Iray Versus Octane Renderer in Daz
Luv Lee
Posts: 229
[Iray Versus Octane Renderer in Daz] Been playing with both engines in Daz and finally hit on the one I like--best...mainly because of how it treats light and shadow. Now Octane is crazy fast and I really do like both though. Made me wonder what others her prefer and why????
Here's a Vimeo link to the Iray versus Octane vid I created:
VIMEO VID: https://vimeo.com/303710003
cute-jacket253STILL2019.jpg
1920 x 1080 - 480K
Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
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Comments
Did you set both render engines to produce a gamma corrected linear image as output?
The animations in your video look very impressive in both sequences.
After looking at a few seconds of that Octane footage I am pretty sure that the video was created with the OctaneRender for DAZ Studio plugin.
The "Camera Imager" settings were left unadjusted.
The greenish tint produced by a custom response curve and the vignette were set by the original OctaneRender for DAZ Studio plugin developer in 2013.
That preset was set as "default" because it best complemented the material conversion from 3Delight to Octane in 2013.
When you autoconvert materials from Iray to Octane in 2018 that greenish camera response setting may not anymore be a preferable choice.
Either use a linear / neutral response or use any of the other countless custom imager presets to create that type of "photo" or "film" look you like.
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But if you want to compare render engines a linear workflow seems recommended:
For DAZ Studio Iray:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54913/approaching-realism-in-daz-studio-and-gamma-correction-demystified/p1
For Octane:
https://docs.otoy.com/StandaloneH_STA/StandaloneManual.htm#StandaloneDEV/CameraResponseCurves.htm?
The one at the very bottom Response Curve OFF (Linear) is the setting I would recommend.
Try if Gamma 1 or Gamma 2.2 provides the look you want for each texture...
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You know what? You TOTALLY ROCK, THANK YOU! THANK YOU, it is easy to find DAZ and iClone tuts but really hard to find good ones for Octane that help me get a range of cinematic feels. Gonna play around with these suggestions. HUGS!!!!
QUICK question and not to sound like a total newb--but yeah, I am using the DAZ plug in--how would I access the controls you mention here...in the cameras tabs?
Octane tab in DAZ Studio
Rendersettings sub tab
Imager settings
Response
It is an old screenshot from v2 but should still look the same in v4.
Image Source:
https://docs.otoy.com/DAZStudioH/DAZPluginManual.htm#DAZStudio/RenderSettingsTab.htm
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"Agfacolor HDC 100 plusCD" is probably the Response setting that creates the greenish tint...
switch it to linear / neutral. Response curve off (linear)
Cannot check the pc right now to see how the response setting is called in the DAZ Studio plugin.
Thanks once again my friend--this helps tremendously Now I am never going to bed--too much play LOL.
Interesting. I'm almost tempted to try it again, but I am pretty sure I am persona non grata over there. I had such a poor experience with the previous developer of the plug in that I demanded a refund... Doubtful that they'd ever even allow me to purchase or trial it.
In answer to the title of this thread, one costs a considerable amount yearly and the other comes free with DS, LOL I love using Vray, but there is a reason (money) why I can't use it any longer.
Oh, I can imagine and don't blame you for your frustrations, I was cussing a storm myself in the beginning, LOL. Working out the bugs on the new stuff can be hair pulling on both sides, but once you find a few workarounds it can be fun and rewarding.
I know right--I was hoping some aspects of Octane would go down in price as it grew more popular but the opposite seems to be the effect. Haven't used Vray yet. Do you have any Daz to Vray pipeline stuff I can check out. Always looking to see what may be out there that could be a tad easier/faster to use.
I've seen raw (unprocessed) Octane renders---out of the box with default conversion---that look better to me (because of the way Octane handles light) than any results I've seen anyone regularly achieve with Iray (though I've seen some comparable Lux renders). Consequently, I'm purchasing a perpetual Octane license early next year. I suppose that Photoshop plus Iray can get close to this. And I'm certain, due to my huge library of Iray shaders, that I will be using several different combinations of the two. My only concern is that I've not yet seen RedSpecSSS-treated skins look as photorealistic as (the relatively few) premium Iray skins do.
Here are examples of a raw default Octane render from this forum along with some of joelegecko's promos from back when he used Octane.
Beautiful... I dunno for some reason I always get the greenish tinty look in Octane and it looks kinda flat even after I play with the materials, and esp when I try to play with HDRI and environment settings. I will play with some of the presets bove suggested to see if I can get better results.
Iray is extremely capable. But it isnt very user friendly, and doesnt yet reach production level support. Iray is also less accurate than Octane, when using the correct rendering kernels. Octane is fully unbiased wheras Iray is merely physically based, but still allows for cheats in some areas wher Octane doesnt. Octane also knows thatr users have different needs and dont always need imperical accuracy. Visually it would appear that your Octane renders are not using the correct rendering kernels.... its hard for me to imagine that this octane version of the render comparison was performed with either Pathtracing or PMC (Populated Monte-Carlo). All of that richness of color you felt was missing from the Octane version was due to the diffuse kernel skipping those color bounce calculations. In fact it looks to me like you used the mere Diffuse kernel, which isnt at all physically accurate but is astoundingly fast.
Once one knows their way around Octane, how to use the kernels etc. its pretty difficult for Iray to compare to Octane. I have begun to view it as a disservice to Iray to even compare them, its like comparing a bicycle to a motorcycle, Octane being the motorcycle.
When it comes to Octane, I always tell everyone...you will not learn how to use Octane properly by only dealing with it through the lens of a plug-in to another app. For example, I personally hate the way the various sliders are arranged in DS, and the Octane parameters in the DS version of the plug-in are presented in the same way as all the other tools in DS, which makes sense. But if you were to spend some time with the standalone version, learn the way the developers of Octane intended for these tools to be presented as originally, it makes us more appreciative of the plug-ins, but it aso tells you what to look for, things you wouldnt notice while in Ds mindset.
Keep makin' them videos!
Now can I get an amen on that one. I also wish they were able to utilize more of the card like Octane so speed can increase... this is my biggest pet peeve.
Yeah, I often do for speed and will use defaults, I need to experiment more but can't find tutorials that help me get more in-depth with the plugin version...
Can you point me to some resource that get in-depth with kernels. Honestly, if I could find a really good and faster way to render a bright scene, I'd be all about it.
I used the standalone to do VR since the plugin doesn't offer a spherical camera and I agree, it rocks, however, I do really long animated scenes and the alembic transfers a pain in the behind. That and I am super lazy so...lol
Thank you!!!! :-)
Luv, your animation work is awesome.
...so how do you get a scene from Daz into the Octane standalone without the plugin?
Aww much appreciated, thank you :-)
Been a while since I have done it. I know there are tuts that show you how to pull in objects and such. Alembic can be used for animation, but for me it crashed a lot...
Kyoto,
The first thing to remember is that there is more to 3d CG art than human figures and especially Daz human figures. I know you already know this but it still bears mentioning in my opinion from time to time. That said there is no reason in particular to need to send things from DS to the standalone, why not just fire up the standalone and work from there? Load in a car or a house or some trees, or even a static OBJ of a Daz figure. You cannot go wrong.
Also, I am absolutely certain there is a tool in the DS version of the plug-in that will export the entire scene in an Octane format likely ORBX. Simple as a single click. I believe this is a requirement for all plug-ins but I could be mistaken in that.
One reason I press this issue of spending time with the standalone with DS users in particular is because of the clunky and blocky sort of interface that DS has. This default interfacing of DS works for DS because DS has relatively few paramters and key to present to users. Octane by comparison, has a lot of tools and to make it visually associable the various sliders and tabs need to be in close proximity to one another, Those same tools in DS end up seaprated by a lot of space occupied by the bulky size of the dials and sliders themselves. I'm actually curious about this "visual windows"s type int4erface product in the store recently.
While I am the first one to admit that I hate the way Win10 has turned my computer into a smartphone, I can admit that this tabbed interface ideal could be a smart move forward for DS, as it continues to grow in capability and complexity. Anyhow that's a side issue.
LuvLee,
My opinions need to be tempered with the fact that I'm a know it all psycho who knows little to nothing and am stumbling my way around as much as the next guy/gal. Iray is well postitioned for Daz3d hobbyists because it can use all resources for rendering, both CPU and GPU. Having open CL support for Iray would make it even more flexible because AMD cards would become useful. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to figure out a way to get AMD cards to be competitive with Nvidia in terms of GPU rendering. This is one more area that Octane might outpace Iray. Still even with no open cl support, if anything I'd say that Iray was one of the best decisions I've ever seen on the part of Daz3d. My only gripe wth Iray is that it isnt user friendly, not about the rendering output. Iray is a top notch renderer. It excells at everything, once you master it, which I clearly have not.
There have even been observations made by many people that Octane has somehow better lighting than Iray. While this might be true, in theory it shouldnt be. So long as the basic rules of energy conservation are respected within the rendering engine, most effects realting to light should appear quite similar. There are very few things Octane can do that Iray cannot do, so far as I have seen. I'm an Octan fanboy for sure, but I wouoldnt discount Iray in any way. If I was forced to work with Iray only I would do so and would be happy.
If one is looking at any sort of career in CG art however, they will probably want to look at applications like Redshift, which is also biased, but like Iray those biases are typically not noticable. Even OCtane isnt getting the market of productions as Redshift.
Iray also has the advantage of the vendors doing so much of the work for the user. However the lure of Iray's point and click ease of use falls off considerably in my view when the time comes to make adjustments or edits.
As a general rule with Octane, you only need to know about the two unbiased kernels, Pathtracing and PMC. I'll explain these a little more in a moment. I wish I could say which tutorials to look into for Octane. It really depends on your willingness and time availability to delve into this new application. the first question will be "is this worth my time" to which I would answer yes, if not now then certainly in the near future. You are also going to start seeing some Octane versions of certain shaders and other content hitting the store, since there is no reliable conversion script between Iray and Otane and with the Octane 4 being free, there already being a dedicated and much improved plug-in, and all the other advantages of Octane...Octane will begin to eat away t a lot of the Iray related content we see now.
Seriously, if you can figure out SSS in Iray, then you can most certainly figure it out in Octane, in 1/3 the time and with likely better results. Getting familiar with Octane makes logical sense to me.
Pathtracing:
There's already a thread about this. but generally Pathtracing is a more robust form of raytracing, in that ray paths are much longer than with raytracing so many more bounces are factored into final color selections. but there are also other more sophisticated effects raytracing cannot produce that Pathtracing can. For all practical purposes, Pathtracing is our most accurate approach available today and likely for any time in the forseeable future. Until recently Pathtracing was good but would result in noise remaining too long requiring more processing time. This was the reason for the introduction of PMC. However with the new denoising that only works with Pathtracing, the need for PMC has dropped somewhat. But then again, denoising isnt alway the answer so for me PMC is still king.
PMC
(Populated Monte-Carlo) As we all know all of these rendering algorithms are Monte-Carlo approaches to some degree. PMC uses intellignce to discern which pixels are more likely to converge quickly versus those that will take more time. So PMC knows that areas that are well lit will resolve quickly, while shaded areas will remain noisy and require more time. So PMC fires more rays into the dim areas and fewer into the well lit areas, so that the overall image converges faster. With regular Pathtracing, the engine continues firing rays into areas that are already visually converged as well as those in need of more time, but this is clearly inefficient.Thus under most circumstances, PMC is faster than Pathtracing to create a visually acceptable image, and it does this while remaining unbiased. The folks at Otoy really are clever as heck.
Anyhow LuvLee, these minor technical considerations matter only but so much, so dont get hung up on it too much. Just keep experimenting and posting and you'll keep getting occassional trolls like me willing to discuss details.
Fun fun!
...never was into "still life" work even when I could still paint and draw.
I can understand doing so with the standalone, as you mention, for the purposes of leaning and becoming familiar Octane's controls and access to it's full set of tools (the latter which by what I read, sounds like many options are not accessible using the Daz UI) however my prime reason for all this is creating illustrations for stories (along with those that tell stories on their own) which include characters as well.
I went to their site but it only shows subscription rates for the various plugin packages, not just the standalone. I cannot afford to plop down the money up front for a full perpetual licence for the standalone on my income.
...as I understand development is working to implement the Vulkan API for supporting AMD GPUs in the Octane 4 2019 release.
Crikey a Vega Pro WX 9100 doesn't cost much more than a Pascal Titan X did and has 16 GB of HBM 2 VRAM.
Hollah! That and the learning curve but it is a good buy--let us cross our fingers that the price will eventually come down for mere mortal consumptions lol.
Yah kidding, that is why I love coming to the boards, to fuss it out with fellow creatives. We are a crazy but passionate bunch--keeps me honest, learning, growing and on my toes.
As far as the other stuff, I've used the stand alone. Agreed it is damn robust and easy to use, but for my business goals (I own a small multimedia company) I can't use it now as I need speed. The DAZ plug in does offer a way to export a scene but that can be a bit dicey, especially if the scene you wish to render is huge as are the files. Putting materials on animated alembic figures takes a while as well, with the myriads of spaghetti nodes. But as far as for VR--I haven't found anything that renders better, easier sharper or clearer than Octane mores the pity.
If Octane could get a spherical in DAZ to work, I may spend more time learning it.
Been wondering about the AMDs myself, but I am too used to Nvidias to make a change.
There's supposed to be a free version for up to 2 GPU's soon(ish?).
The OctaneRender 4 / All Access - FAQ provides all the official information:
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69646
That FAQ covers all the important questions for
- monthly subscription customers
- existing customers with a purchased (Enterprise) Licence
- OctaneRender 4 free Tier
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Been experimenting with some horns I made, and have been trying to use them in octane; is there a trick to getting materials to take as they work on the test renders, but not when showing the model as a whole. I'm using the demo version whilst I decide if I want to get the full version.
The standalone or the plug-in version?
Standalone?
... Do they behave differently with the geocraft?
What are you using to do your "test" renders .... the Direct Lighting kernel? There will be a slight difference between the Direct Lighting, and Path Tracing/PMC, and most noticable with materials that use SSS (no SSS with direct lighting).