Cycles for Softimage

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Sycles 2.1.3Author: Shekn @si-community
V 2.1.3 released August 2023 —

This is a full integration of the Blender Cycles renderer into XSI. This update is a complete rewrite for the latest Cycles version from 2023 and has support for the following Softimage features (quoted from the download page):

Polygon meshes and hair geometry Texture coordinates Vertex colors Shaderball preview. For materials, shader nodes and texture nodes Basic limited support of the following buil-in Softimage shader nodes: Phong, Lambert, Hair Shading, Image, converters between vector, color and scalar Ambience global environment light Limited support of built-in Softimage light sources Model instances ICE strands geometry ICE poitcloud instances ICE geometry attributes (vector, color and scalar) with context per-point and per-object Volume rendering. In particular supports emFluid, Explosia FX and openVDB for Softimage volumes Special VDB Primitive for rendering vdbs without ICE Output multilayered exr file with all rendered passe Rendermaps

The following features from Cycles itself are supported: CPU and GPU rendering. In particular multidevices are supported. This allows to use cpu and gpu simultaneously. Note: This distribution does not contains libraries for gpu rendering. You can download it from here. Unpack the archive and place lib folder to the /Sycles_2_1_2/Application/Plugins/ folder near the file config.ini All Cycles shader nodes OSL shaders OpenColorIO profiles (Blender profile included) All Cycles output passes (Combined, Depth, Normal and so on) Color and value shader AOVs Lightgroups Cycles camera properties, in particular all panorama modes Cycles light sources Denoising by using Open Image Denoise and OptiX denoiser

For more information, full documentation and a list of the available Cycles nodes see the download page linked below. There is no local backup because the addon is still frequently updated - the plugin can be downloaded on Shekn's github releases. The source code is available on github there well.

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Shekn
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by Shekn » 19 Oct 2017, 17:31

In device section of the render properties you see both gpu cards, right? And you would like to be able to select both of them? Please, post here the screenshot with devices list.

jonmoore
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by jonmoore » 19 Oct 2017, 17:32

@Bennyhase, does the GPU that provides GL duties render? As I mentioned earlier, my second GPU is the only one that will render. Not fortunate enough to be able to pick from 4 GPU's! ;)

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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by jonmoore » 19 Oct 2017, 17:39

Shekn wrote: 19 Oct 2017, 17:31 In device section of the render properties you see both gpu cards, right? And you would like to be able to select both of them? Please, post here the screenshot with devices list.
This is what I see. I've noticed with other renderers (Redshift, V-Ray and Octane) that you have to choose your GPU usage (in a multi-GPU setup) via radio button or via a cmd line tool. And even then have to relaunch your DCC for that preference to take effect.

Image

jonmoore
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by jonmoore » 19 Oct 2017, 18:10

Between ramping up my bucket size to 512 and making use of the denoiser even my single 980 Ti spits back 720p frames with GGX metallic roughness in mere seconds (obviously with simple test scenes). Fantastic work so far Shekn, cant wait till you solve the multi-gpu challenge, things will really fly then.

I'm also flummoxed as to why Cycles isn't able to make use of my 1080 Ti (which works normally with my other GPU renderers). Even if you're unable to solve the multi-GPU problem, being able to use my 1080 Ti will provide a 50% speed boost over my 980 Ti and all that extra V-Ram will be handy too. ;)

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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by jonmoore » 19 Oct 2017, 19:23

For those that have got things working, I highly recommend The Cycles Encyclopedia. It's available in both PDF and epub and is of a far higher quality than the Cycles related stuff via Packt.

Here's a review of 1.2 (the book is regularly updated and is currently at 1.4). First link review, second link Blendernation store.

https://www.blendernation.com/2015/04/0 ... edia-v1-2/
http://www.blenderdiplom.com/en/shop/57 ... pedia.html

nospitters
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by nospitters » 19 Oct 2017, 19:52

multi gpu selection would be great...
maybe the cuda cubins for the different shadermodels(sm) should be maybe compiled for the right os (win7, win8.1, win10) because nvidia provides the nvcc compiler for that os...
in my case (gtx780) needs sm 3.5, and the max versions of the cubins in the lib folder is 5.2 which will be i.e. a gtx 980 or gtx980ti. (see wikipedia cuda architecture)
so for a gtx1080 you will need sm 6.1 which is not included in the plugin.
@jonmoore, you could try to take this cubins from blender 2.79 (located in .../scripts/addons/cycles/lib)...and put it to the sycles plugin lib folder .
maybe this would solve your non-rendering with your 1080ti...
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jonmoore
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by jonmoore » 19 Oct 2017, 20:11

nospitters wrote: 19 Oct 2017, 19:52 multi gpu selection would be great...
maybe the cuda cubins for the different shadermodels(sm) should be maybe compiled for the right os (win7, win8.1, win10) because nvidia provides the nvcc compiler for that os...
in my case (gtx780) needs sm 3.5, and the max versions of the cubins in the lib folder is 5.2 which will be i.e. a gtx 980 or gtx980ti. (see wikipedia cuda architecture)
so for a gtx1080 you will need sm 6.1 which is not included in the plugin.
@jonmoore, you could try to take this cubins from blender 2.79 (located in .../scripts/addons/cycles/lib)...and put it to the sycles plugin lib folder .
maybe this would solve your non-rendering with your 1080ti...
Thanks for that. I'll go digging through my Blender folder. I'll report back on how I get on.

nospitters
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by nospitters » 19 Oct 2017, 20:17

looking forward, its a trial and error...
(dont know how deep the nvidia compiler is digging into the sycles source code...)
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jonmoore
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by jonmoore » 19 Oct 2017, 21:26

nospitters wrote: 19 Oct 2017, 20:17 looking forward, its a trial and error...
(dont know how deep the nvidia compiler is digging into the sycles source code...)
It was definitely worth trying but sadly it didn't work.

However at least we now know that latest generation Pascal cards aren't compatible until Shekn looks further into integrating the necessary cubins code to make things function as they should. I'll have a peek through the Python scripts and see if it's anything I can edit in the meantime.

nospitters
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by nospitters » 20 Oct 2017, 15:17

SUCCESS!!!
ok it works now for me...
i deinstalled xsi2015sp2 and installed xsi2015-r2-sp2 (from here https://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-r ... ack-2.html) and with that it works. no crashes, renders fine in cpu and gpu mode...
maybe sycles is compiled with the r2 sp2 sdk, so that older versions miss something...
now waiting for multi-gpu selection support...
very good jo shekn. congratulations.
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Draise
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by Draise » 20 Oct 2017, 15:32

Ok.. so the current fix is......... update Windows 10 to Windows 10 Fall update, uninstall XSI2015-sp2 and use it with XSI2015-r2-sp2 and install some kind of CUDA drivers?

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Bennyhase
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by Bennyhase » 20 Oct 2017, 15:35

It worked for me WITHOUT to install CUDA Toolkit, installed Win10 Fall Update and i´m using XSI 2015 (no SP1 or SP2).......

nospitters
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by nospitters » 20 Oct 2017, 15:37

yes seems so:
win10 users should update to the creators update
installing xsi2015-r2-sp2
i am now on nvidia v385.54 from the cuda toolkit v9. will try it with the newest drivers...
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Bennyhase
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by Bennyhase » 20 Oct 2017, 15:48

You don´t need to update to xsi2015-r2-sp2

jonmoore
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by jonmoore » 20 Oct 2017, 16:02

Bennyhase wrote: 20 Oct 2017, 15:48 You don´t need to update to xsi2015-r2-sp2
Pretty certain there are no differences between 2015 SP2 and the R2 version. I only mentioned that for the developer just so he was aware of all variables. Certainly don't think anybody needs to install the R2 version of Soft to get Cycles to work.

One thing to be aware of is that Sycles 1.4 doesn't appear to contain the necessary CUDA files for Pascal generation GPU's - as I mentioned earlier, my 980 Ti works perfectly but my 1080 Ti doesn't. The developer seems to be looking into this and is also looking into multi-gpu rendering too.

nospitters
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Re: Cycles for Softimage

Post by nospitters » 20 Oct 2017, 16:39

in my case installing the r2 solved previous immediate crashes on rendering in xsi2015sp2 also with the win10 update...so there must be some differences...
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