Welcome to LuisaRender Discussions!

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

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[odil24]

Hi. My name is Odilkhan Yakubov aka odil24
This is great that you are created this dis thread

[odil24]

are you planned to make an exporter for Blender also?

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

Yes, exporters and other more “production-oriented” stuff are in the long-term plan. But at present, we mainly focus on the development of the renderer itself, since there are still many features to complete.

[odil24]

Yes, exporters and other more “production-oriented” stuff are in the long-term plan. But at present, we mainly focus on the development of the renderer itself, since there are still many features to complete.

Is there have any build for testing render engine?

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

We don't make binary releases currently, but I can invite you into the "Insiders" team of LuisaGroup so that you can have access to the source including LuisaCompute.

[odil24]

We don't make binary releases currently, but I can invite you into the "Insiders" team of LuisaGroup so that you can have access to the source including LuisaCompute.

If so can you give instructions on how to compile from the source code step by step?

[orarugogerincufelpattano]

Hi!
The last comment was nearly two years ago so I'm curious how the development of the renderer and a possible Blender Exporter is proceeding.

[orarugogerincufelpattano]

It seems like ZLIB is required by NVidia software like Cuda and also Rust.
I downloaded a ZLIB library and placed it im my path. That solved the issue.
Now there are no more complaints about missing DLLs but now I have that damned 0xc0000142 error back.
I guess it has something to do with the Windows on my PC. I have to keep investigating...

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

Thanks for the information and investigation!

what is the difference between the cl; clang; clang-cl versions?

They are compiled with different compilers: cl for MSVC, clang for LLVM Clang with GNU-like command lines, and clang-cl for Clang with MSVC-flavored command lines. They should have no functional differences so downloading any should be fine.

Normally, without arguments it should give a usage screen, or am I wrong?

Yes it should give a usage screen.

It seems like ZLIB is required by NVidia software like Cuda and also Rust.

It may indicate that the GitHub Actions PCs and yours have mismatched versions of CUDA/system libraries. This could also be the cause of the mysterious 0xc0000142 error (but I'm not sure).

Could you provide the system/graphics driver/cuda versions? Such information would be very helpful for us to track down the issues.

[orarugogerincufelpattano]

Could you provide the system/graphics driver/cuda versions? Such information would be very helpful for us to track down the issues.

Sure, as I don't know much about Windows, so you might need to give me some instructions. But here is what I can figure out alone:
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU W3550 @ 3.07GHz 3.06 GHz
RAM: 14GB
OS: Windows 10 Pro - 22H2
Nvidia RTX 2070
Studio Driver 551,23 - DCH
Cuda: 12.4.74
DirectX 12.0
For any more, you need to give me some instructions.

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

Thanks! The info is quite adequate.

I don't see apparent issues in the versions. Then it may be a privilege issue, like, the system blocked the unregistered DLLs in the binary release. If this is the true cause, the following command might help (run with cmd.exe):

for %1 in (path\to\LuisaRender\release\*.dll) do regsvr32.exe /s %1

Meanwhile, I'll set up a similar environment to see if I can reproduce the issues.

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

BTW, just to be sure, do you have the same issues with the LuisaRender-windows-2022-cl version?

After some searching it turns out that when using Rust with non-MSVC toolchains there could be the zlib1__.dll issue (like this) and I'm curious if it also could cause the 0xc0000142 problem.

[orarugogerincufelpattano]

BTW, just to be sure, do you have the same issues with the LuisaRender-windows-2022-cl version?

Yes, same 0xc0000142 error.
I tried to run regsvr31 on both version (CL & CLANG ) but that didn't helped.
I have a german windows, could that be some local settings that cause this problem?
(That's why I hate windows so much. In comparison to Manjaro or any other Linux or Unix version, it is so badly programmed. It's a shame that it became so widely used...)
The Zlib link you posted was exactly where I landed when I was looking for answers.
I downloaded zlib123dllx64.zip and placed in the path as described but I had to rename zlibwapi.dll to zlib1__.dll.
Maybe that is causing the problem? Do you have an alternative location where I can download a proper zlib1__.dll?

I'm currently testing on myprivate windows pc. It will be interesting if get it to run here, if I'm able to transfer the installation to my work PC where I have no admin rights.... but one step at a time. =)

[orarugogerincufelpattano]

Thanks! I compiled it and if I start it, I get the usage screen! Fantastic!
I downloaded a sample scene and placed it in to the bin folder and tried to render. That gave me a debbuger error.
Is there a documentation on how to render with the renderer? For example what backends are available and so on?

EDIT: I used "-b cuda" as backend and the rendering started and finished. =)
There was an error message at the end, but the image was still done.
[warning] Failed to allocate 34560000 bytes from CUDAHostBufferPool. Falling back to ad-hoc allocation. [D:\a\LuisaRender\LuisaRender\src\compute\src\backends\cuda\cuda_host_buffer_pool.cpp:35]
(I don't have a D: drive in my machine so I don't really understand the message...)

I'm really looking forward to read more abut the renderer and materials and so on.

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

Very happy to hear the good news!

For example what backends are available and so on?

If you are using an NVIDIA card on Windows, then the cuda, dx, and cpu backends are available.

EDIT: I used "-b cuda" as backend and the rendering started and finished. =)
There was an error message at the end, but the image was still done.
[warning] Failed to allocate 34560000 bytes from CUDAHostBufferPool. Falling back to ad-hoc allocation. [D:\a\LuisaRender\LuisaRender\src\compute\src\backends\cuda\cuda_host_buffer_pool.cpp:35]
(I don't have a D: drive in my machine so I don't really understand the message...)

The warning is just fine (as explained here, it just indicates some minor internal optimization failure). The D:\... path is the source file path on the GitHub Actions machiine where the binary release was built.

I'm really looking forward to read more abut the renderer and materials and so on.

Sorry we don't have a comprehensive doc/tutorial at present. The usage of renderer itself is quite simple, with all available options printed in the help screen. The underlying compute library, and its design and implementation mechanism, are described in our paper, which might be a good reference if you're interested about how the high-level rendering process is materialized into low-level compute shaders and API calls. But still sorry that we have not prepared a good doc currently.

[orarugogerincufelpattano]

Thanks and no problem. I'm studying the sample scenes and analyzing the Tungsten converter.
I have some scene specific questions, can I ask them or am I nerving already too much?

[Mike-Leo-Smith]

Please feel free to ask anything you'd like to know :-)

[orarugogerincufelpattano]

Thanks! I really appreciate it! I'll open up a new discussion as this was more about the installation.