AMD ProRender is getting better at quite fast pace right now and support more and more integration where c4d, maya, max and blender seems to be most active. It would be nice to have it as an option in Houdini too since it allows for accelleration on all kind of GPU, CPUS and also works out of core. Are there any talk regardning this?
It would also be extra interesting for Mac people that have a very limited access to NVIDIA GPUS on newer computers.

I would also love to see this. I'm on a Mac, and won't be able to change that course for the time being. That said, I'd love to hear some positives along this line from our SideFX teams.

We're also running a heavy Mac fleet and potentially getting some eGPU setups, being corporate we'd like to keep them stock so running AMD eGPUs would be supported and prorender would be a welcome addition since it also plays with all our other apps too.

I'm not sure if good, but this would be really amazing to see.

I would much prefer a GPU Mantra (Solaris?. Using Redshift, one of the main issues with 3rd party renderers is the amount if small little things that don't quite work as well as they do within Houdini. Ocean shaders, terrains, etc. all require some degree of workaround. Instancing etc. is still being improved, and optimizing packed geometry is a relatively new improvement for Redshift.

A GPU Mantra which ideally runs on brand-agnostic GPU's would be IMHO a game-changer and would probably get me to drop Redshift even if the speeds wouldn't quite be as fast (but ideally somewhat comparable).

Yeah, agree completely! AMD Pro Render is quite buggy and chrashes all the time as it is while not having most of the features one expect from a renderer when using Houdnini (no volumes for starters…).
But since no one seems to be able to write GPU renderers using anything but CUDA I assume the chances are rather slim. Let's hope though!

filipw
Yeah, agree completely! AMD Pro Render is quite buggy and chrashes all the time as it is while not having most of the features one expect from a renderer when using Houdnini (no volumes for starters…).
But since no one seems to be able to write GPU renderers using anything but CUDA I assume the chances are rather slim. Let's hope though!

Cycles render and lux render uses opencl. It would be nice when mantra can get more render power with gpu but it shouldn't reduce the functionality and thats a big challenge.

It takes me wonder how the renderman team made there soulution for the upcoming version.

Blender just dropped Cycles OpenCL support for Mac (because of Apples buggy drivers) so that leaves luxrender for OpenCL… Anyone use that?
Pro Render at least have AMD behind them and has integrated it into C4D so I has some future and development is going quite fast but at the price if stability…

Let's hope there is some secret work behind the scenes so that one don't need a windows PC to get quick feedback in the viewport

I my self tried octane, redshift, eevee and amd pro render (as gpu renders). Based on my experiences I share the opinion above that amd pro render is quite buggy, redshift is the most stable but it's a biased render, octane is unbiased, pathtracing system (I was an octane fun till 0.4 release) but I left them since a few month - they promised way too much that was not fulfilled.
One of the reasons why I was an octane fun, that they promissed so called “democratizeing 3D rendering” - even if they mentioned it due to their ORC system and render tookens, well… it's still can use JUST CUDA cores, their answer due to the lack of AMD gpu utilization was: “all of our contacts left AMD” (hahah thats big) the up to 2 GPU free version is not even on the horizont (beside inside unity)but long story short, I do not see it as a healthy industry where we can buy GPUs just from one company, since redshift and octane, the two “big” gpu render engines are using just CUDA (and now some tensore cores)I'm an Nvidia user for more than 10 years, but I would like to take a walk on the red side sometimes, but I never was able to… (befor due to adobe and premier's only cuda support, now due to octane, redshift)
So THAT IS WHY I support AMD ProRender! Not becouse it's stable, no, it's incredible unstable and bugged right now, but as Filipw mentioned above, they have AMD behind them vs some other open sorce renders like LuxCore or EEVEE that offers gpu render solution not just on Nvidia chips.
Midhpase mentioned the misterious “Solaris” as Mantra's GPU render app. Well, I would celebrate it, if it would offer rendering to both sides, let it be a red, green or upcomung blue gpu.

Solaris is not a Mantra GPU - it is simply a highly customized Hydra port. USD is the future - you get a scenegraph that resolves directly on the GPU, and thus, a storage format (USD) that can be rendered directly on the GPU (Hydra).

Redshift showed what can be done on the GPU, in terms of speed and production workflow support. The fact still remains, if you look at VRay, and the over 10 years head start they had in the GPU rendering research/development sector, it should be clear, just how extremely difficult it is to author a Production GPU renderer. ChaosGroup should absolutely own this GPU rendering market, hands down.

Look, AMD creates GPU's for a living and authored their own GPU Rendering API (Radeon Rays), and their GPU Renderer is crap (ProRender) - that's how hard it is to make a Production GPU renderer. Same thing for nVidia, they created a GPU Rendering API (Optix), released it for free and someone rolled that into a Product (FurryBall) - failed miserably, and famously crashed while running live at Siggraph. nVidia created another GPU Rendering API (RTX), but, this time with hardware acceleration, but no one knows how it will perform - as everyone has to rewrite their Engines under CUDA to get access to that hardware acceleration, to even see how it performs in Production scenarios.

SideFX team is very smart - like, I dont even know who to compare them too, they are in their own league, as far as bringing innovation to market. I'd be pleasantly surprised if they could roll their own Production GPU renderer.

Daryl Dunlap
The fact still remains, if you look at VRay, and the over 10 years head start they had in the GPU rendering research/development sector, it should be clear, just how extremely difficult it is to author a Production GPU renderer. ChaosGroup should absolutely own this GPU rendering market, hands down.

I never tried VRay, but true, they can use GPUs from both side. To be honest, Arnold could play a role as well due to gpu render market, once they release their gpu render app, but I'm afraid, that they will utilize just Nvidia cards (as we were able to see it at siggraph 2018) But if it will happen, indi artists like me will be in trouble… it's not we(indi artists) who are the strongest consumers existentially, but we are the masses-I just hope that it counts. Both companies, Autodesk and ChaosGroup are not afraid of setting up surreal subscription prices.

And to be honest it's a mistery why AMD do not care much more with their own render engine…thats the field where they would be able to beat Nvidia. But god knows, maybe the render market is absolutely marginal in their eyes compaired to gaming and specially to data-centric computing era.

Daryl Dunlap
Solaris is not a Mantra GPU - it is simply a highly customized Hydra port. USD is the future - you get a scenegraph that resolves directly on the GPU, and thus, a storage format (USD) that can be rendered directly on the GPU (Hydra).

I'm absolutely uninformed due to this subject.
Last when I heard about Hydra (around 2003-4) it was a solution for hybrid gpu utilization - but maybe it's a different storry.

How it comes to SideFx's Solaris project? Probablly I should just google after it a bit, but you seems informed, can you drop a link please?