Show Us Your Iray Renders
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I like. Happy scene. Liked your last one too.
Well... Just rendered a test in Iray.... Love the look, but at 2 hrs and over 600 iterations, It isn't going to be the standard... just too much time...
LOL
His legs came out really nice. What are you using for the leg hair?
And love the cat, of course. :)
Depends on your render settings, how big is your scene, your hardware, etc. A lot of factors go into the length of a render.
Even using 3Delight, I set up large scenes to render overnight while I sleep.
That said, there are things you can do to speed up the renders. Probably first and foremost is add more lights.
You can set the height and width to twice the size you need and stop the render when it looks "good enough" then resize it in Photoshop. Someone also mentioned resizing in Irfanview. I have Irfanview and I can vouch for it doing a very decent job of resizing images.
After you've done a few renders you'll have an idea of what percentage of convergence fits your definition of "good enough" and you can set that percentage in the Rendering Converged Ratio in the Progressive Rendering settings of the Editor in the Render pane.
I'm sure others have a few tricks they'll share, too, on how to speed up renders.
LOL
His legs came out really nice. What are you using for the leg hair?
And love the cat, of course. :)
It's just Phillip Hairy. I did the usual 'convert to Iray Base, then ctrl-apply Optimized skin' and then went through and made sure displacements were on.
I'm surprised the hair came out decently... started with converting it to wax, putting bump map into displacement, then yoked back on the translucence a bit.
The cat uses LAMH cat preset set to about 400k hairs (which is about at the point my computer starts chugging). The texture started as wax, adding a clear top coat, and then tweaked and tweaked and tweaked. Gray (slightly blue) gloss, etc.
It's just Phillip Hairy. I did the usual 'convert to Iray Base, then ctrl-apply Optimized skin' and then went through and made sure displacements were on.
I'm surprised the hair came out decently... started with converting it to wax, putting bump map into displacement, then yoked back on the translucence a bit.
The cat uses LAMH cat preset set to about 400k hairs (which is about at the point my computer starts chugging). The texture started as wax, adding a clear top coat, and then tweaked and tweaked and tweaked. Gray (slightly blue) gloss, etc.
It's all about the little tweaks, isn't it? Experience counts for so much, letting you intuitively know what things to tamper with and what to leave alone. I'm looking forward to reaching that level of experience! lol
In the meantime, I'm learning so much from from people like yourself, here in the forum, from various threads on Iray.
Thank you so much for sharing.
That's very sweet, thank you!
I did some hobbyist CGI in the 90s, nothing big because you can only do so much on a Mac LCII (oy). Eventually I got depressed trying to keep up with hardware and software and seeing magazines where they'd advertise neat products (model clouds! Populate landscapes with plants and other features!) that cost thousands of dollars.
This January, frustrated by constantly failing to get really motivated by writing, frustrated by how hard it'd be to illustrate projects I was doing in my free time, I decided to take a look at what was available in the world of CGI.
I was immensely gratified to find Daz3d, and I've been feverishly trying to learn all I can, as fast as I can. :)
You're very welcome, and thanks for the compliment.
using a few normal maps ( google mcjHoney ) and bump maps with IRay materials
the IRay velvet needs some adjustments else it looks ... like that pink couch )
I'm like you, up to a point. I never got started way back when. Somewhere around here I still have the free CD-ROM disk of Ray Dream Designer 4.0... It was too much for my computer. Back in 2007, assuming my "member since" date is accurate, I downloaded DS 3.0, also for free. Again, the program was too much for my computer. So while I've always been fascinated by CGI, I hadn't done anything in CGI myself.
I got a new computer last summer, and by September I'd downloaded and installed 4.6... and this computer is capable of handling it! Yay.
I started writing fiction in 2013 and published my first book that September on Amazon. I'm slow, though, and haven't published anything since, even though I have four works in progress. One of the reasons I got interested in DAZ is the ability to create a scene for my covers that isn't going to show up on anyone else's book cover. That can and does happen when your covers are based on stock photography—even if you pay a designer to do the cover. I have two books on my device now that use the same female figure, even though the backgrounds are quite different.
So... what kind of writing are you doing? And have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo? Done right, that will give you a kick in the pants if you need it. My soon to be published next book was mostly written last Nov via NaNoWriMo...
And knowing DS will make it easy to come up with unique covers for your books. :)
I've heard of NaNoWriMo, yeah. I've actually been published in some RPG stuff (William Timmins, some stuff for Fantasy Flight Games and Sword and Sorcery Studios).
The thing is, I've realized that to some degree fiction writing doesn't really... suit me. Experimenting with the visual medium, I find I much prefer to tell stories that way.
Thus, the web comic in my sig (though it's on hiatus as I poke at Iray)
Better? :)
The 'cave' I used was unfortunately a little low poly, but eh.
Happy with the general results, though! Eager to see how much of the content I have can be integrated.
There's two patches of 'lava,' the one in view and a copy on the opposite corner, that provide all the illumination.
Here's my 5th one I did. Don't ask about #s 1-4. Small child looks a bit Adams Family, I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe he needs to get out more.
One completed and one work-in-progress Iray render
The Medieval Docks http://www.daz3d.com/medieval-docks come out pretty great when converted to Iray shaders - very minimal adjustment needed. The smoke was added quickly in post just to see how it looked. Lighting is just the dome with a sky image.
The orc is still being adjusted - I keep stopping it because I'm not happy with the skin shaders, but I have confidence I'l figure it out eventually. :) Is there a way to have a sun and an HDRI? Right now I'm just using the sun on this one but I'd love to be able to put some detail in the sky with an image too. I can always do it in post if not, just curious.
Mark
The docks render is stunning. Did the ducks come with it? lol They look so real. Tweaking the shaders can be time consuming. I have no doubt you'll get what you want, though.
Spent a few hours today after work doing this one.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Close up from last render, showing more facial detail.
*waves to a familiar face*
OK, got some reflection back in the skirt, replaced the bracers with the Gsuit2 as shin-guards as well. The staffs still need more work as well. I got the morphing color back, the mirror part is still lacking. Also I decided to try the Iray figure shader on the Wachiwi mat (not the SSS one).
IRAY rend info : CPU (8 threads): 4776 iterations, 58.459s init, 14342.393s render
Total Rendering Time: 4 hours 8.56 seconds
So I have got my skin and hair settings pretty set. This is as close as I've ever gotten to a click and render (admittedly with material and shader presets I made myself).
The skin is pretty close to the Daz shader preset, the main difference is that there are no textures in the main specular and the secondary spec is controlled by a mix of the texture and fresnel.
The lighting is also dead simple 2 of the photometric spotlights and a tiny plain blueish texture plugged into the environment map.
I'm still working on my hair preset, in particular getting the translucency to be not white and stronger on the edges, some of it may be an artifact of transmapped hair in general, but I'm hopping not.
Very pretty. I love the look of the skin on her back, the way the light reflects off of it.
This looks like a high-end professional portrait, not a render.
WOW! Very nice - and thanks for sharing your techniques. This is worth emulating!
Really beautiful render.
And thank you so much for sharing some of the details on your approach.
They help a lot. :)
I'm happy with the way this one came out. This was my test of a Geometry Shell with Iray. I used FWF Janna skin with the G2F Optimized Iray shader preset. Then I used Bellatrix at .4 opacity on a Geometry Shell on the skin and lips only. I applied the G2F Optimized Iray shader preset to that, too. On the cornea, eye reflection and tear, I tried the Thin Water Iray preset as suggested in the forum. The lighting is HDRI from the HDR Pro Sets Urban Storm and a photometric spot in Dome and Scene Environment Mode.
Slowly, but surely I am figuring out the Iray lighting. My first attempt at this scene took only about five minutes to render but was dark and needed help in Photoshop (I can't stand dark, muddy renders where you can't tell what's going on - bleh!). Then, while fiddling around I found this setting and while the render took an hour and 20 minutes, it looked WAYYYYY better straight out of the render oven.
Improve the overall light brightness in your scene by going to Render: Render Settings: Environment: Environment Intensity: and I put mine at 3.15 (7 was way overblown, but still a little interesting for glaring bright sunshine). I like this setting. And more importantly, so do the little chicks!
The dark image here was with whatever the default Environment Intensity setting was. The brighter one was with it set to 3.15.
I haven't caught up on threads since Friday so if this was resolved ignore me. :)
Is the rock set or raised above the surface? It may be light reflecting from the water and it just "looks" like it is under the rock....
KatI think you might be right that it is above the surface. This set is gorgeous but is a single piece of geometry from memory I think I did look to see if I could lower it. I may have to put the set into zbrush to move it which is a shame. Thanks for the help Kat!
As I run, yet another render, going back the past few pages to see what I missed.
ACross, Even if it was just filters or something, anything. Progressive Render mode with 3delight at least dose that (the Box pixel filter).
kaz42, and DAZ_KatBriggs, nice renders. I had green and blue stuff, and didn't think of it till it was to late to line up a render.
timmins.william, (Egyptian_idyllSm) That is a cool render with the two of them. The hair dose look good, not sure about the horns, tho I never realy found the perfect horn shader in 3delight. I found some stone shaders that was close enough, tho lack the ability to refine it into actual horn mats.
(Cat_on_lap) That is cool. I think the odd glow on the wall at the floor dose the most to make that not look quite right, the rest is excellent. LAMH is one of the things I've yet to play with, in any render engine.
(Demon_lord) Sometimes low poly is what you need, other times, adding smoothing modifiers can help allot.
Jimbow, That is a very good note about the subsurface maps. I have noticed that some figures appear to have something like that, and others don’t. There's probably a million ways to inject that map into an existing figure mat set. The render looks realy good by the way.
HeraldOfFire, nice render. I had spent some time just clicking threw the different Wachiwi mats, and trying them with that Iray G2F thing. While the figure in my last render is not Wachiwi, she is using her mats.
Elianeck, The feather skirt looks cool. Was that using the default shaders, or converted to Iray shaders? I noticed the the feathers in my render had lost some of the realism.
Totte, that is so you. A train station, and a dining hall, hmm. Sounds like a plot for something.
Casual, I didn't know about that site, and yet, more maps to sift threw to make sure I'm not wasting my time fooling around in MS Paint, lol. Yes the Pink couch is cool.
Tjohn, yes, I like it. The depth is back, and it is not as washed out either. It has clarity, color depth, and contrast, very good.
Madbat, Adams family or not, it's allot better then some of my attempts. Perhaps somewhere the mats got to much green in the conversion, or you can say it was intentional. Fits the scene well.
Excellent renders everyone.
Dumor3D, lol. And a third of 171 watts per card is still rather steep. Lol.
Skiriki, Only 125mb? I guess the View-field dose consume quite a bit of Vram. Now I was wrong about something, If I read that correct, them cores are lounging around at 1400MHz, not 540MHz. Perhaps it is not as week as I had thought it was, lol. Still the ram is such, that the cores will never get to see any of my scenes.