[Bf-committers] Qdune code

[Jonathan Merritt]

Good grief Campbell, that's a very glib statement!

Firstly, you don't say which version of Aqsis you tested, on what  
platform, how it was optimised, etc.  Considering qdune has never seen  
a release, to have Aqsis fairly represented would presumably have  
involved getting a current SVN build going...?  Aqsis SVN is faster  
than the previous 1.2.0 release from Feb 2007.

Secondly, of all the Aqsis geometric primitives, I would say that  
subdiv surfaces are among the *least* well-supported!  They're there,  
and they work, but they aren't anywhere near as fast as NURBS for  
example.  As with everything else, they are in development, and I'm  
sure that if Blender were to become a major provider of subdiv content  
then improving them would shoot way up the list of priorities.

Thirdly, how were your simple subsurf tests performed?  I'm guessing  
you just chucked the same RIB file at both renderers right?  Did  
anyone count how many gprim splits were done or how many micropolygons  
were produced?  I ask mainly because the basic "quality" settings of  
renderers can be different.  Pixie vs Aqsis is a great example...  
Pixie seems to end up with more coarse surface approximations, and  
hence renders "faster".  It doesn't mean that Pixie *is* faster (I  
would argue the reverse)... just that it's not as high quality by  
default, doesn't have to do as much dicing and splitting, and then has  
nowhere near as many micropolygons to shade and sample.  (The idea is  
that whoever produces the scene can change these settings in the great  
speed-quality tradeoff.)

Finally, one of the best things about Aqsis is its test suite.  The  
tests are *not* specific to Aqsis and are more extensive than any  
other RenderMan test suite I'm aware of.  Can somebody please post the  
results of running qdune on these tests?  Then we'll know whether it's  
something to get excited about, or whether it's still a naiive  
implementation with a great deal of work still to be done.

Jonathan Merritt.


On 08/11/2007, at 8:44 AM, Campbell Barton wrote:

> Aqsis was slower then qdune for simple subsurf tests,
> This is a fair comparison, qdune and aqsis both support this well.
> Pixie wont run on 64bit systems yet.
>
> Even if they were used, integration would still take a while.
>
> On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 16:35 -0500, David Bryant wrote:
>> Maybe I'm taking a shot in the dark but,have you examined Aqsis'
>> source code? It's rederman compliant.
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