6 ms·

During my time at PDI/DreamWorks, all idle desktop machines would be incorporated into the render farm as well. I don't know if this is the case anymore with so

During my time at PDI/DreamWorks, all idle desktop machines would be incorporated into the render farm as well. I don't know if this is the case anymore with so many features of the renderer and simulations software depending on the GPU.

dylan604 4y ago
I was surprised at how much CPU only rendering was still done. About 5 years ago, I was a TD at a post house/animation studio. Some of the guys were demoing GPU rendering to see if it was something they could start utilizing. The issue at hand was that they were so heavily invested in the existing data center (leased machines). They were doing the experiments of using multiple GPUs way exceeding the motherboards designs by using breakout cables so each PCIe slot connected multiple GPUs. It was very much Frankenputer with massive PSUs, and cards laying on a desktop not even in a chassis. Even then, the speed was impressive, just wasn't scalable at that time.
dagmx 4y ago
Most feature film work is still highly CPU only. This extends to farms being largely CPU only. In those events, idle workstations are actually more capable if the renderer can use the GPU, but that’s rare. Pixar’s own Renderman is still primarily a CPU renderer for them even though they have XPU coming, and DreamWorks’ soon to be open sourced MoonRay is also primarily CPU only. Most feature film scenes are still too large to fit in GPU memory comfortably. While some GPU renderers can handle out of core rendering (Redshift etc), there’s a lot of concessions to be made in terms of shader types (subsurface is/was much better on CPU renderers) and performance issues when shuttling data back and forth. When we did some evaluation of using Redshift for some projects, our CPU renderer still handedly beat it for mid-large scenes, so it was rarely worth the effort to use it in our cases. There’s also the issue of retrofitting infrastructure. The studios have hundreds of farm machines without GPUs. Most studios run on leases so would have a delay before GPUs would be next widely available in their farms. Ironically, one of the best devices for XPU rendering would be the new Apple Silicon macs. Not having to shuttle data back and forth, plus having a relatively massive memory pool for the GPU is a really advantageous setup. In theory, they could actually out pace much higher end hardware for specific scenes if the renderers could take advantage of both CPU/GPU and unified memory.

dylan604 4y ago

I was surprised at how much CPU only rendering was still done. About 5 years ago, I was a TD at a post house/animation studio. Some of the guys were demoing GPU rendering to see if it was something they could start utilizing. The issue at hand was that they were so heavily invested in the existing data center (leased machines). They were doing the experiments of using multiple GPUs way exceeding the motherboards designs by using breakout cables so each PCIe slot connected multiple GPUs. It was very much Frankenputer with massive PSUs, and cards laying on a desktop not even in a chassis. Even then, the speed was impressive, just wasn't scalable at that time.

dagmx 4y ago

Most feature film work is still highly CPU only. This extends to farms being largely CPU only. In those events, idle workstations are actually more capable if the renderer can use the GPU, but that’s rare. Pixar’s own Renderman is still primarily a CPU renderer for them even though they have XPU coming, and DreamWorks’ soon to be open sourced MoonRay is also primarily CPU only. Most feature film scenes are still too large to fit in GPU memory comfortably. While some GPU renderers can handle out of core rendering (Redshift etc), there’s a lot of concessions to be made in terms of shader types (subsurface is/was much better on CPU renderers) and performance issues when shuttling data back and forth. When we did some evaluation of using Redshift for some projects, our CPU renderer still handedly beat it for mid-large scenes, so it was rarely worth the effort to use it in our cases. There’s also the issue of retrofitting infrastructure. The studios have hundreds of farm machines without GPUs. Most studios run on leases so would have a delay before GPUs would be next widely available in their farms. Ironically, one of the best devices for XPU rendering would be the new Apple Silicon macs. Not having to shuttle data back and forth, plus having a relatively massive memory pool for the GPU is a really advantageous setup. In theory, they could actually out pace much higher end hardware for specific scenes if the renderers could take advantage of both CPU/GPU and unified memory.