BlenderVxKex

Windows 7 CUDA & OptiX support for Blender 4.4.x / 4.5.x / 5.x.x with VxKex.

Description

This repository contains releases of files to replace in the official portable install of Blender to have CUDA and/or OptiX cycles working when VxKex is used.

Build environment before 5.1.0:

Visual Studio 2019, version 16.11.54
Windows SDK 10.0.22621.0
NVIDIA CUDA 10.2 / 11.8 
NVIDIA OptiX 7.3

Build environment since 5.1.0:

Visual Studio 2022, version 17.14.28
Windows SDK 10.0.22621.0
NVIDIA CUDA 11.8 
NVIDIA OptiX 7.3
Only ninja build is working on Windows 7

When you use VxKex on the official portable install of Blender it will work but cycles CUDA or OptiX will not. For CUDA you'll have an error: Failed to load CUDA kernel from '...\kernel_sm_XX.cubin.zst' (Invalid kernel image)

It will work if you replace files from blender-CUDA-OptiX-patch_x_x_x.zip but you will still need to use VxKex.

For CUDA you can only replace the file indicated in the error message.

For OptiX you need to replace other files and blender.exe because official one is checking for r535+ drivers to enable OptiX.
(OptiX 8.0 requires that you install a r535+ driver not available in Windows 7)

4.4.x / 4.5.x support is only available for compute capability between 3.0 and 8.9.
5.x.x support is only available for compute capability between 5.0 and 8.9.

more about CUDA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

OptiX cycles is not working correctly when Open Shading Language is checked.