Real Time Ray Tracing in X13

[TheKitchenAbode]

This change in graphics is certainly a departure from the past when all of CA's features would run on just about any make or system configuration. We now have a feature that is only available to a specific operating system and hardware configuration. Even on a Windows PC this feature is limited to a specific series of graphics card which will mean that many of us PC users will need to upgrade. What about all those existing laptops where the graphics card can't be upgraded or even worse those with integrated graphics chips.

[MarkMc]

It's only one piece of the rendering update and nothing more. They said that rest of the rendering update still works with older hardware and Macs.

And even some of the GTX cards can do RTRT.

 

I don't understand the complaints? The technology/hardware capable of doing real time ray trace is just over a year old. Should Chief have waited until everyone had a new PC and until Apple finally decides to implement Real time Ray tracing in their OS and have suitable cards? I think it's pretty cool that they got it in the works this fast. FWIW I've mentioned the likely need for RTX cards in any thread about new machines that I posted to in the last 8 months.

 

If you have a desktop and the MOBO will support it you can get an RTX 2060 for under $300 even better still a 3070 for around $500.

Laptops don't have to be $2k, start around $1200 with RTX 2060, with 2070 at just under $1500 less with the 1000 cards that work.  Another option is an EGPU but cost is higher.

(I don't think that gets RTRT on Macs if the OS doesn't support it though)

 

[Electromen]

Chief has done a good job integrating this new technology.  It's just frustrating owning a $4,400 desktop and $3,800 laptop that don't have RTX.  I just bought a Dell Alienware laptop for my son, two weeks ago, that has a NVIDIA RTX 2070 video card, so I guess I can use that.

[Electromen]

Can I do that in a laptop?

[MarkMc]

1 hour ago, Electromen said:

Can I do that in a laptop?

No not unless you use an EGPU. But why, a 2070 will work fine. Watch the video again they show time differences between the 2.

[glennw]

Did anyone else notice the Wall Type Definition dbx in the video?

[Rich_Winsor]

17 hours ago, Electromen said:

New major features not supported on my Mac Pro and new MacBook Pro are good reasons to not renew SSA.

Or maybe a good reason to upgrade to a Windows rig.....

OK OK, just joking, lord knows you Apple guys can be touchy.   

 

 

[Mark3D]

1 hour ago, glennw said:

Did anyone else notice the Wall Type Definition dbx in the video?

I did after you pointed it out thanks, also there 2 coming webinars about framing one is hinting at roof purlins and the other is hinting at horizontal wall framing like multiple rows of noggins as that dialog shows 

[HumbleChief]

If you look critically at the new RTRT it's true usefulness becomes questionable, at least for this user. Reason being I almost never RayTrace anymore. It will be nice for the very occasional time but I'm kind of a 10 pass guy so again time saving will be meaningless in my case. And the feature is not designed for walk throughs because as the video shows as fast as it is, the couple second delay simply is not suited for walk throughs. The fact that Chief implemented the tech of the RTX cards, to me speaks volumes about their commitment to new technologies and this is very early days in to GPU focused RT. The future should real a lot more cool stuff for all users.

 

Maybe MAC users RayTrace more than I but it's a feature I would not miss if I had a MAC. On the other hand, and to me it's a pretty big hand, all of the other improvements, of which we have seen very few, coming in X13 gets me pretty excited. Looking forward to the upcoming video/webinars.

[Chopsaw]

10 hours ago, HumbleChief said:

And the feature is not designed for walk throughs because as the video shows as fast as it is, the couple second delay simply is not suited for walk throughs.

 

I commented about ray trace quality walkthroughs years ago and now we might have them.   Quite likely it will take a lot of power to render one and you may be looking at more than just an overnight of a smoking hot computer but if it works it would be quite amazing.   The thing I am worried about is that it is maybe a less than 10 pass ray trace and lighting would need to be absolutely perfect for it to work.  I wonder if there are quality defaults ?

[TheKitchenAbode]

41 minutes ago, Grumpka said:

However, the demo didn't even come close to what third party external render engines are doing

 

Not only that, but personally the demo did not even come close to what CA can do. I'm perplexed as to why the ones who actually design this program can't produce better results, especially when it can produce them. Having been in marketing for a good number of years I would have never accepted releasing something like that as a promotion for a significant new feature. Sorry but really? I don't wish to offend and I'm certain those working on this are doing their best but maybe Graphic Design is just not their strongest skill set.

Here is a screen capture from the video of their PBR with Ray Tracing.

 

Here's a PBR of the same scene I did 6 months ago in X12 without Ray Tracing.

[TheKitchenAbode]

7 hours ago, solver said:

The problem with PBR is lighting.

 

I've not found that to be the case. The reason their PBR scene has all those overblown whites is that the user is not setting the sun, lights and materials correctly. My concern is that CA seems to be satisfied with their rendering results, which in my opinion is well below what the program can actually do. I struggle to find an acceptable explanation for this, do they just have a very low standard? Do they not care? Do they not have the skill? Were they in a rush? As mentioned I struggle to find an acceptable reason for this. The purpose of the Webinar was to introduce this great new real time Raytrace feature, but they demonstrated this on a scene that has many obvious issues. What's the point of adding reflections to an inherently inferior quality scene, reflections or not it is still a poor scene.

 

X12 PBR of same interior.

 

Just another x12 PBR Example.

[Ridge_Runner]

19 hours ago, solver said:

The problem with PBR is lighting.

 

10 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

The reason their PBR scene has all those overblown whites is that the user is not setting the sun, lights and materials correctly.

Graham, I always appreciate your input and examples. I followed your PBR thread closely when it was going strong; still go back to it sometimes. But your explanation above about not setting "the sun, lights and materials correctly" is the struggle I face. I may be like Larry, who has many times said, "I may just be a bonehead," but I constantly struggle with the lighting and materials. I just can't seem to get it thru my head the relationship between settings for the sun and the interior lights as well as what changes to make to the materials. And let's not even mention the ever-present "green cast" the backgrounds give a scene.

 

The best I have ever gotten was to export a model out of CA and into Twinmotion. It was a struggle at first but I did get some good views, especially exterior. If I had more time I am sure I could do better with Twinmotion.  But, like so many others, time is a premium right now. I'm hoping the lighting being more consistent between view types in X13 will help with the lighting issues. We will see.

[TheKitchenAbode]

12 hours ago, Ridge_Runner said:

I may be like Larry, who has many times said, "I may just be a bonehead," but I constantly struggle with the lighting and materials.

 

No one here is a bonehead. None of us have any control over CA's methodology when designing and programing their renderer, and more importantly the ability to intuitively control lighting and material properties in order to achieve optimum results. I will just use the sun as one example, when they introduced PBR several years ago they imparted the ability of the sun to provide both direct and indirect light into the interior which also included the feature of picking up exterior colours and casting them into the interior. Though being a major step forward they failed to provide any means of controlling the degree to which this happens, everything is just fixed to the suns intensity. It only took users a very short while to encounter major problems with this as they would get horrible exaggerated colour casting in their interior scenes when increasing the suns intensity to obtain their desired direct and indirect lighting levels. The only remedy is to either reduce the suns intensity or change/eliminate the backdrop, so now to overcome one problem you must compromise somewhere else. Added to this is the fact that there is also a relationship to the perceived intensity of interior lights in respect to the suns intensity, so if you choose to address the colour cast issue by reducing the sun's intensity then all of your interior lights will increase in their perceived intensity. If you lower the suns intensity too much your interior lights will be way to bright which will cause other problems plus you will undermine the suns direct and indirect interior light contribution. It's like a cat chasing a mouse around a room with no corners. All of this colour cast craziness' could have been easily resolved by one simple slider that allows us to adjust the colour cast contribution or if this was too difficult then a single on/off toggle so we could turn it off. Personally expecting users to figure out creative ways to overcome these fundamental flaws is unacceptable, especially when they are so obvious.

[HumbleChief]

3 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

No one here is a bonehead.

Hey, I resemble that remark....

[rgardner]

So a question for some of the Ray Tracing and PBR experts here...

 

As I understand it this is a new rendering engine completely for Chief not just the ray trace part.  I didn't see any mention to how that will affect the PBR (which honestly is all that I do at most) as I do more construction documentation and design and on those jobs that I need help with I use someone with lots of experience to get me what I need.  So any thoughts on if this will make things different for PBR?

[MarkMc]

30 minutes ago, rgardner said:

So any thoughts on if this will make things different for PBR

The video indicated that there would be more consistency of materials (and I think they also said lighting?, have to go back and see) between render techniques.

At the user group meeting prior to X12 they previewed a new PBR  that looked great, though I did not get to play with it. That did not make it into the release. I asked about it at IBS and was told it was dropped from because Apple decided to drop OpenGLand they were redoing the engine. I'm hoping what we get is at least as good as what I saw back then.

[HumbleChief]

Let me understand a little bit. Chief has a webinar showing that they have now incorporate Real Time RayTracing in to their rendering engine and show a brief exterior shot illustrating the quickness of said engine and that shot shows some users that Chief has basically no idea what they are doing and even lack the skills within their work force to create a rendering engine that is even useful let alone a 'good' rendering engine?

 

I'm tempted to wait for the final release before criticizing their efforts (and will be first to do so as my history here has shown) and as with every new release keep my hopes high and my expectations low.

[TheKitchenAbode]

1 hour ago, HumbleChief said:

...and that shot shows some users that Chief has basically no idea what they are doing and even lack the skills within their work force to create a rendering engine that is even useful let alone a 'good' rendering engine?...

 

I think I'm one of those "some users". Yes I'm being critical because I know the renderer can do better than what they produced in their video. Given that this is a promotional video why would you not make it as good as it can be? The purpose of rendering is to generate beautiful scenes, the purpose of adding real time raytracing is to make those scenes even better. All of the generated scenes in the video had numerous deficiencies that in my opinion did not need to be there if a bit more attention to detail had been taken.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Just to emphasize my point, here is a screen capture of the bathroom in the video.

- light bleed where the tub meets the floor.

- light bleed in the bottom left corner in the room with the sliding door.

- look at the chrome components in the shower where they are seen through the glass, they are just black.

 

Is this the behavior we are to expect?

 

[Kbird1]

5 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

Is this the behavior we are to expect?

 

I wondered looking at the Video if Scott just didn't wait long enough for the RTRT to finish before moving on or swiveling the camera or something? ( little pixel-ly still)

 

I assume the house had a roof and foundation on it so the light bleed up through the floor should not be there ( old PBR issue too)

 

Maybe there are still Issues in RT with Light bouncing of Glass ( photon/caustics? can't remember been quite a while since I did a RT )

and hence the Black Shower head etc.

 

M.

[TheKitchenAbode]

3 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

I assume the house had a roof and foundation on it so the light bleed up through the floor should not be there ( old PBR issue too)

 

Maybe there are still Issues in RT with Light bouncing of Glass ( photon/caustics? can't remember been quite a while since I did a RT )

and hence the Black Shower head etc.

 

M.

 

If these issues still exist as it appears they do then they should fix them, adding raytraced reflections to a compromised scene only results in a poor scene with reflections.

[Kbird1]

30 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

If these issues still exist as it appears they do then they should fix them, adding raytraced reflections to a compromised scene only results in a poor scene with reflections.

 

Yep, no disagreement there for sure ...my hope is we were just looking at a very early Alpha Build , considering what RTX Cards can do in modern games with lighting and shadows etc.  Was kinda why I got a laptop with a 2070 Super after all....

 

M.

[HumbleChief]

3 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

I think I'm one of those "some users". Yes I'm being critical because I know the renderer can do better than what they produced in their video. Given that this is a promotional video why would you not make it as good as it can be? The purpose of rendering is to generate beautiful scenes, the purpose of adding real time raytracing is to make those scenes even better. All of the generated scenes in the video had numerous deficiencies that in my opinion did not need to be there if a bit more attention to detail had been taken.

Agreed somewhat as I have as many or more questions about Chief's motives and methods than most on this forum. In my opinion your logic above makes total sense. Is that their best shot? Or just a quick reveal of speed increases? If it's the former, which I highly doubt, then sadness reigns throughout the kingdom. If it's the latter, then I will still keep my hopes up and my expectations low.

 

BTW we still have a roof and wall structure dbx when in a foundation 'room' defined as a concrete slab as if a slab would create a room at all, and that there might a roof over same, so Chief is capable of any kind of logical misstep that we all must learn to live with. Still hoping for a great render engine when all is said and done.

[Alaskan_Son]

44 minutes ago, Grumpka said:

I dropped x11 rental on count that I found out X9 was really just as good for kitchens!  Why pay support or worse, buy a new version of X13 for $3k?   I can continue to export my work and use far superior rendering tools!  That's fine with me.   Heck, almost wondering how much different their residential grade home design software is vs. the CA package?  If they don't have a professional render engine, and the majority of tools are in the econo version, what is the sell to interior designers on the pro version?

 

I don't even know where to start...honestly, I can't find the mental energy to even begin to break it down because there are so many little intricacies that come into play, but from the perspective of a professional kitchen and bath designer, a long time CA user, and a professional trainer, I can tell you this:

 

If you can't see any reason to upgrade then 95% of the time it's because you're either not learning the tools very well or you're not using them very efficiently.  When I'm hired to train, coach, or act as a consultant for a person or company using a Home Designer product line or an older version, I find myself almost constantly having to side note that there are much better ways to do this or that in X12 or that certain operations aren't even possible with their current version.  If you do this for a living, I really think you're missing out by not staying current.