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AMD Radeon ProRender May 2020 Updates!

With the launch of Radeon Pro VII, AMD announced a slew of updates for Radeon ProRender, including a sneak peek of Radeon ProRender 2.0!

Here is the full list of updates, as well as the official AMD briefing on its performance with Radeon Pro VII!

AMD Radeon ProRender Performance with Radeon Pro VII

First, here is the official AMD tech briefing on the Radeon ProRender performance with Radeon Pro VII.

AMD Radeon ProRender May 2020 Updates!

Here are the new updates AMD is introducing for Radeon ProRender, with a special experimental Radeon ProRender 2.0 mode!

Easier Implementation

AMD Radeon ProRender SDKs are now freely available under the permissive Apache Licence 2.0, simplifying the licensing agreement to use Radeon ProRender in your own application.

AMD is also making open-source versions of all their Radeon ProRender plug-ins available on GPUOpen, so developers can use as examples on how to integrate ProRender into their application.

Updated SDKs

A new beta of Radeon ProRender 2.0 SDK is now available, which will introduce these new features :

a new flexible shader node system,
out-of-core support for heavy geometry,
improved rendering algorithm for better convergence with the same samples per pixel, and
better CPU + GPU rendering

AMD also released Radeon Rays 4.0, an update of their high-performance ray intersection acceleration library, with a custom AABB hierarchy, and GPU Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) optimisations.

This new version supports both AMD GPUs and CPUs, as well as those of other vendors using DirectX 12 and Vulkan.

New Unreal Engine Plug-In

AMD is also releasing their new Radeon ProRadeon plug-in for Unreal Engine, which introduces :

Vulkan API-based Full Spectrum Rendering technology
Full OpenCL path-traced rendering
AI-accelerated demonising
Adaptive sampling
Native tone mapping
Gamma controls

This plug-in is fully-integrated into Unreal Engine, and uses existing lights, materials and textures of any scene you create.

Updated Blender Plug-In

AMD also updated their plug-in to support the upcoming release of Blender 2.83, which includes :

an OpenVBD volumes node
improved export times for image files
support for ObjectID and MaterialID AOVs
experimental Radeon ProRender 2.0 mode

Updated Autodesk Maya Plug-In

They also updated their Autodesk Maya plug-in to support version 2020, which adds features like :

support for rendering OpenVBD volumes
Radeon ProRender lights showing in Maya Light Editor and HyperShade
support for more Maya shader nodes, camera motion blur
experimental Radeon ProRender 2.0 mode

Updated SideFX Houdini 18 Plug-In

This plug-in was updated to include :

support for Houdini principled shader
improved Radeon ProRender area lights
added motion blur support
improved OpenVBD volume rendering

AMD Radeon ProRender : Where To Download

Here is where you can download the updated SDKs and plug-ins :

Recommended Reading

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Deadpool Opening Scene Was Rendered By NVIDIA Quadro

It’s amazing the kind of mayhem that can be unleashed when cutting-edge technology gets pushed past its old limits.

[adrotate banner=”4″]Consider Deadpool, which tells the tale of Wade Winston Wilson, a Special Forces operative turned mercenary whose mutant powers are rivaled only by his smart mouth.

It’s also the story of how the film’s startling opening sequence — one that would’ve seemed unimaginable a few years ago — came to be.fhp

Based on Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-hero and directed by Blur Studios’ Tim Miller, Deadpool is action-packed from beginning to end, starting with the film’s incredible title sequence.

It’s a 90-second-long camera shot that weaves its way through a climactic, frozen-in-time, battle scene. Miller turned to Blur to develop the sequence, which was created entirely in CG.

GPU-Powered Rendering Turns Seeing Into Believing

As a first step, Blur developed detailed pre viz – previews of what the scenes would look like – to show to the studio and to Tim. Typically, such concept previews are rudimentary. They use simplified models, lighting and textures. But not all clients can see beyond these limitations.

Kevin Margo, a visual effects supervisor/director at Blur who served as a lighting TD for Deadpool, had previously explored GPU rendering during the making of his own fully computer-generated short film, Construct. So, he knew it would allow his team to make the previz as visually realistic and immersive as possible.

“We wanted to put our best quality preview in front of Fox,” Margo said.

Blur Studios built CG assets from the ground up using Autodesk 3ds Max. They then rendered them using Chaos Group’s GPU renderer, V-Ray RT, which runs exclusively on NVIDIA GPUs, and is up to 15 times faster than a CPU renderer.

GPU Rendering Delivers Speed and Fidelity

Filmmakers funneled footage captured on set along with visual effects into Open Drives’ storage offering. Blur’s CG artists, equipped with HP Z840 workstations running NVIDIA Quadro M6000 GPUs, then got to work producing a previz of the opening title sequence that was a close approximation of the final.

Blur was able to refine the design, quickly applying textures, global illumination and more — all interactively. That led them to complete and render the scene’s previz in just days.

The result was a physically based render in super-high fidelity. So the executives at Fox could see exactly what the intended sequence would look like to give it the greenlight.

Learn more about NVIDIA rendering solutions during the Media & Entertainment track at our NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference. You’ll hear from Blur Studios and Chaos Group. You’ll also be able to learn more about network, storage and workflow design for film production from Open Drives.

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NVIDIA Brings Near Real-Time Ray Tracing To The Masses

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At a regional tech briefing in Singapore on Friday, NVIDIA revealed the power of the NVIDIA ProViz computing platform. Leveraging on the parallel computing capabilities of the NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards to power the NVIDIA Iray technology, they are now able to deliver near real-time ray tracing.

In this video, Bob Pette, VP and General Manager of the NVIDIA Quadro team, explains how NVIDIA Iray and MDL (Material Definition Language) allow for predictive design through near real-time ray tracing. Check out how they help cut down the time to render ray traced images from hours to mere seconds!

More importantly, NVIDIA is finally making this available to the end-users via NVIDIA Iray plugins. Starting now, NVIDIA is offering Iray plugins for both 3ds Max 2016 and Maya 2016. The plugins for 3ds Max 2015 and 3ds Max 2014, as well as the plugin for Maya 2016 for Linux will be available in January 2016. There will also be NVIDIA Iray plugins for Autodesk Revit, Maxon Cinema 4D and Rhino in the spring or summer of 2016.

All these plugins will be sold directly by NVIDIA to end-users for $295 per year, with a 90-day free trial. According to Bob Pette, this price will be the upper limit, with these NVIDIA Iray plugins offered by their partners at lower price points in their own bundles.

Ray Tracing & Predictive Design

Ray tracing has been around for decades, and offers the most photorealistic rendering of any 3D image. However, it is computationally intensive which means real-time rendering is not remotely possible. In fact, the workflow is arduously long and more importantly disconnected.

The disconnect is a big problem, because it means the designer cannot immediately see the results of his/her work. Instead, he/she will have to wait for the final render to be delivered before making changes, and the process repeats until the design is accepted.

Thanks to the highly-parallelised nature of ray tracing, NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards can deliver almost real-time ray tracing capability via their NVIDIA Iray technology.

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This capability allows a much quicker “Predictive Design” process, because the designer can now predict what the final output would be. Instead of waiting for a render to be finalised at some off-site location, the designer can almost instantly produce a ray-traced view of the design.

Best of all, this capability does not require the designer to physically have access to a powerful render farm, or even high-powered workstations with multiple NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards. In fact, less capable devices, like the NVIDIA Shield tablet, can remotely access those capabilities.

Don’t believe us? Well, take a look at the NVIDIA Iray “Predictive Design” Demo On The NVIDIA Shield Tablet!

How Is This Important?

As far as gaming is concerned, the photorealism derived from ray tracing is not worth the effort and cost. The current “Predictive Design” capability offered by NVIDIA Iray offers a glimpse of what might be possible for PC gaming maybe a decade or two down the line.

[adrotate banner=”4″]What NVIDIA Iray offers now is a much faster and better workflow for designers, whether they are in the engineering or architectural industry. They can now design better products and even buildings faster, because they can see the effects almost immediately.

In his presentation (which we will be posting shortly), he demonstrated how the lack of such ray tracing capabilities have resulted in design faux pas like the infamous Walkie Talkie skyscraper (now nicknamed Walkie Scorchie!), which melted cars in London with its “death ray”.

The remote rendering capability that Bob demonstrated in this amazing video will also be appealing to companies that offer customisation of their products – like cars, apparel and jewellery. Their sales staff can now change colour and material and almost instantly render the final product image for the client to view and approve on-the-spot. Impressive, isn’t it?

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