How long does it take you to do a scene and render?
namtar3d
Posts: 238
I think i'm very slow at this, sometimes i spend many hours with a single scene (5, even 10).
This are my main delaying tasks:
Loading contents (I can't understand why content creators doesn't organize their products by easy categories: Lingerie, Casual Clothes, Swimsuits, Shoes, Medieval Clothes, Sci-Fi Clothes, etc. Instead of that, i need to search my jeans as: "UserThatICantRememberX3D_"
Shader Room (I love carrara shader room, but Daz contents in most cases must be adjusted, and many times they have so much material groups!)
Saving scene (OMG, sometimes i must decide if i go to sleep while carrara saves a scene, even with my ssd)
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Um . . . weeks, months even! (but then I make everything from scratch)
I'd say I have two different extremes. Many images I do just because I am in a mood (usually silly) and want to throw something out there. These images are done very quickly, couple of hours maximum, including render time. The other category is a project that I am taking more seriously, even if the subject matter is not serious. These are independent of my current mood, to the extent that I can ignore my mood. These projects take many more hours because they typically involve much more customization,or even making more elements from scratch. Hate to admit it, but I have been known to never finish these projects and just continue to accumulate the various models and other elements having been worked on.
Well, your work seems to take weeks and even months. I'm a lazy that only use created content (occasionally i make a custom prop or morph, but i don`t dare to make a full scene from scratch!)
I do a lot of kibashing. It can take weeks to find the right clothes and adjust the textures. Texturing takes the most time. Once I have a scene, I spend a lot of time adjusting lighting and shaders to get it to look the way I want. That can take 20 hours or more. It’s a hobby for me and that’s the part I enjoy the most.
it's always a question of how much i need for an image, right now i work a lot with HDRI images why i often save to use a 3D interior or exterior design, that also saves on render time and saving time.
Than i am thinking about what kind of image i want to create, if i want to make a full or half body render i also use clothes but if i just want to render a face i even don't give the character some clothes, that also saves time in saving the scene and rendering.
Actually i use the normal Daz figures and morph them the way i like them, that's taking about 30 minutes, the shader room was one thing that took always the most time but after i saved all my texture shaders for Genesis, V4, Genesis 2 it isn't much to do anymore around the shaders, just swapping the texture images, playing a bit with shine, highlight and reflection, sometimes also with the bump but that's all i do and it's always a question of the HDRI lightning which settings i use.
Dynamic hair took me about 60 - 120 minutes, the question is always what kind of hairstyle i am planning to do.
Perhaps I can help with some of this. Yes, I might spend a bit of time on scenes, but it's not the arduous task that you're going through. Mine is of absolute enjoyment.
The biggest flag to come up from the above statements is the Material groups thing.
Make sure that, as you bring content into the scene that you Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders
As soon as you delete content from the scene, Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Remove Unused Object and then Remove Unused Shaders
This will help immensely in keeping the Save file size down, but wil also keep the amount of shaders to edit at a more manageable range. Yes, a lot of the environment and vehicle content I use will still have many different shaders. I'll take notice of why there are so many. Sometimes there are two or more very similar shaders and once the Spec maps are loaded into Highlight, the need for more than one disappears - so I copy the edited shader and paste it into the other similar ones, and then Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders.
That makes my initial scene startup take a little bit of time, but I get on a roll and it can go along fairly quickly. And if it turns out that I indeed do need a separate shader for one of those, I can quickly recognize that and make the new shader and assign it to the proper zone.
You'll also notice Carrara becomes more responsive as a scene is cleaned up in this manner.
So once I get a basic main environment scene completed, I save the optimized scene to my browser. Then I'll work on vehicles, characters, and individual elements each separately in an otherwise blank, empty scene. I try to always remian somewhat consistent with my lighting so the my shaders all work together in the end, but by optimizing and saving all of these things separately, I get a growing catalog of items arranged in my browser the way I want them organized, as you've mentioned.
I've been doing this method for years - since 2010/2011, something like that - and so now when I'm looking for an outfit I made for my SciFi crewmen, I go to where I saved my SciFi Crew, and open the clothing folder within and chose one of my optimized costumes. If I don't have the right one, at least I have an optimized version of the costume, and now all I have to do is to swap out some texture files.
That's why a lot of the images I show are only an empty scene - because that's all I was working on
This one is now also saved with the SciFi crew folks and the Marcoor Hunter kitbash ship (Larger one in foreground) but the main scene file doesn't have either of those in it. Since the fighter ships are all just one which has been replicated, I keep those in the main scene file.
Last Christmas season, there was a huge sale going on and I ended up buying all of Inception8's Xion series SciFi buildings for populating vast cities.
To get them best ready for use as a scene-builder, rather than saving them all each as individual buildings, I loaded all from all three sets into one scene, sprawling them out as I went. No particular placement other than most of the tallest or largest ones further away from the center of the scene.
After all were loaded in, I consolidated the duplicate shaders and noticed a whole lot of near identical shaders, which would be common for something like this. They all used the same maps, but slight changes in any aspect of them will remove their being identical, so remain separate.
I just went through and made all near identical shader identical. This still didn't consolidate entirely so I had to manually open the models in the texture room and assign the one shader to them. This took some time, I tell you!
But in the end, I have a single file with all of the Project Xion buildings - all optimized. Since these are Props instead of rigged figures, I can open this file, copy the elements I want, and paste them into a different scene. Further, I can use this master file to assemble my own group - arrange them how I like and then group them, and then copy them over to the new scene. Then I just don't save the master file when I close it. Sometimes, however, I might save the master file if I like the new arrangement better for future use.
The above image is more than just the master file. The master file has no volumetric clouds or anything like that.
For the above image, I made the whole master file into a group, zoomed way out and moved the group out to the horizon. Insert a new target help object and parent the group to it, so I have a pivot point at scene coordinates 0,0,0
Duplicate that and rotate it a bit, then continue duplicating until these massive blocks of buildings surround the entire scene.
That saves a LOT of time right there.
I drag all of the grouped blocks out of their target helper objects. Using Shift-Click, I select each of the groups and simply drag them onto the "Scene" at the top of the tray to unparent them. Then I just delete all but one of the target helpers (always nice to keep one around when the scene is so far away from the camera!)
So next, since I've just saved so much time, I manually adjust each group's rotation and position within the scene. Some I might bring in a little closer, some farther - but I never want to bring any very close to the camera for this.
Using an infinite plane, realistic sky and some clouds, I dropped in a spherical camera and shot an 8,000 x 4,000 render and I can now use that distant city render as a background map. Using that, I can get away with dropping in just a few elements to shoot a full render.
So that image above is actually the Master file using the newly shot Background map! ;)
In that same sale I got Project Xion from, I also got Tower City, which is also a bunch of really cool prop object that can be copied, pasted, duplicated, etc., So I saved them into a master file of the same sort. Here is a bland shot of the master file, which uses the Base system of my Badlands kit for lighting and atmosphere
and here is the same scene after dragging a few of the buildings around a bit
My most-used workflow:
Build a scene - save it to the browser
Bring in another element that was already saved in such a way, from the browser
Maybe some more
And bring that all into Howler for a final vfx and color grading
LOL! Is that all? I often spend 5-10 days on a scene.
I think that everyone wants to organize things differently, so you will never be satisfied unless you do it yourself. Personally, I like pictures, so I have a master file which contains dozens of categorized subfolders, each containing pictures of all my the products. For example, if I want a swimsuit for V3, I look in the V3 clothing folder. Keeping these folders updated is the main challenge.
If you like shaders perfect out of the box, there is a product made for you - Daz Studio.
I usually like the process of adjusting shaders, and the incredible flexibility that comes with it. But if you are in a hurry, I know what you mean.
Haven't had this issue so much. Most of my scenes save in a minute or two. Then again, I rarely use Genesis or higher, so that may explain it.
BTW - I sent you a PM.
I modeling everything in Hexagon. So it takes me weeks probably.
For a single image I usually give myself about 6-7 hours total to work on it, usually split across two days, but sometimes they come together more quickly and sometimes I can't stop fiddling with it and it might take much more. I like to model as much of the scene as I feel like I reasonably can in that time, but do use content, especially for people/characters and their clothing.
I'd say that for my average Carrara image, my time-spent goes something like:
For scenes or characters that I intend to reuse for several images I will spend a lot more time on the modeling, since for most scenes I just tend to model what I know is going to be visible to, or affect what is visible to, the camera.
Nice layout/rundown!
After Carrara, my favorite 3D program is Vue from E-on Software, mostly due to the great natural environments, but also to some great models that are Vue only. One of the best vendors has been Peter Pohle, who explains how he made a spectacular steampunk image (thumb below). Since he was doing the modelling, I'm guessing it took weeks if not months. Its odd that Cornucopia3D just issued this in their newsletter, since all of his products seem to have disappeared from the site.
https://secure.cornucopia3d.com/classroom/article.php?id=241&from=makingofs
I used his Helicopter and Submarine models in this 5 minute animation "Dreamscapes":
I used his Submarine and a Steampunk Flying Boat model in this 6 minute animation "Galveston Rendezvous"
Depends on the idea I guess..
I can spend hours on modeling something then ditch it and try it again... some models I have worked on for several years and are still haven't finished..
when it comes to setting up a scene and rendering though, if I have all items available it can take me anywhere between 5 minutes and five hours... anything over five hours I get bored with.
This render I did the other day, setup and render took no more than 15 minutes for a topic in the Commons about having a field full of flowers, opportune time to push Carrara I thought so I knocked it up and posted it just to show how easy it is in Carrara...
some take minutes others all day and Carrara crashes and I lose everything varies a lot
Excellent points.
In the examples I've posted above, I mentioned my techniques because I often don't get a lot of time. So I try to weight what I'm going to do against how long (more like... short) I have, and get to work. I try to get what I'm working on at the time mostly, if not all, finished in the time that I have. So I've adopted those methods to be able to do that.
rendered this scene for 11 straight days
this took a weekend
this was an overnighter
i got an i910850 with 10 cores at 3,60 gigahz and 64 gigs ram with a gtx 970 4 gigs ram and daz studio takes more than half an our to make a single render is that normal? is there a way to speed up the process? i'm building a new visual novel and it will take me forever to build the entire vn if the rendering process is so slow and painfull!