Tips & Tricks for Iray for newbies......

DAZ_Spooky

SnowSultan said:

Two quick questions about lighting if you don't mind:

* I added a Photometric Spotlight to a simple scene and it appears to cast almost no light at all with the default values. Even at 200% Intensity, the illumination is barely visible.

* Of the four Environment Modes, do any offer the option of Scene lights -and- Sun/Sky?

Thanks in advance.

Don't use the intensity, leave that at default 100. Set the lumens/watts etc. for your light intensity.

Environment mode Dome and Scene will allow both sun sky, and scene lights. The Dome is sun/sky unless you change it, like by adding an HDRI.

DAZ_Spooky

HeraldOfFire said:

What's the difference between a photometric spotlight and a regular one?

Real world settings. (It behaves like a real spotlight.)

DAZ_Spooky

timmins.william said:

I assume Iray won't work with AoA's atmospheric camera. Are there any ways to do godrays with Iray?

There is an additional way to do Godrays. Use an object, with the appropiate shader on it. and emission. (Note that there is a bug NVIDIA is working on where if multiple transmapped planes intersect they could cause a crash, so Stage FX may not, yet, be correct for this operation. :)

Oso3D

DAZ_Spooky said:

timmins.william said:

I assume Iray won't work with AoA's atmospheric camera. Are there any ways to do godrays with Iray?

There is an additional way to do Godrays. Use an object, with the appropiate shader on it. and emission. (Note that there is a bug NVIDIA is working on where if multiple transmapped planes intersect they could cause a crash, so Stage FX may not, yet, be correct for this operation. :)

Can you expand on that? I've tried putting image maps in Emission Color and it doesn't seem to do anything.
Or do you mean use object transparencies with a point source or object within it?

Is there a rundown somewhere of what emission shader parameters do?

Edit:
Aaaah. Luminance much too low.

Is there an easy way to suppress the ambient universal lighting? It's making it difficult to get the effects I want.

DAZ_Spooky

timmins.william said:

DAZ_Spooky said:

timmins.william said:

I assume Iray won't work with AoA's atmospheric camera. Are there any ways to do godrays with Iray?

There is an additional way to do Godrays. Use an object, with the appropiate shader on it. and emission. (Note that there is a bug NVIDIA is working on where if multiple transmapped planes intersect they could cause a crash, so Stage FX may not, yet, be correct for this operation. :)

Can you expand on that? I've tried putting image maps in Emission Color and it doesn't seem to do anything.
Or do you mean use object transparencies with a point source or object within it?

Is there a rundown somewhere of what emission shader parameters do?

Putting the diffuse Map into the Emission color will give you both color and light. (though the light color is more controlled by the temperature than the color in the diffuse map. Note the Monitor screen on the wall. (Though the lighting reflecting off the screen blows it out a little, this was an early experiment and I am afraid my lights were a little too bright, or my screen surface too reflective. LOL )

Oso3D

Aaah... you need to put a light in to suppress default lighting. Ok, whew.

Still curious how to get the ray effect, unless Spooky just meant 'you can get a varied light source'

mjc1016

DAZ_Spooky said:

(Though the lighting reflecting off the screen blows it out a little, this was an early experiment and I am afraid my lights were a little too bright, or my screen surface too reflective. LOL )

Both...remember, currently most screens have some sort of anti-glare property to them...whether it's a coating or otherwise, it's there...so they aren't really all that reflective.

Oso3D

Any suggestions on how to simulate effects like subsurface scattering?

Oh hey. Iray Uber. Duh.

kyoto kid

...OK broke down and installed it anyway.first to see what improvements were made to 3DL. Figured I'd also give the CPU mode of Iray a shot as well.

Rendering a copy of an old scene (for comparison purposes) and it is already looking pretty good at 72 iterations (about 7m 50s progress monitor only at 1% though). Skin tones (used SSS),and cloth look very good as do most 'hard"surfaces like concrete stone and brick. Shadows that are at some distance from the casting object though do look too diffuse.

Unfortunately the scene is supposed to be a summer mid afternoon (about 13:00 hrs) summer scene but the only sun angle I can get is more like 18:00hrs). I can rotate the sun along the equatorial but cannot seem to figure out how to adjust it's azimuth.

I already understand that.I need to turn some objects into light sources (have worked with Reality/Lux before) so not bothered by that right now. However, all reflective/highly polished surfaces went "dead" as I had to remove the skydome that the original scene had so the Sun would not be blocked.

For the texture on a roadway in the scene I used the Shades of Life Urban Construct shaders. Apparently Iray isn't able to read the settings I had and so it is rendering at the default tile size of 1 : 1 (V :H) instead of 25 :15.. Can this be adjusted for Iray (I was able to do so in Reality) or am I out of luck?

CPU temperatures are about what I see with Luxrender (low -mid 60s C), definitely not as bad as with 3DLwhere I was nudging 70C (and that was with AoA's Advanced Lights, not UE).

Letting the process run it's course (now up to 34m 30s - 67% complete). Did a 3DL:render of the same scene at the same resolution (1,200 x 900) earlier which only took a bit over 14 min to complete. Seems more on par with rendering a scene that uses UE and Uberlights.

Ghosty12

DAZ_KatBriggs said:

DAZ_KatBriggs said:

ghosty12 said:

DAZ_KatBriggs said:

ghosty12 said:

DAZ_KatBriggs said:

Ok, here are a couple things you can do with lighting.

1. Turn any surface into an Emitter. It will cast light. No more fake "ambient". So real light bulbs. :) Or take a plane/sphere/etc and turn it into an areal light....

To do this, select the surface and apply the Emitter shader you got with the Iray content. (Hold the CTRL key if you want to keep any maps for the surface)

2. You can use a skydome that ships with a product. I while it is "better" to use an environment HDRI, you can still find a use for the cool domes you may have laying around.

Follow the steps above and turn it to an emitter. (use CTRL to keep the texture map) You will need to adjust the Luminance value way up....like 50K. (Shader pane > Emitter)

This little unicorn's horn is glowing and emitting light. :) The horn in the dark is the render without an environment so you can see the result of the emission property.

Kat

Thank you awesomely for the info I wondered where the emitter switch was hiding.. :)
One last thing where is the Shader Pane > Emitter as can't find it to change the luminance.. :(

Here's a screenshot for you. :)

Kat

Cool thank you for the info and pic, another one of those sneaky hiding settings.. :) lol
But have come across another strange issue with the emitter setting as this pic shows the dome of the light I have set as the emitter but the side facing the camera is dark when it should be light.. Not sure why probably missing something just not sure what as never came across this with using Reality / Luxrender..

Any help please would be greatly appreciated thank you.. :)

Which lamp is that? I'll load it up and see what settings need to be on what surface. :)

Kat

I have the whole dome lighting here. Steps:

Load lamp
Apply emission shader to lamp dome
Create camera and switch to that camera
Turn off headlamp on camera parameters
Turn up Luminance value
Render

Kat

Thank you for the info and tried what you said to do and well still not working for me, ah well..

Dumor3D

Kyoto Kid said:

...OK broke down and installed it anyway.first to see what improvements were made to 3DL. Figured I'd also give the CPU mode of Iray a shot as well.

Rendering a copy of an old scene (for comparison purposes) and it is already looking pretty good at 72 iterations (about 7m 50s progress monitor only at 1% though). Skin tones (used SSS),and cloth look very good as do most 'hard"surfaces like concrete stone and brick. Shadows that are at some distance from the casting object though do look too diffuse.

Unfortunately the scene is supposed to be a summer mid afternoon (about 13:00 hrs) summer scene but the only sun angle I can get is more like 18:00hrs). I can rotate the sun along the equatorial but cannot seem to figure out how to adjust it's azimuth.

I already understand that.I need to turn some objects into light sources (have worked with Reality/Lux before) so not bothered by that right now. However, all reflective/highly polished surfaces went "dead" as I had to remove the skydome that the original scene had so the Sun would not be blocked.

For the texture on a roadway in the scene I used the Shades of Life Urban Construct shaders. Apparently Iray isn't able to read the settings I had and so it is rendering at the default tile size of 1 : 1 (V :H) instead of 25 :15.. Can this be adjusted for Iray (I was able to do so in Reality) or am I out of luck?

CPU temperatures are about what I see with Luxrender (low -mid 60s C), definitely not as bad as with 3DLwhere I was nudging 70C (and that was with AoA's Advanced Lights, not UE).

Letting the process run it's course (now up to 34m 30s - 67% complete). Did a 3DL:render of the same scene at the same resolution (1,200 x 900) earlier which only took a bit over 14 min to complete. Seems more on par with rendering a scene that uses UE and Uberlights.

If you are in the northern hemisphere, try setting the date to late June or early July, in the southern hemisphere, late Decemeber or early January. It calculates based on the sun angles for the time of year combined with the hour of the day. I noticed that the scene go dark at about 7pm here in the northern hemisphere, just like outside for this date.

Edit: Looks like you need to set your latitude and longitude manually. I suppose it was set to Salt Lake City. :) Also set your UTC offset to the correct time.

kyoto kid

...but the scene is set in Zagreb at about 13:00 - 13:30 in mid June.

I don't need "real time/real world " lighting (especially since rendering takes nearly two hours), I just want the sun to be where it was in the original 3DLscene. Is there any way to turn this off?

starionwolf

Kyoto Kid, take a look at the environment section of the render settings. Set the environment mode to "scene only".

edited for clarity

kyoto kid

...that didn't work, it turned off the sun completely. Now it looks like a late night picture shot with an over bright flash attachment..

I just need the sun at a mid afternoon position. Cant use a regular Daz or AoA's distant light as they are shader based and there is no photometric distant light to use in place. There has to be some way to override the time/location function so you can just put the sun where you need it.

Reality/Lux lets you do it.

CypherFOX

Greetings,
You can slave the sun to a distant light. That's what I'm doing and it works nicely for me.

I'm on an iPad so it's a pain to pull up the link, but I made a comment in the first page (I think) of this thread on how to do that.

-- Morgan

genfro

But iray can handle large scenes or it will be limited by Vram like octane?

Dumor3D

genfro said:

But iray can handle large scenes or it will be limited by Vram like octane?

It can handle large scenes as there is more than one render mode. Under CPU, it will use system ram. Under GPU it will use VRAM. So, to get the best performance, 4GB or more of VRAM is good or you won't be able to load the scene onto the card. Then speed is proportional to the number of CUDA cores you have on your card(s). Then each card will need to load the scene. VRAM is not a combined total, but a per card total.

Ghosty12

Dumor3D said:

genfro said:

But iray can handle large scenes or it will be limited by Vram like octane?

It can handle large scenes as there is more than one render mode. Under CPU, it will use system ram. Under GPU it will use VRAM. So, to get the best performance, 4GB or more of VRAM is good or you won't be able to load the scene onto the card. Then speed is proportional to the number of CUDA cores you have on your card(s). Then each card will need to load the scene. VRAM is not a combined total, but a per card total.

You can go into Hybrid mode that will use a combo a CPU and GPU and use the memory from both.. I have Iray set to use both CPU and GPU and it fairly cranks.. :)

I have the whole dome lighting here. Steps:

Load lamp
Apply emission shader to lamp dome
Create camera and switch to that camera
Turn off headlamp on camera parameters
Turn up Luminance value
Render

Kat

After a bit of fiddling I found out the problem I was having, it seems that using a IES file causes that problem I was having with the lamp being dark on one side.. Not sure why but could be a bug, who knows.. :)

DAZ_Spooky

Kyoto Kid said:

...that didn't work, it turned off the sun completely. Now it looks like a late night picture shot with an over bright flash attachment..

I just need the sun at a mid afternoon position. Cant use a regular Daz or AoA's distant light as they are shader based and there is no photometric distant light to use in place. There has to be some way to override the time/location function so you can just put the sun where you need it.

Reality/Lux lets you do it.

If you don't want to set the Lat-Long to Zagreb at 1300 on July 4th. You can place a null in your scene. (Leave it on Dome/Scene) scroll down to where it says as sun and use the drop down box until it chooses your null. Now where ever you put the null, that is where the sun comes from.

Wilmap

I'm trying to render Hivewires Dawn to show someone what Iray is like, but I can't get her eyelashes right!

Any suggestions.

DAZ_Spooky

wilmap said:

I'm trying to render Hivewires Dawn to show someone what Iray is like, but I can't get her eyelashes right!

Any suggestions.

Looks like the transmaps are either done without a mostly black background or are not going to the cutout channel. You will probably have to manually apply the Iray Ubershader to the appropriate surfaces to manually adjust them.

DAZ_Spooky

ghosty12 said:

Dumor3D said:

genfro said:

But iray can handle large scenes or it will be limited by Vram like octane?

It can handle large scenes as there is more than one render mode. Under CPU, it will use system ram. Under GPU it will use VRAM. So, to get the best performance, 4GB or more of VRAM is good or you won't be able to load the scene onto the card. Then speed is proportional to the number of CUDA cores you have on your card(s). Then each card will need to load the scene. VRAM is not a combined total, but a per card total.

You can go into Hybrid mode that will use a combo a CPU and GPU and use the memory from both.. I have Iray set to use both CPU and GPU and it fairly cranks.. :)

I have the whole dome lighting here. Steps:

Load lamp
Apply emission shader to lamp dome
Create camera and switch to that camera
Turn off headlamp on camera parameters
Turn up Luminance value
Render

Kat

After a bit of fiddling I found out the problem I was having, it seems that using a IES file causes that problem I was having with the lamp being dark on one side.. Not sure why but could be a bug, who knows.. :)Two sided light on or off?

Oso3D

So there's no atmospheric/cloud effects... any tips/tricks to do anything similar with emitters?

Camera settings, bloom... anything?

DAZ_Spooky

timmins.william said:

So there's no atmospheric/cloud effects... any tips/tricks to do anything similar with emitters?

Camera settings, bloom... anything?

Currently Iray lacks particles, which is the best way to get atmospherics, however you could model them, like the way it was done in Carrara before most of them were replaced with true volumetrics.

Oso3D

While Iray shaders will certainly work better, some tentative experiments with AoA subsurface seem to be behaving properly.

Katherine

Kyoto Kid said:

...that didn't work, it turned off the sun completely. Now it looks like a late night picture shot with an over bright flash attachment..

I just need the sun at a mid afternoon position. Cant use a regular Daz or AoA's distant light as they are shader based and there is no photometric distant light to use in place. There has to be some way to override the time/location function so you can just put the sun where you need it.

Reality/Lux lets you do it.

Add a Null (in the tool bar) to the scene. Place it where you want the sun pointing "from"....other words....the null is the sun location in the sky for directional purposes.

In Render Settings > Environment change to Sun-sky and in the dropdown called SS Sun Node, pick the null you just made.

Poof....That's the direction of your source. :)

Kat

Katherine

timmins.william said:

So there's no atmospheric/cloud effects... any tips/tricks to do anything similar with emitters?

Camera settings, bloom... anything?

Render Settings > Filtering

Turn Bloom on there.

:)

starionwolf

DAZ_Spooky said:

If you don't want to set the Lat-Long to Zagreb at 1300 on July 4th. You can place a null in your scene. (Leave it on Dome/Scene) scroll down to where it says as sun and use the drop down box until it chooses your null. Now where ever you put the null, that is where the sun comes from.

Thanks, that did the trick. Now I'll go play with the intensity and color settings.

nightwolf1982

Help! Tried to switch to GPU rendering, and nothing is happening! When I hit render, the engine runs for about 7 seconds, then quits. Nothing gets rendered.

I'm using an Nvidia Geforce GT 520 graphics card, and am in the middle of downloading the updated drivers.

Jason Galterio

nightwolf1982 said:

Help! Tried to switch to GPU rendering, and nothing is happening! When I hit render, the engine runs for about 7 seconds, then quits. Nothing gets rendered.

I'm using an Nvidia Geforce GT 520 graphics card, and am in the middle of downloading the updated drivers.

It sounds like you are having the issue I was having with lights.

What sort of lights do you have in your scene? If you are only using the Photometric ones, make sure you set your Mode to Scene Only.