gpu vs. cpu rendering

[gdamaso88]

does anyone know of any basic articles comparing these two directions? Our office is in the office of upgrading and I wanted to be up to speed on the direction of the latest technology. We are looking at render nodes, but I don't want to proceed on that when the shift moves to the gpu's.

[AJLynn]

It depends on what you want to do. GPU rendering is great for getting fast images, but has some limitations making it less useful for print quality production stuff. Most people still need to be able to do CPU renders and will for a while.

[Spacelord]

I think the shift to GPU is still a while away.

GPU is great for Product shots and that type of thing, where it can be blistering fast, but for more complex stuff that requires huge datasets, lots of textures, SSS etc.. CPU is still the way. Maybe in another year there will be GPU's with 10gigs of RAM.

[Slinger]

with iray finally being released next week, I think gpu rendering will be mainstream before you know it.

[gdamaso88]

when is the official release of iray? there are some posts that say its been released...it shows it on the subscription description,but isn't available in the list of downloads.

[Slinger]

my understanding is it will be available to previous mentalray clients next week from autodesk.

[Spacelord]

my understanding is it will be available to previous mentalray clients next week from autodesk.

 

You can download the subscription update now, well depending on where your server is.

Heres Kens post.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=6711147&postcount=52

 

with iray finally being released next week, I think gpu rendering will be mainstream before you know it.

I'm sure it will eventually happen, but from my testing I don't think I'd be building a render farm base on it, anyway wait until you have tried it

[Justin Hunt]

also iray is a CPU/GPU render. You have a choice to use both, GPU only or CPU only

 

jhv