LuxRender v0.8 final Release

[edna]

Excellent news. Thanks to all the devs. Dying to try it out.

Unfortunately I can't extract the 7z file. Just clicking it opens 7zip, but if I click 'extract' from within that window then I end up with lots of errors and a folder of files which are names only, not real files. If I right click on the 7z file and "extract here using 7zip" then I get the same errors. This is the LuxRender_0.8_64bit_OpenCL file.

Any ideas?

Edit: The installers works, anyway, so I'm up and running. Never tried the installer before and I am impressed - it has been nicely done.

Might I also suggest that a release like this might come with very basic instructions on use? Not on Luxrender generally, but just a pointer towards the list of presets that set up the hybrid mode (which many people will try first). Lots of people will try out a new release, but won't know where to start with it, so may give up quickly. Just a thought.

Edit: internal/external hybrid modes appear to launch correctly, but according to GPU-Z my (OpenCL enabled) GPU isn't doing any work to speak of. Occasional 10-20% spikes, but generally 0%. The LuxRender log says "OpenCL Device used: [JuniperIntersect]", which looks encouraging. SmallLuxGPU works well, with 100% GPU usage on the same scene. I had the same issue with the beta releases, so reverted to SLG. Happy to put this in a new thread if that would be helpful.

Thanks again for all your hard work, devs.

[Lord Crc]

Unfortunately I can't extract the 7z file. Just clicking it opens 7zip, but if I click 'extract' from within that window then I end up with lots of errors and a folder of files which are names only, not real files. If I right click on the 7z file and "extract here using 7zip" then I get the same errors. This is the LuxRender_0.8_64bit_OpenCL file.

Weird, extracts fine here using WinRAR and 7-zip 9.20. Could be the download was somehow corrupted, or you're using an old 7-zip version?

The installers works, anyway, so I'm up and running. Never tried the installer before and I am impressed - it has been nicely done.

Thanks

Might I also suggest that a release like this might come with very basic instructions on use? Not on Luxrender generally, but just a pointer towards the list of presets that set up the hybrid mode (which many people will try first). Lots of people will try out a new release, but won't know where to start with it, so may give up quickly. Just a thought.

Good point, we do have some manuals in the Wiki, but we could make it more prominent.

Edit: internal/external hybrid modes appear to launch correctly, but according to GPU-Z my (OpenCL enabled) GPU isn't doing any work to speak of. Occasional 10-20% spikes, but generally 0%. The LuxRender log says "OpenCL Device used: [JuniperIntersect]", which looks encouraging. SmallLuxGPU works well, with 100% GPU usage on the same scene. I had the same issue with the beta releases, so reverted to SLG. Happy to put this in a new thread if that would be helpful.

Hybrid renderer requires a balance of CPU and GPU power, and is also scene dependent. Either your GPU is too fast compared to the CPU, or your scene is too simple.

[edna]

Hybrid renderer requires a balance of CPU and GPU power, and is also scene dependent. Either your GPU is too fast compared to the CPU, or your scene is too simple.

So SLG because uses a different integrator, it makes more use of the GPU, presumably. Is there a suitable test scene that is likely to work the GPU relatively hard under Lux 0.8, just so that I can see what difference it makes in a suitable scene? I have tried making my geometry and lightpaths/bounces more convoluted, but neither seems to make a difference (though max depth=512 used up all my RAM and very nearly crashed my computer). I just want to understand what sort of scene is suitable for hybrid rendering.

Thanks again.

[SATtva]

So SLG because uses a different integrator, it makes more use of the GPU, presumably.

SLG has a GPU-only mode (which runs completely on the GPU) and a Hybrid mode which is just like the one in Lux. However, there are two distinctions to the Hybrid: 1) in SLG you have an ability to control how many CPU threads are used to feed the GPU; 2) SLG rendering pipeline is simpler (simpler materials, not spectral) which means it takes less CPU time on rendering and leaves is more time to feed the GPU.

Is there a suitable test scene that is likely to work the GPU relatively hard under Lux 0.8, just so that I can see what difference it makes in a suitable scene?

Very heavy geometry (polygons-count-wize, i.e. a couple of million polys or more), relatively simple lightpaths, low bounce depth (16 or even lower).

[jeanphi]

Hi,

We've made the news at the Khronos Group thanks to our use of OpenCL: http://www.khronos.org/

Jeanphi

[tokiop]

Late, but big thanks for this release !

It feels very mature and solid.. and thanks Jens for the 10.5 / non OpenCL build !

[Sansari]

So SLG because uses a different integrator, it makes more use of the GPU, presumably.

SLG has a GPU-only mode (which runs completely on the GPU) and a Hybrid mode which is just like the one in Lux. However, there are two distinctions to the Hybrid: 1) in SLG you have an ability to control how many CPU threads are used to feed the GPU; 2) SLG rendering pipeline is simpler (simpler materials, not spectral) which means it takes less CPU time on rendering and leaves is more time to feed the GPU.

So this means SLG has features that luxrender doesn't? Namely the gpu-only mode. Is there a particular reason you chose not to integrate it into luxrender? I would've liked to see a gpu only mode without having to download both programs separately :/ Would you guys consider adding SLG-style gpu only mode to future releases of luxrender

[Dade]

So this means SLG has features that luxrender doesn't? Namely the gpu-only mode. Is there a particular reason you chose not to integrate it into luxrender? I would've liked to see a gpu only mode without having to download both programs separately :/ Would you guys consider adding SLG-style gpu only mode to future releases of luxrender

SLG has usually _only_ features that LuxRender doesn't have. SLG is a kind of free form test bed where some of the new stuff introduced in LuxRender is tested. Hybrid rendering has been moved from SLG to Lux, SPPM has been too. PathOCL (alias PathGPU2) is next.

[Abel]

I finally installed LuxRender 0.8 and must say that the installer is working really nicely!

If anything, I would have expected the example scenes to be in the program folder, but I suspect that would be bad practice. Some shortcuts would be nice for the next release though.

[Lord Crc]

If anything, I would have expected the example scenes to be in the program folder, but I suspect that would be bad practice. Some shortcuts would be nice for the next release though.

Yes, since luxrender writes the output to the same folder as the scene is in (and anything else would be confusing to new users imho), it can't be in the program data folder. Since inno setup currently can't do mixed "normal" and "current user only" installs I opted to put it in the Shared Documents folder.

At least on my test VM it installs a shortcut to the example files folder along with the other shortcuts, and also if you chose to run luxrender it sets the working directory of luxrender to the example folder path, so that file -> open will show them.

If this isn't happening for you I'd like to know some more details