Cycles X • Hacker News Board

Re: Cycles X

#51

Post by berkut » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #39

ravenstine wrote: post #3

I've kept an eye on Blender for the last 15 years and tried it again recently after having almost exclusively used Maya. It's continually improved in just about every way, is relatively easy to use with just a trackpad, and it performs really well. In contrast, Maya is has more features overall but is... a piece of shit in many ways. It doesn't matter what hardware I've used; it's a rule that Maya has to crash random…

Blender has a lot of things lacking however: * It too is crash happy just in different ways. However Maya scales better with large scenes than Blender does and that's key * Blenders licensing is a deterrent. Very few people want to deal with GPL. * Blender is not good for extensibility if you're looking for performance. The API is unstable and exposed only via Python. Studios need to extend the DCCs and Blender doesn…

This.

Blender has some rather embarrassing performance choke-points even doing relatively simple things in some cases, that software like Maya and Houdini don't have to the same degree.

GPL code (even if you're not distributing anything) is more of a problem than people would think, especially for places working on very strongly defended IP content (Marvel), where the content owners need to have guarantees that the software used is fully-licensed (there have been quite a few incidents in the industry where unlicensed commercial software was used, which causes surprising issues, like films being delayed), and similarly they need to know the software licenses for non-commercial software used doesn't have "surprises" in (some software has weird additions to licenses, like "must provide credits", and even the artists / developers working on the show for the studio don't necessarily get that).

Extensibility is really the key thing: you wouldn't believe how much custom code is written for glue wrapping around stuff for integration - still mostly Python2, although 3's on the way for the industry, but the fact Blender only supported Python3 when the industry as a whole was still happy with Python2 (they don't really care about unicode, they would have loved the GIL to be removed though) meant it was a non-starter. Similarly, custom plugins (in C++ for performance) are required in huge numbers for various different things, modifiers, deformers, proxy drawing code, etc, etc, and Blender doesn't expose anything like that.

Again, support: Autodesk are far from perfect, but they will fix critical bugs for key customers when they insist - i.e. there aren't work-arounds (often within a week).

Re: Cycles X

#52

Post by capableweb » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

valine wrote: post #14

brundolf wrote: post #12

Oh man, I am pumped about the viewport improvements. Whenever I'm working on a scene, tweaking lighting or shaders is really arduous because after every tiny adjustment I have to sit and wait at least a few seconds to really see what effect it had. These previews look amazing.

Have you tried using Eevee for shader adjustments? A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working with Eevee and then switch to Cycles for the final render.

> A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working

Don't think that's common at all because that won't always work well. The difference between Cycles and Eevee is the lightning, materials, rasterization (compared to raytracing that Cycles does) and such.

Re: Cycles X

#53

Post by brundolf » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #52

valine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using Eevee for shader adjustments? A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working with Eevee and then switch to Cycles for the final render.

> A pretty common workflow is get your lighting setup working Don't think that's common at all because that won't always work well. The difference between Cycles and Eevee is the lightning, materials, rasterization (compared to raytracing that Cycles does) and such.

The GP is correct in many cases. Part of the reason Eevee was created was for this exact purpose. You can't preview certain shader nodes (though you can preview most of them), and you can't preview raycast-only effects like indirect lighting (unless you bake it) and certain volumetric effects. But you can preview your geometry and direct lighting and physically-based materials well enough to get an idea of how things will look, and then you can make a final pass where you preview the actual Cycles output.

If you're fixing your UVs, or adjusting the depth of a bump effect, or arranging a scene to see how objects' colors balance with each other, or tweaking the metal-ness of a material, Eevee works great as a preview even if your final render will be in Cycles. Eevee is particularly useful when working on an isolated object (minimal indirect lighting), vs seeing how an entire scene gets lit.

Re: Cycles X

#54

Post by 127 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #3

I've kept an eye on Blender for the last 15 years and tried it again recently after having almost exclusively used Maya. It's continually improved in just about every way, is relatively easy to use with just a trackpad, and it performs really well. In contrast, Maya is has more features overall but is... a piece of shit in many ways. It doesn't matter what hardware I've used; it's a rule that Maya has to crash random…

Yes, Blender is an amazing project and great 3D production software for being free. However there are many issues that remain unresolved after years. Viewport performance being one of them. There seems to be at least to an extent a mode of development where fun new things get done but old, boring, more critical issues will not.

I give all credit to Blender developers for doing the old, boring and important things. It's just very frustrating waiting for years and realizing that what was the vision a couple of years ago, very few things actually got done.

Re: Cycles X

#55

Post by mattnewton » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

127 wrote: post #54

ravenstine wrote: post #3

I've kept an eye on Blender for the last 15 years and tried it again recently after having almost exclusively used Maya. It's continually improved in just about every way, is relatively easy to use with just a trackpad, and it performs really well. In contrast, Maya is has more features overall but is... a piece of shit in many ways. It doesn't matter what hardware I've used; it's a rule that Maya has to crash random…

Yes, Blender is an amazing project and great 3D production software for being free. However there are many issues that remain unresolved after years. Viewport performance being one of them. There seems to be at least to an extent a mode of development where fun new things get done but old, boring, more critical issues will not. I give all credit to Blender developers for doing the old, boring and important things. It…

Presumably this happens because it’s mostly volunteer labour right? Hiring a person to solve those boring old but important-to-your-business issues seems like it could pay off at a certain number of maya licenses.

My guess is it mostly doesn’t happen because these shops aren’t in the software business and don’t want to be, so don’t know how to value engineers and don’t want to spend money on engineering they aren’t sure will pay off in this fiscal year.

Re: Cycles X

#56

Post by amelius » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

vjeux wrote: post #15

When I was working on a ray tracer, I found that interpolating the color from neighboring points instead of leaving it blank for in-progress elements was a huge improvement for quickly seeing what the scene is going to look like. In the video examples it doesn't seem like they're doing it. I'm interested to know the rationale. (See "Progressive Rendering" section for an example: https://blog.vjeux.com/2012/javascript…

I wondered about the same thing. But look at the other videos. In some of them, the entire viewport is drawn at once and then incrementally improves.

Re: Cycles X

#57

Post by thomastjeffery » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #39

ravenstine wrote: post #3

I've kept an eye on Blender for the last 15 years and tried it again recently after having almost exclusively used Maya. It's continually improved in just about every way, is relatively easy to use with just a trackpad, and it performs really well. In contrast, Maya is has more features overall but is... a piece of shit in many ways. It doesn't matter what hardware I've used; it's a rule that Maya has to crash random…

Blender has a lot of things lacking however: * It too is crash happy just in different ways. However Maya scales better with large scenes than Blender does and that's key * Blenders licensing is a deterrent. Very few people want to deal with GPL. * Blender is not good for extensibility if you're looking for performance. The API is unstable and exposed only via Python. Studios need to extend the DCCs and Blender doesn…

> Blenders licensing is a deterrent. Very few people want to deal with GPL.

I see this claim taken seriously all over the place, and I just don't get it. How in the world is the GPL actually an issue?

The GPL does not apply to anything made with Blender; only changes made to Blender. You can very trivially use Blender without ever dealing with the GPL.

Do studios really think they need to make changes/extensions to Blender itself, then keep those changes totally private and proprietary? How absurd!

I just can't for the life of me think of a scenario where the GPL would actually inconvenience a studio. The only potential problems I can imagine are beaurocratic FUD like having a legal team arbitrarily demand every tiny piece of work be owned by the studio. What a silly reason not to use better tools.

Re: Cycles X

#58

Post by jsheard » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #47

raphlinus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is that OpenCL is indeed in that bad shape, though it does have defenders. Both AMD (ROCm) and Intel (oneAPI) have ways to run workloads originally written to run on CUDA, but they're nowhere near the level of polish as CUDA. I believe an open stack can and will emerge, but it will take time and effort on all levels of the stack. It's possible to do pretty amazing things with Vulkan compute shaders, bu…

ROCm is a total mess, and is Linux only. OneAPI is in a rather good state considering it’s barely a release candidate now I’ll put my money on Blender support Intel GPUs sooner than AMD ones with Cycles X unless AMD will adopt OneAPI.

ROCm doesn't even run on every AMD card, it only supports a subset of their architectures skewed towards the HPC market

The current and previous generations of consumer AMD cards just don't work with ROCm and there's been no indication they ever will

Re: Cycles X

#59

Post by dagmx » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #57

dagmx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender has a lot of things lacking however: * It too is crash happy just in different ways. However Maya scales better with large scenes than Blender does and that's key * Blenders licensing is a deterrent. Very few people want to deal with GPL. * Blender is not good for extensibility if you're looking for performance. The API is unstable and exposed only via Python. Studios need to extend the DCCs and Blender doesn…

> Blenders licensing is a deterrent. Very few people want to deal with GPL. I see this claim taken seriously all over the place, and I just don't get it. How in the world is the GPL actually an issue? The GPL does not apply to anything made with Blender; only changes made to Blender. You can very trivially use Blender without ever dealing with the GPL. Do studios really think they need to make changes/extensions to B…

It's not absurd that corporate entities would make changes to their software without a desire to release those changes as code. It has serious implications on patents etc...

If Blender had a stable C API that was dual licensed, you'd see a lot more studio uptake IMHO. Heck, even libc is dual licensed.

This all comes down to the GPL not being well received by most tech corporations. People can argue whether that's got merit or not. However it's a long standing fact that tech companies do not like having dependencies on GPL code that can "infect" their code base. Entertainment studios are the same. They're largely tech companies at their core that create art.

Re: Cycles X

#60

Post by dagmx » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

ziftface wrote: post #50

MattGaiser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL may as well mean radioactive as far as legal is concerned. A friend worked at a company where they banned GIMP as they feared that editing logos and other trademarks in it could invalidate them. Even working for a tech company, I don't think I would suggest using anything GPL as it would cause a fuss.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty certain that's not how the GPL works. It has no effect on the content you create using the tool. It places restrictions on redistribution of the code itself. I don't think there are any limits on what you do with gimp or blender, unless you are modifying its code and redistributing it.

Yes the GPL doesn't apply to work created by GPL software. I've heard people in companies be worried about it though because they misunderstand "using GPL libraries" as applying to work created as a product of them, rather than strictly software.