maybe you should first TRY, before CRYing. I tried and it runs on 45.28. It would be just slower than on newer drivers.
I have no problems running it on 61.77, sure evaluation mode that is... but running fine. And the plugin for maya (mango) is working ok so far, it´s slow but maybe it has to be that way...anyone for comparisons? regards
@loop29 slow? i thought it would give you an option to use the GPU like a second CPU and increase the final rendering speed. The AMARETTO plugin for 3dsmax is still not available, so i can't test it. But on your Maya you should be able to final-render much faster... but you don't use a FX card, do you? With 4Ti cards it might not work as it should, coz it's not made for them...
It's funny that PIXAR's software only PRMan is still faster than the "hardware accelerated" Gelato, even when run on a Quadro FX 4000 equipped PC... It seems that Gelato is nothing but a marketing gimmick in order to sell more Quadro cards - i guess NVIDIA has a lot of NV35GL chips and tries to dump them into the renderfarm business as Quadro FX 700s for 500$ a piece. ..
I couldn´t see that explanation anywhere that it would speed up my final rendering times, besides I don´t think that it is only for final render process. Somewhere it says something about film production quality renderings. The examples worked fine, but the vaseexample wasn´t much of a big thing from the image quality side. However, Mango installs itself into the render menu of Maya like the preinstalled mental ray, so it acts like an independant render engine and if the GPU helps or not is hidden behind it. I had to cancel the rendering of some of my recent files because took about 1 hour for a quarter of 680x460 on a nurbs object with no textures and default lightning, I mean if that is what it´s all about... uhh. regards
Bluefirexp, MaxMan is just a translator package - if you use it with PIXAR's PRMan, it will probably be faster than Gelato. Loop29, Gelato is a standalone renderer - just like MentalRay or PIXAR's PRMan - it's speciality is offloading some of the rendering pipeline to the GPU, using it as a math coprocessor. The info about Gelato being slower from PRman came directly from the Studio Tools developers at Pixar. Hopefully i will be able to make a direct comparison soon and post the results if you are interested, but i think that the info is true, even though it's coming from the competitor's company...
I just can't believe it in some way I mean- GALATO should more than double the final rendering Speed if used with a fast FX card. So why is everybody using MentalRay, Brazil etc. and not Pixar's magic renderer, if we can expect more than twice the performance compared to the standard 3dsmax scanline renderer? I must see this first.
Renderman is really that fast, especially on complex scenes - that's why almost every big FX/Animation studio is using PIXAR's RenderMan software - it was used to make 35 of the last 39 films nominated for special-effects Oscars. But the cost of RenderMan licenses are not cheap - it costs about $5000 per CPU. And you have to add the cost of translator software for each workstation (you don't need translators for rendernodes). NVIDIA Gelato team has confessed on several occasions (3DFestival @ Kopenhagen, SIGGRAPH 2004 @ LA) that if you compare Gelato perfomance on a machine with a low entry Quadro FX 700 (NV35GL, 275/500) with a high end Quadro FX 4000 (NV40GL 400/1000), the speedup is only in the lower "teen" percentages... so i guess CPU power is still a much bigger factor in rendering performance than GPU power... So, one of the factors everyone must consider is that you can easily buy rendernodes with quad CPUs right now, but you cannot buy rendernodes with quad Quadro GPUs... and SLI is out of the question for rendernodes (too much space & power consuming plus a lot of useless electronics (DAC & DVI chips, video signal capacitor filters) on the videocards that don't serve any other purpose than making heat...
Yes. The Gelato isn't fast enough to make any production houses that needs renderfarms, now go out and buy a lot of Quadros. Still, I think (hope) that we're seeing a first step taken. Do you remember the free RenderMan compliant renderer, Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT)? It was made by an ex-Pixar guy, Larry Gritz. Later, he formed the comapny Exluna, which made a "commerical version of BMRT" - Entropy. Being sold at $1500, Pixar became nervous - and in March 2001 they sued Exluna; for misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, and patent infringement. That case ended with NVidia acquiring Exluna, meaning Larry Gritz and fellow ex-Exluna's is now working for NVidia. The Cg high-level shading language, the "cinematic quality", the Gelato - I believe these things are here much thanks to the ex-Exluna's. Again, I hope that the Gelato is only the first step. I hope it will lead to NVidia announcing a new type of card, not meant for gaming or as a "viewport accelerator" - but a programmable parallell processing rendering card, capable of using shaders made in .sl / .cg etc. And that this would lead ATI to also make one, so both companies would start compete in this area too. Hopefully this will lead to cheaper, better rendering solutions. Today, we have not many in this field: ART, who produces the PURE P1800 card and the RenderDrive RD5000. And that's it. Well - Aspex announced that their Accelera card had been utilized by Imagineer Systems for use in monet extreme, the turn-key system version of their new innovative tracking tool. But the Accelera card is pretty expensive, I guess - should one want to buy one. Also you'd need to develop your own plugins for Maya or max or whatever..
I had the same thoughts as you about making render accelerators, but Larry Gritz himself has denied anything going in that direction. I had the chance of talking to him in person at the CGNetworks 3DFestival in Kopenhagen. I guess NVidia is still mostly interested in selling Graphics cards and probably uses Gelato as a proof of concept in order to make the rendering software makers to start thinking about using GPU's for accelerating rendering, so NVIDIA can sell more Quadro cards...
