A detailed update on the status of the compositor redesign, and a glimpse of the next phase.
At Mind writes:
Phase one of the Compositor redesign project is almost completed. Phase one has made a lot of people smile, even if the compositor is still not using OpenCL. Phase two will give you OpenCL accelerated compositing in Blender! Biggest challenge at this moment is that funding for phase two is not finished.
The old compositor only shows the final image after it is calculated. A user has to wait until the calculation is finished. Only when the final image is shown to the user, you know what the effect is and can react on that. This can take a long time when just making tiny adjustments to settings.
Nowadays most PC have multi-core CPU's. In the near future Quad-core CPU would be the standard. The old compositor only uses one CPU-core to calculate per node. Another node can be calculated on another core. But due to the dependencies between nodes, most of the time only one or two cores are used.
In the new compositor user interaction is updated. The compositor always display result to the user as fast as possible. Even if a small area of the image is calculated this part will be visible. The user can than already make a decision and start modifying the node set-up. The user can even point out a location on the image where the compositor must start its calculate.
The second idea is to make better use of the PC hardware. The calculations are scheduled on multi-core CPU's. In the future heavy calculations will also be scheduled on GPU's.
The ideas are a success. Every time we show the new compositor we get very positive response. Even large resolutions composites (8K or 12K) are fun to play with. The result and changes in the workflow are extraordinary on a two Quad-core-Xeon system.
The project is not over. The goal of the next phase is to make use of GPU's to accelerate the calculations even more. Even supporting multiple graphics-cards! The power of modern graphics-cards are huge. In tests we did an image based depth of field with extreme settings (fStop on 0.1) and the calculation only took 20 seconds on a HD image.
The funding of this project is still on-going. We need another $3000 to finish the next phase. Donate, you won't regret it.
Links
- Download the Windows 32 test build
- Download the Linux 64 test build
- For more information see http://ocl.atmind.nl/
8 Comments
OpendCL is the future
"the workflow are extraordinary on a two Quad-core-Xeon system"
LOL! Yeah. I bet the results are nice on a Xeon "V-8". Unfortunately I don't even know anyone who knows anyone who has one! I do appreciate everyone's work on Blender though. Thank you all very much.
Come on people! This is an obvious one to throw a few bucks at. If you're prepared to wait around for 3d renderings, the difference in looks you can get with compositing will make your eyes water with how much faster it can be to experiment with different look & feels. Throw openCL into that and you have something that can radically speed up the ability to not just get something finished, but to really get it looking like you hoped it would. Add to *that* that the upcoming Blender Institute movies are live action which heavily depends on compositing, and come on... who *isn't* tired of reading "Absolutely everything done in Blender... except compositing which was done in After Effects"? I'm not picking out any one project here. The point is this is a common meme. It doesn't have to be. Let's take it back.
I've downloaded and tested in 3 different computers, all of them show missing dll's errors, so I haven't been able to test it. Anyone has succeeded in running it?
I have tried on three different computers but it prompts me with missing dll's windows and then closes. Anyone has succeeded runing it?
A interesting project for creativity and fund raising http://www.kickstarter.com (What is Kickstarter? We’re the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world).
Already donated for this project and I am thinking of donating again for phase 2. Let's have a fantastic compositor :-)
Is there a page wehe I can make node/and workflow proposal ?
or is there an easy way to create new node and or modify existing one ?