I use Mantra, I'm a bit confused about Karma. I have a bunch of useful vex shaders. As I understand it, they'll only work with Karma CPU. Will Karma XPU ever work with Vex shaders? If not, would the solution be to bake out all textures out of Karma CPU (diffuse, displacement, AOV etc) then combine them with MaterialX and render in Karma XPU? This could work for some things, but not for things like SSS, some unusual reflection/refraction etc.

element33
Will Karma XPU ever work with Vex shaders?

Nope, VEX is slow and won't ever be GPU accelerated.

There isn't really any solution to every situation. Baking textures could work, but would never be one to one. Custom shading and lighting will never be possible with XPU as you give up low level shading access for speed.

Sorry to say, but I think Mantra is here to stay for true wizardry.

Well, that's sad.

When SESI first unveiled Karma (CPU) I was like... finally! A rewrite of this beautiful, flexible, but old-code render engine! 3Delight had a complete rewrite a few years ago, and it's really fast! I was expecting a significant improvement in terms of speed. But we got pretty much the same thing plus USD-capabilities and some slight limitations (I'm talkin about CPU).

jsmack
Mantra is here to stay for true wizardry

Mantra has stopped it's development and will be phased out by 2026 if I remember correctly.

EDIT> I mean, yeah, I'd understand the limiting of VEX shading if the speed of the render had increased drastically... But I don't see it. And not only me.

EDIT> I mostly friends with other freelancers, and absolutely nobody use Mantra (and Karma CPU) for anything. It's ether Arnold or Redshift, with 2 V-ray guys. Mantra being used in my country only by studio guys with render farms. And it won't change.