topic Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering? in Visualization

ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 10:01:38 GMT

I decided to monitor my components when rendering inside ArchiCAD 18 (educational version).

When using any engine, I see that all CPU cores are in use (good), but the GPU is literally idling (bad). My GTX 780 is above what's "tested and recommended" by Graphisoft for this software, but maybe there's something in configuration I am missing?

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 18:14:46 GMT

GPU processing is not utilized. You'll note that there is no system requirement for any of the features that would support GPU processing (e.g., OpenCL, CUDA, etc).

As you can see in this thread, Cinema4D (which provides us with the Cinerender engine within AC 18 ) does not utilize GPU processing:
http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/topic/80660-what-hardware-features-make-for-faster-cinema-4d-rendering/

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 19:05:10 GMT

Karl wrote:
GPU processing is not utilized. You'll note that there is no system requirement for any of the features that would support GPU processing (e.g., OpenCL, CUDA, etc).

As you can see in this thread, Cinema4D (which provides us with the Cinerender engine within AC 18 ) does not utilize GPU processing:
http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/topic/80660-what-hardware-features-make-for-faster-cinema-4d-rendering/

Thanks, this explains a lot.

No wonder some people I know switched to Unreal Engine, just to get better photorealistic renders faster.

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Laszlo Nagy — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:20:38 GMT

Only a few rendering engines support GPUs. Most of them still utilize the CPU cores.
Octane Render is an engine that is available in ArchiCAD and it fully utilizes GPUs, which is much better since GPUs nowadays offer potentially much greater performance for rendering with these hundreds (or thousands) of cores:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_Render

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:43:16 GMT

laszlonagy wrote:
Only a few rendering engines support GPUs. Most of them still utilize the CPU cores.
Octane Render is an engine that is available in ArchiCAD and it fully utilizes GPUs, which is much better since GPUs nowadays offer potentially much greater performance for rendering with these hundreds (or thousands) of cores:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_Render

Thanks, that's what I've been looking for. I also know some people who moved to Unreal Engine for high quality, photorealistic rendering. I'm going to try exporting my models to 3ds max format, which is readable by the UE and render from that, hpefully faster and more effective.

Graphisoft's FAQ on the topic of hardware is severely outdated, where it claims GPUs lack processing power to render environments with high polycounts and detailed lightning.

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Laszlo Nagy — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:53:53 GMT

There are also some topics about Unity:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=230296

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=43764

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=36562

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Bricklyne Clarence — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 04:16:02 GMT

rafalemiec wrote:
laszlonagy wrote:
Only a few rendering engines support GPUs. Most of them still utilize the CPU cores.
Octane Render is an engine that is available in ArchiCAD and it fully utilizes GPUs, which is much better since GPUs nowadays offer potentially much greater performance for rendering with these hundreds (or thousands) of cores:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_Render
Thanks, that's what I've been looking for. I also know some people who moved to Unreal Engine for high quality, photorealistic rendering. I'm going to try exporting my models to 3ds max format, which is readable by the UE and render from that, hpefully faster and more effective.

Graphisoft's FAQ on the topic of hardware is severely outdated, where it claims GPUs lack processing power to render environments with high polycounts and detailed lightning.

It's not so much processing power as much as memory capacity that they lack.

High Polycount and detailed lighting environments entail a great deal of Memory usage and the problem with GPU rendering is that the whole model has to be loaded into Video Memory to process the render, although you'll find most GPU and Video cards have a Video Memory ceiling of about 4GB.

That may seem like a lot but for a medium sized model (with a relatively moderate number of Morph objects and SEO operations), ArchiCAD eats up that much and then some just to load your libraries before taking into account how much of the Video memory itself gets used up to allow you to work in the 3D Window.
And then if you have any high resolution textures or texture maps, HDRI maps, displacement maps and objects, grass,....forget about it.

GPU's are great because they have so many more hundreds of cores to utilize which allows them to give you almost instantaneous real-time unbiased results.
But the memory limit means that you will always be limited to small models or relatively low detail models.

Some render engine developers are trying to modify their renderers to allow them to utilize a hybrid of both CPU and GPU together for the real time (RT) renders, which would theoretically mean you no longer face this memory issue if you have enough RAM installed in your machine ( I believe VRay might be looking into it, and the Maxwell guys gave a demo of their Maxwell FIRE RT renderer for Beta of the next version using GPU processing and possibly also using CPU at the same time. The current engine only uses CPU).

A GPU renderer that works inside ArchiCAD could on the one hand be theoretically great since it would potentially be processing the renders in real time on a window to your side using one of your GPU cards while leaving your CPU cores free for use in ArchiCAD which uses them for everything from Plan views to Elevation/Sections.
But then the 3D Window in ArchiCAD does use the GPU so there might potentially be a conflict or drag on resources.
I'm not sure how Octane renderers (the only GPU renderer that allows you to work from withing ArchiCAD handles this load distribution currently, but theoretically it would be ideal.

Cinerender uses CPU which means your computer can easily assign one core to the render to allow it run in the background while the rest are used by ArchiCAD to allow you to continue working on your project while a render is being processed at the same time.
At least that's how I believe it works.
The only drawback is that it's slower than it would be if it were GPU, or ven better, a GPU+CPU hybrid.

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Laszlo Nagy — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 04:35:08 GMT

Bricklyne wrote:
Cinerender uses CPU which means your computer can easily assign one core to the render to allow it run in the background while the rest are used by ArchiCAD to allow you to continue working on your project while a render is being processed at the same time.
At least that's how I believe it works.
The only drawback is that it's slower than it would be if it were GPU, or ven better, a GPU+CPU hybrid.

If I remember correctly CineRender uses the available number minus 2 cores of the CPU. It leaves one core for the system, and one core for the other parts of ArchiCAD. So in a 4-core processor with 8 threads, it would use 6 threads.

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Bricklyne Clarence — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 08:41:01 GMT

laszlonagy wrote:
Bricklyne wrote:
Cinerender uses CPU which means your computer can easily assign one core to the render to allow it run in the background while the rest are used by ArchiCAD to allow you to continue working on your project while a render is being processed at the same time.
At least that's how I believe it works.
The only drawback is that it's slower than it would be if it were GPU, or ven better, a GPU+CPU hybrid.
If I remember correctly CineRender uses the available number minus 2 cores of the CPU. It leaves one core for the system, and one core for the other parts of ArchiCAD. So in a 4-core processor with 8 threads, it would use 6 threads.

That's interesting.

Although I was always under the impression that ArchiCAD doesn't take advantage of, or rather, is not optimized for Hyper-threading.

Which would mean it would only see your 4 cores instead of the 8 threads (or the 3 available minus the one for the system) in a Hyperthreading (Intel) system.

Does ArchiCAD take advantage of hyperthreading in systems?

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Laszlo Nagy — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 11:37:43 GMT

Maxon says on this page:

http://www.maxon.net/products/cinema-4d-broadcast/rendering.html

With support for multiple processors, HyperThreading and Multi-core technology, CINEMA 4D squeezes every ounce of rendering power out of your computer.

So I am supposing the CineRender in ArchiCAD uses all 8 threads. When I am rendering 7 of them are maxed out, and the 8th is at 50-60%.

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Bricklyne Clarence — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 21:33:40 GMT

laszlonagy wrote:
Maxon says on this page:

http://www.maxon.net/products/cinema-4d-broadcast/rendering.html

With support for multiple processors, HyperThreading and Multi-core technology, CINEMA 4D squeezes every ounce of rendering power out of your computer.
So I am supposing the CineRender in ArchiCAD uses all 8 threads. When I am rendering 7 of them are maxed out, and the 8th is at 50-60%.

I knew that Cinema 4D did utilize hyper-threading (most CPU-based render engines do).

I just wasn't sure that ArchiCAD did as well.

It's still not clear if it does, since the actual process for rendering in AC18 is completely separate (Cinerender.exe and not ArchiCAD.exe) - unlike in previous versions in which Lightworks runs as part of the ArchiCAD executable process in the Task manager.

(in fact, the same case applies with Maxwell as well, I believe; when you use FIRE - the realtime preview within ArchiCAD. it's all one process within ArchiCAD. Maybe that's the reason why the processes have to be completely separate with Cinerender in AC18 - apart from allowing the user to still be able to use ArchiCAD while a render runs in the background).

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 22:59:10 GMT

It's not so much processing power as much as memory capacity that they lack.

The latest version of OctaneRender (and the next release of the OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin) allows the storing of texturemaps in CPU RAM if video card VRAM is full. So for an ArchiCAD scene it is almost impossible to run out of VRAM on a 4GB graphics card (since 20millions polygons take around 3GB's). There is a small perform hit when storing texturemaps in CPU RAM.

Paul

Re: ArchiCAD 18 not using GPU when rendering?

Bricklyne Clarence — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 20:07:12 GMT

paulk wrote:
It's not so much processing power as much as memory capacity that they lack.
The latest version of OctaneRender (and the next release of the OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin) allows the storing of texturemaps in CPU RAM if video card VRAM is full. So for an ArchiCAD scene it is almost impossible to run out of VRAM on a 4GB graphics card (since 20millions polygons take around 3GB's). There is a small perform hit when storing texturemaps in CPU RAM.

Paul

That's pretty cool.

It seems almost ridiculous that most GPU renderers can't take advantage of the CPU RAM, which, in some systems you can have be as high as 64GB or more in your system.