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By JIX - 10 Years Ago
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Indigo 4 public beta is out ...
http://www.indigorenderer.com/node/2016
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By TheOldBuffer - 10 Years Ago
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I've tried the new Indigo renderer and rendered off the benchmark scene.
facts and figures for render are Render time 3m35s 1391.31 s/px and 5.195 Ms/sec
Top pic is screen capture to log the stats and bottom pic is the rendered output.
I have an EVGA superclocked GTX970.
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By yoyomaster - 10 Years Ago
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Works with the current iClone plug-in, but no GPU!
Really fast on GPU with demo scenes, will try with some old scenes whenever I have the time!
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By animagic - 10 Years Ago
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I tried an old scene with speed trees and it wouldn't even convert, although I could render it with the old version of Indigo. I've found in the past that Indigo chokes on scenes with speed trees and that seems to still be the case to even a greater extent it. The benchmark scenes are relatively simple.
I had trouble with the RT beta in that it remained at 3.8, whereas the RL license doesn't work for the full version. I do hope though that we can at least benefit from any improvements with an updated RL Indigo version. I wouldn't even mind if we could just use the regular RT and full Indigo versions for those who use Indigo not just for iClone.
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By wires - 10 Years Ago
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I have never used the stripped down RL version of Indigo RT - the full version works perfectly with the RL plugin, and I can also use it with SketchUp and a few other packages.
I haven't downloaded the V4 Beta version yet, too many other things to get finished at the moment.
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By animagic - 10 Years Ago
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@Gerry: That's good to know; it was never made very clear at the time.
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By hattori kun - 10 Years Ago
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Unless RL changed the whole export process from Iclone to Indigo, its still not useful for animation projects.
Integration with hosts appz is really terrible with indigo products.
Octane 3 is coming out with a $49 upgrade price. RL should really invest their time with octane.
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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Following keenly.
Did you know?: Indigo vendor leans towards AMD GPUs whereas RL's iClone 6 leans towards NVIDIA GPUs.
This conflict of strategy is interesting and is probably the biggest indicator that RL needs to consider a more strategically aligned renderer (can I dream of Octane?)
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By davide445 - 10 Years Ago
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Just arrived in this forum but since some time a hobbyist in Indigo Renderer and analyst in 3d tech.
In fact this statement is not accurate: new Indigo 4.0 approach pure GPU rendering asking for just OpenCL 1.1 compatibility (current OpenCL spec are at 2.1), meaning almost any modern Nvidia, AMD and even Intel GPU or any other compatible hw are usable.
In Indigo forum you did find a lot of developers testing on Nvidia GPU, so there is no AMD related bias.
Looking at the results and experimenting myself with test scene I can say the GPU renderer part it's really fast (for an unbiased renderer!) and got beautiful results in just minutes instead of dozen or hours.
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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NVIDIA works better with CUDA.
Indigo documentation says you stand to get better results with AMD cards..
Compatibility doesn't mean optimal performance!
Am just stating FACTS not opinion. Cheers!
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By justaviking - 10 Years Ago
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pmaina (4/18/2016)
NVIDIA works better with CUDA.
Indigo documentation says you stand to get better results with AMD cards..
Compatibility doesn't mean optimal performance!
Am just stating FACTS not opinion. Cheers!
Very true. But I gotta assume either brand GPU will be much faster than your CPU. :)
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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justaviking (4/18/2016)
Very true. But I gotta assume either brand GPU will be much faster than your CPU. :)
Yes. If there are absolutely no better options, there would be no choice but to settle - as its better than nothing.:P But that's an argument for its own sake because there are better options out there...:)
It just doesn't make sense for RL to tie up with a crappy renderer that makes its users the guinea pigs (second time round - this time for "experimentations" with GPU rendering) - when there are far better, already proven choices out there from experienced developers. Indigo will always be playing catch up when it comes to rendering Animation. Right now they don't have even one example of animation sequence rendered with v4 beta.
Cheap is expensive in the long run. People paid $99 for the current (clearly useless) indigo RT implementation.. I wonder how they feel about Indigo
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By wires - 10 Years Ago
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,,,,It just doesn't make sense for RL to tie up with a crappy renderer that makes its users the guinea pigs (second time round - this time for "experimentations" with GPU rendering)........
Maybe I've missed the post, or the email, but I can't find any evidence to even suggest that RL have requested users here to take part in a Beta cycle being held by another company. I also haven't seen any information anywhere that even suggests that Glare Technologies are requesting that users test their Beta release with a third party plugin.
A Beta is just a test where the tester accepts all the consequences that may occur - including total data loss - at their own risk. In this case RL have no obligation to provide any support to any user testing 3rd party software. If, and when, Glare release a public end version of Indigo then we should ask RL to test their plugin with it, but until that time each user takes the risks and frustrations alone.
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By animagic - 10 Years Ago
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In the end benchmarks would be the way to find out if anyone really cares. Indigo relies on the Open CL implementation of the card, which is where AMD had the advantage for a long time, because NVIDIA ignored the importance of Open CL for their GTX cards. Fortunately this has changed with the latest high-end NVIDIA cards.
I found some benchmark results here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-amd-opencl-2015&num=1. It's for Linux but that wouldn't really matter. The top NVIDIA card in this comparison is the GTX980. In another test with just NVIDA cards, the GTX 980 Ti and GTX TITAN X are included as well: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-10max-clcuda&num=1. Those two cards are very close in performance, but improve over the GTX 980.
But, as far as iClone is concerned, the card is not really the issue as has been pointed out many times.
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By animagic - 10 Years Ago
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pmaina (4/18/2016)
Cheap is expensive in the long run. People paid $99 for the current (clearly useless) indigo RT implementation.. I wonder how they feel about Indigo
It was disappointing, obviously, but I'm more interested in a solution than holding a grudge. It was a failed experiment, but it's time to move on. The implementation on the Indigo side is inefficient because there is no data sharing, so there is not much RL could do about that. There would have been no difference between Indigo RT or the full version of Indigo. What should have been a red flag at the time is that there were no animation examples of any interest rendered with Indigo using any package.
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By justaviking - 10 Years Ago
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@Gerry - Good comment that we shouldn't have any expectations about 3rd party beta software working with iClone.
@Job - I, too, have purchased "shelfware" that I explored and never (or rarely) used. Sometimes it was the software, sometimes it was just me.
From my look inside some of the Indigo files, I do believe there are opportunities for Reallusion to make significant improvements in the "export to Indigo" process to speed it up and greatly reduce disk space usage (E.g. Write "static" textures and meshes one time), but that doesn't address other fundamental problems of rendering speed, etc.
I would like to see at least one more 3rd party plug-in (Octane or Iray or whatever), but it's low-priority to me. Typically (in my experience) the first plug-in is the hardest because you have to set up the architecture to support it. I'm not saying the others are easy, but the plumbing and wiring is in place now to enable them.
However... I'd much rather seen the internal renderer improved first before putting much more effort into 3rd party renderers.
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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Thanks for your comments guys. Interesting viewpoints! Lets see how it plays out,.
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By JIX - 10 Years Ago
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However... I'd much rather seen the internal renderer improved first before putting much more effort into 3rd party renderers.
Me too, but Indigo is still nice to have for stills and seems to evolve. Maybe even from shelfware to your "preferred-ware". You never know ...
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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animagic (4/19/2016)
But, as far as iClone is concerned, the card is not really the issue as has been pointed out many times.
iClone 6 relies on certain proprietary NVIDIA technology e.g. Physx which is incompatible with AMD cards. I think it makes more sense or RL to abandon indigo for rendering animations and go in a direction more closely matched to its tech/product strategy (e.g. Octane). RL marketing blurb should explicitly advise users that although AMD cards are compatible with ic6, for best performance they should use NVIDIA cards.
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By animagic - 10 Years Ago
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pmaina (4/20/2016)
animagic (4/19/2016)
But, as far as iClone is concerned, the card is not really the issue as has been pointed out many times.iClone 6 relies on certain proprietary NVIDIA technology e.g. Physx which is incompatible with AMD cards. I think it makes more sense or RL to abandon indigo for rendering animations and go in a direction more closely matched to its tech/product strategy (e.g. Octane). RL marketing blurb should explicitly advise users that although AMD cards are compatible with ic6, for best performance they should use NVIDIA cards.
You are correct. I was specifically referring to rendering with Indigo and the problems with the iClone plugin.
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By oscarj - 10 Years Ago
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Hi all, I'm one of Indigo 4's private beta testers and thought I might be able to bring some clarity to some concerns raised here.
For all of you that have problems with rendering (crashes, screen coming out black, etc), please make sure you have the latest GPU drivers - Indigo 4 is unlikely to work without recent drivers. If the scene is actually rendering but comes out black, try Reinhard tonemapping and see if that makes the scene visible. If you're still having problems or errors, check the render log window from the dropdown menu to the right and consider sending Glare a bug report along with your hardware and software specs.
Concerning Indigo being stuck in the beginning with Kernel builds - make sure you update your betas continuously because they're working towards minimising the time it takes and how often they happen.
There haven't been any claims that rendering performance is better on AMD cards. In fact, initial benchmark results suggest the opposite may be true, the best rendering performance has come from Nvidia cards, more specifically from the Maxwell generation. Older gen NVIDIA cards can expect good performance as well, though you will probably want to use something like 660Ti or better to get any significant increase of performance over Indigos regular CPU rendering. The only minor limit with Nvidia cards right now is that the total texture size must be lower than 25% of the total VRAM amount, however the devs are looking at working around that in the future.
I wouldn't worry too much about Indigo 4 not being CUDA - Indigo 4 doesn't support CUDA because they don't need to, with OpenCL. There has been beta tests by Octane power users, one if which has said that Indigo 4 renders "Incredibly fast" and that the release is "very exciting!". The different rendering engines are of course difficult to compare, but test rendering comparisons have showed very favourable results for Indigo with a lot of room for further improvements.
About Indigo being a suitable animation renderer or not - it's true that there have not been to many professional animations done so far as it has rather been considered a very high quality stills renderer and found its niche there. There are of course exceptions to that, examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3erlUfylFAE
http://www.polygonmanufaktur.de/schiffskabine.html
With the new, faster rendering the devs are however eager to get into the animation business properly and lots of further improvements in that department can be expected.
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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Many thanks Oscarj. Very relieved & happy to read your comments. The sample animation is awsome and it would be interesting to know how much hardware and time would be needed to render similar work with the 4.x release. The iClone community is both time & resource constrained so the ideal solution should be able to offer decent (what does that mean?:unsure:) results, within acceptable timeframes (like what..?:unsure:) and with fairly minimal hardware resources (like iclone recommended hardware - at least I can be more specific on that one). Texture size compatibility with NVIDIA will be essential for iCloners since the best cards for iClone (best technical match) are NVIDIA cards.
Thanks again and welcome to the RL community forum!
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By animagic - 10 Years Ago
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Thanks, oscarj, for your comments. It is encouraging to hear that the Indigo developers are getting serious about animation. Hopefully in that regard there will be specific testing that includes input from iClone users,
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By justaviking - 10 Years Ago
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animagic (4/23/2016)
Thanks, oscarj, for your comments. It is encouraging to hear that the Indigo developers are getting serious about animation. Hopefully in that regard there will be specific testing that includes input from iClone users,
For animation work, I still look forward to Reallusion making use of shared/common resources that don't change with every frame. I've done enough programing to be certain that it wouldn't be a difficult change for them. That, along with improved Indigo rendering speeds, could be interesting.
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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Just to correct any misunderstandings.. the beta tester actually confirmed, albeit very positively and diplomatically, that indigo is fatally mismatched with iClone. I thought it was obvious but apparently not everyone got it. Having indigo as the sole renderer is bad news for iCloners. We need a "plan B" that is already proven for animation and optimally utilizes iClone friendly hardware: e.g. Octane. That is the bigger picture.
Remember: It makes sense to improve our odds of getting the rendering right. We can only gain by having a choice of 2 rendering plugins + iclone Native PBR renderer. If you haven't voted for Octane already @Feedback Tracker, now is the time. Don't get distracted by the theoretical debates. :)
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By oscarj - 10 Years Ago
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pmaina (4/25/2016)
Just to correct any misunderstandings.. the beta tester actually confirmed, albeit very positively and diplomatically, that indigo is fatally mismatched with iClone. I thought it was obvious but apparently not everyone got it.
Hmm, no I'd say that's your own conclusion. :) Indigo runs just as well on modern Nvidia GPUs as on AMD's, and was actually chiefly developed on GTX 970s. That Indigo, unlike Octane, runs great on AMDs and CPUs as well is just a bonus.
An interesting fact is that Octane for a long period developed an OpenCL version of Octane for its v3 release, but eventually gave up on it. They are now going try to develop a CUDA emulation that can run on other platforms than NVIDIA, which will be interesting follow.
One thing I'll definitely agree with is that it's always better with choice. Octane is definitely ahead in the animation department and the iClone - Indigo plugin does not seem to be working very well. Had I, for whatever reason, been an iClone user I would have been just as eager for more rendering options as you. :)
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By will2power71 - 10 Years Ago
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I have the RT Plugin and I have to say, that I'm more interested in seeing Iclone's new renderer than I am with Octane or Indigo. It's not that I don't like either of them. I have used Octane extensively and Indigo not so much, but enough to know why I don't like it for this purpose. The reason I feel this way now is that game engine video is how Iclone started. It's one of it's strengths.I think now that we know a new internal render is on the horizon, that it's best to wait and see what we're getting. A lot of these concerns could be rendered academic if the new Renderer is a beast.
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By animagic - 10 Years Ago
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I guess I am/was of two minds. I wasn't aware that iClone was close to completing an improved native renderer supporting PBR until a few days ago.
So if that works out, that would be great.
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By pmaina - 10 Years Ago
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Further research suggests that we need an *biased* raytracer for animation... like VRAY to give a good efficient balance of speed & quality when rendering animations.
V-Ray RT Information
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