Envirenment taking forever to render.

Sorry if this question have been asked before but this is the "Problem"

I have been using daz for 7 months and one thing is still a mystery !

How to light an Iray scene without it taking forever to render.

So I load envirenment and place caractor and render , render time 8-9 hours.

I remove celing of envirenment , render time 20 mins ?!?

Shure light effects are gone but now I can render a scene before I die :)

I wonder why it takes so much longer to render when using lights rather than sunlight ?

Have tryed to remove a wall not in sight but that doesn't help.

I have only been using the deafult lights that came with daz so Im wondering if I need to buy better light sources or something to make things  work.

Basicly render time I could lve with maybe 3-4 times inside rather than outside but 10-20 times I can't :)

 

 

Comments

  • If you are looking at an enclosed space (such as a room) and the light is external (HDRI environbment, Sun/Sky, or Distant Lights) then you are relying on the light that bounces in through any openings and then bounces around inside the room to light surfaces - Iray is usually good at optimising for the former, so that it isn't wasting a lot of rays on the unseen outside of the room, but there isn't anything much it can do about the latter. If you want to speed renders you need more direct light filling in the places that are slow to converge (lose their noisiness) - one common solution is ghost lights, simple surfaces (such as a plane primitive) with the Emissive preset applied and their Cutout Opacity reduced to a very small, but not zero, value: there are sets of Ghost Lights in the store. You will to render with the Environment Mode set to one of the options including Scene for those to work, and you will probably need to adjust the Tone mapping settings too (what works for a bright day outside, the default values, won't work indoors).

  • cypher969cypher969 Posts: 26

    I have been messing with indoor lighting for closed scenes but it seems that except for spotlight, witch I think is not the best light since I have none in my home :), I can't get enough light to light up the scene.

    Put 3 linear point lights in a scene turned up to 250000 lumen and scene still looked a bit dark, and with allot of shaddows.

    So it is not uncommon to adjust tone mapping exposure value  to a setting lover than 13 for indoor rendering ? I have been messing with that setting and had some luck but seems I have to adjust it to maybe 9 or 10 to light up the seen ?

  • FirstBastionFirstBastion Posts: 7,220

    Which environment?  And what nvidia card do you have? 

     

  • cypher969cypher969 Posts: 26

    I have a gtx 1060 but it kind of goes for all environments time is about 20-30 mins no environment (1080p), HDI a beach for example, and 2-9 hours with and always seems to be dark, wanting more light.

    Adding lights help but always leave surfaces behind objects pitch black (no ambient light) and then it takes a long time to render.

    In sunlight theres some shadows but not nearly as visible as indoor

     

  • novastridernovastrider Posts: 204

    You can change how dark it interprets dark in the settings with things like Crush Blacks too. Just lower its value and the shadows become less strong for example.

  • Matt_CastleMatt_Castle Posts: 2,299
    edited June 2019
    cypher969 said:

    except for spotlight, witch I think is not the best light since I have none in my home :),

    You're taking that too literally. In digital rendering, a "spotlight" is simply a directional light, (as opposed to a point light that radiates in all directions, and distant lights that are at infinity and thus have only one direction for the entire scene) and it's not at all uncommon to have directional lights in the home. (Maybe not specifically your home, but recessed lights or spot strips aren't unusual).

    In any case, I can guarantee you don't have any linear point lights in your home - they're actually physically impossible; they're a cheat that plays the artistic licence card as an easier way to get even lighting from fewer sources.

    However, the way you need a light to work for a scene is not automatically the way it would work in real life. I will regularly use spotlights in Daz as a "sun", because it really doesn't matter if the sun is only shining in a small arc when that small arc covers the parts of the scene I want it to.

    Post edited by Matt_Castle on
  • cypher969cypher969 Posts: 26

    ok the joke about spotlights was kind af a joke :) Im all for using different light sources to make for a realistic scene but sometimes I just want there to be abient light, just light, without having to mess with light there and there and there....., I just wan't the room to be lit with minimum shadows like it is outside.

    There doesn't seem to be a way to do that in iray rendering ?

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    cypher969 said:

    ok the joke about spotlights was kind af a joke :) Im all for using different light sources to make for a realistic scene but sometimes I just want there to be abient light, just light, without having to mess with light there and there and there....., I just wan't the room to be lit with minimum shadows like it is outside.

    There doesn't seem to be a way to do that in iray rendering ?

    I'm not an IRay user, but I've seen people mentioning making the ceiling emissive to light up indoor environments with ambient light.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,552
    edited June 2019

    Yeah, I have the same issue. Wish there was a more efficient way to light interior scenes realistically. Sadly for those of us with less robust hardware cheating is the only  way.

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • Matt_CastleMatt_Castle Posts: 2,299

    Iray is an unbiased renderer, so it is not possible to have it not create shadows in any scenario that there should definitely be shadows.

    If you want minimum shadows, then you have to change the scene so there should be minimum shadows. That will either mean adding more light sources (including tricks like mentioned above - making the ceiling into a light source), or doing things like using Iray section planes to cut away parts of the room and thus effectively make it outside as far as your Iray environment is concerned; however, the latter obviously results in a very unrealistic result for inside a room.

    The only shortcut I've had any success with is AI denoisers (although I don't personally much rate the one now built into Daz), but given limitations in Iray, they take their own level of patience to get the most efficient results out of.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,714
    edited June 2019
    cypher969 said:

    ok the joke about spotlights was kind af a joke :) Im all for using different light sources to make for a realistic scene but sometimes I just want there to be abient light, just light, without having to mess with light there and there and there....., I just wan't the room to be lit with minimum shadows like it is outside.

    There doesn't seem to be a way to do that in iray rendering ?

    I'm not an IRay user, but I've seen people mentioning making the ceiling emissive to light up indoor environments with ambient light.

    Yes, I've done that here (first render, daytime). With he second one (night) I've turned the flourescent lamps into emissive lights instead which produces a quite realistic indoor light (could have been a bit brighter I guess).

    cafeteria_day.png
    1431 x 962 - 2M
    cafeteria_night.png
    1431 x 962 - 2M
    Post edited by Taoz on
  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,714

    Found the scene so I loaded it and improved the lighting and checked render time, 10 minutes on a GTX 1070 for this one.

     

    cafeteria_night_2.png
    1347 x 901 - 2M
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    Taoz said:

    Found the scene so I loaded it and improved the lighting and checked render time, 10 minutes on a GTX 1070 for this one.

     

    That's pretty darn fast, hard to beat with aweSurface, scripted pathtracing and CPU rendering:)

    I actually use the ceiling trick myself every now and then. Here's an experiment I did a couple of months back, HDRI lighting, part of the ceiling is emissive and two emissive lamps by the bed. Don't recall the render time but guessing several hours;)

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528

    But the result is astonishing, Sven Dullah, well done.

     

  • cypher969cypher969 Posts: 26
    edited June 2019

    Sven Dullah & Taoz you are geniuses laugh that was excatly what I needed.

    I know it might not be completely right as to where light sources might be but it gives me that ambient light I have been looking for.

    Haven't testet render times yet but it renders pretty fast on my laptop (CPU) so I guess it'll work on the "render farm" also yes

     

    Post edited by cypher969 on
  • novastridernovastrider Posts: 204
    edited June 2019

    Love the light on that one Sven, very natural.

    Post edited by novastrider on
  • outrider42outrider42 Posts: 3,679
    If you are doing an environment, the denoiser really can make a difference. Try it out. The denoiser only works correctly in the beta or the latest full release. If you are using 4.10 the denoiser is broken. Your situation is exactly what the denoiser was created for.
  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,714
    edited June 2019
    Taoz said:
    cypher969 said:

    ok the joke about spotlights was kind af a joke :) Im all for using different light sources to make for a realistic scene but sometimes I just want there to be abient light, just light, without having to mess with light there and there and there....., I just wan't the room to be lit with minimum shadows like it is outside.

    There doesn't seem to be a way to do that in iray rendering ?

    I'm not an IRay user, but I've seen people mentioning making the ceiling emissive to light up indoor environments with ambient light.

    Yes, I've done that here (first render, daytime). With he second one (night) I've turned the flourescent lamps into emissive lights instead which produces a quite realistic indoor light (could have been a bit brighter I guess).

    Have to correct myself, I didn't make the ceiling emissive in the first (day) render, but placed an emissive plane at the size if the ceiling right below it and made that invisible (Opacity 0.000001 or so) which won't affect the look of the ceiling. If you make the ceiling itself emissive it will probably look too bright, and if you're making it transparent it will disappear (in either case it only matters of course if you see it in the render).

    Post edited by Taoz on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    Taoz said:
    Taoz said:
    cypher969 said:

    ok the joke about spotlights was kind af a joke :) Im all for using different light sources to make for a realistic scene but sometimes I just want there to be abient light, just light, without having to mess with light there and there and there....., I just wan't the room to be lit with minimum shadows like it is outside.

    There doesn't seem to be a way to do that in iray rendering ?

    I'm not an IRay user, but I've seen people mentioning making the ceiling emissive to light up indoor environments with ambient light.

    Yes, I've done that here (first render, daytime). With he second one (night) I've turned the flourescent lamps into emissive lights instead which produces a quite realistic indoor light (could have been a bit brighter I guess).

    Have to correct myself, I didn't make the ceiling emissive in the first (day) render, but placed an emissive plane at the size if the ceiling right below it and made that invisible (Opacity 0.000001 or so) which won't affect the look of the ceiling. If you make the ceiling itself emissive it will probably look too bright, and if you're making it transparent it will disappear (in either case it only matters of course if you see it in the render).

    Aah I see! Yeah a ghostlight is probably easier to control. With aweSurface you can set the brightness (exposure) independently of the light intensity, but it's just as easy to create a ghostlight from a primitive plane. And with just one poly it will also render faster.

    @Artini and @novastrider, tks for your kind words:)

     

    cypher969 said:

    Sven Dullah & Taoz you are geniuses laugh that was excatly what I needed.

    I know it might not be completely right as to where light sources might be but it gives me that ambient light I have been looking for.

    Haven't testet render times yet but it renders pretty fast on my laptop (CPU) so I guess it'll work on the "render farm" also yes

     

    Just passing on information picked up in the forumssmiley  As Taoz pointed out, it's probably a better solution to use a large emissive plane, whatever works best;)

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