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E-Cycles - Faster rendering on Blender

51
By on Cycles

mathieu writes:

E-Cycles is an optimized version of Cycles for CUDA GPUs. It renders up to 2.7x faster than latest official version out of the box and up to 14x faster using new options and presets. It's available on Windows, Linux and Mac based on latest 2.8x or latest 2.79x. Today you can get all 2019 updates with 50% off.

Render much faster, even a remote render farm is slower in most cases due to upload and download time is slower. Here, the 2.79x option for pre-processing time is used as well as the new April update (beta) features too:

The final video with the march update of E-Cycles on a single 1080Ti (20sec per frame inclusive pre-processing and compositing):


original scene from Evermotion

Render times out of the box on different scenes (open the file, hit render):

times on Windows

Easily choose between speed and quality thanks to presets. Here 47sec to 11sec in one click:

original scene from Mike Pan

If you prefer quality to speed, you can use the speedups to render with even more bounces, detailed textures, lights, samples, full caustics, etc.

Renders courtesy of Albert Shamseev:

And http://planungsdetail.de/:

Render good previews with the new AI denoiser even at very low samples (16 spp here):
the original noisy image:

The new denoiser version:

Original scene from cgstrive.

Here's what others say about E-Cycles.

Today you can get all 2019 updates with 50% off on either 2.8x or latest 2.79x

51 Comments

  2. Robert on

    Very nice, want to give it a try but at Gunroad the Paypal option does not work. It moves to CC payment after login.

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      I reported the problem to Gumroad. I guess they get lot of traffic with the GumroadDay sales. I would try later on, if it persists, contact me per PM on Blenderartists and I'll provide you with a solution.

      Kind regards,
      Mathieu

      Reply
        • matmenu on

          I reported the problem to Gumroad. Whatever happens, I'll provide a solution. Can you connect to your PayPal? It may also be a problem with PayPal itself. Maybe try to open the page with another browser also like chrome or Firefox, it may help.

          Reply
          • Robert on

            Actually Paypall connects fine, i added some funds and then proceeded. Then in the payment phase you can choose CC of Paypall and then you log in. After thatit simply goes to add a CC instead of finalizing the payment. Well, i'll check tommorow again no problem.

        • matmenu on

          The support told me they had problems with their payment service tonight and some issue still remain for some user. Everyone experiencing problem should contact [email protected] and they will solve the problem for you.

          Reply
        • matmenu on

          I let the coupon one day more active so you and other experiencing the issue can still benefit from it.
          I wish you Gumroad get it sorted out quickly.

          Reply
          • Robert on

            I got this vague response from Gumroad:
            Unfortunately we cannot change the requirements for payment on the PayPal plugin that we use. This is simply the plugin that PayPal has built for us. So, in other words, if PayPal won't let you buy from your PayPal balance, I can't fix that on my end.

            If you still wish to purchase the product, you can also use a debit card to purchase it.

        • matmenu on

          Sorry to here that, But it indeed sounds like a paypal problem, did you contact them? The coupons are still valid for the some hours and people are still working in the U.S., so i would ask for help there before WE.

          Reply
  3. IsTheName on

    Hi,

    This sounds great. I need a little help though, if one buys "Blender course - Make your own version" extended version with the Cycles speed-ups, do they need E-Cycles?

    Thank you,
    Merci.

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      Hi,
      You don't need E-cycles absolutely, as you will do the builds yourself, with the speedups and new modifiers based on whatever branch you like. Fracture modifier or mantaflow with 2x faster Cycles for example is cool and only doable through the course. Some still bought both to benefit from the latest advances, the new AI denoiser addon (that automates the compositing node tree creation for top notch denoising), etc.

      Reply
      • matmenu on

        I'm happy you like it :) I hope it can help build the next generation of Blender (or any other great app) coders!

        Reply
  4. Mike on

    MATMENU, I have two questions:

    1) Are the latest monthly/weekly E-cycles updates included in the course for some time so that i can build E-cycles myself?

    2) Does the speedup in render time work for architectural renders only or for any kind of scenes with organic models and procedural textures?

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      1) The course include all the updates until the AI denoising node. I'll update the course later, when I'm finished with the French and German translation, which will take some time. But you can already have most of the speedup and the new denoising. A plus compared to E-cycles is that you can add it to whatever version of Blender you want, including Fracture Modifier and Mantaflow which are very beloved.
      2) It works for all kind of renders, it's just that the scene I'm allowed to show are architectural one. Here a happy customer, creator of the toon kit for Cycles happy with E-Cycles for cartoon animation: https://blenderartists.org/t/e-cycles-better-ai-denoising-and-sales-starting-in-some-hours/1139717/658?u=bliblubli

      Reply
  8. Robert on

    Incredible results here. I am rendering VR180 stereo animations. With normal cycles its 04:48 a frame and with e-cycles its 0:15. I don't think this is representative for any render, but in my case remarkable results. Thank you Mathieu.

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      Awesome :) I'll update the doc soon so that everybody can benefit from such speedup with the preset system. Thanks for the feedback.

      Reply
    • matmenu on

      The big speedup is for Nvidia GPUs only. CPU rendering and OpenCL also get some slight speedup (around 5-20% most of the time) but only CUDA is officially supported for the render speed. You can still benefit from the new AI denoiser on all 3 device types.

      Reply
  10. Elad Barness on

    Bought it and it works like q charm, unbelievably faster (for me at least twice ito 7 times!!!!)

    Just one question about the denoiser is it using the latest intel ai denoiser or something else?

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      I'm happy to hear it is bringing very good speedups in your case. Indeed, it uses the Intel denoiser and the patch made by Stephan Werner under the hood for the AI denoiser addon if you activate it.

      Reply
  11. Nicolas on

    Really interesting addon, if I see a discounted price again I will buy it for sure.
    Right now is a little bit expensive for me.

    Reply
  12. Russell Schiwal on

    I am very interested, however I'm curious if I could try before I buy. I have a great Blender 2.79b System going, but Blender 2.8 Cycles crashes when I try to render with GPU. I'm worried it may have the same compatibility issues.

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      E-Cycles has Blender as a base, so yes, upgrading to 2.8x will have the same advantages (new features) and same inconvenients (more bugs as a stable release), with faster and cleaner rendering on top. 2.8x often crashes with rendering because it uses much more RAM than 2.79x (my current scene takes 3500MB GPU RAM on 2.79x and 9600MB on 2.8x).
      Their is a 2.79x version of E-Cycles, which is very stable, while offering all the latest Cycles features just like 2.8x. E-Cycles 2.79x also has some more features compared to 2.8x like the very fast fly-through option (only do the preprocessing once per animation when only the camera moves). I actually have a lot of user on 2.79x and several switched back from 2.8x to 2.79x because of it's strengths (stability, memory efficiency, very good addon ecosystem, etc.)

      Reply
  13. wkm on

    I have the 2.8 version of e-cycles...where do i submit bug/crash reports?

    i keep getting the following CIDA errors:

    CUDA error: Launch failed in cuCtxSynchronize(), line 1740

    Refer to the Cycles GPU rendering documentation for possible solutions:
    https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html

    CUDA error: Launch failed in cuMemcpyDtoH((uchar*)mem.host_pointer + offset, (CUdeviceptr)(mem.device_pointer + offset), size), line 965
    Error: CUDA error: Launch failed in cuCtxSynchronize(), line 1740

    wkm

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      Hi wkm,

      E-Cycles has it's own documentation available as a pdf on your product page. This issue is a "feature" of newer windows. How to solve the problem is explained in the PDF. It's a registry key to add.

      I recommend reading the documentation to have the best experience, it includes a lot of tips to further improve the rendering speed and optimize memory usage.

      Kind regards,
      Mat

      Reply
  14. Alexa on

    Hello Mathieu, I have Win 8.1 and use Blender 2.79b. and I don't want to change it for 2.8 in nearest months. I would like to try E-cycles for one month, but in your offer, one month option is only for 2.8. So, what do you suggest to do?

    Reply
  15. wkm on

    thank you for your quick reply.

    i had read the documentation but did not connect my problem to the tdr setting solution in the PDF...i am not a programmer/engineer but a retired graphics hobbyist...

    wkm

    Reply
  16. UJF on

    Hi
    In Blender 2.8 CUDA is no longer supported on a mac. I have a NVIDIA AGPU but can't use it with 2.8, will it work with e-cycles?
    Thanks

    Reply
    • matmenu on

      Hi,
      if it doesn't work with 2.8 official, I guess it will not work with E-Cycles either, sorry. Maybe you can revert to an older OSX version that still support CUDA. Or I would recommend to install a Linux distribution on your Mac.
      Kind regards

      Reply
      • UFJ on

        thanks
        Even with an older version of OSX the new 2.8 does not support CUDA anymore - so i would correct it in the description of E-Cycles: OS X is not supported...

        Reply
        • matmenu on

          I have several users on OSX and it works very well for them with CUDA. So if the limitation doesn't come from your OS/drivers, it will work.

          Reply
  17. Abe on

    Hi MATMENU,
    I have some question about the course.

    1. What is the format of this course? Is it a video? or is it a classroom session?
    2. Is this course still valid and available?

    Thank you for your course. Hope to hear from you soon.

    Thanks & Kind Regards,
    Abhishek

    Reply

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