Is it better to use more than 3p light sources?

Nice_Glasses

Hi there,

i'm new to daz. As far as I understand you have to put 3 point lights on interiors to get a better and faster rendering result. However, even though I did that it takes literally forever to render that one scene I've done with Itray. It's bin over 1 hr and the progress is still at 20%. I'm using the following render settings: Max Samples: 5000, Max Time: 0, Rendering Quality: Off, Ratio 98% and Rendering Quality: 2.0 with a Res of 1500x2000.

My Pc: i7 6700k, GTX 1080, 32 GB RAM

My question is, when I put more than 3 interior light sources will it be faster?. And should I raise the Rendering Quality to 5 or is it irrelevant for the outcome? I'm not really sure about Rendering Quality since I haven't seen any differences yet.

Thanks.

JonnyRay

Higher Rendering Quality will actually slow down the render, but give you better results. 

More light helps with most Physically Based Rendering (PBR) engines like Iray. But that doesn't necessarily mean more light sources. If you're happy with the light / shadows you have now, you can just increase the lumens value on them. Also you can change the Max Paths value from zero (unlimted) to a number. That's basically how many times a light can bounce before Iray stops tracing it. Depending on your scene, you may find that 3 or 4 bounces is enough. You'll have to play around to see what works best for your scene.

Nice_Glasses

JonnyRay said:

Higher Rendering Quality will actually slow down the render, but give you better results. 

More light helps with most Physically Based Rendering (PBR) engines like Iray. But that doesn't necessarily mean more light sources. If you're happy with the light / shadows you have now, you can just increase the lumens value on them. Also you can change the Max Paths value from zero (unlimted) to a number. That's basically how many times a light can bounce before Iray stops tracing it. Depending on your scene, you may find that 3 or 4 bounces is enough. You'll have to play around to see what works best for your scene.

Thank you Sir, I'll keep that in mind. What I really want is a high quality outcome (best as possible). I'll set the Rendering Quality to 5 then and Max Paths to 3. However, I've read that by increasing the Max Paths the quality of the outcome will suffer, is this true?.

JonnyRay

Max paths by default is set to zero, which actually means it keeps bouncing the light until there isn't enough energy left to bounce. Putting a number there limits how many times the light bounces regardless of the energy left. For some scenes, this may cause issues and you might end up with some dark areas that would have received at least a little light by bouncing a few more times. For other scenes, you may not see any difference at all in the final outcome. As with so many things in 3D there isn't a clear "Yes/No" to this. I would try it and see if it helps performance without adversely impacting the results. If you don't like the results or it doesn't save you very much time, then setting it back to zero may work better for the particular scene you're trying to render.

SpottedKitty

ayunox said:

I'll set the Rendering Quality to 5 then

Note that the effect of Rendering Quality goes up fast as you increase the value. This includes negative effects (much longer render time, higher chance of the render falling back to CPU mode or failing altogether) as well as positive (better looking render). I've seen posts here recommending values of no more than 2 or 3 for a final, high-quality render. Setting it at 5 is probably way too high.

Edit: I just re-read your first post — you said you'd set the Rendering Quality toggle switch to "Off". Try turning it back on.

Nice_Glasses

Thanks a bunch guys, I do appreciate the help!.

 

SpottedKitty said:

ayunox said:

I'll set the Rendering Quality to 5 then

Note that the effect of Rendering Quality goes up fast as you increase the value. This includes negative effects (much longer render time, higher chance of the render falling back to CPU mode or failing altogether) as well as positive (better looking render). I've seen posts here recommending values of no more than 2 or 3 for a final, high-quality render. Setting it at 5 is probably way too high.

Edit: I just re-read your first post — you said you'd set the Rendering Quality toggle switch to "Off". Try turning it back on.

Alright, I'll do that.

evilded777

FIrst off: Max Time 0 is never going to work. Are you sure you wrote that right?

I'm not sure where you came across this advice.  3 Point Lighting is a completely seperate topic from lighting intereior scenes, and doesn't actually refer to Point Lights at all.

You've gotten some good advice above.  But I think there is some basic confusion here for you as a beginner.

Here's a good simple discussion of Three Point Lighting.

Lighting interiors can be difficult.  Most people attempt to do too much.  I've said this before, I'll no doubt say it again: find the focus of your image and worry about lighting that and not the whole scene. That being said, sometimes you do need more light.  Point Lights may or may not do what you need.  There are other approaches.  I'd use Spotlights before Point Lights, or one of the emitter solutions (like Ghost Lights)..

Rendering Quality...I shudder when I hear people turning that up to numbers like 5.  2 ought to do it.  But no number is going to help if you don't have enough light. And if you don't give enough Samples and Time, you aren't giving that Render Quality enough to engage either.

 

Rendering is always a mix of aesthetic choices and technical considerations. How and what you light are the asesthetics.  How you get that to render is the technical challenge. This article I wrote might be off some help: Dark Is Not the Absence of Light

Nice_Glasses

evilded777 said:

FIrst off: Max Time 0 is never going to work. Are you sure you wrote that right?

I'm not sure where you came across this advice.  3 Point Lighting is a completely seperate topic from lighting intereior scenes, and doesn't actually refer to Point Lights at all.

You've gotten some good advice above.  But I think there is some basic confusion here for you as a beginner.

Here's a good simple discussion of Three Point Lighting.

Lighting interiors can be difficult.  Most people attempt to do too much.  I've said this before, I'll no doubt say it again: find the focus of your image and worry about lighting that and not the whole scene. That being said, sometimes you do need more light.  Point Lights may or may not do what you need.  There are other approaches.  I'd use Spotlights before Point Lights, or one of the emitter solutions (like Ghost Lights)..

Rendering Quality...I shudder when I hear people turning that up to numbers like 5.  2 ought to do it.  But no number is going to help if you don't have enough light. And if you don't give enough Samples and Time, you aren't giving that Render Quality enough to engage either.

 

Rendering is always a mix of aesthetic choices and technical considerations. How and what you light are the asesthetics.  How you get that to render is the technical challenge. This article I wrote might be off some help: Dark Is Not the Absence of Light

 

Thanks a bunch for the helpful tips! I'll keep that in mind and adjust my settings in regards that. I do very like your Gallery btw. which settings are you using if I may ask?

evilded777

ayunox said:

evilded777 said:

FIrst off: Max Time 0 is never going to work. Are you sure you wrote that right?

I'm not sure where you came across this advice.  3 Point Lighting is a completely seperate topic from lighting intereior scenes, and doesn't actually refer to Point Lights at all.

You've gotten some good advice above.  But I think there is some basic confusion here for you as a beginner.

Here's a good simple discussion of Three Point Lighting.

Lighting interiors can be difficult.  Most people attempt to do too much.  I've said this before, I'll no doubt say it again: find the focus of your image and worry about lighting that and not the whole scene. That being said, sometimes you do need more light.  Point Lights may or may not do what you need.  There are other approaches.  I'd use Spotlights before Point Lights, or one of the emitter solutions (like Ghost Lights)..

Rendering Quality...I shudder when I hear people turning that up to numbers like 5.  2 ought to do it.  But no number is going to help if you don't have enough light. And if you don't give enough Samples and Time, you aren't giving that Render Quality enough to engage either.

 

Rendering is always a mix of aesthetic choices and technical considerations. How and what you light are the asesthetics.  How you get that to render is the technical challenge. This article I wrote might be off some help: Dark Is Not the Absence of Light

 

Thanks a bunch for the helpful tips! I'll keep that in mind and adjust my settings in regards that. I do very like your Gallery btw. which settings are you using if I may ask?

90% of the time I have Render Quality turned off, and I render to 15,000-20,000 samples (depending on the complexity of the scene... a single figure, well lit could take significantly less) but I also almost always render to Canvasses and do my Tone Mapping in Photoshop, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.

Shoot for Render Quality of 2, 98% convergence.  That's a good place.  You may have to bump up time or samples to get something good.  Just remember to focus on what you want to show and worry less about the parts that are not important.

SpottedKitty

It's also important to keep in mind that every render is a juggling act, weighing one setting change against another — there's no such thing as One True Setting™ that works for everything. It is a lot to learn, but you'll soon get the hang of it.

Nice_Glasses

SpottedKitty said:

It's also important to keep in mind that every render is a juggling act, weighing one setting change against another — there's no such thing as One True Setting™ that works for everything. It is a lot to learn, but you'll soon get the hang of it.

Yes I know what you mean. I'm usually working with Blender and I started creating models for my 3d printer at first to get my own high poly art. Blender however works a bit different and has a advanced rendering funtionality compared to daz. You can even use multiple computer simultaneously to render your work, but of course you have tons of more stuff to render at the end.

 

evilded777 said:

90% of the time I have Render Quality turned off, and I render to 15,000-20,000 samples (depending on the complexity of the scene... a single figure, well lit could take significantly less) but I also almost always render to Canvasses and do my Tone Mapping in Photoshop, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.

Shoot for Render Quality of 2, 98% convergence.  That's a good place.  You may have to bump up time or samples to get something good.  Just remember to focus on what you want to show and worry less about the parts that are not important.

I've started also with 15000 at the beginning but since it took so long I had to play around a little bit. I also thought about using rather photoshop to fake envoriment instead of putting 3d stuff in there, which ultimately slows the rendering a lot no matter how many objects you use at the end.I'll stick with render quality 2 then and see how it goes with the quality. Thanks again.