What should we develop on the GPU first?

[Matt]

What should we develop on the GPU first? Let us know by submitting your vote in the poll above!

[cyphyr]

I can't vote because I can't differentiate between terrain and clouds but I think that if we could move both over to the GPU for rendering that would be a huge bonus.
Asset generation is less important than rendering in my opinion. 

We can generate both terrain and clouds quickly in Terragen already (and we can generate both in 3rd party apps/externally) and the previews and good enough to get useful results.

The slow down in creation comes from the rendering process so if GPU acceleration is on the cards that is where I would like to see it happen

[WAS]

With Cyphyr,  that my opinion holds much weight. A focus on a GPU renderer or hybrid would be awesome, and seems most logical route.

[Dune]

Completely agree with both, so I ticked clouds rendering, but terrain would be my second choice. So rendering it is.

[Kadri]

Rendering. I ticked clouds too but hard to choose. Even just to see this poll is awesome

[pokoy]

This is interesting - I'd like to see what the expected improvement in each area is.
I'd think that since GPU is heavily restricted in terms of available memory and knowing a voxel cache can take a lot of memory (for high res detailed images it can easily reach tens of GB) I wonder if GPU falls back to CPU speed once available GPU RAM is exceeded by the scene's usage.

And what's does 'Asset generation' actually mean? OpenGL performance when rebuilding a terrain or IR? Or new tools? Really can't tell so hard to take part in the poll for me.

[WAS]

I'd think that since GPU is heavily restricted in terms of available memory and knowing a voxel cache can take a lot of memory (for high res detailed images it can easily reach tens of GB) I wonder if GPU falls back to CPU speed once available GPU RAM is exceeded by the scene's usage

I don't think this matters with GPU rendering, like a TG render is split into buckets, the workload for the GPU is also split. And in some scenarios, works a lot faster than the CPU. Hybrid renderers seem to be the best moving forward, as what the GPU can do fast, it can do, and what the CPU does best, it can do.

And what's does 'Asset generation' actually mean? OpenGL performance when rebuilding a terrain or IR? Or new tools? Really can't tell so hard to take part in the poll for me.

I was curious about this too. Not sure what it means either. Elaboration on what these targets are for would be nice.

[Hetzen]

I'm with Cypher as well. If cpu cores could be servers to banks of gpu cores, I don't think you'd need all the data on the gpu card at once, not like you would for real time applications.

[amandas]

I would push all procedural stuff to the GPU, like noise algorithms etc. This should affect everything in positive way. Referring to the poll, terrain generation at first. For me, the most important thing is viewport terrain generation boost for faster feedback. Seriously. When it comes to rendering... renderer is already nicely optimized and fast, but I would opt for RTX and Optix for denoising in later turns. Thanks for asking!


Best

[KyL]

renderer is already nicely optimized and fast, but I would opt for RTX and Optix for denoising in later turns

Totally! A GPU denoiser is the first thing I would love to see implemented.

[WAS]

When it comes to rendering... renderer is already nicely optimized and fast, but I would opt for RTX and Optix for denoising in later turns.

TG Path Tracing is pretty darn dog slow compared to other leaders, and with it not being NUMA aware, it inherently is not well optimized or fast. Think Cycles showing up Threadrippers 256 threads at EPYC Horizon. Finally overcoming some of Threadrippers quarks is a big stepping stone. The fastest TG render is in the 3 minute mark, which is bottom tier for most other renderers with performance on the Ryzen 5's. Lol For example, Cycles slowest 2.80 render was 427, with the very next tier being 270 seconds (Ryzen 3400G and 2600X respectively). These renders were done with 32 samples and 32x32 tiles.

[Hetzen]

Referring to the poll, terrain generation at first. For me, the most important thing is viewport terrain generation boost for faster feedback. Seriously. When it comes to rendering... renderer is already nicely optimized and fast, but I would opt for RTX and Optix for denoising in later turns. Thanks for asking!

I may have miss understood the question in the poll. Yes, faster feedback. Procedural work sent to the GPU.

[amandas]

When it comes to rendering... renderer is already nicely optimized and fast, but I would opt for RTX and Optix for denoising in later turns.

TG Path Tracing is pretty darn dog slow compared to other leaders, and with it not being NUMA aware, it inherently is not well optimized or fast. Think Cycles showing up Threadrippers 256 threads at EPYC Horizon. Finally overcoming some of Threadrippers quarks is a big stepping stone. The fastest TG render is in the 3 minute mark, which is bottom tier for most other renderers with performance on the Ryzen 5's. Lol For example, Cycles slowest 2.80 render was 427, with the very next tier being 270 seconds (Ryzen 3400G and 2600X respectively). These renders were done with 32 samples and 32x32 tiles.

You mention small tiles so I assume you mean GPU rendering here?

[WAS]

You mention small tiles so I assume you mean GPU rendering here?

Huh? No, I mean what I said... this is CPU rendering. GPU rendering is a separate category for benching cycles, and another probably for hybrid.

[KlausK]

For me rendering happens in times I do not use my workstation or it goes to another machine over night.
There are more options to get your final render done - may cost you extra but they are out there.

And since we can only choose one option I am all in for the fastest 3D preview update we can get.
There is no substitute for that. Will RTP be developed further when the developers work on GPU processing now?
It`s a pain to wait for rerendering of the terrain. This really slows things down for me.
If the accuracy of the previz could be enhanced also - even better.
Clouds seem to be quite ok with RTP for now.

Development cycles for TG seem slow (to me as a customer), so workflow enhancement while I am building has no.1 priority.
CHeers, Klaus