Cycles new Embree patch... is it compatible with the new GPU/CPU feature?

So, let’s see if someone can answer me, probably it will be in the future, but as it is today… is it compatible?

Is there a way to get this applying some patch to master?

Cheers!

It was presented at the Blender conference:

Most up to date information from the mailing list:
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2017-November/048936.html

Hi everyone,

I pushed a new branch to git.blender.org yesterday, cycles_embree. As the name says, this is an integration of the Embree raytracing kernel into Cycles*. If you are interested in building it, you will need version 2.16.1 or newer of Embree, built with EMBREE_RAY_MASK=ON. To avoid self-shadowing with hair, a slightly patched version of Embree is necessary which you can find here: https://github.com/skwerner/embree/tree/cycles_compatible

For now, this is a CPU only feature, and the real benefits from using Embree come into play with scenes using deformation motion blur. Small or static scenes don’t benefit much. Be aware that that not everything renders 100% identical to regular Cycles when enabling Embree: Object motion blur in Embree does not do arc interpolation but only straight linear motion. Curve and line intersections use a different algorithm and therefore render to a slightly different shape.

This branch is still a work in progress - the last few (hopefully just a few) bugs are being ironed out, there are still some known instabilities and memory being wasted. I’m in touch with the Embree authors to see if/when we can use a version of Embree without Cycles specific patches and still get identical results to plain Cycles. It should certainly be possible to use Embree’s BVH data and traverse it in OpenCL and CUDA to get fast deformation blur on GPUs too, but that is still a task I haven’t tackled yet at all (volunteers are welcome).

-Stefan

This, the Embree branch and the Cryptomatte branch are features that I would hope to eventually merge into master (2.8?) once they’re stable, feature complete and reviewed.

Hey, Anyone done a windows build of this they can post. Cant be bothered with setting up and compiling today, just want to test it out with large terrain rendering for bakes.

Hey 3DLuver, I can try to do it, do you know the name of the branch, i´m going out now and cannot check it, but I´ll try it later.

Cheers!

https://github.com/skwerner/embree/tree/cycles_compatible

Hi Esimacio

Thanks, I meant the blender branch with the modifications, do I have to use those libraries also?

Cheers.

As I understand you need to get the embree libraries delivered in the windows zip file. And in Visual studio you need to set the path to those libraries. But this could be incorrect, I am a newbie :slight_smile:
After that you can checkout with the branch name cycles_embree

Currently, Embree is an option for CPU-only renders. GPU or GPU+CPU renders will use the stock Cycles ray intersections.

For the interested, here’s a Windows build: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ap47HIkOUUa3hESym1u1ltWiKyks