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Status of preparing CentiLeo 0.43 alpha
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
Sep 23, 2016 13:08
Hello everyone!

A lot of time passed since releasing CentiLeo 0.42 for Max and Cinema. And I fell we need to post how the work on the next version is going.

The next version 0.43 is still in progress because too many things have been started for it. Some of them are quite large.
The most time consuming part is multi-GPU implementation. As soon as it's implemented we will publish the new version. It may take few days or even one week more.

So far we have already implemented:

1) Transition to CUDA 8. Now the renderer should work on Pascal NVIDIA GPUs (but we need testers for that). A wonderful thing is that even on my old GTX 970 the renderer works 12% faster with new CUDA. This new CUDA has also fixed some bugs that could touch the renderer.
2) Faster image convergence when portals are used. Not yet measured how much faster.
3) Fluent GUI responce when heavy render computations are processed by CentiLeo IPR. This is true for both 3ds Max and Cinema 4D. This is now much more pleasant to work with it.
4) More AOVs (reflection layers, base, transmission) that can be summed into beauty image. And AOV with beauty+alpha and alpha as mask.
5) 30-50% speedup when rendering large resolution images like 4K or even 10K. The speedup is better when there are a couple of AOVs computed in parallel and the image resolution is larger.
6) Fixed the bug with texture resolution downscaling for environment map visible through the glass material.
7) More bugfixes for CentiLeo in 3ds Max plugin (lile no crash with Max physical camera and Undo/Redo for materials and lights).
8) More bugfixes for CentiLeo in Cinema 4D (a couple of crashes and unnecessary IPR restarts were fixed).

What is still in progress:

1) General image convergence improvement when materials with several layers are used (almost done).
2) Material GUI improvements in CentiLeo for Cinema 4D (in the middle).
3) Multi-GPU (in the middle).
4) More bugfixes for small GPUs like 2GB which I talked about. Sometimes you have 2GB labeled on the GPU but in reality the OS may give you around 1GB (less than in the middle).
5) Will highly likely switch the layer organization of cntlStdMat to additive mode by default (when you tune the weights of each layer relative to each other). And there should be no confusion with stack-based priority. Will add optional checkboxes to enable old feature for material reflection layers where it is usefull.

Most time consuming things were performance improvements and now is multi-GPU. If multi-GPU will take even more time then we will wrap up what is done and release. In this case multi-GPU will be done for 0.44. Btw, for 0.44 we plan to accelerate renderer for scenes with many light sources (there are very promissing early experiments).

After finalizing 0.43 we will split the work so that new alpha versions will come much more frequent. New versions should be produced at least once or sometimes twice per week.
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
I'd like to be one of Pascal Testers for c4d .
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
Oct 1, 2016 15:38
Quote
Aimar NL_21 wrote:
I'd like to be one of Pascal Testers for c4d .
Hi Aimar! Welcome here! We are completing 0.43 which should support Pascal. Right now here and there we are connecting many small things together.
Too much time was taken by
Quote
1) General image convergence improvement when materials with several layers are used (almost done).
But results are good, you will see them in a couple of days :)
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
Oct 5, 2016 10:07
Delayed with some stupid bugs. Additionally the "visibility settings per light" were broken due to new feature in light transport acceleration. Recovering this
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
Oct 6, 2016 11:09
+ visibility settings per light recovered
+ material preview now work cleaner
+ direct lighting with materials more complex than just diffuse is much cleaner now. Indirect lighting too
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
Oct 14, 2016 11:37
A lot of time was grabbed by new introduced bugs.
But we have made a lot of things with IPR (now even more stable and featured with render region and varios convenient buttons) and render passes/AOVs. AOVs work in parallel and very fast, only consume CPU memory. Btw, IPR now communicates much better with Picture Viewer in Cinema 4D. PV can continue the work of IPR avoiding reload times, same is true for native Cinema render region. Also can copy IPR current render with all passes to PV.

In 3ds Max the work is going same way.

Remaining things to be done are:
1) bugfixes for small GPUs with 2GB memory (where actually less than 1 GB is available)
2) Re-arrangements material GUI for Cinema 4D

Working hard to deliver 0.43
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Good job !
Please go on !
Gaël
 
Good job.
Thank you for your efforts.
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
Oct 19, 2016 12:24
Hello everyone!

Currently done our part on lowering GPU requirements (now it can work with at least 896MB provided by OS/CUDA driver). Recall that sometimes on single-GPU setups even if you have 2GB on GPU box label the actual provided memory by the OS/driver for the renderer plugin can be much lower close to 1GB. From time to time the actual provided memory depends on many factors of what people run on their computer. This situation is heavy for primary display GPUs and when a few GPU plugins/programs are up and running.

Just need to fix GUI of CentiLeo materials in Cinema and to connect some Render passes and a couple of IPR with 3ds Max GUI. Compile and both plugins will be out.
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
Oct 22, 2016 09:13
And now 0.43 is ready for Cinema http://centileo.com/forum/messages/forum18/message266/76-download-link-centileo-for-cinema-4d-v043-a... :)

Soon will be same for our 3ds Max plugin.
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
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