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

kyoto kid

...need to re render last example. somehow it did not save correctly or to where it was supposed to go and I am not about to waste a lot of time hunting it down

Soto

Can someone please tell me why the image in the environment looks distorted? like stretched in some places? Like a low poly, bad UVed sphere?
It`s not the map... I hae tried a lot of HDRI maps from different places.

EDIT: Never mind.... the environment will distort to create the ground. I thought it would only add a shadow, but that`s a biased trick. Should have tought of that. :/

Adjusting the scale to 1000 solved it in this particular case.

kyoto kid

..OK re-rendered and saved to the right folder.

...OK have an interesting issue occurring. The three attachments below illustrate an odd anomaly I came observed when rendering a test scene in Iray. I had converted all the glass in the scene to the Iray Uber glass material so as to get the reflections I needed. As can be seen the elements of the shelter's interior line up differently with the window frame closest to the camera. This did not occur in the 3DL render test as can be seen in the attachments below. What appears to be happening is the Iray Uber Glass shader is for some reason distorting the imagery behind it. Same is evident in the bus behind the girls In RL this aberration does not occur unless the glass is very thick and viewed through at an extremely low angle. The glass in the shelter window is seen almost head on.

In looking at the default refraction for the Iray glass material index in the surfaces tab set at it is1.55 which is on the high end for Crown glass (IOR range of 1.5 - 1.6). Though "physically correct", it apparently creates an unrealistic effect in the finished rendered scene. I tired the Thin Glass material, but it still presented the same IOR issue as the regular clear glass. Lowering the IOR of the glass does help but it also reduces the reflectivity quality as well.

Wondering if anyone knows of a workaround.

Fig 1, Screen Shot of the render settings.

Fig 2. 3DL rendered image.

Fig 3. Iray rendered image with glass at default IOR

Fig 4. Iray rendered image with glass set to IOR of 1.0

Visuimag

This may be a very silly question, but is there a way to revert the normal, flat (as in, no lights in the scene) lighting back to how it was with 4.7? It seems like the closer I get to a character, the darker they become. This wasn't the case with 4.7. Again, forgive me if this is a ridiculous question, but when I'm just setting up a scene, I don't need shadows and such on the characters, as it blocks out the ability to see small details up close.

- Any aid will be greatly appreciated.

ben98120000

SnowSultan said:

Could someone please explain how you get an interior scene with one emitter light to not be completely black? Do you always have to lower the Exposure value down to 0 or lower from it's default of 13? If I do that, the light emitting object becomes completely white. I expected the Exposure Value to use a base of 0 and we would make small adjustments like with a camera (+1, -1, etc). Why is 13 the default?

Every time I think I'm making progress, it turns out I'm not. Using the sun gives easy and realistic results, but otherwise lights in Iray seem to have almost no strength at all.

Any preset values would be very helpful, I just want something accurate to use as reference and a starting point.

Level 17 scene lit with one sphere primitive with emission shader applied. Iv turned Two sided light option ON, switched Luminance Units to W, set Luminous Efficacy to 100 (in surfaces tab of the sphere).

In first picture luminance is 5000, in second picture luminance is 10000, in third picture luminance is 50000. Rendered in Scene Only Environment mode. The rest of render settings ware default, as in, I didnt tinker with exposures etc.

ben98120000

tjohn said:

I've seen some renders by Totte and others that appear to be Dimension Theory HDRI sets, including shadow catchers, in Iray.
Could someone give some step by step on how this is done? Please? :)

Shadow catching appears to be automatic.

Render settings for this image:

Environment mode: Dome and Scene
Dome mode: Finite sphere (just because HDR image was too low resolution for infinite sphere and in finite mode theres an option to adjust sphere radius).
Environment Map: HDR image

Except for reduced sphere radius, rest of the setting ware default.

Eva1

I've read a few posts where people are saying Iray is rendering faster - could anyone recomend settings for this. I'm finding it slower than 3delight at the moment, using just the default sun. And what's the best way to get a noise free render - is it just the Noise filter settings? Or is there any other settings that contribute? I've tried that setting and Rendering Quality set a bit higher than the default but I suspect that might increase the render time.

JimmyC_2009

Eva1 said:

I've read a few posts where people are saying Iray is rendering faster - could anyone recomend settings for this. I'm finding it slower than 3delight at the moment, using just the default sun. And what's the best way to get a noise free render - is it just the Noise filter settings? Or is there any other settings that contribute? I've tried that setting and Rendering Quality set a bit higher than the default but I suspect that might increase the render time.

It will be faster only if you have a decent NVidia graphics card, with plenty of CUDA cores. I don't, and it is not faster than 3Delight for most things, but the lighting is superb. I have an NVidia GT 420 with only about 36 CUDA cores, but it does help a little (about 20% faster than CPU only)

The whole point of it is not speed, but accuracy in the lighting. The first render I tried, was just the default settings, and it looked good.

What specs has your PC, and do you have an NVidia card?

Eva1

Hi Jimmy thanks for the reply. I have a GeForce GTX 660 on a fairly new computer, with 8GB RAM. I just realised I had 'CPU' checked instead of the card. I think it is slightly fast now.

maclean

Re interiors

I'm wondering if object area has an effect on lighting level? In the image below, I set Luminance to 40,000 (from the default 5,000), and although it could definitely be lighter, it's not pitch black. But there are 6 fairly large lighting panels as a single material and I applied Emissive to them. All other settings are at default..

So maybe instead of trying a candle or ball, you need to use something pretty big. This is just a guess on my part, but in the real world, 6 large panels will give more light than a candle.

mac

Design Anvil - Razor42

I have put together a free Q&D set of light and render presets for use with BETA Daz 4.8 and IRAY.

See the freebie forum thread here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53797/

Or go straight to download here: CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Dumor3D

maclean said:

Re interiors

I'm wondering if object area has an effect on lighting level? In the image below, I set Luminance to 40,000 (from the default 5,000), and although it could definitely be lighter, it's not pitch black. But there are 6 fairly large lighting panels as a single material and I applied Emissive to them. All other settings are at default..

So maybe instead of trying a candle or ball, you need to use something pretty big. This is just a guess on my part, but in the real world, 6 large panels will give more light than a candle.

mac

Just keep adding 0's! :) Try 400,000 or 4 million. Or switch the emitters to Watts which will use lower numbers.

Dumor3D

Kyoto Kid said:

..OK re-rendered and saved to the right folder.

...OK have an interesting issue occurring. The three attachments below illustrate an odd anomaly I came observed when rendering a test scene in Iray. I had converted all the glass in the scene to the Iray Uber glass material so as to get the reflections I needed. As can be seen the elements of the shelter's interior line up differently with the window frame closest to the camera. This did not occur in the 3DL render test as can be seen in the attachments below. What appears to be happening is the Iray Uber Glass shader is for some reason distorting the imagery behind it. Same is evident in the bus behind the girls In RL this aberration does not occur unless the glass is very thick and viewed through at an extremely low angle. The glass in the shelter window is seen almost head on.

In looking at the default refraction for the Iray glass material index in the surfaces tab set at it is1.55 which is on the high end for Crown glass (IOR range of 1.5 - 1.6). Though "physically correct", it apparently creates an unrealistic effect in the finished rendered scene. I tired the Thin Glass material, but it still presented the same IOR issue as the regular clear glass. Lowering the IOR of the glass does help but it also reduces the reflectivity quality as well.

Wondering if anyone knows of a workaround.

Fig 1, Screen Shot of the render settings.

Fig 2. 3DL rendered image.

Fig 3. Iray rendered image with glass at default IOR

Fig 4. Iray rendered image with glass set to IOR of 1.0

Window glass should be set to a refraction of about 1.40. A little change to that setting makes a big difference. Yes, crown glass does and should create more distortion, more reflection and it catches more light within the glass, such as crystal. Generally speaking... the higher that number in the real world equals more expensive crystal. :) Also, yes, if the glass is thick, it will cause more distortion of the objects behind. The same thing happens with real world glass, such as looking through the bottom of a coke bottle.... if you can find a coke bottle anymore.

Szark

Anybody find a Chrome mat or have any tips of making one? Me just being lazy and trying to save my brain from imploding. :)

Dumor3D

Szark said:

Anybody find a Chrome mat or have any tips of making one? Me just being lazy and trying to save my brain from imploding. :)

Hey there BWC Szark!

Under Shader Presets->Iray Uber Shader, there are a number of metal shaders. Polished Aluminum is pretty much like a mirror. Nickle to me is a bit more like chrome. So, it depends on how well you maintain your chrome. :) Knowing you.... maybe you really need rust. LOL!

Katherine

Spit said:

Got it installed and all and have found most things, not that I know what to do about 'em. I couldn't find the sun thing, but found the answer on the previous page (render settings folder) so that'll be next. I even figured out the backdrop and how to get the effects of a skydome without actually having one in the scene.

IRay is much faster than I thought it would be. Of course there's nothing fancy here not even a single reflection so I may take that back soonly. This pic is washed out without enough contrast and doesn't look real. I had rendered this scene with 3Delight with an Uber plus one distant light this morning in anticipation and it looks much better.

This is just the skylight and one photometric? spot. The 3Delight/Uber/Dist one took 2 1/2 minutes, the Iray 5. Only used CPU. I've got 144 CUDAS but only 1gig of non-shared vram so I didn't check the box for my video card (it wasn't checked by default which was probably trying to tell me something.)

It's like there's too much light in the pic and I don't know the new vocabulary well enough to figure out what to do about it.

By the way the upper right around the viewport is very crowded with tiny arrows and menus. LOL

Hi Spit,

Nicely done. And no, there isn't too much light. :) You are dealing with realistic conditions and it takes a little getting used to the lighting and what you see. If you stood out in the field in real life with that bright blue sky, you may even find that your image was a tad dark. :)

It looks good though. I like it. :)

Kat

Katherine

Superdog said:

DAZ_KatBriggs said:

timmins.william said:

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

Your Iray with AoA question got answered when you posted it in the Iray render thread, in case you missed that. :)

They are shader based lights and will not work in Iray. You can still use them in 3Delight.

You will have to postwork godrays as Iray isn't using a cloud/atmospheric system. :)

Kat

I use Octane Render and the way to create Godrays is to use a Godrays prop such as this:

http://www.daz3d.com/simple-godrays

and tun it into a light emitter. You can adjust the light intensity, colour and translucency. This should work in any unbiased renderer.

I really need to clarify whether shader based lights sold by AoA and Marshian will actually work with iRay if these products use default DAZ shaders. Marshian seems to think they will. Is this correct?

You just quoted my answer. :) It has been asked many times and the answer is the same. These lights are not going to work in Iray. They are not "default" shader based. They are un-needed in Iray as it has it's own lighting system.

Kat

Serpent

DzFire™ said:

I rendered the Armory and had the emitters at 1 billion

1.21 GIGAWATTS! :ahhh:

Will fiddle with emitters tonight and set 'em high...

Szark

Dumor3D said:

Szark said:

Anybody find a Chrome mat or have any tips of making one? Me just being lazy and trying to save my brain from imploding. :)

Hey there BWC Szark!

Under Shader Presets->Iray Uber Shader, there are a number of metal shaders. Polished Aluminum is pretty much like a mirror. Nickle to me is a bit more like chrome. So, it depends on how well you maintain your chrome. :) Knowing you.... maybe you really need rust. LOL!Hiya dude, how's the 8 legged mooses.

Ok so I haven't missed it there is no chrome but yeah I think I will adapt the Nickel one. Hey no rust here dude, all polished up like brand new. :P

Dumor3D

Szark said:

Dumor3D said:

Szark said:

Anybody find a Chrome mat or have any tips of making one? Me just being lazy and trying to save my brain from imploding. :)

Hey there BWC Szark!

Under Shader Presets->Iray Uber Shader, there are a number of metal shaders. Polished Aluminum is pretty much like a mirror. Nickle to me is a bit more like chrome. So, it depends on how well you maintain your chrome. :) Knowing you.... maybe you really need rust. LOL!

Hiya dude, how's the 8 legged mooses.

Ok so I haven't missed it there is no chrome but yeah I think I will adapt the Nickel one. Hey no rust here dude, all polished up like brand new. :P

I think Totte is making spaghetti out of the meese! LOL

I guess I wasn't clear. The polished aluminum is good for chrome... It is just very bright chrome... mirror like instead of what most people see on their car. It's more like the new in the showroom car that just got the spit shine.

Szark

Sorry man yeah you were clear. I tested Nickel before replying and I can adapt that for a more chrome look but for the sake of completeness I will give the Ali a try now.

SnowSultan

Thanks Ben, those are good examples.

What I don't quite understand is why we have to tinker and experiment with luminance values of a half billion or more in a renderer that uses real-world calculations. That's what we had to do in 3Delight. We have charts that list real-world exposure and color temperatures, so I would assume it should be fairly easy to make light and render presets that are physically accurate. There should be no need to fake anything or even guess at how bright a light should be in Iray.

Now of course it's only been two days, so those presets will surely come in the near future. Hopefully "soon". ;)

Spit

Crescent said:

Emitters - instead of putting the Luminance up to crazy numbers, why not change the units used?

Here's two renders with the sphere as an emitter. One has the Luminance set to 50000 using the default unit (cd/m^2). The other uses Luminance set to 50, but with the Units set to kcd/m^2.

Makes sense because the 'k' in kcd means 1000.

Spit

DAZ_KatBriggs said:

Spit said:

Got it installed and all and have found most things, not that I know what to do about 'em. I couldn't find the sun thing, but found the answer on the previous page (render settings folder) so that'll be next. I even figured out the backdrop and how to get the effects of a skydome without actually having one in the scene.

IRay is much faster than I thought it would be. Of course there's nothing fancy here not even a single reflection so I may take that back soonly. This pic is washed out without enough contrast and doesn't look real. I had rendered this scene with 3Delight with an Uber plus one distant light this morning in anticipation and it looks much better.

This is just the skylight and one photometric? spot. The 3Delight/Uber/Dist one took 2 1/2 minutes, the Iray 5. Only used CPU. I've got 144 CUDAS but only 1gig of non-shared vram so I didn't check the box for my video card (it wasn't checked by default which was probably trying to tell me something.)

It's like there's too much light in the pic and I don't know the new vocabulary well enough to figure out what to do about it.

By the way the upper right around the viewport is very crowded with tiny arrows and menus. LOL

Hi Spit,

Nicely done. And no, there isn't too much light. :) You are dealing with realistic conditions and it takes a little getting used to the lighting and what you see. If you stood out in the field in real life with that bright blue sky, you may even find that your image was a tad dark. :)

It looks good though. I like it. :)

Kat

Thanks, Kat. You know what hit me though? This is a renderer that deals with realistic conditions, as you said. But also realistic is our own eyes. In bright light our pupils contract, and they dilate under low light (and under other things I won't mention lol). So there will be a difference between what is and what we see as far as light level is concerned. The same with a camera, film and shutter speed etc. So all this will take a while to get used to and to realizing what may look right or not.

Anyway, I think using the actual 'sun' will most likely look better than what I did. 'til next time.

Katherine

Spit said:

DAZ_KatBriggs said:

Spit said:

Got it installed and all and have found most things, not that I know what to do about 'em. I couldn't find the sun thing, but found the answer on the previous page (render settings folder) so that'll be next. I even figured out the backdrop and how to get the effects of a skydome without actually having one in the scene.

IRay is much faster than I thought it would be. Of course there's nothing fancy here not even a single reflection so I may take that back soonly. This pic is washed out without enough contrast and doesn't look real. I had rendered this scene with 3Delight with an Uber plus one distant light this morning in anticipation and it looks much better.

This is just the skylight and one photometric? spot. The 3Delight/Uber/Dist one took 2 1/2 minutes, the Iray 5. Only used CPU. I've got 144 CUDAS but only 1gig of non-shared vram so I didn't check the box for my video card (it wasn't checked by default which was probably trying to tell me something.)

It's like there's too much light in the pic and I don't know the new vocabulary well enough to figure out what to do about it.

By the way the upper right around the viewport is very crowded with tiny arrows and menus. LOL

Hi Spit,

Nicely done. And no, there isn't too much light. :) You are dealing with realistic conditions and it takes a little getting used to the lighting and what you see. If you stood out in the field in real life with that bright blue sky, you may even find that your image was a tad dark. :)

It looks good though. I like it. :)

Kat

Thanks, Kat. You know what hit me though? This is a renderer that deals with realistic conditions, as you said. But also realistic is our own eyes. In bright light our pupils contract, and they dilate under low light (and under other things I won't mention lol). So there will be a difference between what is and what we see as far as light level is concerned. The same with a camera, film and shutter speed etc. So all this will take a while to get used to and to realizing what may look right or not.

Anyway, I think using the actual 'sun' will most likely look better than what I did. 'til next time.

LOL Yes exactly. :) Tone Mapping is a section you will want to read up on in the documents. It talks about the Exposure Value, ISO etc.....so will be a big help as well. :)

Nvidia Iray:

Nvidia Iray Documentation

Iray Uber Shader:

Iray Uber Shader Documentation

These documents are fluid and will change over the course of the beta to add/clarify more information. :)

Please note that some pages are still being worked on. If you get "permission denied" that page is not yet live. :) As I said, these are fluid through the beta. The pages with the most pertinant info are Tone Mapping, Environment, and the Iray Uber Surface shader pages, and those are all live and available.

Kat

Wilmap

I eventually worked out what was causing the big black eyelashes. There were two Mat zones for the eyelashes but only one had a TransMap.

This is the result. The person I did this for to show them what Iray could do was very pleased and is going to try the Beta now.

Ist image those eyelashes, 2nd image sorted!

Pschelfh

Is there a way to show speed/memory used/GPU temparature in the render screen (like in Octane)? Or can I find these somewhere else?

Peter.

DAZ_Spooky

peter.schelfhout said:

Is there a way to show speed/memory used/GPU temparature in the render screen (like in Octane)? Or can I find these somewhere else?

Peter.

Since GPU usage can come from lots of places and there are plenty of utilities, that are free, so we haven't, at this time, included one.

I have been using GPU-Z and found that to be more than adequate.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

ReddofNonnac

I apologize if this has already been asked but I didn't see it when I read though the posts. I've noticed that when I use Iray certain things like Vein Set from the MASSIVE Morphs for Genesis 2 Female set won't show up in the Iray render but will show up in a normal render. Is there a setting that I need to adjust? I'm using the Iray sunlight and the Iray preset mat for Gen 2.

I also noticed that the skirt which shows wrinkling in normal rendering also doesn't show the wrinkling in the Iray render, so I'm hoping it's just me not understanding the settings.

Pschelfh

DAZ_Spooky said:

peter.schelfhout said:

Is there a way to show speed/memory used/GPU temparature in the render screen (like in Octane)? Or can I find these somewhere else?

Peter.

Since GPU usage can come from lots of places and there are plenty of utilities, that are free, so we haven't, at this time, included one.

I have been using GPU-Z and found that to be more than adequate.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Thanks, yes, now that I think of it, I also can see my GPU temp in MSI Afterburner.

For speed and memory usage, I was refering to the readout for Iray render (how much memory the scene occupies and the render speed).

Peter.