Recommendations for UltraScenery Workflow ? DS slows to a crawl when I use it
Olo_Ordinaire
Posts: 649
I tried to begin experimenting with UltraScenery and found that it is nearly unusable on my system. I have the accelerator, so building a landscape is pretty quick. But when I begin working with it, changing the camera angle or doing anything in the DAZ Studio user interface, it takes 20-30 seconds between mouse-click and the user interface response.
I'm on DS v4.20.1.43 Public Build. My system is pretty decent, I think: Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 64-bit, Ryzen 9 16-core processor, 128 GB RAM, RTX-3090 graphics card. All DAZ content and the WIndows OS drives are SSD.
I shouldn't need a Cray-2 supercomputer, but it sure seems like I do with an UltraScenery landscape in the scene!
For what it's worth, my workflow typically looks like:
1) Scene creation, sets, props - all in Texture Shaded mode in the viewport
2) Add character figures - costumes, poses, props, etc -- still in Texture Shaded mode
3) Tweak lighting - HDRI choice, add fill lights, rotate the HDRI dome, etc. - I jump in and out of IRay preview here to preview lighting - an absolute must
4) Tone map settings - almost all of this is in IRay preview on the viewport - an absolute must
I've seen other posts in the forums recommending never to use IRay preview with UltraScenery as it doesn't handle instancing the same way as a full render. But that's just not acceptable if I can't use the application to adjust the lighting. Lighting's the thing, man! 
If anyone has any thoughts about how to make this thing usable on a system that's not a dedicated $15,000 CAD workstation, I'd love to hear 'em!
Thanks,
Olo
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Comments
You may not like it, but you already know the answer (you said it in your OP). IMHO, your expectations aren't reasonable. Iray preview will never be responsive for a full US environment with multiple clothed/hairy figures - no matter what hardware you have.
- Greg
ETA: You can't just brute force it. Restricting instances to the camera view may help, as not having all instance groups visible until the final render, but whether or not that will be enough to make Iray Preview responsive is impossible to say without knowing exactly what is in your scene.
You have a fantastic computer for Daz Studio. You could try hiding instances of UltraScenery layers that have a lot of small instances and don't contribute much to shadows, to reduce the load while adjusting lighting. I'm thinking of things like grasses, daisies, ground litter, rocks, and pebbles, etc. Keep the large trees that do most of the light occlusion in your scene.
Once you've established your camera angle, rebuild the UltraScenery with the restrict to camera option. That will greatly reduce instances.
Turn off background tree instances, if they are not needed for your scene. Keep in mind that background trees behind the camera cause shadows that you may want to keep, so in that case, you'll need to keep the background instances, or delete them and put a couple tree props there manually instead.
Ahh, that's interesting. I'll try hiding some of the smaller bits and see if that helps. Thanks!
I edited my message above to add a couple more suggestions about other ways to reduce the number of instances.
You can do some stuff using the Filament engine. It's better than texture-shaded as far as lighting previews, and faster than Iray. You can also use interactive previews, rather than photoreal for most things. There's no getting around tone-mapping in Iray photoreal if you don't do postwork. The obvious option is to render to 32-bit canvases, with separate canvases for environment lighting and each light source or groups of light sources, and then fixing everything in post. Creating a normal canvas can also help lighting direction, etc. It's a bit advanced, but powerful. Once you include postwork in your process, things get a lot easier in Daz Studio.
Here's one way to use normal maps in Photoshop.
There's also the option of only generating what's in the camera frame. You can sort of feel your way around and decide on a place for your characters with a full set, and then regenerate using the camera frame option for fine-tuning. You may have to add some props out-of-frame to create some extra shadows, but those don't have to be high-rez and even billboards can do the trick.
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure a 15k system would choke on large, fully rendered scenes, as well.
PS: there are a few threads in Commercial with bunches of tips on using Ultrascenery. Here's the latest, I think:
UltraScenery - new territory [Commercial] - Daz 3D Forums
Hiding the plants when changing angles, moving camera speeds up things. Ultra Scenery Toolbox - Volume One makes is possible with one-click.
I don't have the idal computer for DAZ, and just adding HDRI to Ultrascenery slows everything to a crawl. So I use Iradiance Light probe instead. I have all three of them. They are much lighter. They don't add sky, but I rather add that in post anyway.
Thanks @Sevrin for the link to that thread in the commercial forum, and others for their suggestions. I didn't see a reference to the commercial thread when I searched -- probably just didn't look through the search results long enough!
It seems like lots of folks have figured out ways to make this work. I'll tinker a bit more, but if it will require extensive post work, then I'll probably abandon the product.
Don't count out postwork. It takes some learning, but once you get the hang of it, it's really fun. It doesn't need to be Photoshop, although there are lots of free learning resouces for it. There are free options like The GIMP, and cheap ones like Affinity Photo,just to name two.
Thanks. I've got Affinity Photo and can use it decently well. I just have the goal of doing everything "in camera" with DS. My renders for rendering contests and my DeviantArt stuff are all made without post-work. If I were doing this professionally, I'd use any tool at hand, but I'm striving for the highest quality I can get without image editing.
There is one other alternative that I use : render very small.
make a render preset that's just 600 pixels width x height ratio (more or less depending on speed of your system) and it will speed up your workflow. Remember that each render works squared, so doubling your render size quadruples the resources needed (roughly)
You could probably make custom menu items to switch render presets.
OP, I use quite a bit of post-work to adjust things like color/contrast, do some overpainting to fix hair, etc etc...but I also rely heavily on working in Iray preview for lighting. I have a 3090 with 64GB of RAM and I still can't embrace UltraScenery because while you can set the scene up by hiding things, you still need to use the Iray preview to do final touches. I haven't found a way around that yet.
I also wouldn't shy away from doing post...there are an infinite number of levels of post...from just color/contast to full out repainting and everything in between. I do find that even a teeny bit of post work can make even the best "I did everything in Daz" renders look more polished. Photographers use post to polish their work too...you can think of it that way.
I find it easiest to work with multiple scene files and merge them together. So I do all of my figure set up, dressing, posing, etc., in one scene file. Then I have a second one to just set up UltraScenery to where I like it and where I'd want to put my figure. Then I merge the figures into my UltraScenery scene. (Just have to be careful the lighting in the figures scene doesn't overwrite.)
I also hide most of the foliage layers when adjusting things like lighting, just to make it quicker. It really helps a lot.
There is also masking for each layer in US. You can have empty places where your camera needs to be.