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Thanks for the info, but none of that really makes a lot of sense to me. No matter what I try I still only get a blank screen after 10 seconds.
I just want to set up a scene and render!
I'll stick with 3Delight in future, less hassle.
Unless you've got a really powerful rig I'd be surprised if Iray wasn't still producing a blank screen after 10 seconds. It usually takes between 20-30 secs for me to see anything upon rendering. Are you sure you're giving it enough time?
Try this - Start with a brand new scene. Add in a model or something simple. Then go to Render Settings -> Environment and set environment mode to 'Sun-Sky Only' and switch the draw dome option to 'On'. Create a new camera, point it at your model, then go into the paramters tab for the camera and switch off the 'Headlamp'. Viewing the scene through that camera, hit render.
If everything in the scene is coming out black then you're probably experiencing the bug I came across. If you close DS and then open it up again that problem might go away.
After 10 seconds the renderer stops! I'm left with a black image.
Just tried what you said and still nothing! After 10 seconds the renderer stops and I get a black image. Starting DS makes no difference.
Hmmm. Whats in the scene? What are you trying to render? That would be helpful to know.
When you say the image is black - is it the entire image, or can you see the outline of black shapes?
Also, just to check... In the Render Settings tab make sure at the top it says 'Engine: NVIDIA Iray'. Then, just above that, click on Advanced and see what you're using to render. If you have a good Nvidia gpu then tick both cpu and gpu options. If not, then use only cpu.
Other than that, and the possibility that maybe you're trying to render something thats completely blocking out the light from the Iray environment... I'd say try asking the admins in the Nuts 'n' Bolts forum because it could be a tech problem.
It really depends on how you're defining realism ;) I know non-answer answer. If by stylized you mean something like cell shaded, that's probably not going to happen but illustrative and painterly are definitely doable
In my renders I aim for sort of realism but not photo-realism. My ultimate goal is something that looks like a painting not a photograph. If that's what you're going for, my main suggestion is use lights not hdr and crank up the scale on on them in the geometry settings. Iray can get really nice soft lighting, which is great for non-photorealistic stuff, and something it does with much greater ease than 3delight.
Thank you btw, your question has totally inspired me to figure out a way to composite an Iray render with some generated lines and make a mucha styled render
Thanks. I know Iray was designed for something other than what I like to do, but I'm always curious. I've gotten some reasonably good results over the past few days, and will continue to tinker. Just because.
No idea why, but it is working now!
I'd just rendered Stonemason's Streets of London and thought I'd try Iray again. Removed the skydome and lights. Added the sun dial set up. Set it for Dome & scen and turned dome draw on. used the Atmosphere camera and it suddenly worked! An image!
Thanks for all your help.
Same thing happened to me. Glad to see its working for you now too. Nice render :)
Not sure if it has been mentioned but if you use current character skins without Iray materials will they work, like using Monique or Darius skins, or do we have to wait till products are released giving us that option, like with the dragon 3, m6, and v6?
If I remember correctly the background can be placed via the environment tab.
You can simply load any character skin and then apply the G2F/M6/V6 Iray preset while holding down CTRL and telling DS to ignore texture maps. That sets everything up for IRAY and will usually look decent. You might have to reset the UV to the one that matches the character you used for the textures.
Ciao
TD
If you're rendering in Iray then DS will automatically convert the materials to render correctly during the process. So yes, they should work. However, they might not look as polished as you'd like under Iray settings so most people tend to convert the materials using the Iray Uber Base, or Iray Optimized Genesis 2 MATs so that they can then tweak the surface settings.
There are cases where this won't work, such as many landscape textures and some old shaders will not convert correctly in Iray.
I don't think you need to hit CTRL for the Iray Optimized skinset any more.
I also heartily recommend using the skin as a starting point; the 'use iray uber base' advice came from early in beta, but the skin default is really darn good.
Wilmap:
What probably happened was that you had a skydome and your lighting was outside the skydome. So it finished black because none of the lighting got to your scene.
True, but if you like the character's default skin (like Ysabeau's, which is really rather good) then using ctrl + Iray Uber Base is a good way to convert them to Iray materials without losing the skin's unique look.
If all you want to use is the Iray optimized skins, then your way is also fine.
What I'm saying is that if you apply Iray optimized skins, it preserves the maps by default. Go try it.
Ah, I see what you mean. Thanks timmins. Didn't realise that had happened.
How is that different from applying the uber base then?
Edit: Oh I see - the surface settings are all different, but the look stays more or less the same. Interesting.
Iray Base doesn't set anything, it just switches it over to Iray shader.
Iray optimized skin sets a bunch of things. Most skin has translucency, cornea and eye stuff set to appropriate values and refraction, etc.
It's not perfect... it sets Top Coat to reflectivity when it ought to be fresnel, for example, but it gets you most of the way there, quickly.
So with the optimized Iray skin for G2M set it would preserve the skin settings of characters like Reptilian 6 and Minotaur 6 then? I've been having a rough go of getting Reptilian's scales to have a nice sheen to them in the surface settings, so if the shader converts the original textures decently enough I'll give it a go!
With the scales I'd probably convert to Iray base, because I don't imagine you want a lot of translucency. You might then want to put metalicity to .5 and experiment with the look.
You might also want to try CTRL-applying a car paint to the skin... some of them have really cool effects that you might like (though probably mute them down a bit).
Thats very helpful to know - thanks.
Call me crazy though, but I prefer the look of just applying the Iray uber base as opposed to using the Iray Optimized mats when it comes to Ysabeau. It leaves the skin slightly paler and, in my opinion, more realistic looking.
Do you apply it to just the skin surfaces, or all the model's surfaces (such as teeth, eyes etc)?
Has anybody else noticed that some older sets are suddenly refusing to load their textures? Deco Club, Deco Redux, Crypta Sepultus... are all lacking textures now for me.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Thanks Spooky. I think part of my problem was also an error somewhere in my install. Just tried reinstalling Deco Redux and the textures are back. Guess I'll have to reinstall certain products.
tl155180: I just select the figure and apply it to everything, then modify from that.
The reason why Ysabeau is paler with base is probably because the optimized is applying a (realistic) translucency. Now, if you prefer not to have that undertone, that's cool. You could also set the translucency color to lower saturation, or lower translucency.
Another possibility is to darken the skin to more realistic levels (diffuse tends to be all over the place -- too dark/saturated, too pale, etc) and then adjust lighting/tone control to get more balanced results.
Or, hey, if you like it with base, do that. My experience is that if you are going to have several characters in a scene, you're better served working out skin to a common standard rather than 'this looks good for now.' But singular headshots? Whatever looks good.
Mec4D had a lot of good advice about skin and such. "Realistic" diffuse map should be between 120-160 value.
@timmins.william
Cool, thats what I thought. It certainly makes the eyes and teeth a more realistic tone.
I completely agree with you on the whole working to a common standard thing. I probably should use the optimized skins. The reason I just apply the uber base and work from there is because its felt like the path of least resistance to me to get the results I wanted and I'm not very good at knowing which surface settings to tweak. Much of the stuff in these Iray threads is quite technical and might as well be in Italian for all I understand of it - especially the stuff about skins and shaders :)
They are also very taxing to wade through to find the good tips. I had the bright idea of trying to collect all of the tips and tricks together into one handy pdf document (without all the additional chat), because I used to do that for a living for a big finance company, but in the end I didn't feel like I was understanding enough of what I read to put it together.
Thanks again for the suggestions though.
You mentioned scales, so I experimented...
G2M, Exo head at ~80% and full exo body (from Creature collection), with scale pattern (CC again). Made sure Subd for the body is at 3 (so HD and other details show properly)
Applied Iray optimized skin.
Applied Chameleon car paint to skin/lips/nails, made a few tweaks.
Put bump channel into Displacement channel, reduced it to .05 range (default was too much)
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Scaly-Dude-535931555
Thats really nice. Good work.
It wasn't me who asked about scales, but I'm interested in the methodology. What do you mean by SubD? I've seen this mentioned a lot with regards to skin settings but I have no idea what it does and have never been able to find a setting for it anywhere.
SubDivision.
There are two places it comes up: mesh resolution, in General Parameters for an object. Basically concerns how divided up the mesh is. If an object has jagged edges or blocky shadows, consider upping this (though any more than 3 is likely to make your computer weep, most of the time). If an object can't go beyond 'base resolution,' then there's an option: Edit > Object > Geometry > Convert to SubD
(Save before you do this, because some objects end up looking like poop subdivided and you can't undo it)
However, under Displacement in the Iray shader is ANOTHER entry for SubD. This will subdivide the surface for the purposes of the displacement effect. It's somehow... different, though I think if the base mesh is, say, SubD 3, you don't need to set the SubD of the Displacement.
But if you want any displacement, you want at LEAST SubD 3 (mesh or displacement specific) or it'll look dumb.
In a few cases I've found it useful to push Displacement subd to 4, 5, or even 6, primarily when trying to use displacement maps to create furry/fuzzy effects. However... I'm not sure my computer can handle it well.
Each level of SubD increases number of faces by 4x, I think.
(Examples to follow)
Here are examples.
The top row is a sphere starting with Base resolution, then High Resolution SubD 1-5.
The bottom row are all base resolution spheres, with Displacement SubD going from 0-5.
As you can see, the effect on displacement is the same, but the shape of the sphere is more 'right' by applying mesh resolution. However, I THINK the mesh resolution subdivision is more 'expensive' to process.
You also need to keep an eye on this stuff because sometimes resolution SubD will switch to a lower value. I'm not sure exactly why.
SubD also COMBINES. So if you want a displacement to have the effect of subd 6 and your mesh resolution is 3, set Displacement subd to 3.