-
Looking to understand Blue’s preview \ rendering capabilities…
Hello,
I am trying to get my head around some of the information that I have been reading on the Boris website.
Primarily, the statement “100% Hardware Previewing and Rendering to Disk”. Hardware Previewing is obvious. It’s the “Hardware Rendering to Disk” part that has me puzzled.
I understand that by hardware, they are refering to the GPU. Are they suggesting that they are using the GPU for rendering to disk? I do not suggest that I am an expert on video hardware. It makes sense to me that the main system passes off data and math to the GPU for processing prior to putting the results on your display. But I was not aware the system could pass data and math off to the GPU for processing and then suck the results back for writing to disk. Is this the big breakthough that Boris is suggesting that Blue is capable of?
If not, exactly what hardware is being used to render to disk that might be different than, let’s say Red? Could it be that the Blue rendering to disk is properly multithreaded so it uses all CPU’s on a multi CPU system? I have observed that the Red engine does not render to disk using more than one CPU. This would be great news. And I would suggest that such a capability (Multi-CPU Rendering to disk) in Blue would bode well for Red 4.
So where am I out to lunch on this?
-
3 Replies
-
Hello,
Boris Blue not only handles the preview of compositions via the GPU but also exports that preview from the GPU to disc as the final result. This is how it has such a tremendous speed advantage over other compositing solutions. For most work it is pretty much real-time for previews and exports with Blue.
Boris RED uses the GPU for preview only and all exports to disc are re-rendered using a traditional scan line rendering approach. While Boris RED uses one CPU for most operations there are some operations that use multiple CPU’s, such as some of the filters where rendering can be CPU intensive.
I hope this helps.
Peter.
-
Hello,
Boris Blue not only handles the preview of compositions via the GPU but also exports that preview from the GPU to disc as the final result. This is how it has such a tremendous speed advantage over other compositing solutions. For most work it is pretty much real-time for previews and exports with Blue.
Boris RED uses the GPU for preview only and all exports to disc are re-rendered using a traditional scan line rendering approach. While Boris RED uses one CPU for most operations there are some operations that use multiple CPU’s, such as some of the filters where rendering can be CPU intensive.
I hope this helps.
Peter.
-
Thanks for the response Peter.
Exporting the rendered output from the GPU to disk sounds somewhat revolutionary (at least for hardware and software that is meant for a large commercial market).
It makes me wonder if this capability is a feature of OpenGL or is proprietary to the NVidia product? Seeing as how ATI also supports OpenGL and Boris does not seem to be supporting ATI cards this way, I have to conclude the feature is proprietary to NVidia cards. Any one know for sure either way?
To hear about Red’s use of a single processor is a bit dissapointing. If Boris’s intent is to continue to make Red a software based rendering product, it would seem reasonable to assume they should be making maximum use of whatever main CPU a machine has to speed up rendering to disk. Especially when you consider that Dual Core and Duo Core proccessors are going to become the norm in short order.
It would be VERY VERY cool if full on, multiprocessor operation came as a feature in Red 4 (hint, hint).
RE 🙂
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up