Blender Ray-Tracing: Intel Aiming For oneAPI RT In 3.6, AMD HIP-RT Working Internally

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Blender Ray-Tracing: Intel Aiming For oneAPI RT In 3.6, AMD HIP-RT Working Internally

While NVIDIA users have been enjoying hardware ray-tracing with the Blender 3D modelling software for years with the OptiX back-end and RTX GPUs, the ray-tracing support for AMD Radeon and Intel Arc Graphics is still coming together for this industry-standard, open-source 3D modelling software...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Blender-Ray-Tracing-December

[uid313]

Almost strange how they haven't refactored out their UI code to a separate widget library.

[Calinou]

It'll be interesting to compare rendering performance on Windows and Linux, as Windows will likely outperform Linux until AMD RT performance is brought to a similar level on Mesa drivers. It's not every day you see Windows outperforming Linux on Blender

[stargeizer]

Almost strange how they haven't refactored out their UI code to a separate widget library.

Blender devs have stated many times thay don't want a separate library that adds overhead, size and requires manpower to maintain. For them is easier to manintain their own internal library that can be modified to their will (and also, it will produce the exact result, no matter what OS are you using, and this is a plus for Blender devs). As far i've seen, they don't like Qt, and GTK is a no go for them.

They are developing their own solution (bWidgets) but they are doing this at a slow pace, because they want to do things "the right way", and not the "rush way".

[mbriar]

It'll be interesting to compare rendering performance on Windows and Linux, as Windows will likely outperform Linux until AMD RT performance is brought to a similar level on Mesa drivers. It's not every day you see Windows outperforming Linux on Blender

AMD HIP-RT is going to run on AMD HIP/ROCm, like the name says. It won't run on Mesa or use vulkan ray tracing implemented in RADV. Therefore it will probably perform about the same on windows as on linux.

[tildearrow]

Almost strange how they haven't refactored out their UI code to a separate widget library.

Let me post!

Why not Vulkan ray-tracing?

[mirmirmir]

I wish they have CAD transformation. It's a hassle to move one object relaive to another object. Sure we have an add-on for that, but it doesn't always work well, like ignoring my click when I want to change tool, or not able to snap a linked collection form different blend file.

I also need locking viewport from rotation and or pan. I was surprised we don't have this feature. I often make a model off a floor plan, and it annoys me when I accidentally rotate the viewport. When that happens, I have to let go my mouse and press numpad 7 and go back again to my mouse. It's a pretty painful experience.

I'm grateful for blender, but it's a 3d modeling software, I expect it to nail its main feature, you know, before adding additional features like grease pencil or something

[uid313]

Blender devs have stated many times thay don't want a separate library that adds overhead, size and requires manpower to maintain. For them is easier to manintain their own internal library that can be modified to their will (and also, it will produce the exact result, no matter what OS are you using, and this is a plus for Blender devs). As far i've seen, they don't like Qt, and GTK is a no go for them.

They are developing their own solution (bWidgets) but they are doing this at a slow pace, because they want to do things "the right way", and not the "rush way".

Oh, I wasn't aware of bWidgets, thanks for bringing it to my attention!
This sounds like exactly what I had in mind. It seems they started working on bWidgets in parallel and are experimenting with it, but do yet rely on it for Blender even though there seems to be plans for that.

Sounds like a really cool project. I wonder if it could be used by some other projects, like maybe for some game.

[microcode]

I love how there's an actual industry standard API for this stuff; but instead of that, every single vendor has its own API that is marketed as a standard API but which only really works properly on one vendor...

[OneTimeShot]

I love how there's an actual industry standard API for this stuff; but instead of that, every single vendor has its own API that is marketed as a standard API but which only really works properly on one vendor...

From what I understand, Nvidia forced their way into Blender and paid to have it not work with anyone else's graphics cards.