Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part II
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Some great renders and advice. I'm curious that the architectural sampler made Mec4d's render faster as it seemed to slow it down for me. Also, Mec4d, I'd love to know your skin settings! Your renders look fantastic!
I think the softest lights will be emission surfaces. You can create a primitive and add the iray emission shader to it and set it outside the camera view (setting the opacity down may work too). Also change the luminance units to cd/cm^2.
Photometric lights can also be given pseudo geometry for the same effect, without having to add actual mesh. Emissive shaders are mainly needed, as far as I can tell, for non-standard shapes and for partial illumination.
Photometric lights can also be given pseudo geometry for the same effect, without having to add actual mesh. Emissive shaders are mainly needed, as far as I can tell, for non-standard shapes and for partial illumination.
It's not so much as the geometry as is the quality of the light. Photometric lights alone seem to make the scene harsher. I'll use them for actual lights or rim lights, but the emission work better for a softer fill.
Photometric lights can also be given pseudo geometry for the same effect, without having to add actual mesh. Emissive shaders are mainly needed, as far as I can tell, for non-standard shapes and for partial illumination.
It's not so much as the geometry as is the quality of the light. Photometric lights alone seem to make the scene harsher. I'll use them for actual lights or rim lights, but the emission work better for a softer fill.
As Richard said the Photometric lights pseudo geometry give exactly the same effect as an emissive mesh. There are an important difference indeed when switching the geometry in a Photometric Spot Light: you need set Spread Angle to 180º to get the correct illumination from the pseudo geometry. Doing that, you get exactly the same effect.
It's not so much as the geometry as is the quality of the light. Photometric lights alone seem to make the scene harsher. I'll use them for actual lights or rim lights, but the emission work better for a softer fill.
As Richard said the Photometric lights pseudo geometry give exactly the same effect as an emissive mesh. There are an important difference indeed when switching the geometry in a Photometric Spot Light: you need set Spread Angle to 180º to get the correct illumination from the pseudo geometry. Doing that, you get exactly the same effect. lol, and there is that spotlight vs soft box bit as well. Spot lights (And point lights) will be harsher then soft boxes.
Watched a vid about that many months ago regarding real photo-studio lights. The photographer was demonstrating the differences between the different sizes of soft boxes.
went for a sci-fi look this time
Could use more baking, I'm wondering if there's a way, like with lux, to keep the render going or restart it if you chose the wrong number of passes.
Interesting. DAZ_Spooky told us the Architectural Sampler was for interior scenes, and he also said it would increase the render time. Did you use it for interior and/or exterior scenes? I'm going to have to give it a try now. lol
Both the Architectural Sampler and Caustic Sampler are highly scene dependent. They do, in our testing, appear to increase rendering time, in most cases significantly, with our content in most typical scenes. NVIDIA's docs do talk about when to use each, or both. After much experimentation, both by Software QA and by the Art Department, the recommendation I am going to issue is "experiment," so you have a better feel for it however based on our testing, they will default to off. LOL.
My Iray renders for today :)
HDRI lighting only
render time from 6 min to 30 min for GOT
GTX 760 + CPU
I hope you like
Cath
ok, now the question :)
When comes the next build
The Architectural sampler remove the noises much faster so I can lower the pixels samples what shorter the rendering time since it clear much faster than without .
Both the Architectural Sampler and Caustic Sampler are highly scene dependent. They do, in our testing, appear to increase rendering time, in most cases significantly, with our content in most typical scenes. NVIDIA's docs do talk about when to use each, or both. After much experimentation, both by Software QA and by the Art Department, the recommendation I am going to issue is "experiment," so you have a better feel for it however based on our testing, they will default to off. LOL.Mec, any chance we could get a look at your HDRI setup? I'm not sure if it's been covered in one of the threads. But I'd love to get an idea of how you put your scenes together.
ok, now the question :)
When comes the next buildlol. to quote Daniel Jackson, lol. It will be ready, when it is ready.
Now that's some interesting information on the spread angle. Did you learn that by experiment or is it documented somewhere?
Now that's some interesting information on the spread angle. Did you learn that by experiment or is it documented somewhere?
By experiment as Photometric lights are still un-documented.
All elements in my scene have new custom material setting mostly PBR based maps Albedo, Microsurface and Reflection, the specular u see on all models is nothing else than reflection of the HDRI environment map as it happening in real world . I use HDRI map on Finite sphere scaled to my needs .
For the skin I use base color, glossy weight map, glossy color,glossy reflection, translucent, Normal maps
for rendering I use the default rendering settings with 1500 pixel samples and Architectural sampler On.
Tone Mapping ISO 400 as the HDRI map is dark with only one major strong light source
The PBR Metal/Roughens is horrible , and it does not work with standard PBR values producing fake metal effects so... I would skip it and use any of the other for material setting . Nvidia stated they are not yet there with this one .
...thought about using that, however, the scene I am working with does not have an outside light source that is shining through an opening like a window or other entrance. All lights are "internal".
...those look really good. Particularly like the skin detail in the third one.
I've noticed with HDRIs that come with jpg backplates that the jpg will look really washed out compared to the hdr/exr. Seems like a gamma correction problem....they usually match better if I set the Environment Map weight for the jpg to 1 and Gamma under Tone Mapping also to 1 (for hdr/exr I keep the defaults of 2 and 2.2). Since gamma also affects anything in the scene, I have to hide everything and render out the jpg alone as a new backdrop for the final render with everything unhidden and gamma back at 2.2.
Good advice! Thanks! I was attempting to boost the contrast and saturation of the environment map jpg files and wasn't getting very far very fast.
The attached file follows your advice and gives me a much better HDRI background. I still haven't got much sunlight from the dome, so I'm using a couple of spotlights to imitate the sun on the girl. I'm finding myself adjusting the environment intensity to alter the brightness of the dome, and the luminance of the spotlights to adjust the brightness of the girl. I think I've got them both in a plausible place?
Until the next build comes out, (can't help but hope that's soon, lol,) you can adjust parameters in the Progressive Rendering section to increase the rendering time. Here is some more specific information I posted earlier: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/797529/
I'm currently rendering the Chess Set scene again, having added a couple of photometric lights pointed at the ceiling in the corners furthest from the scene. I'm using the Architectural Sampler, and I'm really pleased with the changes so far. But it does look like I'll have to let it render for days to get a useable image. I'm debating whether or not I want to tie up DS that long right now.
I also tested an outdoor scene, (Yosemite HDRI in the Environment Map, a couple of horses, stables, G2M and some plants,) first with Architectural Sampler on and then with Architectural Sampler off. The difference was astounding! At the end of one hour, the scene had reached 3.45% convergence with Architectural Sampler off, and almost 71% with Architectural Sampler on! (No video card, CPU only.)
I should mention I have Instancing Optimization set to Speed for all my renders now. That seems to have ended the problem I was having with some renders hanging up and never finishing.
I'm thinking I may leave Architectural Sampler off for interior shots unless the outcome is very important, but turn it on for everything else. Doing all my renders CPU only, I'll take any speed advantage I can get!
EDIT: Okay, tested with portrait-style set up with two characters, Monterey "Monument" HDRI Environment Map, one photometric spotlight from the side. With Architectural Sampler on, the render completed almost 3% in 47 minutes. With it off, the render finished with 50% convergence in 43 minutes. I shall do more testing with this. It will be good to know what types of scenes see faster render times with Architectural Sampler set to on.
...[removed]
Iray render of http://www.daz3d.com/fw-dan-megapack
and http://www.daz3d.com/mec4d-dragon-rider-for-genesis-2-male-s
Still playing with light coloured skin textures, as I am happy with the results they have produced so far.
G2M with Brodie 6 skin textures, lit with Camera headlamp set at 0.80 and rear facing photometric light. Overall lighting with HDRI called 'Path' kindly made available free from http://www.hdri-hub.com/hdrishop/freesamples/freehdri/item/117-hdr-041-path-free
:-)
Edited to add Skin settings :
Iray Optimised Genesis 2 Male MAT used and then settings altered as follows :
Skin settings
Translucency Weight 0.5
Glossy Layered Weight 0.33
Share Glossy Imputs On
Glossy Reflectivity 0.5
Glossy Roughness 0.40
Refraction Index 1.45
Base Bump 1.21
Top Coat Weight 0.50
Top Coat Roughness 0.55
Top Coat Layering Mode Fresnel
Top Coat IOR 1.45
Top Coat Thin Film IOR 1.50
Transmitted Measurement Distance 2.00
Scattering Measurement Distance 0.50
SSS Amount 0.30
SSS Direction -0.50
nice, I am going to make new materials for this end other products to get optimum effect in iray
just waiting for the official version
Here's the outdoor image I used to test the settings for Architectural Sampler. Both images below were rendered for about 1 hour, CPU only. The first had the setting "on" and reached about 71 percent. The second, with the setting "off," reached about 3.45%.
This scene uses two DAZ 2 Horses, a couple Hydrangeas, some grass objects from Forest Autumn, the stable from Barn Yard and the 12th Yosemite Pack image. The Genesis 2 male is wearing Diana and Jones Outfit with Real Short Hair and beard by Unshaven. the dark skin is from adding a diffuse color to the shader. (I still need to work on his skin.)
Very nice, I can see the difference , also slightly change in tone the first one is more warmer
I read on Nvidia website that Architectural sampler improve so much scenes , that why I started to testing it out , my last renders took like 6 to 10 min to clear out before around one hour ... it will be very usable especially when rendering huge city scenes
Here are two other images I used to test Architectural Sampler where I got the opposite results in speed.
These images were rendered with Rendering Converged Ratio set to 50%. The first image, with the setting "on," was just under 3% when I stopped the render at 47 minutes. The second image, with the setting "off" completed rendering (at 50%) in 43 minutes.
Thanks. I was really just playing around when I put that scene together a couple days ago. When I first started playing with Iray, I kept everything to Scene Only. It was more familiar. But I'm stretching my wings as I get a handle on what Iray can do.
As an aside, I was hoping DAZ would come out with a G2M version of Unshaven. When they came out with a beard product for G2M I was so disappointed. It was just too unkempt for my needs, so I went ahead and got Unshaven. What a nice product. I love how you can just dial in a bit of this and a touch of that and come up with exactly what you want. I'm really glad it works so well with the G2M. Thank you for your work on that. :)