Catching some rays...

JOdel

I've not touched Iray yet, and am in no hurry. I have a fairly hefty investment in 3Dlight shaders and I gather that Iray is not their friend.

Otoh, Iray shaders seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Some at very reasonable prices. As in PC+ offerings.

Well I was curious. So here is a quick render -- in 3Dlight, of the fur and leather shaders which were in the PC a week or so ago.

On the whole, while I know they do look better in Iray (have seen posts with them), I would say that this isn't altogether shabby. Worth keeping in mind, anyway. And I suspect that it may go the other way as well; 3Deloght shaders in Iray. Admittedly both are likely to be hit-or-miss.

DarkSpartan

Actually, 3Delight shaders do mostly okay in Iray-- the implementation DAZ uses recompiles them at rendertime into an Iray equivalent, and then goes to town. Like Iray shaders in 3DL, they don't always look quite as good as they do with what theyr'e designed for, but it's much better than I was expecting.

Unlike, say, Firefly rendered in 3DL and vice-versa.

Here's a compare and contrast for you. Same scene, one rendered in Iray, one in 3DL. The one on the left is nothing but IRay shaders, and the other all 3DL.

Yes, my 3DL shaders look a little squirrelly. I'll be looking at them here shortly.

Oso3D

For what it's worth, I find Iray more 'natural' with lighting and substances. Want a fire to glow? Emission. Want glass? Bam, glass. Want light to bounce off someone's red shirt and give highlight to their chin? Done.

Yeah, 3delight can be a lot faster, but only if you stick to simple 3delight stuff that doesn't use the features that Iray is. If you do Uberenvironment, meshlights, and other fancy stuff in 3delight, you see your render times get long.

 

Tobor

For the last seven or so years I tried to make a decent render with D|S and 3DL. Couldn't do it, so I gave up and used Poser instead. I had better luck with Firefly.

With Iray I can now make halfway decent renders using D|S, so my game is improving. I like the fact that I can more directly apply the photographic principles I learned long ago to rendering. In fact, I'm teaching a class on virtual photography using D|S and Iray.

I've seen some stunning renders using 3DLight. I'm just not capable of reproducing even a portion of the quality using that engine. 3DL and I just don't get along. I'm sure there are 3DL users who feel the same way about Iray. Fortunately, it looks like D|S will include both renderers for the foreseeable future.

DarkSpartan

I'm with you on the 3Delight thing. I've seen really great results from it, but it'll be a million years before I manage to get those myself. Beyond working out the lighting for indoor scenes with Iray, I got really solid results out of the box.