This add support for rendering of the point cloud object in Blender, as a native
geometry type in Cycles that is more memory and time efficient than instancing
sphere meshes. This can be useful for rendering sand, water splashes, particles,
motion graphics, etc.
Points are currently always rendered as spheres, with backface culling. More
shapes are likely to be added later, but this is the most important one and can
be customized with shaders.
For CPU rendering the Embree primitive is used, for GPU there is our own
intersection code. Motion blur is suppored. Volumes inside points are not
currently supported.
Implemented with help from:
* Kévin Dietrich: Alembic procedural integration
* Patrick Mourse: OptiX integration
* Josh Whelchel: update for cycles-x changes
Ref T92573
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D9887
This patch adds MetalRT support to Cycles kernel code. It is mostly additive in nature or confined to Metal-specific code, however there are a few areas where this interacts with other code:
- MetalRT closely follows the Optix implementation, and in some cases (notably handling of transforms) it makes sense to extend Optix special-casing to MetalRT. For these generalisations we now have `__KERNEL_GPU_RAYTRACING__` instead of `__KERNEL_OPTIX__`.
- MetalRT doesn't support primitive offsetting (as with `primitiveIndexOffset` in Optix), so we define and populate a new kernel texture, `__object_prim_offset`, containing per-object primitive / curve-segment offsets. This is referenced and applied in MetalRT intersection handlers.
- Two new BVH layout enum values have been added: `BVH_LAYOUT_METAL` and `BVH_LAYOUT_MULTI_METAL_EMBREE` for XPU mode). Some host-side enum case handling has been updated where it is trivial to do so.
Ref T92212
Reviewed By: brecht
Maniphest Tasks: T92212
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D13353
BVH2 triangle intersection was broken on the GPU since packed floats can't
be loaded directly into SSE. The better long term solution for performance
would be to build a BVH2 for GPU and Embree for CPU, similar to what we do
for OptiX.
This patch contains many small leftover fixes and additions that are
required for Metal-enablement:
- Address space fixes and a few other small compile fixes
- Addition of missing functionality to the Metal adapter headers
- Addition of various scattered `__KERNEL_METAL__` blocks (e.g. for
atomic support & maths functions)
Ref T92212
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D13263
Remove prefix of filenames that is the same as the folder name. This used
to help when #includes were using individual files, but now they are always
relative to the cycles root directory and so the prefixes are redundant.
For patches and branches, git merge and rebase should be able to detect the
renames and move over code to the right file.
* Split render/ into scene/ and session/. The scene/ folder now contains the
scene and its nodes. The session/ folder contains the render session and
associated data structures like drivers and render buffers.
* Move top level kernel headers into new folders kernel/camera/, kernel/film/,
kernel/light/, kernel/sample/, kernel/util/
* Move integrator related kernel headers into kernel/integrator/
* Move OSL shaders from kernel/shaders/ to kernel/osl/shaders/
For patches and branches, git merge and rebase should be able to detect the
renames and move over code to the right file.
These transparent shadows can be expansive to evaluate. Especially on the
GPU they can lead to poor occupancy when only some pixels require many kernel
launches to trace and evaluate many layers of transparency.
Baked transparency allows tracing a single ray in many cases by accumulating
the throughput directly in the intersection program without recording hits
or evaluating shaders. Transparency is baked at curve vertices and
interpolated, for most shaders this will look practically the same as actual
shader evaluation.
Fixes T91428, performance regression with spring demo file due to transparent
hair, and makes it render significantly faster than Blender 2.93.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12880
* Rename struct KernelGlobals to struct KernelGlobalsCPU
* Add KernelGlobals, IntegratorState and ConstIntegratorState typedefs
that every device can define in its own way.
* Remove INTEGRATOR_STATE_ARGS and INTEGRATOR_STATE_PASS macros and
replace with these new typedefs.
* Add explicit state argument to INTEGRATOR_STATE and similar macros
In preparation for decoupling main and shadow paths.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12888
This is the first of a sequence of changes to support compiling Cycles kernels as MSL (Metal Shading Language) in preparation for a Metal GPU device implementation.
MSL requires that all pointer types be declared with explicit address space attributes (device, thread, etc...). There is already precedent for this with Cycles' address space macros (ccl_global, ccl_private, etc...), therefore the first step of MSL-enablement is to apply these consistently. Line-for-line this represents the largest change required to enable MSL. Applying this change first will simplify future patches as well as offering the emergent benefit of enhanced descriptiveness.
The vast majority of deltas in this patch fall into one of two cases:
- Ensuring ccl_private is specified for thread-local pointer types
- Ensuring ccl_global is specified for device-wide pointer types
Additionally, the ccl_addr_space qualifier can be removed. Prior to Cycles X, ccl_addr_space was used as a context-dependent address space qualifier, but now it is either redundant (e.g. in struct typedefs), or can be replaced by ccl_global in the case of pointer types. Associated function variants (e.g. lcg_step_float_addrspace) are also redundant.
In cases where address space qualifiers are chained with "const", this patch places the address space qualifier first. The rationale for this is that the choice of address space is likely to have the greater impact on runtime performance and overall architecture.
The final part of this patch is the addition of a metal/compat.h header. This is partially complete and will be extended in future patches, paving the way for the full Metal implementation.
Ref T92212
Reviewed By: brecht
Maniphest Tasks: T92212
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12864
Previously the storage here was optimized to avoid indirections in BVH2
traversal. This helps improve performance a bit, but makes performance
and memory usage of Embree and OptiX BVHs a bit worse also. It also adds
code complexity in other parts of the code.
Now decouple triangle and curve primitive storage from BVH2.
* Reduced peak memory usage on all devices
* Bit better performance for OptiX and Embree
* Bit worse performance for CUDA
* Simplified code:
** Intersection.prim/object now matches ShaderData.prim/object
** No more offset manipulation for mesh displacement before a BVH is built
** Remove primitive packing code and flags for Embree and OptiX
** Curve segments are now stored in a KernelCurve struct
* Also happens to fix a bug in baking with incorrect prim/object
Fixes T91968, T91770, T91902
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12766
Similar to the previous change in the area: need to avoid ray
point and direction becoming a non-finite value.
Use the view direction when the geometrical normal can not be
calculated.
Collaboration and sanity inspiration with Brecht!
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12703
The issue was caused by hair shader setup setting normal to a non
finite value, which then gets used to create a ray with non-finite
direction, making BVH traversal to run out of stack memory.
Happens with 150_0040_A.lighting.blend frame 112 of the Sprites
project.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12692
This includes much improved GPU rendering performance, viewport interactivity,
new shadow catcher, revamped sampling settings, subsurface scattering anisotropy,
new GPU volume sampling, improved PMJ sampling pattern, and more.
Some features have also been removed or changed, breaking backwards compatibility.
Including the removal of the OpenCL backend, for which alternatives are under
development.
Release notes and code docs:
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Cycleshttps://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Source/Render/Cycles
Credits:
* Sergey Sharybin
* Brecht Van Lommel
* Patrick Mours (OptiX backend)
* Christophe Hery (subsurface scattering anisotropy)
* William Leeson (PMJ sampling pattern)
* Alaska (various fixes and tweaks)
* Thomas Dinges (various fixes)
For the full commit history, see the cycles-x branch. This squashes together
all the changes since intermediate changes would often fail building or tests.
Ref T87839, T87837, T87836
Fixes T90734, T89353, T80267, T80267, T77185, T69800
Prior to rBb8ecdbcd964a normals were stored both in
DeviceScene.tri_vnormal and the float3 attributes buffer. However, the
normals in `DeviceScene.tri_vnormal` might have be transformed to world
space if the object's transformation was applied, while the data in the
float3 attributes buffer were not. This caused shading issues in cases
where the objects did have transformation applied, as the math expects
the normals to be in object space.
To fix this, convert the normals to object space if necessary before
applying the normal map.
Reviewed By: brecht
Maniphest Tasks: T90854
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12294
Vertex normals are needed for normals maps and therefore are packed and send
to the device alongside the other float3 attributes. However, we already pack
and send vertex normals through `DeviceScene.tri_vnormal`.
This removes the packing of vertex normals from the attributes buffer, and
reuses `tri_vnormal` in the kernel for normals lookup for normal maps, which
reduces memory usage a bit, and speeds up device updates.
This also fixes potential missing normals updates following rB12a06292af86,
since the need for vertex normals for normals maps was overlooked.
Reviewed By: brecht
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D12237
Custom properties defined on objects are not accessible from the
attribute node when rendering a volume in Cycles. This is because
this case is not handled.
To handle it, added a primitive type for volumes in the kernel,
which is then used in the initialization of ShaderData and to
check whether an attribute lookup is for a volume.
`volume_attribute_float4` is also now checking the attribute
element type to dispatch to the right lookup function.
Reviewed By: #cycles, brecht
Maniphest Tasks: T87194
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D11728
Offset rays from the flat surface to match where they would be for a smooth
surface as specified by the normals. In the shading panel there is now a
Shading Offset (existing option) and Geometry Offset (new).
The Geometry Offset works as follows:
* 0: disabled
* 0.001: only terminated triangles (normal points to the light, geometry
doesn't) are affected
* 0.1 (default): triangles at grazing angles are affected, and the effect
fades out
* 1: all triangles are affected
Limitations:
* The artifact is still visible in some cases, it could be that some quads
require to be treated specifically as quads.
* Inconsistent normals cause artifacts.
* If small objects cast shadows to a big low poly surface, the shadows can
appear to be in a wrong place - because the surface moved slightly above
the geometry. This can be noticed only at grazing angles to light.
* Approximated surfaces of two non-intersecting low-poly objects can overlap
that causes off-the-wall shadows.
Generally, using one or a few levels of subdivision can get rid of artifacts
faster than before.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D11065
This is relatively expensive and as per the OSL spec, this value is not
expected to be meaningful for non-light shaders. This makes viewport updates
a little faster.
As a side effect also fixes T82723, viewport refresh issue with volume density.
The existing code for this was incomplete. Each instance can now have a set
of attributes stored separately from geometry attributes. Geometry attributes
take precedence over instance attributes.
Ref D2057
This avoids OpenCL inlining heavy volume interpolation code once for every
data type, which could cause a performance regression when we add a float4
data type in the next commit.
Ref D2057
This patch adds support for the curve primitive from OptiX to Cycles. It's currently hidden
behind a debug option, since there can be some slight rendering differences still (because no
backface culling is performed and something seems off with endcaps). The curve primitive
was added with the OptiX 7.1 SDK and requires a r450 driver or newer, so this also updates
the codebase to be able to build with the new SDK.
Reviewed By: brecht
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D8223
Also removing the curve system manager which only stored a few curve intersection
settings. These are all changes towards making shape and subdivision settings
per-object instead of per-scene, but there is more work to do here.
Ref T73778
Depends on D8013
Maniphest Tasks: T73778
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D8014
This keeps render results compatible for combined CPU + GPU rendering.
Peformance and quality primitives is quite different than before. There
are now two options:
* Rounded Ribbon: render hair as flat ribbon with (fake) rounded normals, for
fast rendering. Hair curves are subdivided with a fixed number of user
specified subdivisions.
This gives relatively good results, especially when used with the Principled
Hair BSDF and hair viewed from a typical distance. There are artifacts when
viewed closed up, though this was also the case with all previous primitives
(but different ones).
* 3D Curve: render hair as 3D curve, for accurate results when viewing hair
close up. This automatically subdivides the curve until it is smooth.
This gives higher quality than any of the previous primitives, but does come
at a performance cost and is somewhat slower than our previous Thick curves.
The main problem here is performance. For CPU and OpenCL rendering performance
seems usually quite close or better for similar quality results.
However for CUDA and Optix, performance of 3D curve intersection is problematic,
with e.g. 1.45x longer render time in Koro (though there is no equivalent quality
and rounded ribbons seem fine for that scene). Any help or ideas to optimize this
are welcome.
Ref T73778
Depends on D8012
Maniphest Tasks: T73778
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D8013
The kernel did not work correctly when these were disabled anyway. The
optimized BVH traversal for the no instances case was also only used on
the CPU, so no longer makes sense to keep.
Ref T73778
Depends on D8010
Maniphest Tasks: T73778
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D8011
The hair BSDFs are already designed to assume this, and disabling backface
culling would break them in some cases.
Ref T73778
Depends on D8009
Maniphest Tasks: T73778
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D8010
Triangles were very memory intensive. The only reason they were not removed yet
is that they gave more accurate results, but there will be an accurate 3D curve
primitive added for this.
Line rendering was always poor quality since the ends do not match up. To keep CPU
and GPU compatibility we just remove them entirely. They could be brought back if
an Embree compatible implementation is added, but it's not clear to me that there
is a use case for these that we'd consider important.
Ref T73778
Reviewers: #cycles
Subscribers: