DAZ Studio 3 vs DAZ Studio 4 - Any MAJOR improvements to the Renderer and Quality / Speeds of?

RonnyRulz

I have been away for quite awhile, but I haven't stopped using my old version of Carrara and playing around with beta when I can.

However, I only ever used DAZ STUDIO 3, and a lot of what it had to offer in terms of rendering... well, it was lacking. While I still use a workflow of DS3 --> Carrara, I was wondering... how much has truly changed for Daz Studio from 3 to 4? Especially the renderer.

A lot of the products I see are at most amazing, or at least nifty. The export/import process of going from DS to Carrara is often headache-inducing, and the load times of importing big objects is quite long.

However... render times with Carrara + some great store bought lighting presents is the epitome of why I chose Carrara over DS3. The high quality lighting presets of DS3, or REALITY 1.0 with DS3, had (for my images at least) worse quality AND over 10x the render speed.

What I do, is professionally render animated daz models for use in a 2D video game I am creating.
These renders are quite small, and in Carrara each frame renders in 3-5 seconds at the highest quality. Bigger frames like a Dragon were still pretty quick.

(See attachment 1 & 2)

Question 1) Does DS4 have a plugin for render farms? While a render farm isn't required, the fact Carrara has the option is very awesome. If I ever get to the point where I need faster rendering, I like the option.

Question 2) How are DS4 render speeds (with beautiful lighting presets) compared to DS3 render speeds with lighting presets? Although this is a difficulty question to answer due to tweaking settings, I was curious if the renderer has changed at all, or if the lighting presets have improved in speed. I remember UberEnvironment presets were so incredibly slow, and REALITY's speed was incredibly fast in comparison. Regular lighting or other light presets in DS3 were just low quality and didn't add that realistic look to the renders.

Question 3) How is DS4 + Newest version of REALITY render speeds, compared to DS3? I remember REALITY renders were on par (or even better) than my Carrara + bought presets with just the default created "SUN" light that was created. However, REALITY renders were quite lengthy compared to Carrara's.

Question 4) Are there any massive improvements in DS4 over DS3? (Not including Genesis, the figure, I mean the Software DS4 itself.) Plugins included, if they are huge improvements.

Question 5) Is Dynamic-Clothing better simulated in DS4? I must say that in DS3, it is not always headache-free when dealing with animations or occassional poses. No matter how much time I'd simulate or what settings I chose, often the clothing would scruntch up or go crazy, and then stay that way unable to fix it in animation.

Question 6) Part of what makes Carrara so fast is the 64 bit, multi-core rendering. Does DS4 support the same? I want to be able to run all 8 cores to render, so I can achieve the fastest render times.

I am not looking for a reason to justify switching from Carrara to DS4.
I am an old DS3 user, a current Carrara user, and someone who barely tried out DS4 when it released. I stopped following the DS software and am looking for a reason to justify trying it out again. But really, I don't want to even try out DS4 and plugins unless there are major improvements. I've heard of some minor improvements, and that isn't enough.

Mind you, I don't mess with lighting myself, or even lights for that matter. I mostly use high quality presets where I just load a scene with a light/camera setup, load a character, import a .bvh animation, and hit render.

Richard Haseltine

1) No, but you could render to RIB and send that to a 3Delight render farm (having tested it on your own machine, at lower settings or in selected frames, with the stand alone 3Delight).

2) the version of 3Delight in DS4 is noticeably faster than that in DS3, though I haven't done any benchmarking.

3) Reality doesn't render, LuxRender does. If the version of Reality you have is using the current Luxrender then there won't be any change in speed.

4) Sorry, I lose track of what came when. There are several tools that work with all content - instancing, smoothing and collision detection to reduce or eliminate poke-through, and the improved 3Delight version for example.

5) Dynamic clothing has not been markedly changed, though there have presumably been at least some bug fixes.

6) yes, DS4 uses all cores for rendering - but so did DS3.

RonnyRulz

Richard Haseltine said:

1) No, but you could render to RIB and send that to a 3Delight render farm (having tested it on your own machine, at lower settings or in selected frames, with the stand alone 3Delight).

2) the version of 3Delight in DS4 is noticeably faster than that in DS3, though I haven't done any benchmarking.

3) Reality doesn't render, LuxRender does. If the version of Reality you have is using the current Luxrender then there won't be any change in speed.

4) Sorry, I lose track of what came when. There are several tools that work with all content - instancing, smoothing and collision detection to reduce or eliminate poke-through, and the improved 3Delight version for example.

5) Dynamic clothing has not been markedly changed, though there have presumably been at least some bug fixes.

6) yes, DS4 uses all cores for rendering - but so did DS3.

Thank you :)

I might have to get DS4 and give it a try to see if I can pull off high quality renders AND fast renders. From what I've seen, DS4 can definitely produce some high quality stuff. If I can tweak settings to be quick about it, I might be able to switch over. As much as I love Carrara, it is a PITA to import/export from DS3 to Carrara for every single animation's with its own dynamic clothing or morphed clothing.