Version 5 64bit?

The 64bit extravaganza, the never dying feature request:
https://filterforge.com/forum/search.p...FORUM_ID=0

Although in a way, 64bit probably won't make FF any faster than it is.

Actaully it's interesting to note that up until recently Sketchup and Zbrush were 32bit applications. Zbrush announced they're going 64bit finally. I guess it's better, but most people probably don't even exceed beyond what the program was already capable as a 32bit app. Either way it's just some nice addition.

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GMM I've always wondered why so many people believe that "64 bit" equals "better".

I think that is only because 64 is more than 32 and this happens in CPU, RAM;, Hard drives, etc. more seems to be always better, but is not always true.

Is true that it always seem that having a 64 bit application is much better than having a 32 bit one, and I am included in this, as it seems to be a very old thing to keep using 32 bit, but maybe I am wrong thinking this and it could be that is not always true as it will depend on which application and how it works.

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Rabid Well for one it stops you fr om running out of memory. Every program I have the 64bit version always seems to be more stable and a bit quicker than it's 32bit versions.

YES, I think this is the main and most important reason to update the software to 64 bit, as you do not have anymore the 32 bits memory lim it, and I know that Filter Forge can ONLY use 1,5 GB RAM even if you have 16 GB RAM

Maybe changing to 64 bit would not make FF faster but would be possible to use more memory, although I do not know since what resolution it would be a real benefit for this.

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64 bit computing from Wikipedia Some 64-bit programs, such as encoders, decoders and encryption software, can benefit greatly from 64-bit registers, while the performance of other programs, such as 3D graphics-oriented ones, remains unaffected when switching from a 32-bit to a 64-bit environment.

So I do not know if upgrading FF to 64 bit would make it better according and justifying the amount of work needed to make the conversion and then the testing

As far a I know converting any application from 32 bits to 64 bit is not at all an easy task and could take much time and work, although really I do not know how much and I think also that it would also depend of each individual application and how was programmed and what language has been used.

10 Biggest Issues for Developers Migrating 32-bit Applications to 64-bits

Seven Steps of Migrating a Program to a 64-bit System

INTEL Developers Zone - Moving from 32-bit applications to 64-bit applications

Converting 32-bit Applications Into 64-bit Applications: Things to Consider

64-bit generally does equal better in most apps. When running tests on general purpose apps, just the switch from 32-bit OS to 64-bit OS led to performance increases of 5-15%, and that's using an un-optimized 32-bit app.

On apps that don't make heavy use of CPU or memory, switching to 64-bit won't actually deliver much more of a benefit. However, with apps that do make heavy use of CPU and memory, 64-bit support can provide a pretty significant boost. Additionally, being able to tap into larger pools of memory opens the doors to working with much larger resolution images. All these things are absolutely crucial in a program such as Filter Forge.

From my experience with FF 4.0, the program becomes extremely unstable when working with higher resolution textures. It will either crash outright, or the render stalls completely when you attempt to render/save to disk. This is happening because the application is running out of memory. Checking my activity monitor, it has never used more than 4GB on a 64GB system.

Having seen, experienced, and tested other graphics, video production, and rendering apps that have made the 32->64-bit transition, I'm confident that with no other optimizations or improvements, users on modern 64-bit operating systems would see noticeable performance improvements (as well as be able to work at higher resolution).

Ouch, that is unfortunate. Perhaps it's time to start exploring another memory management solution - even basic home computers have been coming with much more RAM than that for years, and pro users have many more times that amount of memory available. As computers and design software gets more powerful, the demand for higher resolution textures is growing steadily.

FF already has a pretty great application and interface, with loads of great filters available to users (thanks to all those who've contributed). With 64-bit support and a capable memory manager, Filter Forge could continue to be a viable solution even when working at high resolution.

- Every software that works on large images can benefit a lot from more memory when it is done right.

- The "custom memory manager" isn't doing a very good job in reality and breaks in many cases. I can't use FF on large images because of it.

- I can't even set Maximum RAM to 100% in preferences since the memory manager goes bonkers in that case and rendering is getting stuck... I have to keep it at 50 to 70% in reality.

- Even a 32 Bit software can use up to 4 GB RAM on a x64 system when done right... FF can't...

- It would be beneficial to have a REAL plugin for Photoshop x64 that can be run directly instead of just being externally linked.

- I have 32 GB of fast memory. It makes absolutely no sense to me to restrict FF to 1.5 GB. What is the point in this day and age?

- The argument that software is only ported to 64 Bit "since everybody does it" is silly on so many levels.

- The whole development and recognition of FF is stifled by this IMO.

I personally can't see myself updating to FF 5 if it doesn't handle memory much better than 4 and allows me to use all my RAM.

Cheers,

Tom

I haven't purchased FF yet. If version 5 isn't going to be 64-bit, will it work within Photoshop 64-bit?

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but it's development pace is extremely slow

have to agree on that. KEEP US EXCITED FILTERFORGE!!! AHHH.

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developers aren't exactly on the bleeding edge of current tech... smile;-)

Here's some praise. I'm a CGI designer here, studying and working in the industry for the last 4 or 5 years. Frankly, FF is still on the cutting edge when it comes to how darn simple it is. Every other node-based tool screws with the UI or tries something revolutionary when all we need is just a damn, easy to see interface that I can put nodes down on.

Yeah, the pace of development for many other products is pretty impressive. I'm a Modo user and I hear Fabric Engine's coming to Modo pretty excited here.

I personally feel "GPU" is quite overrated (at this point in time), unless your machine is equipped with the latest GPU, it's a real pain to work with. Most people don't have that "latest GPU" and are running on crummy store-recommended GPUs. So the unfortunate side effect is that you get sluggish performances. One instance of GPUs kinda suffering is that it's a progressive brute-force renderer right now. There's a lot of noise, a lot of artifacts as renders refine over time. It's great if you have 2 or more GPUs at hand, but again, the market's quite limited when you think about it.

I kinda still recommend CPU based rendering only because the output result is calculated, not progressively refined. The other thing is that clients really don't like seeing noise on their logos, mascots, etc, and we don't want to apply noise-filtering or median filters on images or animated sequences. We add camera profiles, grain etc later so that's the preferable workflow right now. Frankly this process out performs our GPU rig.

A lot of people don't really know about this. They see all these great results but don't really know the "other side" to the issue. In the end "GPU" feels 60% marketing buzz, 40% actually usable. But I swear, I don't deny that this is really the future. So it's really not a bad thing to invest in. I frankly wish FF would do so... but it's also considerable to use products like Substance Designer.

I really don't know if 64bit = better with FF really, the request's been throughly discussed on these forums. It seems that the program itself doesn't see the benefits. But I'm no official here so I can't say anything on that other than what I've seen on the forums.

In the end I just want FF to stay on top of it all. The race for better tech is always there. And this program is huge, it has way too many potentials for it to be lost amongst time. I certainly don't want to just shift over to other programs just because the program's "out dated".

[Long post because discussion hitting something neat, mildly needs explanation]

Oh hey it's fine I have my own quarrel with new tech vs the rest of the world I'm in.

Perhaps I'm a bit over stating when I say "overrated" I just don't think many people are informed about what's good what's bad about GPU at this time. Most people seem GPU = FASTER = BETTER. By logic it works, but at the heart of it there are issues, and those issues are slowly but surely going away.

I'm really I guess trying to say I come out of a completely different workflow of things, hence I'm simply not convinced to use GPU in my current workflow, and most people who work along side, and most people who I know, as many as a couple studios, don't use GPU because of those nit-picky issues mentioned.

But as an individual, I do use GPU rendering on occasion where I find worthy of usage. So I don't entirely shut the whole thing out of my existence, it's just that I can't use it on production without convincing people that it's worthy of switching over.

I was the one of the early adopters of Octane renderer when I was in college, I purchased the beta just as it came out (I remember the times when $99 seemed awesome for a render engine of that quality). I used it on my projects and it really did help with the appearance of things. But I'm now working in this kind of field where you got people, unaware of anything, just yapping that my renders look grainy due to how it's rendered at 4k (10 seconds of animation). And we're not allowed to use de-noising of any sorts on these renders in post, it's just standard protocol at my work unfortunately.

Yes you're right about the biased / unbiased rendering techniques for purposes of scene. I do understand that and of course do utilize that knowledge.

So my opinions are kinda swayed around on both spectrums.

At my studio right now I'm using IndigoRT along with Cinema4D. I personally use Modo901 which has an excellent render engine as well. And I'm super glad hearing fr om somebody who uses Thea!

I'm glad I'm talking to somebody who actually has experience using that kind of stuff. Most people on these forums (not just FF) just yap GPU = FASTER = BETTER without really knowing the arguments. What people should really be doing is finding out if it works with their workflows. But seeing all these ads and people talking about it without that kind of intimacy I think leads to misdirection or just bad judgement which can be costly in the industry.

By the way in regards to the 64bit version discussion here's the thing I'm taking note of:
https://filterforge.com/wiki/index.php...ist#64-bit

Again, not sure if it goes either way. There's clearly a benefit from being 64bit on other apps so I wonder if it's just FilterForge. Suffice to say it's at least "planned for the future" it's just "who knows when".

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No disrespect meant, but some of the discussions here are pretty uninformed...

Don't worry, it's honestly difficult to explain all of this without mentioning my background and what I've been through. Part of me has been working in the industry wh ere protocol is strict hence leading to this kind of discussion. It's quite stone headed really, and I come out that way myself. But I've seen results based on our ways of doing things... and both GPU / CPU have their own flaws.

In the end, I don't know how it all benefits FF, but if it does work itself in there, I'd be a happier person.

Sub.blue is just pure genius you know lol. Guy's just insane. Anything that happens from Sub.blue is generally insanely awesome.

Welp, keep fingers crossed. Or otherwise there's always the alternative I mean ok, I don't know when FF's gonna do their stuff but whenever. I'm waiting FilterForge. I'm waiting VERY patiently.

We already have a working 64-bit version of FF under Windows (sorry Mac users, Carbon is holding us hostage under Mac OS X so a 64-bit Mac version will take longer), however, we don't want to release it yet because we are still working on rendering speed issues (mostly related to compiler optimizations that stopped working for some reason).

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I really don't know if 64bit = better with FF really

Skybase, yes, absolutely yes. 64-bit = better FF. This is without question.

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I'm glad I'm talking to somebody who actually has experience using that kind of stuff. Most people on these forums (not just FF) just yap GPU = FASTER = BETTER without really knowing the arguments.

I'll have a lot more to say about the GPUs in the coming months. We're actively experimenting with them at the moment. Short answer: it's not all roses.

Thank you very much Vladimir, that is really good news.
I look forward to what you come up with.

I don't know what compiler you are using but the Arnold renderer got pretty good speed enhancements out of the intel compiler some years back when I was following it's developments as a beta tester for Softimage XSI - no idea if it would help with the 64 Bit optimizations or if you are using it already anyway.

Lua support sounds very good. I look forward to that!
Compiled JavaScript can also be quite fast these days and many people know it already from web development, but I guess it's harder to get right.

As for GPU: I am quite aware about the complications of working with the GPU. Quite a different kind of approach can be needed in some cases.
Some years ago I was quite sceptical myself, since I found it more logical to invest my money into faster CPUs that would speed up everything I do instead of GPUs that would only speed up some specific things.
But these days you
a.) get very good speedups with relatively cheap GPUs. My lowly GTX 660 TI is as fast with rendering as my 6 core i7 running OC'd at 4.1 Ghz (costing 3 times as much). I plan to add a much faster GPU soon.
b.) more and more software uses the GPU for realtime video effects and playback, 3D rendering, audio effects, games and all kind of computations, so it makes more sense for people to have a good one.
c.) the software is getting more clever and there is more selection. Octane started it but is GPU only. Thea Render came later with GPU support but does it much better in that it uses the CPU at the same time - quite a speedup for me. And now there are biased (non-grainy @Skybase ) renderers like Redshift (https://www.redshift3d.com/) that open it for the animation industry as well. At first hair and displacement was unthinkable, now those renderers support more and more of the standard stuff...
d.) Nvidia Cuda is really good nowadays and supports a lot of cool stuff.
ATI/OpenCl still behind but getting better too.

Again, I have no clue in how far GPU can be useful in a software like FF, but I've seen many developers being quite amazed at what speeds certain things can run on a halfways decent GPU and the trend towards GPU computation continues, so I would think it's a good idea to have a very close look on what can be done with it.

Thanks and best regards,

Tom

@Skybase: I'm not saying you have to use Redshift, I just wanted to make clear that GPU rendering/acceleration has NOTHING to do with grainy renderings. That is a myth.

It just happens that most of the initial GPU using renderers were unbiased and unbiased renderers are grainy until they are fully cooked.

There are now all kinds of computations done by the GPU and "being grainy" is not what this is all about.

Cheers,

Tom

Thomas has been always right. Don't necessarily disagree here. Oh and I took Redshift as a suggestion! Always love playing with new stuff.

It's just that I don't see it working nice with my timeline, my workflow. I gotta dig out an example where GPU just doesn't cut it. It's a really interesting situation and it happens to me once in a while. In that case I just go CPU.

Thanks Vladimir.
You are of course right, I use unbiased rendering a lot and have no grain in my final images if I don't want to (and let them render long enough ).
But what people usually associate with "GPU" rendering is "progressive rendering" which at first looks grainy.

Progressive rendering as such is a godsend for me, since I can simply let an image render as long as needed, can save a preview at any time for review and can even stop rendering and continue later.

FPrime for Lightwave (progressive renderer but CPU based) had a very fascinating render mode where you could render an animation and it would render all the images in turn, refining them in a loop. This way you were able to load the sequence into your video editor very early while still rendering and could do your initial editing while over time the images got better and better.

I personally find slightly noisy renderings much more pleasant than badly interpolated ones and the human eye is much less sensitive to fine noise in animations than to the typical interpolated GI flickering - otherwise we would go crazy watching movies with filmgrain...

Would be actually interesting to have a progressive mode in FF if that is possible at all.

Sorry for going a bit off-topic here

Cheers,

Tom

@Skybase: You still muddy the waters here (as far as it is related to FF at all), since you constantly throw unrelated things together.

I'll let it rest now, since this has nothing to do with FF in the end.

All the best,

Tom

Just a little heads up:
I recently tested the "Substance Designer" fr om Allegorithmic, which is similar to FilterForge in many aspects (although more 3D-Object-Texture oriented).
It is x64, runs optionally on the GPU and is very fast compared to FF:

Exporting complex 4K textures (all the 8 standard maps at once as png!) takes about half a minute for me.

It is fast enough to be used inside of games where parameters of a Substance (= FF Filter) can be changed live...

So it is doable and already done by the competition...

(and I am aware that this does not help the FF devs to port their code or make it faster, I just want to move the discussion towards reality)

Cheers,

Tom

I know this is a very old thread but since I just bought a pre-order of FF 7.0 today I thought I put a "Thanks" here for the offer to buy a price-reduced new license from my FF 4.0 license.

Neither FF 5 nor 6 did convince me, but 7 is usable for my needs finally.

Things have moved forward quite a lot in the meantime, I pretty much use GPU based or -supported software only nowadays, from Redshift to (not so much) Octane to Allegorithmics Substance Designer & Painter to Blackmagic Resolve etc. Would be interesting if FF will ever be able to use my (currently) two GPUs...

My main 3D package these days is Houdini Core 16 and I often work on very high resolution images (10,000 px square and up) and FF 7.0 is finally able to deal with that (my 64GB Ram help with that ).

So cheers and thanks!

Tom