Arion

From RandomControl Wiki

Arion Render

real-time digital photography.
	Current version		v1.0.01
	fryrender support		{{{fryrender_support}}}
	Arion support		{{{arion_support}}}
	Release date		2010.04.04
	Operating system		Microsoft Windows
	Type		Standalone application
	License		Arion Single or Multi GPU

Arion is the first hybrid unbiased render engine in the world.

Arion is a production-ready render engine designed to make combined use of all the CPUs and the GPUs in the computer. It can also use all the CPUs and GPUs in the computers in the network. This CPU+GPU+LAN concept of squeezing as much computational power as possible from all the devices available is called hybrid acceleration.

Arion's rendering core is unbiased and physically-based. This, combined with hybrid acceleration, turns Arion into a grid-computing solution for the simulation of light physics.

The speed of Arion not only does bring a significant decrease in render times, but it is also high enough to allow for interactive rendering. The Arion standalone is an interactive editor with real-time feedback that displays the scene with final quality all the way as the user makes changes in the lighting, materials, and cameras.

Contents 1 Version history 2 Installing 3 Hardware compatibility 4 Driver trouble-shooting 5 Loading a scene in Arion

Version history

You can take a look at the Arion version changelog here.

Installing

Arion's GPU acceleration is based on nVidia CUDA, so you need to install the nVidia CUDA Toolkit 3.0 in order for Arion to run.

win32 - http://www.nvidia.com/object/thankyou.html?url=/compute/cuda/3_0/toolkit/cudatoolkit_3.0_win_32.exe

win64 - http://www.nvidia.com/object/thankyou.html?url=/compute/cuda/3_0/toolkit/cudatoolkit_3.0_win_64.exe

Mac OS X - http://www.nvidia.com/object/thankyou.html?url=/compute/cuda/3_0/toolkit/cudatoolkit_3.0_macos_32.pkg

You also need to install video drivers with CUDA support. You can download the latest WHQL driver from NVIDIA drivers page here:

http://www.nvidia.com/drivers

Or alternatively if you encounter stability issues, you can get development certified CUDA drivers here:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda_3_0_downloads.html

Current drivers (267.91):

http://www.nvidia.com/drivers

Hardware compatibility

Despite one of Arion's highlights is GPU acceleration, it can run without a CUDA-enabled device (using the CPU only). So any computer should be able to run Arion.

In order to benefit from GPU acceleration you need at least one CUDA-enabled device. The link below provides nVidia's official list of CUDA-enabled graphics cards:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html

Driver trouble-shooting

http://www.randomcontrol.com/wiki/index.php/Watchdog_Timer

Loading a scene in Arion

Since Arion uses natively the same file format as fryrender, it can be used from its plugins as well. This means that Arion supports the following modelling applications:

• Plugin for 3D Studio Max
• Plugin for Cinema 4D
• Plugin for Maya
• Plugin for Modo
• Plugin for Lightwave 3D
• Plugin for Rhinoceros 3D
• Plugin for SketchUp
• Plugin for Softimage

Additionally, Arion can import scenes from several file formats (fryrender .rcs and .fry, and WaveFront .obj).