THEA render VS V-Ray for interior visualization

[Mario Pende]

the nice thing about Thea is that it's all under one roof and there is no weak engine. if you need total fidelity you choose unbiased, if you need speed you can choose biased or GPU depending on the scene.

 

Somehow I doubt that Theas biased engine can be compared with Vrays in terms of speed and quality. This is where I get off every time I read aboth Thea - biased/unbiased/GPU for a fraction of the price of mainstream rendering solutions.

Maybe Im wrong.

Also I didnt see much Images in Theas gallery using biased mode, why is that?

Besides that not much nice images also compared to MW or FRY...

[Derek Forreal]

Somehow I doubt that Theas biased engine can be compared with Vrays in terms of speed and quality.

 

Also I didnt see much Images in Theas gallery using biased mode, why is that?

Besides that not much nice images also compared to MW or FRY...

i only said it remains to be seen.

 

i guess one of the reasons why there aren't many biased images on the gallery is because the the new GI engine is relatively new. the new engine is now very fast while maintaining good detail but that upgrade has been somewhat overshadowed by the GPU upgrades which seem even better.

 

regarding the images, i'm not sure. Thea's user base is certainly much smaller than other render engines (especially Vray), so it's normal that there aren't going to be as many 'nice' images. i'm sure that as Thea use increases, so will the quality of the images produced.

 

and while it's certainly true that there are beautiful images coming out of Vray and Maxwell (not sure about Fry/Iray), it's also true that there's a lot of poor quality stuff too, so as always there's a lot to be said for the artist creating the images.

 

anyway, you asked about Thea so i was just giving my opinion

 

FWIW, here are some examples of Thea put to good use. maybe it's just me but i think that there's something different in the quality of the light and materials (?):

 

http://www.ronenbekerman.com/carapicuiba-house-by-sandros/

 

http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=12423

 

some biased renders:

http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=13292

 

edited to add link.

[Mario Pende]

Yeap nice renderings.

Would definetly love to see rendering time on that biased render.

Do you know maybe if anyone has made an direct comparison of biased/unbiased rendering on the same image?

[AJLynn]

I haven't used Thea but from what I can see it looks like the unbiased engine is of the same breed as Maxwell and the unbiased one is of the same sort as iray and the rest - which is to say, Maxwell-like with GPU implementation. This should be faster than an unbiased CPU renderer but not as fast (in many or most circumstances) as a well-optimized biased (which is not a bad word) CPU render.

 

In iray they've provided the same functionality using two engine, because the "unbiased" mode is written in CUDA and can run on CPU, GPU or both.

[Derek Forreal]

Do you know maybe if anyone has made an direct comparison of biased/unbiased rendering on the same image?

not sure but i'm preparing a test scene for the Thea forum and will post the results here too if you're interested. hopefully sometime this week.

 

I haven't used Thea but from what I can see it looks like the unbiased engine is of the same breed as Maxwell and the unbiased one is of the same sort as iray and the rest

i would agree with that and would add that Thea's biased engine is the same breed as Vray. will post a biased version of the above too.

 

BTW, i assume that you meant to say "the GPU one is of the same sort as iray".

[Mario Pende]

not sure but i'm preparing a test scene for the Thea forum and will post the results here too if you're interested. hopefully sometime this week.

 

 

i would agree with that and would add that Thea's biased engine is the same breed as Vray. will post a biased version of the above too.

 

BTW, i assume that you meant to say "the GPU one is of the same sort as iray".

 

Derek that would be great! :-)

 

edit:

Just thought of an idea :-)

Derek could you download the "Let there be light" scene from the "Unchallenge" forum and give THEA a try with different rendering engines.

Edited October 6, 2013 by del82

[Derek Forreal]

that would be great! :-)

i've started doing some tests which you can see here:

 

http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=13395

 

if for some reason you can't access the thread let me know and i will copy the content here.

 

let me know what you think and if you have any questions.

 

BTW, i had a look at the 'Let there be light' scene but it seems a bit primitive (?)

[Mario Pende]

Derek,

first of all thanks for you time you devoted to make these test.

Realy generous from you, thank you! :-)

Theas CPU+GPU engine -> I might be wrong but this is currently the only "hybrid engine" on the market, right?

I dont see any logic in THEA having TR1 and TR2 when you have CPU+GPU option?!

Tell me please, do you use "standalone THEA studio" or a plugin and how does this work?

Do you export geometry from host modeling program via plugin to THEA studio or...?

I dont wanna sound rude, but from all rendering engines available, THEAs gallery for me was always the least impressive. Like the images always lacked that "WOW effect" that we saw in images when Maxwell, FryRender, Indigo, OCTANE came out.

[AJLynn]

That "hybrid" feature is not a new/unique thing. iray's and (I think) Vray's GPU renderers can actually run in GPU only, CPU ony or GPU+CPU modes. Their CUDA (and I think Vray's OpenCL option too) engines run on both. You can actually run iray with or without an nVidia card.

 

I'm honestly not seeing how this stands out from mental ray. Are there any major selling points that differentiate it?

[Derek Forreal]

I dont see any logic in THEA having TR1 and TR2 when you have CPU+GPU option?!

Tell me please, do you use "standalone THEA studio" or a plugin and how does this work?

Do you export geometry from host modeling program via plugin to THEA studio or...?

TR1/2 were the original Unbiased engines. the GPU engines are very new and don't yet support all material features so TR1/2 can be used in these instances and/or when the most accurate renders are needed.

 

i use MODO for modelling and use a basic exporter to get the geometry into Thea Studio.

 

the best plugins right now are the Max, C4D, SketchUp and Blender plugins which offer most functions integrated in the host app but i haven't used any of them so can't comment.

 

I dont wanna sound rude, but from all rendering engines available, THEAs gallery for me was always the least impressive. Like the images always lacked that "WOW effect" that we saw in images when Maxwell, FryRender, Indigo, OCTANE came out.

i think that's fair to say and i've mentioned it more than once to the developers. they are extremely focussed on developing better render engines and often that comes at a cost to other important things that get delayed, like maintaining a quality gallery and showing off Thea's features.

 

More recently though the gallery has been updated more often so hopefully there should be some good stuff on there.

 

I'm honestly not seeing how this stands out from mental ray. Are there any major selling points that differentiate it?

can you post or link to some examples? a link to an Iray gallery would be good too as i can't find many examples.

 

which engines are you comparing to Mental Ray? the unbiased (CPU and GPU types) are completely different and superior IMHO.

 

personally, i don't think the output from Thea could be much more different to Mental Ray, so not sure how you can't see the difference.

 

i think we need a scene that we can all render so we can compare directly

[Mario Pende]

Just a quick one,

"Thea Presto is a new render engine that has been written bottom-up, from scratch, and runs entirely on your graphics card processor"

from THEAS site.

PRESTO is only GPU rendering and does not add CPU power to rendering.

Derek why did you write GPU+CPU in your images?

[AJLynn]

Derek, you can't compare the unbiased Thea to the regular mental ray - they're for different things. Compare regular Thea to regular mental ray and unbiased (CPU and GPU) Thea to iray. iray runs on GPUs and CPUs and is an unbiased renderer along the lines of Maxwell etc.

 

Some galleries:

mental ray: http://www.nvidia-arc.com/gallery/mental-ray-gallery.html

iray: http://www.nvidia-arc.com/gallery/iray-gallery.html

[Derek Forreal]

Just a quick one,

"Thea Presto is a new render engine that has been written bottom-up, from scratch, and runs entirely on your graphics card processor"

from THEAS site.

PRESTO is only GPU rendering and does not add CPU power to rendering.

Derek why did you write GPU+CPU in your images?

sorry Mario, i thought i had linked to the latest announcement on my test thread. Thea development is progressing very quickly ATM and although GPU rendering is a recent addition, a further announcement was made some days ago that the next update will have GPU+CPU rendering (hence my 'tests' thread on the Thea forums). the tests i have shown are done with the beta version which has GPU+CPU rendering.

 

you can find more info on this on the Thea website and on this forum thread:

 

http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13307

[Mario Pende]

a further announcement was made some days ago that the next update will have GPU+CPU rendering (hence my 'tests' thread on the Thea forums). the tests i have shown are done with the beta version which has GPU+CPU rendering.

you can find more info on this on the Thea website and on this forum thread:

http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13307

 

Very interesting.

A question comes to my mind and reading THEAS forum it still hasnt been answerd:

"is the CPU+GPU going to be limited by the GPU memory size or is there going to be some smart plan to use computer RAM for bigger more complex scenes?"

Edited October 15, 2013 by del82

[Derek Forreal]

Derek, you can't compare the unbiased Thea to the regular mental ray - they're for different things. Compare regular Thea to regular mental ray and unbiased (CPU and GPU) Thea to iray. iray runs on GPUs and CPUs and is an unbiased renderer along the lines of Maxwell etc.

 

Some galleries:

mental ray: http://www.nvidia-arc.com/gallery/mental-ray-gallery.html

iray: http://www.nvidia-arc.com/gallery/iray-gallery.html

that makes more sense now but the whole point of my tests so far are to show that 'Presto Square' (the name for Thea's new GPU+CPU engine) is so fast and flexible. that's why when i started the colour tests i didn't even bother with the biased rendering as Presto does a better and faster job, especially when you factor in set up time.

 

thanks for the links to the galleries. having looked at the Archvis images, there's not that much to look at other than the Prodan renders (which were posted years ago and have had heavy post production) and there is no indication of render times.

 

don't forget that the tests that i am doing are straight from the buffer with no post and are being rendered on my own pretty average system (an i7980x + GTX560ti). anyone with a multi GPU set up will get much faster results.

 

anyway, i don't think that there's much point to this discussion without having some point of reference. if anyone would like to provide or suggest a scene for us to render so we can objectively compare render times and quality across different render engines then i'm up for doing some more tests.

[Mario Pende]

So using PRESTO2 you cut down rendering time form 3 hours (TR2) to 1 hour?

Thats 3x faster and using just one GPU GTX560ti?

WOuld you say that this is a clear indication that one should invest more in GPU power then in CPU power if buying a new rig?

 

p.s. Derek, please read my last post I made an one crucial edit

[AJLynn]

Derek, I'm still really honestly not seeing how this stands out from the renderers that Max owners already have. As a less expensive alternative to Vray for Sketchup, Rhino and maybe C4D users I can see it making sense, but for Max, it looks like it's at a point where it's similar to mental ray / iray, which is good, but Max has had stuff like this for 3 years (and that's been improving year over year) so this is hard to get excited about.

[Derek Forreal]

p.s. Derek, please read my last post I made an one crucial edit

i'm not able to give any info on this i'm afraid, though you may get an answer from the developers if you post on the Thea forum.

 

So using PRESTO2 you cut down rendering time form 3 hours (TR2) to 1 hour?

Thats 3x faster and using just one GPU GTX560ti?

WOuld you say that this is a clear indication that one should invest more in GPU power then in CPU power if buying a new rig?

actually, it's a lot more than 3x faster. the TR2 render has quite a bit more grain still, whereas the Presto one is much cleaner.

 

don't forget these renders are using Presto^2 so GPU and CPU are being used. looking at the console, Thea is telling me that my CPU (i7980x) is contributing a bit more than my GTX560ti. for sure adding 1 or more high end GPUs will add significant render power.

[Derek Forreal]

Derek, I'm still really honestly not seeing how this stands out from the renderers that Max owners already have. As a less expensive alternative to Vray for Sketchup, Rhino and maybe C4D users I can see it making sense, but for Max, it looks like it's at a point where it's similar to mental ray / iray, which is good, but Max has had stuff like this for 3 years (and that's been improving year over year) so this is hard to get excited about.

this isn't about engine cost and that's not what i'm referring to at all. it's about having a flexible software with 3 completely different types of render engine under one roof and all of which can be used with the same materials and lights, with different host apps or as a standalone and with a free Blender integrated plugin (however this does require a standalone licence).

 

then there's the issue of render speed. the links you posted show some nice renders, but the first one was a 4 hour render time with 2 high end GPUs and with an 'easily' lit scene. the second one is certainly more tricky but it rendered for 24hrs on a GTX580 and the artist says he had to stop the render and remove all the fireflies.

 

my tests are done on a GTX560 and an i7. adding 1 or more high end cards would boost performance enormously and i'm getting great performance already even on my very average system.

 

i could be completely wrong but i reckon that in a direct comparison to the best known engines in their respective classes (e.g. Maxwell, Vray and Octane), Thea, in a single package would be at least as good and just as fast if not faster. that is why i suggested doing some comparison renders.

 

of course Thea has its weaknesses too, but they certainly aren't in the render quality and speed.

 

now if you're happy with your current set up then that's great. i'm simply offering my 2c on questions that other interested users have brought up.

 

another point of note is that even though Iray, as you point out, has been doing this for some years now, there are very few Archvis renders appearing that have been rendered with it. given the massive Max user base in this industry i think that says a lot.

 

likewise, i haven't seen many Vray GPU renders, but maybe i'm looking in the wrong place.

[Scott Schroeder]

Concerning iRay for architecture. This quote from Jeff Patton pretty much sums up why GPU rendering is still in the early days and won't be fully adopted for some time for architecture. Product viz is where GPU rendering really shines.

 

Yes, there are some restrictions/limitations to deal with but IMHO it’s quite useable for the product-vis and to some degree the architectural-vis communities. I hesitate on the architectural-vis side of things because typically architectural interiors can be quite time consuming to render with path-tracer type applications.

 

This holds especially true on interiors illuminated by a few small light sources or small windows. You’d have to give iray a lot of fast hardware at a scenario like that in order to achieve decent render times. Architectural exteriors are usually pretty good with path-tracer type applications. You get more light/bounced light in areas in a more efficient/faster manner than on an interior.

http://jeffpatton.net/2011/04/why-iray/

[Mario Pende]

I realy dont see much logic in this statement given previous posts where Derek has presented us with very impressive times and results.

But again I would like to hear on the GPU memory limit wich is at least for me THE ONLY problem for current GPU engines.

 

Thea is telling me that my CPU (i7980x) is contributing a bit more than my GTX560ti.

Derek I cannot agree with you here.

You posted a image rendered with TR2 - 3 hours, you used same engine unbiased but with addition of GPU wich reduced time almost 3 times.

So GPU power is clearly greater then that coming from CPU.

[Derek Forreal]

Concerning iRay for architecture. This quote from Jeff Patton pretty much sums up why GPU rendering is still in the early days and won't be fully adopted for some time for architecture.

thank you, this is exactly my point. AJLynn has been bringing up Iray and saying that Thea seems the same kind of thing, but i am trying to point out that Thea's GPU+CPU engine is very fast and holds up for interiors too (though of course interiors are not as fast as exteriors or product vis). Jeff Patton is right of course, Product vis is where GPU shines, but i maintain that Thea will do it faster and cleaner.

 

here is a quick test with a model i made a while back. i literally just rendered this. 10 mins (again, on my i7 and GTX560ti), direct from the Thea buffer - no noise reduction, no fireflies, full float image. BTW, that isn't noise on the paint as you can see in the image below (rendered previously).

 

 

 

sorry for the off topic but it seems relevant given the comment.

 

an additional benefit of Presto is that you are able to specify Tracing Depth and Diffuse bounces separately (maybe you can do this in Iray?) and can combine with a kind of AO if desired to get nice bright interiors. it's a kind of 'Pathtracing with bias' (sorry but i'm not very technical) and can be tuned in terms of speed vs quality.

 

seriously, has anyone got an interior scene that they'd like to do a comparison on?

[Derek Forreal]

Derek I cannot agree with you here.

You posted a image rendered with TR2 - 3 hours, you used same engine unbiased but with addition of GPU wich reduced time almost 3 times.

So GPU power is clearly greater then that coming from CPU.

TR2 and Presto are different types of unbiased engine. i'm not nearly knowledable enough to give you a technical explanation but TR2 is a MLT based engine and is more advanced (hence the render time penalty).

 

Presto is a Path Tracer which has a number of optimisations and can be combined with fewer bounces to give a result that is most times very similar to TR2 but much faster.

 

TR2 is CPU only. Presto can be used with CPU, GPU or both together. when i use both, the results are telling me that my CPU is contributing more to the final render. a higher end card (or multiple cards) would obviously reverse this.

Edited October 15, 2013 by derekforreal

[Mario Pende]

seriously, has anyone got an interior scene that they'd like to do a comparison on?

 

Would realy like you to try the "let there be light" scene together with "let there be architectual glass". In the 2nd one you have an interior scene with an glass table wich could realy take long for an unbiased engine to render.

[Derek Forreal]

Would realy like you to try the "let there be light" scene together with "let there be architectual glass"

the LTBL scene link doesn't work.

 

i have downloaded the LTBAG scene but there are no renders to show where camera should be, show lighting and so on.

 

in any case this will only be useful if someone is prepared to do up to date Vray/MR/Iray etc versions so we can compare...