Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part II
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Here's a very early attempt at Iray. Very simple. Astrid and the Votive Candle. I set the Emission Color of the candle flame to yellow-orange and kept boosting the Luminance until I thought I reached one candlepower. As the area of the candle flame is so tiny, the Luminance ended up at 500,000,000! I have learned that one doesn't adjust Luminance by nudging the slider with one's mouse. You click on the number and type. If your image is dark, one increases the Luminance by a factor of 10, or perhaps of 100, and expect to do it again.
This shows two "features" in the Iray Genesis 2 Female shader I've since learned to deal with. The color of her irises was originally a light blue. They became black once I hit the shader. I clear this problem by setting the eye color again, essentially removing the Iray shader from the eyes. Also, the lipstick comes out very glossy, more than I care for. I've found I can control this with Glossy Reflectivity, Top Coat Weight and similar controls.
Again, I used the Iray shaders as much as seemed reasonable, just to see what they do. The candle uses the glass and wax shaders. The necklace uses diamond, gold and red velvet.
Look close at her thumb. I've found that if you put a strong light source near a character's hand, the light can be seen passing through it.
Again, scene only mode with headlight off.
I posted a single entry on this problem, but getting into flow of conversation is important.
I have been testing out the new Beta on some old scenes and Daz stops the render as if finished but as you can see it clearly isn't. The pixels as they is unworkable. Any suggestions on render settings?
I did check out the great tutorial posted on getting set up.
No, one does not need a luminance set that high. Adjust your Tone Mapping. Imagine you are using a camera and you need to set the proper exposure. The common practice to this point has been to throw light at a problem. That is no longer the complete solution.
I don't mean to sound... horrible.
You're not using all the tools at your disposal. Your renders will be better in the end, and I think you will be happier with the result, if you use the tools provided.
Iray has several 'stop now' settings. Default is 95% convergence, two hours, and 5000 iterations, whichever comes first.
You can change these in render settings.
Do you imagine you could actually take a photograph of that with only the candle flame as illumination? I imagine you would need ridiculously light sensitive film and an enormous exposure time. That's utterly unrealistic.
You would be better served by setting your exposure properly and then lighting your scene to match.
Set your Dome Mode to Finite Sphere and try then.
Tried it, but still doing nothing but tilting.
Thanks, that's unfortunate but completely expected and logical.
That's a good idea Richard...I wonder if interior scene creators like Merlin, Faveral, and SoullessEmpathy could include HDRIs of their rendered scenes with future products to allow that sort of rendering.
Iray support is honestly what worries me the most about this whole move towards PBR. DAZ will almost certainly do it with their official releases, but how many PAs will include Iray shaders with their products?
So you could use the HDRI rather than the set that they are selling? That logic leads to people just setting up scenes to sell the HDRI rather than selling the setting. I'd rather not pay for the time they would need to set up true HDRI lights when the fix is setting up true interior lighting instead.
Edit to explain that. Exterior HDRI lights mimic all the light that bounces around an infinite environment like a park or city scape. For an interior the program can actually properly calculate the light bouncing around a room and doesn't need that faked ambient to compensate. With 3dellight that was not the case and why it was handy to be able to use those lights as ambient fill.
So you could use the HDRI rather than the set that they are selling? That logic leads to people just setting up scenes to sell the HDRI rather than selling the setting. I'd rather not pay for the time they would need to set up true HDRI lights when the fix is setting up true interior lighting instead.
I'd never buy something like that, but I think the idea was to INCLUDE an HRDI to augment the set, not replace it. And the set would need to be built in a way that the HRDI could actually be used: turn off the right walls, the ceiling, etc.
I'm not sure how that would turn out, but it would be fun to see someone try.
Not entirely true...3DL could do true ambient...it just took forever and a day to render it. Plus, other than UE2, none of the light shaders in Studio were actually set up for it.
I understand that. But I really would not want to kick in the extra dollars for the extra hours the PA would spend.. all so I could not use part of their product. There is of course nothing preventing the end user from doing those renders to combine them into an HRDI for the set.. But they would need to set up the correct interior lighting to do that and well.. you get the picture. I think it is more logical to hope that the lighting used for the promos be included with the product so the interior renders can be done without having to sort them out.
...are there not interior HDRIs though?
Of course I meant that an HDRI *of* the interior be included with the product; you really think Faveral is going to work a month on a scene and then only sell the HDRI? ;)
Even selling HDRs of scenes really isn't any different from people who sell backgrounds made with Vue or DAZ/Poser products (of which there are hundreds at that other store).
Because it would require them learning a new shader system, making Roughness/Metallic maps in addition to Specular/Glossiness ones, etc. It's far more work than just tweaking a couple of parameters.
Pretty sure they are up to the task and since income will depend on it I doubt that they will ignore that part of the Studio market. It is totally illogical to think that they will not want to support Iray where possible. Especially since so many are waiting on "the word" so they can start including the new settings.
If you have a true high dynamic range image providing the lighting, the sun is already 'there'.
Physical sky/sun should be one lighting option. HDR environmental another. They shouldn't have to be used together. Nor should they need something to simulate the sun.
Most HDRs around are really not very high dynamic range. A HDR with a high enough range will do it automatically. Also color problems/corrections won't be needed or if they are, minimally so.
Aren't sIBL files designed to be used with an added sun light, though? They come with a .ibl file which is a text file that gives the coordinates of the sun in the image, and latitude/longitude, date and time, etc. You can plug those into the sun/sky settings in the environment map to render a backdrop with a shadow, then use the .hdr for lighting the final render.
The Iray shader also has a spec/gloss mode thats pretty workable with ubersurface with the same maps.
edit ...ugh the lighting on the 3DL one is pretty half-assed.
Aren't sIBL files designed to be used with an added sun light, though? They come with a .ibl file which is a text file that gives the coordinates of the sun in the image, and latitude/longitude, date and time, etc. You can plug those into the sun/sky settings in the environment map to render a backdrop with a shadow, then use the .hdr for lighting the final render.
Thats to make up for the fact that they are rather low dynamic range HDRs...
Your first response got me a bit emotional. The following is perhaps more intense than it has to be...
You are still using film? Really?
I use a digital point and shoot, usually set to “Auto”. My camera senses the amount of light in the field of view and adjusts various stuff to make the picture come out right. I can easily imagine such a camera that can take pictures by candle light. I seriously doubt that mine can. The human eye is still much more adaptable to varying light conditions than most any camera. Still, I think I’m going to light a candle tonight and see what happens.
It seems to me that 3Delight is much like a modern point and shoot camera, while Iray shares attributes with old pre computer chemical stuff. Back then, a pro would have to know about things like aperture width, shutter speed, film sensitivity, focal length, depth of field and so much more. I know about such things in principle. In time I could learn them in practice. I’m not sure I want to bother. I am sure I don’t want to be forced to bother.
It seems Iray is being designed by pros to simulate pro equipment. If this gives additional capabilities, that’s nice. Does this philosophy match the business model of giving away one’s render engine free in hopes that people will buy models?
The default Iray camera settings seem to be set up for outdoor scenes using the default sunlight. Back in the 1950s, that was about all my father’s camera could do. He’d line up us kids down sun on a bright day for best results. Like the 1950s, when you go indoors, you might need flashbulbs, different lenses, slower snaps and what not. I’ve been doing the Iray equivalent of flashbulbs, boosting luminance out the kazoo. A lot of other Iray users haven’t even figured out flashbulbs.
Is an auto mode where the sensitivity of the camera automatically adjusts to the light available plausible? Is the objective in designing Iray to make using the engine more difficult than necessary?
I’d be pleased by a list of the other options to control and adapt to light. I’m assuming F-Stop under the camera parameters is one of them. Are there other controls that us point and shoot 3Delight people should know about?
Plenty of pretty casual hobbyists had cameras that used those things. I owned a cannon in the early 80's and no one would ever accuse me of being a pro. So I bought 200 film which was pretty flexible and good for most outdoor and some brighter interiors like museums. For not as bright places I would switch to 400 film. The camera had a few hints on where to set other things and I could see the focal length as I adjusted it. Really was not rocket science.
There are EV charts out there and you could just use the EV setting and not worry overmuch about the rest of the settings other than the f/stop. I have noticed that adjusting it can help increase the viable light on backdrops much better than brighter lighting does in some cases. A little bit of testing is really all it takes to give you enough of an idea about how things will look as you fiddle with them. Most of them you could suss out by just watching the Aux view port as you make adjustments.
The best reason for learning a bit about the tone mapping is that way you can use real world light levels and have expectations about what the light will look like. Everyone knows about how bright a 40 watt bulb is vs a 100 watt bulb so it will be easier to set up a scene with those sort of expectations already in your head. You will be able to use the real world experience of how many lights you need in your den to make it really bright or how brightly lit an office is with all those florescent ceiling lights. Then you can say "oh so this room has x lights and I know that should be reasonably lit for this scene" and then go to the tone mapping and say "ok it is an indoor scene so I know I need 200 or 400 "film" and then it is just tweaking a bit to get the final levels you want.
....hmmm...I still use film.
To replace the old 35mm SLR I have with a comparable Digital SLR would be frightfully expensive.
Aren't sIBL files designed to be used with an added sun light, though? They come with a .ibl file which is a text file that gives the coordinates of the sun in the image, and latitude/longitude, date and time, etc. You can plug those into the sun/sky settings in the environment map to render a backdrop with a shadow, then use the .hdr for lighting the final render.
Thats to make up for the fact that they are rather low dynamic range HDRs...
That is by design...the intensity of the sun is factored out and represented separately so that the images can be much smaller and your GPU memory doesn't get clobbered during your render.
We may have to learn about basic camera and film techniques to use Iray properly, but I get what Blantyr is saying though. I don't want to have to think about camera settings when I'm not using a camera. I'm not interested in replicating the look of film or photography; I want to view renders as if I were looking at the scene with eyes and not through a lens.
I just consider Tone Mapping to be a general "brighten everything" slider and will postwork anything else that doesn't look right. You don't have to be interested in how these things work, you just need to figure out what they do. :)
My apologies. It reads nasty. But the intent wasn't. I need to work on my delivery.
Go to the Render Settings Tab for Nvidia Iray. You will see your Tone Mapping settings there.
I have not yet touched anything below Vignetting. And I can't say that I am any sort of expert on any of these settings.
Simple adjustments to Shutter Speed, F/Stop and ISO will make a huge difference.
Hopefully some of the improvements to the Studio/Iray interface will include live adjustments ala LuxRender.
Your first response got me a bit emotional. The following is perhaps more intense than it has to be...
You are still using film? Really?
I use a digital point and shoot, usually set to “Auto”. My camera senses the amount of light in the field of view and adjusts various stuff to make the picture come out right. I can easily imagine such a camera that can take pictures by candle light. I seriously doubt that mine can. The human eye is still much more adaptable to varying light conditions than most any camera. Still, I think I’m going to light a candle tonight and see what happens.
It seems to me that 3Delight is much like a modern point and shoot camera, while Iray shares attributes with old pre computer chemical stuff. Back then, a pro would have to know about things like aperture width, shutter speed, film sensitivity, focal length, depth of field and so much more. I know about such things in principle. In time I could learn them in practice. I’m not sure I want to bother. I am sure I don’t want to be forced to bother.
It seems Iray is being designed by pros to simulate pro equipment. If this gives additional capabilities, that’s nice. Does this philosophy match the business model of giving away one’s render engine free in hopes that people will buy models?
The default Iray camera settings seem to be set up for outdoor scenes using the default sunlight. Back in the 1950s, that was about all my father’s camera could do. He’d line up us kids down sun on a bright day for best results. Like the 1950s, when you go indoors, you might need flashbulbs, different lenses, slower snaps and what not. I’ve been doing the Iray equivalent of flashbulbs, boosting luminance out the kazoo. A lot of other Iray users haven’t even figured out flashbulbs.
Is an auto mode where the sensitivity of the camera automatically adjusts to the light available plausible? Is the objective in designing Iray to make using the engine more difficult than necessary?
I’d be pleased by a list of the other options to control and adapt to light. I’m assuming F-Stop under the camera parameters is one of them. Are there other controls that us point and shoot 3Delight people should know about?
SnowSultan you nailed it on the head when you said "I want to view renders as if I were looking at the scene with eyes and not through a lens. "
Problem is, that's what Iray does: mimics a photograph. Biased renderers like 3Delight attempt to mimic how the eye sees, that's why they are so subjective and versatile and lean more towards art than science.
I fear Iray may never be quite the right fit for you :)
/edited to add
I am so not getting the flavor of what people are saying today on the first read through. Too much coffee?
I'm really much nicer than I may be coming across at the moment.
...I have a basic working knowledge of photography. No expert mind you.
My favourite outdoor film used to be trusty old Kodachrome 64 (no longer available) due to the nice depth and colours it produced SoI've had a lot of experience with it. I used the settings in the scene with the girls at the bus stop I'd as I would were I actually photographing it based on the exposure chart for ASA (ISO) 64, Bright Daylight. Aperture was set to f11 and exposure rate 1/125th. Stepping up the exposure rate from 1/125th to 1/60th did make it look as if it were more "natural" for that level of brightness.
I think it can work for me as long as I can find a way to postwork the renders. Photoshop is the Lord of graphic software, it fixes all.
Sorry to ask again. Does anyone have a clue about why these renders say complete and yet are clearly unfinished? The above pic I posted is pixilated all over and I have been turning the dials for different results to no avail.
Thanks!
Sorry to ask again. Does anyone have a clue about why these renders say complete and yet are clearly unfinished? The above pic I posted is pixilated all over and I have been turning the dials for different results to no avail.
Thanks!
The render will stop when it has made a set number of passes, has taken more than a set number of seconds, or has reached a set level of convergence. Presumably one of the first two (probably seconds elapsed, it stops at two hours) had been achieved while the image was still massively unconverged. The parameters are in the progressive group in Render Settings.
If the quest is to use more realistic light scales, it might help if someone could answer a few questions.
I found Iray’s Tone mapping screen, about a dozen controls including F/Stop, Film ISO and others. If I were about to take a series of pictures inside a modern or science fiction building, power is abundant, there are lots of lights on the ceiling producing an environment pretty much ideal for the human eye, how would one prep one’s camera? What would the basic tone map values be?
Now suppose I’m going to a fantasy setting, indoors, at night. There’s a pretty good fire going along one wall. There are quite a few oil lamps and candles burning. There is no problem finding one’s ale mug or avoiding walking into a table, but if one wants to read one wants to be right next to one of the light sources. Again, if one is taking pictures inside such a room, how would one set up one’s camera? What would the basic tone map values be?
I found a Lumen to Watt conversation table. As far as everyone knows, if I put a photometric Point Light inside a frosted glass sphere, this should let me do a pretty good light bulb?
Sitting down with Google provides suggestions on how bright candles, kerosene lamps and fireplaces ought to be. They compare reasonably to the light bulb chart.
Anyway, if somebody who knows cameras could give me a couple of tone maps to start playing with I’ll see what happens. Might save me some trial and error. If some of the less tweaked variables are not mentioned in the suggestions, I won’t touch them. Sorry to ask, but I have little idea of what a basic mundane tone map looks like.
Sorry to ask again. Does anyone have a clue about why these renders say complete and yet are clearly unfinished? The above pic I posted is pixilated all over and I have been turning the dials for different results to no avail.
Thanks!
Your lighting & the amount of time / information takes to "clear up" is affected by your Progressive Rendering settings. Try increasing the number of samples to allow the scene to continue gathering enough sample passes to clear up. The default is 5000, try increasing that. Another trick is to place a white plane just behind your camera, to give the scene a surface to bounce the window light off of & give the scene more light information to resolve itself.