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Will Resolume 3.0 use GPU shaders? (opinion poll inside)

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 22:30
by continuity-B
Open question to Bart an Edwin...

Harking back to this old thread....
http://www.resolume.com/forum/viewthrea ... 13#pid7837
resolume is indeed doing everything on software bases.
So every effect and blend mode is done by the CPU.
Pilgrim is using the GPU and that makes it very fast, but then again you are limited on functionality when using the GPU only. But since more and more cards are supporting fragment shaders it get's more and more interesting.
If you make the choice to make a GPU based render engine then almost everything should be done using the GPU, if you start to mix both performance will drop dramatically. We've done some research on the GPU side and it is definately something for the future. I can't properly run Pilgrim on my laptop by the way because my videocard does not supporta ll the fancy things pilgrim does.

And that's just one of the major reasons why our software is CPU based,
when we started making resolume most videocards did not have this support and just now most machines ( not all ) are shipped with a videocard that support it.

so yes cheers to the pilgrim guys for making such a fast app.
and no i think we will never join forces.
good competetion is healthy for the market

cheers
Edwin de Koning
... will Resolume 3.0 support GPU rendering, even optionally, given many new cards (including laptops) now have DirectX9 cards as standard (plus i just bought one ;) )?

Everyone else please vote whether you'd like this or not!

[Edited on 16-9-2005 by continuity-B]

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 16:10
by mfo
Still directX9 doesn't support blendmodes like "multiply".
So, how do you think, usage of GPU should work without dropping all the blendmodes except simple alpha, add and subtract?

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 17:01
by continuity-B
This is the kind of info we need cos I'm no expert - I was of the naive opinion you could sort of do it all in DX9.

Has anyone got a comprehensive list of what can and can't be done? I'm trawling google just now and saw a mention of 'shader model 3.0' as well.

I'll report back but if anyone knows in the meantime...

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 17:08
by continuity-B
Pilgrim R2 (which is DX9) will aparently be able to offer the following blending modes
Blending Modes:
- Add, Add Smooth, Multiply, MultiplyX2, InvMultiply, SubtMultiply, Opaque, Subtract, RevSubstract, Min, Max, AddOnAlpha, AddOnInvAlpha and many others
I don't see keying though, and can anyone explain the unfamiliar modes here?

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 08:11
by levon
im all for going GPU, if it increases speed or quality, but all that realtime 3d stuff doesnt appeal to me.

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:19
by continuity-B
Originally posted by levon
im all for going GPU, if it increases speed or quality, but all that realtime 3d stuff doesnt appeal to me.
Me neither, I just like a nice fast simple mixer.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 15:02
by gpvillamil
Yep, this would be very, very nice.

Compositing on the GPU would make things very fast and interesting.

Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 04:23
by lotech
(Not sure why this is bolded sorry) Not only would you be loosing some blends but Freeframe effects wouldn't be possible other than on the first step of your mix. Once you pass the clip though to the GPU, you wouldn't be able to bring it back to then add another effect and GPU's aren't designed to do freeframe FX.

CLIP -> FX -> GPU -> LAYER RENDER -> OUT
Where as at the moment its
CLIP -> FX -> LAYERS -> FX -> GPU/OUT
This allows the freeframe FX to be dropped in at 2 steps, one on each clip and one being the final output. With GPU based rendering there would only be a few DX8/9 effects available. It sucks, I'm all for actually using my video card to render (check Modul8's antialiasing of resized clips) but find it almost as necessary to be able to adjust the final out with effects.
Although now that I've reread the post - I would be all for freeframes on the first FX bus on clips only and then DX9 FX on the final mix, that should give colour correction, resizing, smothing, 3D and some other cool bits.... hmmm.

[Edited on 5-10-2005 by lotech]

Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 08:29
by nkm
"Not only would you be loosing some blends"

Why would you lose blends? Any blending mode you can think off can be created already using dx7. And with pixels shaders (dx8 and up) their are no limits anymore.

"Once you pass the clip though to the GPU, you wouldn't be able to
bring it back"

It can be brought back, although it is a bit expensive. However, with the new PCIExpress bus the speed has increased by factor ~8 which makes the bustransfer overhead marginal in comparison to the CPU processing overhead.

RE:

Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 15:39
by VjSky
Why not try to cary deep blue with you on a gig :)