[Soc-2014-dev] Weekly Report #7 Cycles

[Thomas Dinges]

Hi,
here my report for week 7: 
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:DingTo/GSoC_2014/Weekly_Reports/Week7

Best regards,
Thomas

= Week 7 =

== What I did this week ==
I did some cleanup and fixes for CUDA:
* Code cleanup: (6ac06523955e, 4800c52700b4)
* Updated CUDA error messages, so we get more meaningful errors instead 
of "Unknown CUDA error value". (5898abe99d5d)
* Volumes can be compiled on GPU again, yet this is still quite fragile. 
(5aec61f8493f)
** Distance Sampling works, Equi-Angular and MIS fail with 
memory/address CUDA errors, issue probably in 
kernel_volume_decoupled_scatter().
** Sample All Lights Indirect causes errors too. Not sure why Direct 
works though, it's the same code in 
kernel_branched_path_volume_connect_light().
** In general I think Decoupled Ray Marching needs some fixes for GPU, 
or we completely #ifdef that and only use distance sampling on the GPU. 
The latter is a viable option for the 2.72 release, *if* the performance 
drop is not too big. Have not benchmarked it yet.

Other work:
* Looked a bit into the Smooth normal optimization of my original 
proposal, but no real code there yet.

* The usual bug tracker maintenance (check on reports, close 
invalid/fixes ones...)

== Next week ==
I have exams starting on Monday until the 17th July, so don't have time 
for GSoC. As said in Report #5, I will be back full time afterwards, 
which leave me full 4 weeks.

== Questions ==
None.