OSL evaluation slow?

[MysticLtd]

Hi!

I created an 8-Bit integer value input system with OSL for typing in colors in the good old R_255,G_230,B_115 manner. But what I noticed is, that the slate material editor takes relatively long to update the nodetree when i change one of the integer at the base of the tree.

The scene file contains nothing. Just this little nodetree snippet. 3dsmax 2021.1

Now I'm not shure if I should go further with the OSL workflow cause I fear of huge lags when i bring much more OSL shader branches into the slate.

Is there something that I miss to keep the performance up to a good level?

Here is a pic of my node-tree:

What I miss is an Integer-To-Float converter OSL node. Obviously it converts it automatically cause I can plug the integer node into floar inputs, but I don't know if this could cause some issues.

Just a side node:

I think the material and shader preview calculations of the slate material editor should run in the background like the processing of the liquid solver, so that live work is possible without interruptions when the slate has to render much previews.

Greetings! 🙂

[MysticLtd]

Hi!

I created an 8-Bit integer value input system with OSL for typing in colors in the good old R_255,G_230,B_115 manner. But what I noticed is, that the slate material editor takes relatively long to update the nodetree when i change one of the integer at the base of the tree.

The scene file contains nothing. Just this little nodetree snippet. 3dsmax 2021.1

Now I'm not shure if I should go further with the OSL workflow cause I fear of huge lags when i bring much more OSL shader branches into the slate.

Is there something that I miss to keep the performance up to a good level?

Here is a pic of my node-tree:

What I miss is an Integer-To-Float converter OSL node. Obviously it converts it automatically cause I can plug the integer node into floar inputs, but I don't know if this could cause some issues.

Just a side node:

I think the material and shader preview calculations of the slate material editor should run in the background like the processing of the liquid solver, so that live work is possible without interruptions when the slate has to render much previews.

Greetings! 🙂

[madsd · Accepted solution]

It's a fundamental issue in slate, and nothing we can do anything about in short term.

However:

Disable thumbnail preview on everything and only enable the node you need to inspect, if you want to continue to monitor your data streams in slate.

Alternatively, and this is my preferred method since OSL got introduced back in max 2019, is to completely disable thumbnail rendering in slate, and strickly rely on the viewport or Arnold realtime view.

The viewport can update, show, print the results at a far lower latency than the Slate thumbnails can, so you will speed up workflow. You can make a sphere or a plane as your review mesh if you need to do something in a scene.

This method works very well, and it has been tested for years.

[madsd · Accepted solution]

It's a fundamental issue in slate, and nothing we can do anything about in short term.

However:

Disable thumbnail preview on everything and only enable the node you need to inspect, if you want to continue to monitor your data streams in slate.

Alternatively, and this is my preferred method since OSL got introduced back in max 2019, is to completely disable thumbnail rendering in slate, and strickly rely on the viewport or Arnold realtime view.

The viewport can update, show, print the results at a far lower latency than the Slate thumbnails can, so you will speed up workflow. You can make a sphere or a plane as your review mesh if you need to do something in a scene.

This method works very well, and it has been tested for years.

[madsd · Accepted solution]

converting an int to float is done automatically of your catcher is a float.

shader o

(

float output Out = 0,

)

{

int i = 2;

float j = i*i;

Out = j;

}

[madsd · Accepted solution]

converting an int to float is done automatically of your catcher is a float.

shader o

(

float output Out = 0,

)

{

int i = 2;

float j = i*i;

Out = j;

}

[MysticLtd]

Thanks for your detailed answer! 🙂

I hope this fundamental issue, you're talking about can be fixed better sooner than later. So long it seems we have to life with it.

[MysticLtd]

Thanks for your detailed answer! 🙂

I hope this fundamental issue, you're talking about can be fixed better sooner than later. So long it seems we have to life with it.

[madsd]

Sure, they know all about it.

For now, bypassing slate thumbnails is the route to go if you aim for speed.

[madsd]

Sure, they know all about it.

For now, bypassing slate thumbnails is the route to go if you aim for speed.