Just hopped onto E-Cycles, great stuff! As an E-Cycles beginner I have a question though, maybe I’m missing something obvious.
In 2.83 RTX linux version, when I switch to clay or AO render and then back to normal, it doesn’t reload the materials, it gets stuck with plain white shaders. Is there a trick to force the switch back besides choosing different preset and setting Feature Set to “Supported”?
Hi @kesonmis
thanks! I’m updating the documentation to explain it more in depth. For compatibility reason, I use material override with this preset, so that it can also renders as clay on a render farm with vanilla Blender. You can disable the override in the layer panel. Using another profile also takes care of this for you.
And with the graphic cards prices going up (here most 2080Ti models are now more expansive as for their launch 2 years ago!), workflow speed-up with E-Cycles makes more sens than ever 
New builds of E-Cycles 2.83 and 2.90 are up.
Happy rendering!
For REAL ARTIST and for PATIENCER waiting a few times than other nothing meant. Definetly, its on “patience” aimed point 
I have two 1080Ti, would they benefit from the RTX version?
I am also very curious about the NVLink Memory Pooling, how does it work? Do I have to turn on SLI or simply linking the two cards with the NVLink cable would work?
Many thanks!
I agree with you. 
But for real business and my life, I have to choose time rather than patience.
@bliblubli
Hello Matthieu,
I have your E-Cycles edition 2019. I have been following the releases from 2.79, 2.80, 2.81a and 2.82Beta, up to the end of the year 2019.
I have been using 2.81a for the past months, not 2.82 just in case the pre-release 2.82 has bugs.
Please advise: now that I just bought a new laptop with RTX 2070 MaxQ (upgrade from GTX 680M…), does 2.82 (E-cycles release on 31.12.2019) have more optimized OPTIX performance compared to the 2.81a, E-cycles release on December 2019 also, I think 14.12.2019 ?
I have most my addons installed on 2.81a and don’t want to re-install everything in 2.82, thinking of waiting later in the year to buy E-Cycles again. So for now : is there a gain in performance between your 2.82 (2019) and 2.81a?
Edit :
Unfortunately all I am getting when I try to start the Optix drivers is this initial message
and after some minutes the following “Cancel” and no render in the viewport, not in Cycles (Eevee is ok)
And this is the message if I render F12
Quick file search shows that this exists in the following folder:
This happens in 2.81a and 2.82… for now the competition is level, though a failure.
I just wanted to reply to the addon re-install part.
You do know re-installing addons on new Blender version is a simple press of a single button?
Ty
If the installation is standalone from the zip, I think I either have to install each addon, with a single click from Preferences (assuming I have the original download for each) or I could copy the addons section under Appdata/Roaming from one version to the other, I think.
You probably mean if I install over with an .msi Windows installation file? But I do want to have both versions.
Or you are suggesting something else?
Still I would like to know about Optix performance of E-Cycles between the two.
Hi, I guess he meant if you open a new Blender version the splash screen shows a question “Do you want to copy settings from older version” or so.
It happen only on first start.
If you look in to your Blender Foundation directory there should be several folders as 2.81, 2.82, there are the settings/addons stored.
Cheers, mib
Yes that’s what I thought, but that means you would have to install over.
Are you saying the older version stays under Program Files as well?
If you use the installer no but with .zip yes.
The install is in Programs but the settings are in your user account.
To be safe copy your Blender Foundation directory to a safe place.
You can try with a daily build of Blender from builder.blender.org.
I use many versions in parallel, you can even have same version with different settings but this need manually add a config folder in \2.82, for example.
I never used the installer by the way.
Cheers, mib
Yes. The old installation stays intact. For new version you will have to wait 10-15 seconds until it copies settings and addons to a new folder. But we are getting heavily offtopic.
I agree, no need to talk about this any longer (it started off as a side-note regarding my installation)
Back to the main point about E-Cycles :
Hi, the kernel for E-Cycles should be in E_cycles_2.90_v20200515_lin/2.90/scripts/addons/cycles/lib/
It is may better to mail @bliblubli in reply of a mail from him for bugs/errors.
He don´t look to often in the forum.
CHeers, mib
Hi,
the performance of E-Cycles between 2.81a and 2.82 beta is about the same, so I would recommend using 2.81a as it’s more stable. The error message is strange as the kernel is here… I just tested with the 2.81a build and couldn’t get such an error. Can you send me the file giving issues per mail? (answer any mail from Gumroad about E-Cycles or message on Blender Market).
NVLink memory pooling requires p2p access to the other GPU. It may work with SLI (GTX) instead of NVLink (RTX), but only NVLink speed will make the feature usable with a good speed. E-Cyces RTX has optimized OptiX code, which will work on GTX cards. As only RTX cards have real RTX acceleration (GTX only “emulate” it), the speed will be about the same as with CUDA, so I would recommend E-Cycles standard in your case.
If you use viewport denoising heavily, E-Cycles RTX may be better even on GTX cards as the viewport is about 40% faster in this case.
Some renders made this week by artists I like and with E-Cycles:
https://blenderartists.org/t/1227566
Problem solved by Matthieu. There was a mistake in the way I was installing RTX.
Quick and efficient, again!
Thank you @bliblubli
