Blender 3.0 speed tests and improved Paige image.
NEW IMAGE
How do I make this image the thumbnail for my portfolio?
I changed the skin material’s subsurface scattering method to random walk and the micro scattering to multi-scatter ggx. I stopped using the Filmic color look up table and used the Blender standard one. This improved the skin appearance. Her eyes have more realistic color. The hair got slight random color variations and is more shiny. The lighting is a mixture of an HDRI environment and the studio lighting of the earlier images. I also post processed the image in Paint Shop Pro with a filter called Fill Light and Clarity to make it crisper.
SPEED TEST
Blender 3.0 cycles vs B2.92
Paige:
– 100 samples, no denoise, no adaptive sampling: B2.92 1m11s B3. 57s
– 469 samples, no denoise, no adaptive sampling: B2.92 5m6s B3.0 2m47s
– 469 samples, no denoise, with adaptive sampling: B2.92 4m43 B3.0 2m28s
It is sometimes inconsistent though. Sometimes 3.0 is only slightly faster. I’m sure it will be better when I learn more about 3.0. No denoise for tests since optix denoise is not available in 3.0.
Torus:
– About 150K polygons, 1000 samples: B2.92 18.9sec B3.0 17.5sec, not much difference
Ice Moon:
– For this image B3.0 was around 2x as fast.
Big disappointment: No optix denoising. I could select optix, nlm, or oiden with B2.92. In B3.0 I only have oiden. Oiden removes almost all detail (yes, in 3.0 too). Only optix denoise works well in B2.92 for Paige.
Maybe my gtx1070ti’s are to old for optix? In B2.92 perferences I can select optix instead of cuda but that rendered very slowly. Optix denoiser is good though. In 3.0 optix is not available but a warning babbles about drivers so I may just need to update.
UPDATE Dec 14, 2021
Updated the gpu driver and optix is back. It is different though. Denoise quality, loss of detail, is about the same with B3.0 optix vs oiden but optix is faster. B3.0 is almost 2x render speed though so I can throw so many samples at it that it doesn’t need denoise but renders in about the same time.