I noticed.
E-Cycles’ AI Denoiser is not only more convenient than the normal version, but also details.
In this scene, the difference is obvious in the details of the canvas and the details inside the sofa armrest.
Focus on the inside of the sofa armrest and the canvas.
Original
Blender 2.81 Alpha’ AI Denoiser
(The sofa armrests and canvas details are gone.)
E-Cycles’ AI Denoiser (Multi Pass)
(Clear denoising with good detail)
Hi, the Nvidia OptiX raytracer suppport:
Operating System Windows and Linux
(see release notes for specific version)
Dependencies
NVIDIA GeForce, Quadro and Tesla products with Maxwell and newer generation GPUs.Recent NVIDIA Display Driver
Meant it should support even GTX 700 cards.
Iirc, Brecht (Cycles developer) mention to complete change Cycles kernels to OptiX at some point. Usually BF push unfinished features to Blender instead include working solutions like OIDN (Intel denoise) waiting 9 month in tracker.
Cheers, mib
And the new black logo of E-Cycles looks great 
@norka too.
The hardware limitations can be solved and probably will. OptiX is indeed compatible with older generations.
On the other side, many of the features limitations are here to stay simply due to their nature. The way those work is not adapted for OptiX. Maybe someone will find some smart tricks later, but there is no sign for it yet. That’s why I recommend standard E-cycles if one need those all the time. If you need those only in some projects or bake AO for example, the standard version is included in the RTX dowloads to offer the best tool for each projects.
Thanks for the comparison. 5 months of polishing the OIDN integration make a difference indeed
I have some updates for RTX in the works too 
I remember you being a advocate for making things easier when you were comparing other render engines (like redshift etc)… I for one appreciate the quick settings a lot. I see nothing “unprofessional” with it.
Mashing random set of render settings which were originally categorized into one, uncategorized rollout, and creating duplicate settings in the UI without any added functionality has nothing to do with ease of use or usability. But I do realize some people want some random settings at the top. That’s why I requested if it’s possible to get build without the UI modifications. I did not suggest removing it for others who already got used to it.
Is something wrong in 2.81 alpha denoising normal? That armrest look so different at high view angle
Hi Mathieu!
BF has finally resolved the issue! This error only related to Blender Kernel so you can safely and easily merge into your E-Cycle Blender. This is the commit which resolve the problem.
Since I launch Windows in very rare occasions, I didn’t have a chance to test RTX version so far. I gave it a try today.
Wow! I rendered just one interior scene, obviously expecting better performance, but the difference (including viewport rendering) was really huge.
Render time (regular E-Cycles vs E-Cycles RTX) dropped down from 5:33 to 2:22 on RTX2080TI.
I’m pre-ordering 2020
This is a test from the same setting.
In Blender’ OIDN, AI Denoiser removes that part.
Nvidia OptiX Denoiser also crushes that part too.
That’s why E-Cycles’ OIDN optimization is very interesting.
Good evening (o;
Sorry if this has been maybe asked before as I didn’t follow this thread for a while due to testing the new Blender 2.80 Otoy release…
From the last email from Mathieu I understand that the new RTX 2020 version will be only available for Windows?
Or will it be supported on AMD/Intel Linux as well?
Well…forget macOS as Nvidia is supported with current releases…
Just asking as my current Otoy subscription runs out by December 6th…so not sure which version to extend for next year (o;
thansk in advance
richard
Happy customer here 
just a minor bug report, the increment/decrement buttons in the dilate/erode node in the compositor are broken. they work fine on the official buildbot.
(i’m also the guy on twitter who asked for the option to pipeline the next BVH on the CPU so the GPU never has to sit idle. would be a nearly 2x speed increase in my case as the time spent rendering my current animation is about 50/50 split between pre-processing (when the GPU is idle) and rendering(when the CPU is almost idle))
(you asked me to be here instead of twitter so i added that here too )
Good evening,
RTX builds for Linux are now also available
Kind regards,
Mathieu
Hi Matthew,
thanks for the kind words and the report. Does it also happen in the latest 20191003 builds from yesterday? This part of the code is 100% like Blender, so if it works in buildbots now, it should also work in latest E-Cycles.
Actually, for bug reports and just like for official Blender, it’s better to open a ticket to ensure your report is seen and information is per item and is kept in one place. For E-Cycles, you can open a ticket by mail by answering any mail from Gumroad or by sending a message on the Blender Market.
Thanks for your Idea. While it may take time to implement, I’m currently working on making pre-processing faster and the BF too, so there should be good improvements coming soon. Current test builds already yeld 2 figures results in many scenes.
E-Cycles 20191003 is up for Windows, Linux and Mac in both the standard and RTX version.
A bug in the rendered viewport was fixed in E-Cycles (some scene could be much brighter in the viewport than in final render since the 20190912 builds) on top of the many fixes from upstream. I recommend everyone to update.
For those who would like to still get the 2019-only version of E-Cycles on the Blender Market, it’s the last day it’s available.
Which version of driver must be installed to have Optix available on Linux?
I have 430.40 and see ‘No compatible GPUs found for path tracing’ message in settings.
I can see 435.21 BETA available in AUR - anyone on Arch/Manjaro have installed it and can share some feedback if there were any issues?
Drivers for Optix:
Windows: driver version 435.80 or newer
Linux: driver version 435.12 or newer
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/Cycles
I quickly fresh installed Manjaro on a new partition, tried to build 435.21 from AUR (no success), then tried to install from official Nvidia installer (no success), and eventually messed up the system as much as I can’t boot it anymore. It seems like Beta driver is not for me.
So, be careful if you want to try installing it And drop some hints if you succeeded please.
Dilate/erode increment/decrement bug is gone now
Alright I’ll be using the Blender Market messages for bugs from now on
And great to hear 
it seems BVH times have been extra obnoxious as of late, glad to hear many are working to slay that dragon.
