Renders not finishing even when set at 100% convergence

Wonderland

Renders are not finishing even when set at 100% convergence. When I rendered on my CPU only computers, the renders would take forever but at the end, they were done, fully converged. Now that I have a 1080ti, they are rendering faster but not to completion. I was told that if left on 100% convergence it would keep rendering forever. Not true. It still stops early. I put it on max samples, max time, riduculously high rendering quality, but it still stops early before full convergence. What am I doing wrong? 

outrider42

Take a look at your log file and see what it says. I think it would show what parameter ends the render. There has to be something cutting it off.

Perhaps you could reset the parameters to defaults and test it? Also, look at your optimization tab, Max Light Path at '-1' means it can run infinite light paths. Any other number would limit the number of times light can bounce.

SimonJM

The log may tell you the reason for 'completion'. As an example, my last Iray render showed this:

2018-06-09 18:58:05.897 Iray INFO - module:category(IRAY:RENDER):   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Received update to 03760 iterations after 4608.453s.
2018-06-09 18:58:05.898 Iray INFO - module:category(IRAY:RENDER):   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Convergence threshold reached.
2018-06-09 18:58:53.535 Saved image: E:\DAZtmp\render\r.png
2018-06-09 18:58:53.584 Finished Rendering
2018-06-09 18:58:53.637 Total Rendering Time: 1 hours 17 minutes 37.90 seconds

 

Toonces

When mine stops early, I go to Help > Troubleshooting > View Log File and find out what made it stop. In these instances, it's usually hitting the limit I set for max samples.

I personally never set it to 100% because I also heard Iray simply runs forever approaching infinity.

The Blurst of Times

It's a big reason I am training myself in post-rendering techniques in GIMP.

There's nothing the last standard deviation of render engine sampling will do better than post-rendering enhancement, IMO.

Wonderland

The Blurst of Times said:

It's a big reason I am training myself in post-rendering techniques in GIMP.

There's nothing the last standard deviation of render engine sampling will do better than post-rendering enhancement, IMO.

True, I do a lot of postwork  anyway...

Wonderland

Toonces said:

When mine stops early, I go to Help > Troubleshooting > View Log File and find out what made it stop. In these instances, it's usually hitting the limit I set for max samples.

I personally never set it to 100% because I also heard Iray simply runs forever approaching infinity.

That's why I set it to 100 as a test. At 99.8% it ends early. It DOES NOT go on for infinity at 100%. It stops anyway. And still unfinished.

Wonderland

outrider42 said:

Take a look at your log file and see what it says. I think it would show what parameter ends the render. There has to be something cutting it off.

Perhaps you could reset the parameters to defaults and test it? Also, look at your optimization tab, Max Light Path at '-1' means it can run infinite light paths. Any other number would limit the number of times light can bounce.

Optimization has default settings.

Wonderland

Here is the log. Oops, apparently too large to upload, I had to zip it. No idea what any of it means and Tech Support took 3 weeks to even try to figure out the issue when I couldn't open DS at all and a forum member finally solved the issue. I have no faith in Tech Support anymore...

Toonces

Yeh according to the file you hit your max sample limit:

Received update to 15000 iterations after 4077.388s.

Maximum number of samples reached.

You can change it in Render Settings. Maybe you already did and perhaps 15000 is just a max of Daz Studio itself..

Wonderland

Toonces said:

Yeh according to the file you hit your max sample limit:

Received update to 15000 iterations after 4077.388s.

Maximum number of samples reached.

You can change it in Render Settings. Maybe you already did and perhaps 15000 is just a max of Daz Studio itself..

Weird. So 2400 X 1800 is too large for DS? 

Toonces

What do you have this value set to: Render Settings > Progressive Rendering > Max Samples?

If you have it set to 15000, try setting it higher.

AlmightyQUEST

The samples has to do with the number of iterations it goes through, not the size of the image. You can tell it to not set a time limit, but there is a separate settings for iteration limit, like there is a separate setting for the convergence. I don't know off hand what limit, if any, DS has.

zombietaggerung

You can turn off the limits on Number of samples if you want. If you want it to render to infinity or until you cancel it, turn off Render Quality, set Max Time to 0, and turn off the limits on Max Samples, and then crank that up to like 100,000 or something. Then it will go until either it gets to 100k samples or you cancel it.

HorusRa

.

outrider42

If grain is an issue, you try adding a bit more light. Iray tends to like that. Not only will it render faster, but it should render cleaner. You can then darken the image in post. You can do this with tone mapping. I think this might work better than trying to crank the iterations up to crazy numbers for little gain.

 

Wonderland said:

Toonces said:

Yeh according to the file you hit your max sample limit:

Received update to 15000 iterations after 4077.388s.

Maximum number of samples reached.

You can change it in Render Settings. Maybe you already did and perhaps 15000 is just a max of Daz Studio itself..

Weird. So 2400 X 1800 is too large for DS? 

Though larger images will take longer, the limit you are hitting is how many iterations have ran. It is stopping at 15,000. That's a reasonably high number. I see it took just over an hour to run 15,000. You can set the max to 30,000 or more, but like I said above, I am not sure just how much of a difference that will make if 15,000 wasn't enough. You could be rendering for another hour or more for little gain when you may be better off making the scene brighter and fixing it in post.

There is one other option, you can try doubling the size of the image, render, and then reduce the size of the image in post. The reduction in size can help get rid of grain. Some people use this down sampling technique with Iray. You don't even need to render it to 100% doing this.