SimpleLuxGPU

Here is my best so far attemt at using SimpleGPUlux Rending systme:

new update

have been doing some more render tests,
with luxrender and cuastic light.

(click to enlarge)








my final very nice luxray render took 8620 seconds to render. but it does look nice :)

Upcoming Big Rendering

i have started a big comparison of open source rendering options. hope to be finished by the end of the week.

here are some of the first results results,
Direct lighting, ambit, ray-tracing, ray depth 10-20 max supported!
Luxray 7.0rc2 730s
Blender 2.49b 970.23s
Blender 2.5 render 262.19s
Blender 2.5 508.69s
Yafaray 0.1.1 3.766s

in this case Yafaray was the clear winner!
see renders:
(click to enlarge)

am doing more ray-tracing tests along with strands, volumetrics (were supported ect)







Ps. the Luxrender render was stooped by me when i deemed it crisp and thus to the same fine quality as the other renders.
I am also testing SmallluxGPU the demonstration version of what GPU accelerated Luxrender could end up as, this runs nice and fast on my macbook pro, with 4 threads 2 for cpu and 2 for gpu.

Edit:here is a hi resolution version of the above image

Keyboard map update.

I have msot of the edit mode (for mesh) and object mode buttons in blender 2.5 alpha 2:






(click to enlarge)

while making this i have nottest that some keys seem over used (eg the 's' key) and others like '[' ']' '\' '/' '`' 'k' 'y' 'j' 'v' 'x' ';'

there are also some conflicting keys, such as shift+f is fly mode, (which should work in both edit and object) however since shift+f is mesh fill (fly mode doesn't work in edit mode without changing the shortcuts)

please leave your comments, on other conflicts you have found, allso on how i might best depict the diffident content on the keyboard?

blender 2.5 Alpha 2 Keyboard shortcuts map, on its way

i have jsut started creating a map of the keyboard short-cuts for blender 2.5 alpha 2 see here:







there is still a long way to go.

testing the render branch of blender 2.5

I used my test scene from the previous post on blender render25 branch (32 bit) [27656]
on blender 2.49b I got this as before:
Time: 1h 6m 21s = 3981 seconds











On blender render25 branch:
Time:13m 28s = 748s











blender render was 5.3 times faster than blender 2.49b and it was 1.6 times faster than blender 2.5 alpha 2.

Comparison of image:
The Hair was by far the slowest part of the render here. also do take note of the colouration of the fur and cone. Unlike in the normal blender 2.5 alpha (see previous post) the monkey is an almost perfect replica of that in blender 2.49b.
see difference map: of blender 2.49b and blender render25










And see map of: blender 2.5 alpha 2 and blender render25













system and render settings:
the cone in ray-traced transparency, the sphere is a ray-traced mirror, the hair is using zbuff to fade the ends, the monkey is repeated by a array modifier, and has SSS. the background is a NURBS surface. there are 4 colored lights. (rendered on mac book pro 0sx 10.6, 2.53 core 2 duo, 4GB 1067 NHz DD3 ram, )

rendering improments in 2.5 alpha 2

here is a test render:
the cone in raytraced trasparency, the sphere is a raytrased mirro, the hair is using zbuff to fade the ends, the monky is repeated by a array modiphier, and has SSS. the backround is a NURBS surface. there are 4 colored lights. (renderd on mac book pro 0sx 10.6, 2.53 core 2 duo, 4GB 1067 NHz DD3 ram, )

blender 2.49b
time: 1h 6m 21s = 3981 seconds











blender 2.5 alpha 2
time: 19m 54s = 1194 seconds











this shows more than the 3 times speed up.
here is a diffrence map of the two results:
one can see that the hair paticals in blender 2.49b where rendered larger than those in 2.5, there is a slight color diffrence, and the bump map on the monky is aplied with diffrent intesity.

blender 2.5 doc,

I propose that it is time for the comnity to start work on the blender 2.5 manual,
due to the great interface changes in blender 2.5 there alot more work updateing the manual for this release than that for preivus releases.