Ambient Occlusion and Anti-alias process

I have experienced some problems with ambient occlusion (direct sampling >= 1) when the anti-alias step kicks in during rendering. What happens is that the rendering slows down extremely or simply stalls (at 70-90%).

The problem seem to be more likely when rendering big images, and also depends on how much else is going on on the computer. So I'm thinking it is related to available memory or something.

I haven't yet been able to narrow it down to a reproducible state, but I'm mentioning it here anyways in case others experience similar problems (perhaps a pattern will emerge)...

Ok, I will try that.

To the FF devs: the ambient occlusion feature is extremely nice. I hope you will try to optimize it in future releases, both regarding speed and memory usage

But I don't want to! I want it to render fast with good quality, low mem usage, free concert tickets and cool beer! Lol.. hmpf ok then..

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cfree68 wrote: I wonder if GPU acceleration is in the works for FF?

There are some common problems connected with it.
First of all, moving to GPU-based architecture needs time... a lot of time =)
Many algorithms of FF components aren't suitable for GPU calculations due to their design (conditional operators, breaks in cycles). And FF uses double-precision calculations. AFAIR only nVidia Fermi architecture has low penalties for double-precision.

Actually I asked Vladimir about the issue several months ago. And he asked me: "How many hi-end GPU renderers do you know? Do Mental Ray, Vray, Maxwell support GPU acceleration?". I think it's wise question, isn't it?

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Actually I asked Vladimir about the issue several months ago. And he asked me: "How many hi-end GPU renderers do you know? Do Mental Ray, Vray, Maxwell support GPU acceleration?". I

Actually.. yes. Though not by the same name. MentalRay has IRay which is GPU accelerated and physically accurate. Besides that there are many other "optimized" raytracers which are gpu accelerated.

I know this because I'm currently working on an application using the RealityServer architecture which allows you to do accelerated Physically accurate (not just raytraced) rendering on a cloud in a web browser.

On top of that. Photoshop itself uses GPU acceleration and most adobe apps have plugin technology called pixelbender which does similar things to some of the FF plugins like Droste etc. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbender/

here's a video showing some photoshop gpu accelerated filters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKU0R31WEyc

Now I'm not saying its a small job to pull this off. I'm just saying FilterForge would be ideal for it. Especially with the newer more intensive effects like bomber.

Just my 2 cents of course.