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Blender 2.78 Released: Works On VR Support, Adds Grease Pencil

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  • Blender 2.78 Released: Works On VR Support, Adds Grease Pencil

    Phoronix: Blender 2.78 Released: Works On VR Support, Adds Grease Pencil

    Blender 2.78 is now officially released to end out September for this open-source, cross-platform 3D/animation program...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    What about OpenCL? Any mention about improving it? That's what really matters, Blender seems totally bought to Nvidia and that's very disappointing for a Free Software project.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by timofonic View Post
      What about OpenCL? Any mention about improving it? That's what really matters, Blender seems totally bought to Nvidia and that's very disappointing for a Free Software project.
      As explained in the previous Blender threads, there's a simple reason for this: OpenCL is just not working well enough - if you enable more features, drivers (especially AMD) start to hang or the performance suddenly drops by 50% or more. The code is already there, but when you enable it, the drivers refuse to cooperate. Not really a lot you can do there as a developer.

      For example, consider the slow kernel compilation (by the way, the last OpenCL benchmark here that's totally invalid because it failed to account for compile times is still uncorrected). A few days ago, I tried to multithread it (also, so much for "bought"). Guess what - all drivers limit compilation to a single thread internally. Well, again, not much you can do there.

      And as a last point: You mention yourself that it's an open source project. If you really think that improving OpenCL is easy, but all developers have been "bought", why not do it yourself? Because OpenCL programming is tricky? Well, guess what, that's the reason why its support currently isn't as good as CUDA.

      Instead of conjuring a big conspiracy here, I'd recommend taking the tinfoil hat off and accepting reality.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by lukasstockner97 View Post
        And as a last point: You mention yourself that it's an open source project. If you really think that improving OpenCL is easy, but all developers have been "bought", why not do it yourself? Because OpenCL programming is tricky? Well, guess what, that's the reason why its support currently isn't as good as CUDA.

        Instead of conjuring a big conspiracy here, I'd recommend taking the tinfoil hat off and accepting reality.
        I accept your answer, but why is AMD not improving their driver? Has there been bug reports? I really don't understand...

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Steffo View Post
          I accept your answer, but why is AMD not improving their driver? Has there been bug reports? I really don't understand...
          I don't know for sure, but I guess the problem is that GPGPU rendering kernels are extremely big compared to most applications, so for 98% of the OpenCL users it's not a problem.
          They certainly are aware of the issues - in fact, rather than fixing their driver, they actually did contribute some work to the Cycles OpenCL implementation, which is why it kind of works now instead of just not working at all.
          On the other hand, I should mention in favor of AMD that they are actually sponsoring two developers for at least the next year, one of them for the new Viewport and one for Cycles OpenCL support.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by lukasstockner97 View Post
            On the other hand, I should mention in favor of AMD that they are actually sponsoring two developers for at least the next year, one of them for the new Viewport and one for Cycles OpenCL support.
            At least something which makes hope. I don't want to sponsor non-standard technology.

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            • #7
              Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite


              AMD OpenCL support is pure garbage, the slide says it all.

              CUDA, it just works and runs beautifully, making everyone more productive.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by lukasstockner97 View Post
                I don't know for sure, but I guess the problem is that GPGPU rendering kernels are extremely big compared to most applications, so for 98% of the OpenCL users it's not a problem.
                They certainly are aware of the issues - in fact, rather than fixing their driver, they actually did contribute some work to the Cycles OpenCL implementation, which is why it kind of works now instead of just not working at all.
                On the other hand, I should mention in favor of AMD that they are actually sponsoring two developers for at least the next year, one of them for the new Viewport and one for Cycles OpenCL support.
                The problem is on Blender who has relied on their CUDA knowledge to design their OpenCL kernels. AMD had to come in a clean it all up, and are now sponsoring two new developers to continue the work. The monolithic kernel design was a bad design; hence the kernel-splitting work.

                Work has already been announced back in SIGGRAPH 2016 that resources and programming talent is coming to fix it.



                Anyone not firmly in Nvidia's camp can figure this out. OpenCL kernel support for Intel is also broken on OS X, and AMD blames the fact Apple requires a baseline profile for OpenGL 3.x as the culprit, instead of fixing the requirement. Then again Blender is moving to the OpenGL 3.2 profile. The ProRender port gives AMD the resources and code to have FX OpenCL 1.2 profile support and also proper knowledge of OpenCL kernels.

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                • #9
                  Just a quick point about the headline - the Grease Pencil is not new for this release but it has gained a *lot* of new features. I think it is being referred to as Grease Pencil 2.0

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