Digital Art Zone

Anybody have any experience with using 3Delight to render on multi core computers? From what I can tell the 3Delight renderer that comes free with the Daz4 program only uses 1 core.  I’ve got a first generation MacPro dual processor 8core machine running OSX 10.6.8. The renders I’m making take forever. Would purchasing a 3Dwlight multi core rendering engine speed things up? I looked at the 3Delight website and I didn’t see that it has much support for its users. B4 I spend hundreds on the 3Delight I thought I should get some reviews from Daz4 owners using multicore 3Delight render engines to render their Daz4 scenes. You can see the renders I’ve done so far with the free version of Daz4 using the one free 3Delight render engine at the following links. These renders take a long time and since I’m probably going to have about 1200 of them in my upcoming graphic novel NOCTURNES I need to speed things up a lot. Check out the links here:

Nocturnes by AVU4U
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/519/

Club Street in the graphic novel NOCTURNES
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/520/

Z Nightclub interiors in the graphic novel NOCTURNES
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/524/

Here are some renders of the mighty Z Nightclub and Club Street in my upcoming graphic novel NOCTURNES. The work that I have put into these renders taught me how to do UV maps in Lightwave and then export them to Daz4. Doing this is not easy. I’ve been working on the Z Nightclub for over 3 months and its almost finished. Hopefully I’ll get it done next week and then I can begin to build the interior of the BANK Nightclub which is across the street from the Z Nightclub. If everything goes well I hope to have the graphic novel NOCTURNES done in about a year from now.
I have a couple of more interiors to finish once the BANK is done and then I can begin to design the characters. The illustrations in my graphic novel Nocturnes will probably exceed 1200 with a projected page count of about 300. I’ve never done anything like this so wish me luck. Daz4 rules.

The 3delight in DAZ Studio should use all available cores to render.

The 3Delight version included in the DAZ Studio install will use all available cores.  The standalone version will use a maximum of 2 cores unless a commercial license is purchased.

Kendall

Make sure your using the 64 bit version, on a 64 bit platform, to get all the cores available.  On my Win7 64 bit machine, I get all 8 cores.

You can also allocate the number of cores you want DS to use if it is bogging your system down.

Open your Task Manager, select processes, scroll down to DAZStudio.exe, Right-click on it and select Set Affinity, then uncheck till you get the number of cores you want allocated to it.

You will need to do this every time you run DS unless you write a script to do it for you.

On this topic, are there other renderers that can be used in DAZ Studio 4? I’m not a fan of how the renders look almost exactly like screenshots of the preview pane. Maybe something like lux renderer?

Paradigm67 - 28 May 2012 12:11 PM

On this topic, are there other renderers that can be used in DAZ Studio 4? I’m not a fan of how the renders look almost exactly like screenshots of the preview pane. Maybe something like lux renderer?

If you render to “RIB” from the render settings tab, you can import the data into another Renderman compliant renderer.  There may be issues with pre-compiled shaders and paths for assets.  This can somewhat be mitigated by checking the “Collect and Localize” option.

Otherwise, the Reality plugin will let you render using Luxrender, and there are plugin that allows rendering in Octane and Blender’s “Cycles” Renderer.

Kendall

Paradigm67 - 28 May 2012 12:11 PM

On this topic, are there other renderers that can be used in DAZ Studio 4? I’m not a fan of how the renders look almost exactly like screenshots of the preview pane. Maybe something like lux renderer?

Not sure if this applies to you, but are you sure you are using “Software Rendering” (and not OpenGL)? Also light / material setup plays a large role on how the render looks like.

Either way, when I am using the 3Delight render engine, the render does not look like a screenshot of the preview pane at all, not even close.

Frank0314 - 28 May 2012 09:34 AM

You can also allocate the number of cores you want DS to use if it is bogging your system down.

Open your Task Manager, select processes, scroll down to DAZStudio.exe, Right-click on it and select Set Affinity, then uncheck till you get the number of cores you want allocated to it.

You will need to do this every time you run DS unless you write a script to do it for you.

Here is the link for both Windows and Mac (which I use) that shows how to set the computer up to use all available cores.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/dazcms_check

Renpatsu - 28 May 2012 01:14 PM

Paradigm67 - 28 May 2012 12:11 PM

On this topic, are there other renderers that can be used in DAZ Studio 4? I’m not a fan of how the renders look almost exactly like screenshots of the preview pane. Maybe something like lux renderer?

Not sure if this applies to you, but are you sure you are using “Software Rendering” (and not OpenGL)? Also light / material setup plays a large role on how the render looks like.

Either way, when I am using the 3Delight render engine, the render does not look like a screenshot of the preview pane at all, not even close.

Ah that must be it, being new to DS I haven’t played with lighting or shaders yet, and most materials I use are low res