Does DAZ 3D Studio 4x Pro have multicomputer render bank capibilities?
Muzeke
Posts: 2
in The Commons
I have been searching around to see if DAZ 3D Studio 4.10 Pro has a multicomputer render bank capibility. Is there a possiblity to send your DAZ sceen to a render que for later rendering or rendering on another computer? Could we send the sceen to Carrara so we can use its render-node capibilities? Thank you upfront for the advice.
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at this time, Daz does not have a render farm for the rendering of pictures.
No, but you can use Iray Server (through the Advanced tab of render Settings) or the stand-alone 3Delight (through Render to RIB or scripted rendering) if your budget runs to those licenses.
Are there any commercial rent-a-servers offering Daz Iray support? I've used them for Modo renders and really liked how fast and easy it was relative to my old and not-designed-for-CGI computer.
This is precisely what I do. My main machine is a Surface Studio with a GTX980M GPU and 4GB VRAM. Not the fastest for rendering (though I find it just fine for previews, etc.)
I bought a license last year for iRay Server (I think it was around $250?) and I send all my render jobs to my rendering rig which is an Alienware Aurora R6 with 2 Titan X Pascals. The great part is I can tweak the render settings after I've sent the scene over if I need to re-render something. That and my main machine isn't tied up. :-)
Thank you for the input. I am looking at the iRay Server option. I have a small farm that I use for Vue, Poser and Carrara. I think this might be the best way to utilize that farm for great animation frame rendering. Thanks again, I'll let you know more in a month or so when I get everything up and running. Best Wishes to all.
...so basically this only works if you have the Big Zlotys (particularly these days with the spike in GPU prices) for building your own multi GPU Iray render box and purchase an Iray licence. So then what is the purpose of the login to Daz in that tab? Makes it seem as if they were going to host a dedicated rendering service us to rent time on (which hopefully would have been less expensive than the ones currently out there).
...so Daz won't be offering a service then and it's either for one of the real expensive places that are like 75$ - 100$ a day, or hope to find about 5,000$ while emptying pockets before doing the laundry to build your own. Bugger. seems there is no inexpensive solution for knocking down Iray render times any more.
The fields are logging into whichever service you use, not for Daz.
I think the real thing here is defining 'inexpensive'.
To be clear, I'm not talking for Daz here, nor do I know what their long-term goals are for rendering services.
My server has been touted on the forums a bit, but really it's something that I've only offered to PA's for the simple fact that there is a cost involved. So in that regard, I do have some experience of the whole process. For PA's, time is money, and having the ability to offload rendering frees up their own machines to carry on doing other things. In the cases of people that do use it, it's proved handy.
While it's not designed to generate vast amounts of income, it does have to pay it's way.. there is the cost of the equipment, the maintenance, the time to admin and invoice, support, running costs (licensing and electricity, plus AC in the summer). On top of that you have issue with network bandwidth, plus some interesting nuances between DS and Iray Server. While it's good in most cases, I've seen some interesting edge cases which Nvidia have yet to address in an update. So for me, it's currently not at a stage where you'd roll it out to thousands of people, it's just not there yet.. (and not really even designed for that).
$75-100 a day is cheap, when you really think about the amount of processing power you have access too.. especially when you think that rendering is a one-at-a-time deal, its not like you can have loads of people sharing the same hardware (you could in theory, but we're talking Iray server instances.. you rent the whole machine for the time you use it).
I've done my own market research, and yes, it appears that a lot of people balk at the idea of paying the sort of going rates we're currently seeing.. but with the whole crypto-mining stuff, I can see it getting even worse.
Not sure what the answer is, but I'm personally skeptical that there'll be a time where people can jump on huge render servers for just a few dollars a day.
...a good number of us are unable to afford 75$ a day. Crikey if I could drop that much for a day's worth of rendering access, I could afford a 1070 at the inflated prices we are currently seeing.
Where Iray on the CPU is a real pain is running multiple test renders while setting up a scene, as the long render times have a serious impact on workflow. True renting time on a render server brings this down to a more reasonable level but at a price. For the Pro who has the resources, yeah it's a good deal, for the hobbyist or "starving artist" working on a frayed shoestring budget, not so much. True to keep the cost down, I could simply do all the tests on by own system and then rent time to do the final render process, but then much of the advantage of having access to a more powerful system is lost when the workflow for creating the scene (which involves multiple test renders) is still bogged down by glacial render times.
This is why as of late I have found working with Iray to have become somewhat discouraging and why I have put a number of projects on indefinite hold. Either its having to deal with the high cost of purchasing a capable GPU (thanks to all this cryptomining rubbish) or the high cost of renting extended time on an commercial server, there seems to be no middle ground.
If you're not rendering animation, you won't need to rent for a whole day. I've used Rebus for single renders (via Modo) and they cost something like $0.50 each. I'll be doing some investigation about rental systems (with Rebus, since I've had a good experience, and Ultra Render, since they've done DS testing) and if it isn't really diffiuclt to set up, I'll probably send a number of renders out. Way cheaper than a new video card.
Right, but you’re not renting a machine with a single 1070.. it’s at least (I’m assuming from what I've seen advertised) 4 x 1080ti’s/Quadros. Some of these rental servers are 8 cards... That’s upwards of 15-20k’s worth of equipment. $75 a day is a steal. It's like a renting a supercar for the weekend.. it's not 'cheap', but you're renting something expensive to purchase outright.
As also pointed out.. you can do a lot of rendering with that amount of equipment over 24 hours. It’s not going to sit there idle, it’s going to be pegged at full load for 24 hours.
I'm not say it's a going to be a good fit for everybody.. just trying to explain that costs involved may never come down into the realms where the cost is negligible.
...as I mentioned I would need it for test rendering during scene development as that is what is frustrating me with Iray. When have to wait 40 min or more each time I run a test to check lighting, surfaces, render settings etc., it becomes a real drag on the workflow. A lot of times I am unable to tell that something is off until most of the noise has cleared away (about 80% convergence). Even a single 1070 would speed that process up significantly compared to what I am dealing with now, but 750$ - 800$ for a 380$ GPU card is ridiculous. Last night I was running a proof render using a simple setting with two figures, no other props, a neutral background. along with a studio light setup that consisted of two ghost lights, one Photometric Spotlight along and an ambient HDR, After about 75 min I was finally able to notice elements there were issues with the characters' skin shaders that needed to be attended to.
With 3DL I can let the process run until it is finished as it renders so much quicker, and find myself ahead of the game.
I feel you, Kyoto. I don't have a Nvidia card and do my renders overnight. If you're doing small test renders, though, a renderfarm might still be afordable for at least some work. 3DL is a great render engine, so if that works for you, you should use it. But if you just need to do tests, you might think abou doing a couple of things: 1) hide everything you'r not testing, while checking on shaders, settings, etc., 2) use a really low render quality setting, 3) lower to maximum map size, and 4) render small images. Those things allow me to run tests that take a few minutes instead of hours.
...I still need to do tests of the full scene as well, and my experiences with even just running tests on scene components with nothing else but a photo studio backdrop (like I mentioned about last night) are frustrating. Rendering at a lower quality or lower resolution often hides imperfections that don't become apparent until rendering in high quality/full size. Even just a single character with a blank backdrop and simple studio light setup can take 25 - 35 min as I have an old first generation i7. It is just too costly on my budget to spend for even 10 - 12 hours of server time to perfect a scene.
Given what people like Kettu, Wowie and Parris are doing with 3DL they are opening up more of what that engine is really capable of. Just using IBL Master alone has shown major improvement as it produces high quality environmental lighting with out the equally frustrating long render times of UE. I can run test renders of full scenes even in large resolution format in around 10 - 15 Min.
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ETA:
On another thread concerning the Nimbix render farm service, it is mentioned that uploading can take time, a lot of time as it's also governed by your connection speed (which is usually slower than download speed by about 50%) which I would be paying for.
...and were talking about file sizes in gigabytes, not megabytes or kilobytes.