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Brings me back to my attempts to render on a Mac LCII...
A two week render.. no way. Uh Uh! That's crazy unless it's a commision project that's was bringing in big bucks. YIKES!
I think the problem was ... Terradome mesh is large, and I rather foolishly used SubD. And considering I was filtering it a lot, that was mostly unnecessary.
Final result, if anyone is curious (render shaded + outline, filtered):
...still don't have a proper grass shader like AoA created for 3DL, and both skin as well as hair require way too much "nit picky" adjustment and/or enhacement in a 2D programme to look "realistic".
Well, I guess you can make both renderengines look good and bad but rendering the same scene in iRay and 3Delight by only changing the shaders is a bit like taking a Lamaghini to plough a field. You can reach "photorealism" (ask ManRay what that means) in both render engines as the dear lads and lasses who worked on a string of Potter movies demonstrated for 3Delight and Stonemason (who has worked on films like Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, and is a bit to modest about it), proves on a regular basis here for iRay. Now this work by Belarussian Gleb Alexandrov:
http://www.creativeshrimp.com/gallery
Is among the most photorealistic, jawdropping work I know......done in Blender Cycles.....
In my experience however the workflow towards iRay is much more organic, since you can render an iRay scene in the viewport (if you have the right hardware which price/performance rate is growing each month). What I hate is that I'm forced to use NVidia hardware (Cycles can run on AMD cards of the newer variety as well) but that is trade of I was willing to make. What are the advantages of iRay to me:
- Fast feedback (card dependent)
- Easy lighting using true IBL
- Easy access to shader based lighting (as Gleb said you can't have to many light sources)
- Reasonably well intergrated workflow with awsome tools like Substance Designer and Painter......which more and more PA are using.
- Height and Normal maps integrate well in the DAZ iRay Übershader
- Metallicity and Base maps do so also....
- Roughness is a bit of strugle that needs some fiddeling to get the shaders to work the way I want
- The basic lights need to be cranked up pretty far in order to render right in iRay
- Posing using the iRay rendering in the viewport is cumbersome at best
- A pathway for direct implementation of .MDL files in a controlled way would also be benneficial......since Sub Des and Paint can spit out these files and this is a great way to intergrate them in Unity for instance (or Unreal).
Sometimes lighting falls flat (in both engines) without an apperent reason but never without a reason......the most overlooked reason in those cases is the headlight that stays on as IBL is not considered a lightsource by the DAZ iRay render engine, at least that seams to be my experience. Personally I think that DAZ 3D as it stands now is trying to please both crowds but is not doing a real good service to either of them, since iRay and 3Delight are just to different to live under the same roof or use the same viewport engine for that matter. iRay would be awsome if the DAZ 3D viewport gave a more accurate view of your scene without using iRay in the viewport (can be slow when posing and lighting). 3Delight would be awsome if the basic shaders became a it more elaborate and diverse and we wouldn't have to use the (rather complex but well documented) AoA shaders for almost everything since these shader feel a lot like being targetted to skin (I sometimes even use them for creating skin in iRay, allthough I'm not supposed to do that).
Greets, ArtisanS
Okay, but how long does the same scene take it Iray, for comparison.
I know with my I5 4670k/32GB/GTX960-4GB computer, Iray scenes take a considerably longer to render in Iray, than with 3DL (Using the Same Scene, different renderer). you could look back in this thread and see that 3DL took less than 2 minutes and Iray almost 40. Then again I don’t know how typical my setup is compared to what other’s have. Then again I am not making my living making models and such, if I was then I would spend the coin for top of the line systems and software, and it the future I might just have to do that.
I remember trying 3D on a Mac IIFx, I think the word painful could be used and I could see a Scene taking Weeks to render. Does anyone know how much time it took to took the Guys at Pixar to render the average Frame for Toy Story using RenderMan?
Are you rendering on the 960 or on the processor using iRay......memory on the 9 series videocard is rether limited (my 980 TI regularry spooks out when I use large scenes and that sport 6 Gb of RAM), but G3 is verry good at filling these in a jiffy!
Greets, ArtisanS
Haslor, a 960 has 1024 Cuda cores.....that is underpowered I use 3 times as much, and sometimes iRay takes about 6 hours to render a scene, but that is normal in complex scenes. You know the Blender movie Cosmic Landromat....some frames to 24 hours to render. A freind of mine uses commercial render farmes for rendering movies for his clients. If it's realism your after you need lots of lights during night scenes (every window, every streetlamp, every billboard and shopwindow has one or more lights.....that's okay for 3Delight but it will be expensive for a true unbiased renderer and will tent to generate noise and rendering out the noise takes itterations and to a degree some nifty noise canceling. Complex scenes mean large render times there is no way about it......and as hardware gets better our scenes will get more crowded and rendertimes will stay the same....
Greets, ArtisanS
ArtisanS
I agree it is under powered, and I do have the 4GB model it cost about 200 USD. I haven't had an issue with it yet, but most of my Iray things have been rebuilds of 3DL Scenes. Sort of testing the water before, jumping in and dropping the double the cost of the rest of my system on a set of boards. But right at the moment I dabble, but I like sorting out the problems. I've also heard there was a issue with the 10 series not working with Iray? So was I looked for a Bang for my bucks, while that got worked out.
Your statement "3Delight would be awesome if the basic shaders became a it more elaborate and diverse" is correct. After reading the 3DL doc's on line, I wonder why most of the 3DL Materials aren't equal to the Iray shaders. I think the Base Shade we have is there because it is what was needed to import the basics of Poser Materials. Sort of like converting 3DL materials to Iray, you can do it by applying the Iray Base and you can use it, but if you tweak it you get something so much better.
The one thing AoA's SSS Base shader taught us; 3DL is capable of so much more, we just need to build a better 3DL base shader or several of them for different materials and one that allows for mixing the Bases. Say AoA Grass and Rock Shader with a dirt road shader, to I have Wagon ruts in the grass.
It hasn't kept up with the advances in 3DL, so it's pretty much stuck several 3DL versions ago. Which kind of limits it's capabilities. The one nice thing...it still works.
At some point I hope to get around to making some noise shaders for 3DL, like I did for Iray.
(Lack of donations for the Iray shaders sort of dimmed my enthusiasm for it)
For something reasonable, looks like about 20, 30 minutes.
One thing I'm reminding myself is that for the process I'm doing, I can A) render in Iray for the shading pass if I feel like it, and B) I can use a smaller shading render and then blow it up, because the fine details are lost.
It was for a job, and the setup was insanely complex. There were several hundred point lights, millions of polygons, lots of glass (both transparent and translucent), shiny/reflective marble floors and more. I used a machine with 128GB of RAM to render it. This was pre-Iray although there isn't a GPU with enough VRAM to hold the thing.
Kendall
And then you noticed a figure was 'hovering' an inch off the floor.... and had to do it all over again...
EVERY TIME
Ah yes, Roseanne Roseannadanna law get you all the time. "Well, it just goes to show you, it's always something — if it ain't one thing, it's another."
WOW. you must have a killer rig Ken. Wish you could show us a tiny version of this render you did.
Well, it's nice to know that I'm not alone with this problem. While my 4.9 doesn't crash whenever I use groups, it takes exceptionally longer to load them. It takes EXTRA long to load G3F over G2F, for some reason. If I have a G3F character, clothing, and spotlights in a group and three of those in a scene -- molasses. It's to the point where I'm contemplating either moving my characters back down to G2F or not using groups or going back to 4.8, either or all of which would really mess with my workflow. -_-
--MW
As for the "rig", it is one of many in my racks and is not the "biggest" especially since I brought most of the other servers back from the co-location facility. One of the machines is capable of holding 2TB of RAM (i can only afford to put 256GB in it).
Kendall
Spot render is your friend....drop the figure to the floor then spot render to a new window around it...composite in an image editor.
I still want to hear more about this problem with 3DL and groups? Like, when you group a bunch of models, there's a bug in 3DL? Inquiring minds!
I haven't had any problem with it...especially exporting to RIB and rendering in the standalone 3DL, so I'd say if there is one, it's a Studio side problem
WOW... one of the guys from the Hive mentioned to anyone wanting a new rig that they should ebay for one with 2 processors and what ever else you can get included and then finish building it.
Seriously. I can remember when the idea of 1 GB of RAM was insane.
ArtisanS:
Now this work by Belarussian Gleb Alexandrov:
http://www.creativeshrimp.com/gallery
I can't say WOW enough. Boy am I an amateur in comparison. I'm going to watch those videos over and over...
Thanks for the link!
...128 GB of physical memory, that was part of my dream workstation project (buildable only if I hit a lotto).
Couldn't go to 256, as W7 pro tops out at 192 GB. To go beyond that limit would require an expensive W 2008 server licence (699$ at Newegg for an OEM) which can support 2 TB physical memory and up to four CPUs. For running only 2 CPUS and 256 GB of memory, just a bit of overkill price wise.
Saw a server with 512 CPU cores and 2 TB physical memory on sale at ebay UK for only 34,000£ (about 41,444 USD).
...maybe if I win the Mega Millions.
As far as lighting is concerned, I came pretty close to what Iray can do (in pre-Cycles Poser, below), but to took me a 52 light rig and blown out render times to get the damn ambient in there where I wanted it. Now I can do it with one light and an HDRI in Iray, and renders time are much better, though not astromatically better. I'd say that 3DL is absolutely fine if that is the type of image you are trying to achieve, and a lot of them are absolutely beautiful.
...same for 3DL, one AoA ambient light and then other lights as needed for the type of scene.
Again in 3DL it isn't as time consuming or difficult to get characters looking like they visually fit in with the rest of the scene. Iray skin and hair shader presets still have a ways to go to get to that same level of visual continuity with the rest of the scene without resorting to a lot of tedious manual adjustments.
I promised a Zombie Hoard and I am delivering, after a few false starts and a little head banging, really bad words and Real Life setting its bottom on my keyboard and demanding to be dealt with.
The scenes below has 1515 zombies. Okay, I know they look like Genesis 3 Females, with Lucille Zombie and Lavinia Vampire for Genesis 3 Female skins and in basic undies, but your all artists use your imagination. It is a work in progress and with a change of clothes, they will look the part.
So how about render times, I got those.
Stats first:
The base of the environment is the Original TerraDome system from RDNA. I am using Zone1, two Zone2 sections , two Zone3 and Sky-dome; at 300% of scale. The surfaces are using the original texture images, but recreated as the RDL shaders. There is no flora in this WIP, but will be adding some. Lighting is supplied by DimensionTheory's Luminance HDRIs for DAZ Studio with the intensity reduced, to get that almost dark dusky feel to the image. (I do have another set done with AoA's Lights)
The big set piece is Moonshine's Diner, with Fallen Textures, I added the inner wall but it need to have some grime thrown on it. I didn't use the Fallen set, due an issue with the Texture. (If someone could double check that, I will put in a Bug Report on it.) The roof sign lights and the neon rim ring lights, I recreated the Surfaces as Surface Lights with the Shader Mixer. All Renders are with 3Delight, at 1920x1080, on an i5 4670K with 32GB.
Scene Items :
Nodes : 5,185
Lights : 2
Cameras : 12
World-Space Modifiers : 0
Scene Geometry : Active / Base
Total Vertices : 1,872,557 / 1,327,164
Total Triangles : 14,750 / 14,750
Total Quads : 1,583,170 / 1,109,434
Total Faces : 1,597,920 / 1,124,184
Primary Selection :
Name : Genesis3Female
Label : Prine A 174cm
Class : DzFigure
Vertices : 17,418 / 17,418
Triangles : 0 / 0
Quads : 17,000 / 17,000
Total Faces : 17,000 / 17,000
You will notice that I have turned off the Sub-D, which reduces the active number faces from 68,000 to 17,000 per G3F.
Total Rendering Time for 1500 Instances Plus+ Camera 6.png: 24 minutes 9.32 seconds
Total Rendering Timefor 1500 Instances Plus+ Camera 2.png: 27 minutes 9.3 seconds
Total Rendering Time for 1500 Instances Plus+ Camera overhead.png: 20 minutes 40.82 seconds
So there you go, If anyone is interesting how I kept the Zombies out of the Diner, the Differences between UltraScatter and Instances Plus+, or want a few tips on how to deal with 1500 Zombies and all the other little things I learned along the way. I'll happily do that in a separate tread. But tell me today. Tonight at Midnight I start writing for NaNoWriMo.
But I think this proves you can do a believeable Hoard of Zombies, Irate Potesters, or Adoring fans, with 15 to 20 Primes and a hundred or some instances of each and using 3Delight Render it in time for Lunch! Which I need to get to.
*Edited to take out the table
That poor diner... always getting beat up.
Where's Alice when you need her?? (And Rain, because Rain was just cool and kick-ass!!)