Software rendering Vs Hardware Rendering

[superhighgain]

I wonder to know..what is software rendering and hardware rendering? What is the different between them?

[joojaa]

Hardware renderer is fast so you could do a 2k animation with motion blur and AA overnight (ok, a short one and youll probably waste a lot of hardrive). But making shaders for hardwere rendering is quite paistaking and slow, and you cant do everyhing with it. Pretty mych what you see in the wievport

Software, can do allmost anything, but at a slower speed (generaly atleast). Supports raytracing, glows, paint effects, blobby particles, complex shaders etc. = better quality in general

[redexe]

In reply to:
Hardware renderer is fast so you could do a 2k animation with motion blur and AA overnight (ok, a short one and youll probably waste a lot of hardrive). But making shaders for hardwere rendering is quite paistaking and slow, and you cant do everyhing with it. Pretty mych what you see in the wievport

Software, can do allmost anything, but at a slower speed (generaly atleast). Supports raytracing, glows, paint effects, blobby particles, complex shaders etc. = better quality in general

NOT TRUE, you can program the same custom shaders on a hardware renderer because of the renderman specification standard.
AND second the Hardwareengine has ALWAYS a better quality over Software, look at the Hware rendering algorithm of the renderdrive, it's always 128(!!!) bit traced+antialiased compared with the 32/64 bit renderengines on a normal cpu.

Plus PaintFX is a POST applied FXsystem, NOT 3D RENDERED !!!
It only takes 3D information from the scene to get the properties of the 2D (post!!!) applied strokes IN A POST DEPTH BUFFER !!! Don't forget, VERY IMPORTANT to know !!!

[greg68]

In reply to:
AND second the Hardwareengine has ALWAYS a better quality over Software, look at the Hware rendering algorithm of the renderdrive, it's always 128(!!!) bit traced+antialiased compared with the 32/64 bit renderengines on a normal cpu.

Hard to believe!
Can you post some harware rendered images?
greg

[joojaa]

Yeah but i was under the impression the original message was about the hw buffer that utilizes the videocard, but thenagain i might be worng.

If you can afford a renderdrive then yes the quality is superior. No general chip can compeete with a chip that has integrated algorithms, but thisway you will sacrafice versatility for speed. The more spesilaized the routines are the fatser the chip will be but, on the otherhad you losse some flexibility. And as its much harder to make a hardware chip its allso much slower to develop its functions. So software can offer you some godies that whare unheard of whan the chip was designed (altough renderdrive is quite flexible as far as i know, so it isnt totaly optimized for speed). So doing all your properitary stuff for renderdrive might not be to smart or even possible =)

Yeah i know ffx are 2D post effects (thats why they are so fast), as are glow and lens FX too. And most of the stuff you se on the big screen are part 2d and part 3d, because some things are just too expensive to do in post.