What is better for rendering, CPU or GPU?
spswafford
Posts: 179
And is it even possible to use the GPU in DS if that is the better way to render? I noticed when I do render, DS eats my CPU up.
Thanks,
Stefan
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My experience is that for high res (maxed out) software rendering looks a lot better. When I lower the quality slider, I get faster rendering but often with bizarre problems, sometimes small, other times not so small.
I'm not sure if the software render uses GPU or not, someone else can probably answer this question, in any case the answer would lie with the rendering engine people.
In case you are not aware, you can change the speed of rendering, while keeping the quality slider constant, such as at the very top, by changing the render rate (?). Try it with settings of 4, 2, 1, 0.1, 0.02 etc. As you decrease the value it takes longer but gives you much finer details for higher quality render.
The software renderer, 3Delight, only uses CPU, and it's a pretty intense process. Hardware (OpenGL) renderer doesn't have all the features of software rendering. (There are other rendering engines that do use GPU, like LuxRender and Octane).
If you have more than 1, you can change the 'set affinity' in Task Manager [each time D/S is opened] to use less CPU units. Renders a tad slower but still have computer :-)
I have never been able to get the DS GPU render to produce good looking renders.
Octane render, which is not free, has a GPU render option for DS. Some people have posed good renders with it. LuxRender, which is open source and free, has two plugins for DS (LuxRender itself is free, the plugins are not free). I have not seen many real renders using the LuxRender GPU options, lots of LuxRender CPU renders though.
These GPU render options all have limitations in terms of what graphics cards they will work with (usually high end cards), how many light sources they will support, how many textures you can have in the scene, how much geometry they will allow.
3Delight render times vary a lot depending on how the lighting is done and how much transparency there is in the scene. Right now all the GPU render options come with enough restrictions on scene complexity that I find them too limiting.
Why did I not know about this? All this time! Ahhh! Many thanks Patience ;) I am a free man again. Even just freeing up one core means I can do most everything I want to do without having the system slow to a crawl.
Why did I not know about this? All this time! Ahhh! Many thanks Patience ;) I am a free man again. Even just freeing up one core means I can do most everything I want to do without having the system slow to a crawl.
You're most welcome. I happened across that information 'once' [and I forget who and where but it wasn't in here] ... enables me to use D/S4.x on my laptop too. Otherwise it seems to choke itself just loading figures.
CPU rendering is better if you've got a quad core or bigger and an ok graphics card (for viewport stuff). GPU rendering is better if you have Luxus/Reality, a very good graphics card, and a computer you can leave doing nothing but rendering for 8 to 20 hours at a time.
Don't plan to do any serious large renders (with multiple hairs, good-looking water, and lots of UberEnvironment lighting) on a single or duo core unless, again, you've got a LOT of time you're able to commit.
So far my renders have been pretty simple, 2 or 3 models and a handful of lights. Render time usually 30 to 45 min. Kind of wondering what I will have to load to get an hour or longer render, lol.