16 replies to this topic

[Joseph Pedigo]

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and up will do DirectX 12 ray tracing in SoftPlan.

The Nvida GeForce RTX 2060 and up do have special hardware that allows the DirectX 12 ray tracing in SoftPlan to render a scene faster than the 10 series cards do.

[John Pepper]

I don't think you are using  DX12 version of the raytracing / path tracing.

To double check this when you go to render options are you able to select DX12.  It must be selected to us the new engine.

 

Now Dx12 provides us with the ability to do much faster path tracing and the denoising option smooths out the speckles that you see in the software engine version.  What would take hours in the CPU software version now can take minutes.

Additionally if you are not using path tracing but rather the DX12 raster engine, SoftPlan incorporates raytracing features where we can ray trace reflections into the raster image very quickly.

 

 settings.png   14.75KB   7 downloads

 

 

Here are some quick renderings..

DX12 Path trace with denoising, 100 passes. Takes a couple minutes.

 quickpathtrace.jpg   73.77KB   8 downloads

 

DX12 Raster with ray traced reflections

 raster_with_reflections.jpg   91.62KB   6 downloads

 

The DX12 uses a different material/lighting model called physically based rendering.  It uses roughness and metalness

 physicallybased.png   6.45KB   7 downloads

 

If you need to bring the brightness of a material up, you can use the uniform setting (kind of like ambient)

In path tracing, emissive truly emits light and should create a glow.  So in the past to brighten things up we have used the emissive property.  In DX12 many of these objects probably shouldn't glow so you would use uniform instead.  We are still playing around with conversion of material properties between dx11 and dx12 engines as they are not a direct mapping and we need to configure better defaults.

[John Pepper]

I don't think you will notice any difference in ray traced mode (using the software renderer) between video cards.  
The biggest difference will be in having access to the features that I mentioned above and thus the improved performance.

[Brent Hyndman]

If you have a video card that supports DX12 but the option is still greyed out in SoftPlan version 2022, you may not be using your high performance video card by default and will need to enable the card for use with SoftPlan.

 

Right click on the Desktop shortcut for SoftPlan Version 2022- Select the 'Run with graphics processor' option if it appears there- Select your high performance processor.

 

You may also have a control panel that is associated with your particular video card that will allow more advanced control of when and how the video card is utilized.

[Jon Churchill]

I can see there are going to be many questions regards video cards, which one to buy, what settings should I use, etc etc.....

 

Apart from speed ( time taken ) to produce a Ray Tracing image is there any difference in quality between say the RTX 2060 and the RTX 3090 ?

[John Pepper]

The difference should just be the speed.

[Jon Churchill]

Will the current textures need to be enhanced or changed, or does the new rendering engine just handle the textures in a different way?

[John Pepper]

The source images (jpg/png) should be the same.  We have some automation for converting a ambient defuse specular model  to a physically based rendering model (roughness, metalness, uniform)  but these calculations are rough at best.  So some configuration for the physically based settings will have to be done to get a desired look as the settings are different.

[John Jones]

SoftPlan 2022 has a new rendering engine: DirectX 12.

 

SoftPlan recommends a video card capable of supporting DirectX 12 Raytracing.
Cards branded Direct 12 Ultimate should give the best performance.
Presently the best cards out there that support DirectX 12 Raytracing are
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3090
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3080
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 SUPER
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060 SUPER
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060
The following cards support DirectX 12 Raytracing
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
GeForce GTX 1660
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
GeForce GTX 1080
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
GeForce GTX 1070
DirectX 11 cards and DirectX 12 cards that do not support DirectX 12 Raytracing will still be able to run SoftPlan, but they will not be able to use any of the new DirectX 12 SoftPlan features.
Future cards that may support DirectX 12 Raytracing are AMD Radeon RX 6000

 

[Steven Wohlgemuth]

Are the AMD video cards compatible with Softplan 2022?

 

SoftPlan 2022 has a new rendering engine: DirectX 12.

 

SoftPlan recommends a video card capable of supporting DirectX 12 Raytracing.
Cards branded Direct 12 Ultimate should give the best performance.
Presently the best cards out there that support DirectX 12 Raytracing are
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3090
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3080
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 SUPER
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060 SUPER
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060
The following cards support DirectX 12 Raytracing
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
GeForce GTX 1660
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
GeForce GTX 1080
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
GeForce GTX 1070
DirectX 11 cards and DirectX 12 cards that do not support DirectX 12 Raytracing will still be able to run SoftPlan, but they will not be able to use any of the new DirectX 12 SoftPlan features.
Future cards that may support DirectX 12 Raytracing are AMD Radeon RX 6000

 

[John Pepper]

The older AMD cards should work as they did on previous versions.  The new AMD Radeon RX 6000 series cards can run our dx11 engine as normal.  The  dx 12 engine runs, but anything involving ray casting like path tracing and reflections does not function properly yet.  Since it is extremely new hardware and technology we hope that issues will clear up as they improve their drivers. 

[Jeff Grenz]

Ended up with an RTX 2080 super with my Lenovo.

 

Your settings above were key to bringing this thing back to life fro previous version tinkering.

 

Thx.

 

[Peter Nauta]

So if I understand this correct.
My GTX 970 can do directx12, but will still be grayed out in mode options ?

[Joseph Pedigo]

The SoftPlan DirectX 12 renderer requires video cards that support "DirectX 12 Ultimate" features such as ray tracing.  The GTX 970 is a DirectX 12 card, but it does not support all the DirectX 12 Ultimate features that SoftPlan requires so DirectX 12 will be grayed out in mode options.

[Peter Nauta]

Thanks Joseph.

So my GPU is kinda putting a damper on how well SoftPlan can look in 3D.
I'm assuming that could also be the case then for my rendering computer running Lumion.  That one has a GTX980Ti.

[Brent Greener]

So I have been experimenting with Direct X 12 and have a RTX 2080 Super card.

 

One thing I noticed is that reflections seem to be very week in 12, the settings that look good in 11 show no reflection at all in 12. Pretty much have to turn the reflection up to 100 now.

[David Zawadzki]

I have a Brand New in the box RTX 3070 graphics card if anyone is interested.  It is an exchange for a defective graphics card they had put in my computer. 

 

I couldn't afford to wait the 2.5 months they took to finally offer to give me a new card and had already purchased a 3070 from Amazon... now I have an extra one that I hope to help recoup the cost of that one.