Iray in Mac and Windows

LennyElf

I'm a complete noob in DazStudio, but I use Poser since version 5.

I had typed a very fancy text, but the forum ate it and I'm trying to replicate it here: I have two computers, and I want to use only one, preferably the Windows Dell, since my MAc Mini does not see my external Poser Runtime correctly, all of that because I'm loving Iray rendered images.

In the Windows Dell, I have all my runtimes from Poser working (various Gigabytes of many coolstuf), and in Mac Mini, Daz Studio working decntly, but with almost nothing in the runtime. I want to render in my Dell as good as I render in the Mac Mini, and I'm looking for tips to do that such as doubleing time, lowering some settings in the Render Editor. Anything that can make my Dell render a little better will be considered. Below, an exemple of test rendering in default settings of Iray, they are almost in the same position(did it by eye, looking from a monitor to another, I know I could have saved and opened separetedly, but I did the hard way...), but are the same character, same hair, same light and same enviroment. To be fair, in this specific render there was not much problem, but I made another that rendered fot 7 hours in the Dell, and still had noise, super gritty noise. While in less than 2hours in Mac I made a very detailed portrait.

Thing to be noted in the comparision image: The sampling of the shine in the lips is different, and in the Mac image, the render looks smoother (Need also trained eyes to see the diferences too, my sigh is alredy saturated of that). Also, as a reference, the render in Dell ended because the max time ended it (was set default to 7200), and the render in Mac ended because it completed enough samples to seem proper. Fair to be also reminded, Dell started itarations much earlier than Mac (I started the render at the same time, but the image started appearing first in Dell).

I KNOW that my Dell is much older and defased than my Mac, but I prefer making renders in it and the post production in Mac Mini, also my Mac does not have enough space to comport all my Poser runtimes internally and, as stated before, for a diabolical reason it does not read my external runtime properly (I'm not even debating this, it was a hell of a week when I discovered that and tryied, by all means, to make it work... But, if you have a neat suggestion I'm also open to this matter too).

I'm looking for tips to improve the render in the older hardware: Should I turn off the limits and let it render ad eternum? Should I improve quality setting? Anything in the render editor panel that  can do to make it as good as the render done in the Mac?

Sorry if the text got a little confuse, the one I typed before was so much better...

fastbike1

Consider buying an Nvidia GTX960 (at a minimum) graphics card. Probably your cheapest alternative.

LennyElf

fastbike1 said:

Consider buying an Nvidia GTX960 (at a minimum) graphics card. Probably your cheapest alternative.

Unfortunatelly that's not on the table right now, besides, as stated, I own a laptop not a desktop, so I can't upgrade to this model.

fastbike1

Then your easiest bet is to up the time and max samples in your Iray settings. If the Mac image looks smoother on the Mac screen, then a different monitor for the Dell may help. FWIW you didn't state it was a laptop. Some of us are not conversant in the various Dell models.

LennyElf

fastbike1 said:

Then your easiest bet is to up the time and max samples in your Iray settings. If the Mac image looks smoother on the Mac screen, then a different monitor for the Dell may help. FWIW you didn't state it was a laptop. Some of us are not conversant in the various Dell models.

Argh sorry, I stated in the phantom post that disapeared. I'm doing a experiment right now I set up to 24hrs (86400 secs) and the samples are at 22000, let's see how this is going, I hope it reaches the samples before it reaches the Max Time.

LennyElf

At least, Mac users can help me to make my external runtime properly visible?

fixmypcmike

LennyElf said:

At least, Mac users can help me to make my external runtime properly visible?

Is it on a USB or network drive?

Totte

LennyElf said:

At least, Mac users can help me to make my external runtime properly visible?

It all depends on where it is, but as long as it is "Poser Only" stuff and not content using the Smart Content Database, it should be fairly simple to map it, but, and this is a huge big but with a flashing warning label on it. Remotly mounted content will cause problems if one of these conditions occurs:

- The MacMini goes to sleep and comes back up.
- The connection to the remote volume is disturbed and then comes back.

The Techie explaination:

What will happen is that the logical mountpoint will change but it will be transparent to you as a user (because finder plays some tricks), but it will not be transparent to Daz Studio or any other software mapping direct physical paths.

The non-Techie explaination:

When the MacMini realizes it has temporarly lost connection to the remotly mounted drive, it will put it in offline mode, and when it comes back, it will mount it again, but with another name. Say you mounted a drive called "My Content" remotely, and configred DAZ Studio to look for it at /Volumes/My Content (/Volumes is where all mounted volumes are mounted in Mac OS X)Then then the connection to the drive is lost (MacMini goes to sleep and cmes up again), and now it's restored, but it will now be  /Volumes/My Content 1, but  /Volumes/My Content will still be there, empty. Finder handles this, but most programs doesn't, so suddenly DAZ Studio won't find the content even though you as a user sees it in Finder. By looking in /Volumes (using Terminal.app) you will see this though.