Member planaria Posted February 27, 2011 Member Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 i really love this program, i bought it for the retopology tools alone. i think this has been posted before but im posting this just to bump it for the devs. i am sure there are many many people who would appreciate an opencl version so that 3d-coat could accelerate its performance with not only nvidia but with ati. i am also sure you would get many more sales of 3d-coat but figuring out how to get a version that supports opencl out the door. anyways i am pretty sure it would be a gigantic pain to port your code from cuda to opencl but consider how much the ati users in the room will love you even more and also the potential revenue our losing simply because people cant use 3d-coat to its full extent either way thanks for making a great program, one of the few programs i felt the need to invest money in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 27, 2011 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 i really love this program, i bought it for the retopology tools alone. i think this has been posted before but im posting this just to bump it for the devs. i am sure there are many many people who would appreciate an opencl version so that 3d-coat could accelerate its performance with not only nvidia but with ati. i am also sure you would get many more sales of 3d-coat but figuring out how to get a version that supports opencl out the door. anyways i am pretty sure it would be a gigantic pain to port your code from cuda to opencl but consider how much the ati users in the room will love you even more and also the potential revenue our losing simply because people cant use 3d-coat to its full extent either way thanks for making a great program, one of the few programs i felt the need to invest money in. I don't think even CUDA offers that much of a tangible benefit at this stage. Andrew stated a few months ago that he hadn't optimized CUDA for Voxel sculpting when he re-engineered the Brush engine. He said he hasn't updated CUDA's implementation since it was first introduced into the application about 2yrs ago. So, I'm not sure where he stands with that, but it's really limited as to what it does in the application, anyhow. It's only utilized in Voxel Volume mode, and when I have GPU-Z running, in order to try and gauge how hard the GPU works during sculpting, I don't notice much activity...so, unless Andrew re-works it, it seems more novelty at this point than anything else.What's more is that OpenCL is still relatively new and not anywhere near as mature of a technology as CUDA. Plus ATI's OpenCL implementation leaves a lot to be desired. NVidia's OpenCL is better, which is ironic. VRay RT uses OpenCL and as yet will not work with ATI cards. What does that tell you? Why dump a lot of investment into OpenCL when ATI doesn't even have their own act together? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member planaria Posted February 28, 2011 Author Member Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 i was referring mainly to voxel volume mode, and when i had an nvidia card it was much faster in rendering the voxels so that is my personal experience. honestly i wanted to buy nvidia when buying my new computer, but they were a ) too expensive b ) barely available at the time i was in the market. i cant say for sure if opencl is 'mature' enough or if its a novelty or if the ati implementation is worse(even if the implementation is worse it would still be a speedup in voxel mode). but opencl seems like a better step forward then the extremely proprietary cuda. the voxel sculpting in 3d-coat is an extremely important feature and its a big reason why many people buy 3d-coat. improving its performance and extending it to perform better on ati will ultimately keep customers and attract new ones. it makes sense to atleast try it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 28, 2011 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 i was referring mainly to voxel volume mode, and when i had an nvidia card it was much faster in rendering the voxels so that is my personal experience. honestly i wanted to buy nvidia when buying my new computer, but they were a ) too expensive b ) barely available at the time i was in the market. i cant say for sure if opencl is 'mature' enough or if its a novelty or if the ati implementation is worse(even if the implementation is worse it would still be a speedup in voxel mode). but opencl seems like a better step forward then the extremely proprietary cuda. the voxel sculpting in 3d-coat is an extremely important feature and its a big reason why many people buy 3d-coat. improving its performance and extending it to perform better on ati will ultimately keep customers and attract new ones. it makes sense to atleast try it out. From what I've gathered over at the Chaos Group's forums (VRay), ATI's OpenCL practically doesn't even WORK....period. VRay customers with ATI cards have been waiting for GPU accelerated (OpenCL) RT to work on their cards. You have ATI to thank for that. So, even if Andrew invested all the time in that effort, it still wouldn't work for ATI users. ATI is all about gaming and little else. They have been behind in GPU stream processing from the start and continue to do so. Until they get THEIR act together in that regard, why should a developer waster their time?I used to be a big proponent of ATI, where I bought nothing but ATI cards for years...until about 24 months ago. I got tired of their cards not working with some of my everyday software and no real GPU processing to speak of. OpenCL with ATI is nothing but a ruse right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Grandmaster B Posted February 28, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 OpenCL is now starting to work good on ATI cards, they started to include the driver in the Catalyst package. Things may finally change. In some tests OpenCL performance on ATI is better. However, i do not want OpenCL support in 3D-Coat at this point either. I fear that this will introduce new bugs or stalls current bug fixing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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