to have limits on the size of scene it can handle. I know that the Lux software render is much slower than 3Delight to produce a quality render, but Lux does the render globally. In 10 minutes or so you can see enough of an image to figure out if you screwed up the lighting or something. That can save you rendering overnight to discover you forgot to turn on some of the lights or something.

I know Lux includes built in network rendering and there it is part of the free license, so you can use it at no additional charge.

A few things to keep in mind:

1) All these rendering engines have learning curves. You need to learn who to get good results with them.

2) The way you do lighting with biases and unbiased render engines is different.

3) Lux and Octane use different descriptions of materials. The products in the DAZ store, other stores or on sites like ShareCG usually come with materials that support DS or Poser. The Lux and Octane plugins try to automatically convert those materials to the descriptions used by Lux or Octane. They do a pretty good job, but it is not perfect. To get really good results with Lux or Octane you need to learn how to tweak the material.

EDIT: Remember 3Delight is a commercial rendering engine. It has been use on many Hollywood movies. DAZ has negotiated a license with 3Delight that allows them to give away copies of this render engine for free, with the restriction that it cannot be used for distributed rendering.

Subtropic Pixel

Mark, thank you so much for contributing. I have some followup questions...

mark128 said:

I am not an expert in the area. I don't know of any spread sheet available on this.

There are many types of render engines. The built in 3Delight render engine that comes with DAZ Studio is a Renderman compliant render engine. Renderman is a standard developed by Pixar for the interface between a 3D graphics program and the rendering engine. Pixar's main goal was to support network distributed rendering. Renderman render engines are considered 'biased' render engines. They do ray tracing, but they take shortcuts to speed up the rendering process.

Wow, I always thought that Renderman was a Pixar internal product, but you say it's a set of standards? Interesting. Thank you for explaining "biased" versus "unbiased".

The 3Delight render engine packaged with DAZ Studio will use all the cores on your processor, but it cannot be use for network distributed rendering. You can purchase a version that will do distributed rendering directly from 3Delight, but it is expensive. You can get one free license for the stand alone 3Delight. I believe it is now limited to using only 4 cores on your processor, but it will allow you to do renders from a batch shell rather than using the DAZ window. The DAZ window version will use all your cores, but does not support batch operation. Until recently this one free license was for a very old version of 3Delight that did not work well with DAZ, but it is now for a slightly more up to date version than comes with DS. I have done some experiments with it and it seems to work better with DS than the old version.

Thank you for the background on 3Delight.

Lux and Octane are both unbiased render engines. That means they randomly create light rays based on the light sources in the image and trace them until they are gone. The biased render engines cut off this tracing fairly quickly to save time. Lux is an open source project and is free. Octane is not free. Octane can use GPUs that support CUDA (NVIDIA) to accelerate rendering. Lux can use GPUs that support OpenCL (mostly ATI, but some recent NIVIDIA).
You ain't kidding that Octane isn't free. I figured it out, it could run me $1,000 or more for standalone + plugin licenses, eep!

I have an AMD card and I think I want to stick with AMD...I am thinking of buying an HD 7990 card because it has two GPUs. So Octane wouldn't work with AMD at all for rendering?

I have Lux, but I don't have a graphics card that supports OpenCL, so I have only used the software version. One thing to keep in mind is that an GPU accelerated render is probably going to have limits on the size of scene it can handle. I know that the Lux software render is much slower than 3Delight to produce a quality render, but Lux does the render globally. In 10 minutes or so you can see enough of an image to figure out if you screwed up the lighting or something. That can save you rendering overnight to discover you forgot to turn on some of the lights or something.

Can Lux make use of multiple GPUs and/or multiple GPU cards that support OpenCL?
I know Lux includes built in network rendering and there it is part of the free license, so you can use it at no additional charge. A few things to keep in mind: 1) All these rendering engines have learning curves. You need to learn who to get good results with them. 2) The way you do lighting with biases and unbiased render engines is different.

Okay, thanks for the heads-up.
3) Lux and Octane use different descriptions of materials. The products in the DAZ store, other stores or on sites like ShareCG usually come with materials that support DS or Poser. The Lux and Octane plugins try to automatically convert those materials to the descriptions used by Lux or Octane. They do a pretty good job, but it is not perfect. To get really good results with Lux or Octane you need to learn how to tweak the material. Could you give an example or two, to help me understand?
EDIT: Remember 3Delight is a commercial rendering engine. It has been use on many Hollywood movies. DAZ has negotiated a license with 3Delight that allows them to give away copies of this render engine for free, with the restriction that it cannot be used for distributed rendering. Thanks again for taking the time. Much appreciated!

mark128

Subtropic Pixel said:

Wow, I always thought that Renderman was a Pixar internal product, but you say it's a set of standards? Interesting. Thank you for explaining "biased" versus "unbiased".

Pixar does have a Renderman compliant render engine. It is used internally and you can buy it too, but I think it is $1000+ and may not be completely compatible with DS.

Subtropic Pixel said:

Can Lux make use of multiple GPUs and/or multiple GPU cards that support OpenCL?

The documentation says it can, but I have no experience.

Could you give an example or two, to help me understand?

The only plugin I have direct experience with is Luxus for LuxRender. It does pretty well with simple materials, but doing a good job on SSS skin materials takes some effort. There are a couple of very long threads on Luxus.