Bryce Multicore Rendering
RexRed
Posts: 1,493
Would it really be that much for Daz to add more multi core renderig abilities to Bryce?
Bryce is pretty much obsolete with my RTX 3090 card...
What should take minutes takes hours...
I need multicore rendering on the "render to disk" function...
Post edited by RexRed on

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I am pretty sure it does multicore CPU render already
you can even choose how many threads you use
yeah with your GPU you can just do other stuff whille Bryce chugs away in the background like play Cyberpunk 2077
RexRed - Bryce has two different render engines and both are raytracers, not pathtracers as video cards use. We had that discussion when Bryce 7 was developed whether GPUs should be used or not. At the time, the results from them was inferior, so we decided not to go the pathtracing path.
Both raytracers use only the CPU but can use several cores. At the time, we were told that it is limited to 8 cores. There were no CPUs with more cores/threads at affordable prices at the time. You can select the priorities: Low uses 1 core, Normal half the cores and High all at the limit of 8. However, I tested on my i9 that has 8 cores and 16 threads, Normal uses all 8 cores and High additionally the 8 threads, so it renders at 16 threads in total. The frequency of the CPU gets a bit lower but the test renders were around 25% faster when all 16 threads were used.
Using CPUs instead of GPUs has the advantage to render on several machines connected by a home network together. I have currently 5 computers (from Win2000 up to 10) connected with total 37 threads that can be used for network rendering.
Also note that a raytracer renders slower than a pathtracer because the whole environment (also outside of the camera view) is considered and true shadows are created (takes much more time than the light) and no shadow and gloss shaders are needed.
Thanks for the input Wendy, I haven't tried Cyberpunk 2077 yet!!! :)
That is interesting Horo, It can use 8 cores (16 threads) but I don't think it is using 8 cores when I render to disk.
I need 8k sky renders and I can't seem to get the document setup to go over 4000 pixels.
Is there a way to get the document render to go above 4k?
Thanks for you help! :)
RexRed - I just tested an 8000 px wide default scene in High priority on my i9 and because it took half an hour, I rendered 2000 x 1333 with different Priority settings. I checked the Task-Manager and rendered to Disk (a) High Priority, 8 cores, time used 122 sec; (b) Normal Priority, 8 cores, time used 65 sec; (c) Low Priority, 1 core, time used 18 sec. This is most weird! Normal Priority rendered almost double as fast as High Priority and Low Priority 3.5 times faster than Normal Priority and 6.7 times faster than High Priority. In fact, Low Priority to Disk is as fast as a normal High Priority render. With High and Normal Priority, the 8 cores had a very low usage, the single core with Low Priority went to 100%. I recommend that you make some test renders to disk with a simple scene to see what works best.
If I need a sky render, I render the 6 faces of a cube (4000 px x 4000 px) and assemble them to a spherical panorama in PTGui. The result is a bit over 12,000 x 6,000 px.
RexRed - sorry, I come again with Render to Disk. The 8000 x 5333 px one I rendered with High Priority earlier used 8 cores and 32:51 (min:sec). I rendered it again in Low Priority and it finished in 4:06, that's 8 times faster - unbelievable! I watched the CPU usage in the Task-Manager and only 1 core was used but at 100%. After about 10 or 20 seconds, the working core was released and another core took over, and so on. Presumably to keep the temperature of the fully working core at an acceptable range. It therefore seems that you'll get the fastest (or least slow) result by setting Priority to Low for a render to disk. And so you're finally right: no multicore.
Hey Horo, thank you very much for taking the time to test out this issue. I do not plan on using the Bryce sky as a HDRI in Daz Studio. Rather, I plan to use them on a plane and set the plane to emissive in Daz Studio but I will be rendering the scene at 13500 x 11462 resolution so I need at least a 7-8k image for it to come out really great. What we need to do is to ask Daz really nicely to add multicore rendering capabilities to "render to disk"... Then we can make really high quality skies in a realtively short amount of time. The skies could be nearly unlimited with Bryce's capabilities...
I got interested in some of conclusions this thread has expressed and did some tests again.
So, with an empty (default?) scene it's indeed weird. Low priority is fastest, normal is in the middle and high priority is slowest. However, that's like it only when doing it with Regular render. With Premium, things go back to the way they should be (Low priority = slowest, normal = so so, high = fastest).
Hmm, well, maybe it's Regular render that is broken so only Premium works as intended? Again, no! The trick above with low priority being fastest only works with an empty scene. If your scene is just a bit more advanced, then it works normally on both premium and regular, with high priority being faster than normal and normal being faster than low. I've spent some time opening up demo scenes by Horo and David Brinnen that came with Bryce 7 Pro, and everything worked the intended way.
In the end, I'd say that myth is busted (like on my favorite tv show, haha) and, well, feel free to use high priority if you can! It helps (except with an empty scene).
P.S.
It's funny that due to my PC being old, my GPU is such a weak one, so doing stuff in either iRay (DAZ Studio) or Cycles (Blender) is almost as slow ad Bryce rendering. Yeah, I won't taste the pleasure of "fast rendering" until I'd get a new rig.
P.S.S.
Wait, I just realized you were talking about "render to disk" while my tests were "render in Bryce". Sorry...
So if you set the priority (in task manager?) to low vs normal it does a better job of rendering? If this is the case I wonder if this has to do with the fact that Bryce is 32b vs 64 b.. it would be nice if it could be updated
No, we've talked about "priority" option in Bryce itself, sorry for confusion.
On a side note, I wonder if one might check whether or not something could be helped with Process Lasso.
Oh My!!! This thread has my head itching. Its possible that Render to Disk wasnt ever updated for multicore, and that using it for Render to Disk should be the same speed for all priority settings, High being slower than normal is insane. Wow
Some features eat up CPU more than others. Lots of geometry, leading to lots of shadow rays, volumetrics, reflections, transparencies etc.
So now the big question is what's actually faster in total: Render in Bryce at High Priority, or Render to Disk at low priority?