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Network render consistencies
Hello,
I have access to a network of Macs & PCs with varying levels of graphics abilities. Am I right in assuming that a “watch folder” multi-frame render would be OK (ie. all frames would have the exact same look) even if it were rendered with some machines using GPU acceleration and some not? Might there be some differences in the way a graphics card calculates, for example, motion blur versus a CPU’s idea of motion blur?
I’m 99% certain the answer is “yes, it’d be fine, GPU or no GPU acceleration”.
Thanks,
Paul
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5 Replies
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My experience- yes there will be a difference.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
If you’re seeing any such differences in After Effects CS6, please tell us. That’s a bug.
Such differences were one of the major reasons that we threw the OpeenGL renderer in After Effects CS5.5 and earlier into the trash.
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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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That was CS 5.5 and before- true.
Todd- thanks to the AE team for the new audio options in the Render settings, you guys do listen! ;D
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
[Paul Roper] “I have access to a network of Macs & PCs with varying levels of graphics abilities. Am I right in assuming that a “watch folder” multi-frame render would be OK (ie. all frames would have the exact same look) even if it were rendered with some machines using GPU acceleration and some not? Might there be some differences in the way a graphics card calculates, for example, motion blur versus a CPU’s idea of motion blur?”
The answer is, as always, it depends.
Some effects (like Magic Bullet Looks, Video Copilot Optical Flares and Element, and Mettle ShapeShifter AE and FreeForm AE) use OpenGL GPU acceleration, independently of the After Effects renderer. These are processing graphically on the GPU, and thus may be inconsistent from GPU to GPU.
If you’re talking about the new ray-tracing renderer in CS6, or CUDA-enabled effects like GenArts Sapphire, then the GPU is not processing graphically; it’s processing numerically. The results should be identical in all cases to the CPU renderer.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Thanks for that Walter. I suspected that AE did indeed just use the GPU for number crunching. For any work I do which requires non-standard plugins, I don’t do network renders due to the whole plugin licensing/installing thing, so that shouldn’t be an issue.
– Paul
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