Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part IV
This discussion has been closed.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Here's Nevio done with the Pixar HDR alone, for some reason, he took an hour to do, though I have a suspicion that Windows did a download during that time as the light on my wireless adapter was flashing.
CHEERS!
When you say rectangular spotlights, were they specifically Iray lights, I'd like to know the settings if they were.
CHEERS!
Very nice, and the lighting is so natural.
I'll definitely need a GPU before I get into doing anything like that.
CHEERS!
Hmm, nice image but closing as no memory? It should be using swap, in affect you never run out of memory. Have you got it disabled? Although, that should have crashed the computer not just Daz.
All I know is that DAZ Studio closed leaving the message from the system saying something like 'running out of system memory, please save any data and close DAZ Studio'. The swap file is set to use all available space on the drive so I have no idea why DAZ shut down, coincidnce maybe. Task Manager was showing as using nearly 15 GB of the 16 on the Laptop.
Of to check the Swap File though. Thatnks for the reminder.
It was the Swap File. I haven't been in there for months so I don't know how it got changed but it was set for some stupidly small size. Thanks for the heads up nicstt
Now set to MAX 
It isn't especially unusual for the swap to be disabled when there is a SSD present; folks think it saves the SSD, which is a problem as it can cause crashes. In the past running out of memory, and having swap used would be more noticeable as the system would slow down considerably due to how slow HDs are; SSDs are much slower than system memory, but not in relation to an old mechanical HD, so the slow down should still be noticeable if it happens a lot, but perhaps not always. It doesn't really save the SSD and lost data and potential damage due to such crashes are a bigger problem. Maybe Daz is configured so it doesn't render when Swap is in use; it would be interesting to know officially how Daz responds in such situations, or if it takes ist queue from how the system is configured.
I''ve known folks to add an SSD thinking it is a better solution than adding extra memory; the situation isn't quite so obvious, it depends how much memory the computer has, and if it is a 32 or 64 bit system; as you're using IRAY (I presume) then you can and do have more than 4GB available for it to render with. It may be easier to add an SSD (ignoring the fun of a reinstallation or migration), than to add more memory; it may actually be cheaper now, or there may not be room to add more memory.
I don't have an SSD so that doesn't count and that is the first time in thirty years I have had the System Low on Memory message
...both of your moonlight scenes look pretty spot on. Still been struggling myself between to get a better balance of realistic while making sure the characters can be seen.
..yeah am using them in the London scene I'm still working on.
...I tried replacing the distant light I was using for the moon in my London scene with a spotlight (disk) to get a slightly softer edge to the shadows but the scene rendered way too dark
Look forward to seeing it.
CHEERS!
..yeah, Swap saves my bum a lot with the big scenes I do. Slower than all bugger, but at least the render finishes.
...yeah my MB is limited to 24 GB total. I'd have to build an entirely new system to go beyond that.
Sure thing, though the settings aren't anything unusual. Attached are some images to help illustrate how I set it up. The first image shows the whole scene with the camera placement, and the three spotlights. The spotlights are all Iray spotlights. I loaded them in, placed them, set their geometry to be rectangles, and tweaked until they looked right to me.
SpotLight 1 is the main front light which I wanted to have somewhat soft shadows, so I made the rectangle geometry bigger at 50x50. I upped the Lumen to 14,000.
SpotLight 2 is the first rim light - a 10x10 rectangle with a Lumen of 8,000. I wanted this one to be slightly warmer for contrast with the other lights, so I lowered the temperature to 4,000 K.
Spotlight 3 is the second rim light - also a 10x10 rectangle, but much brighter at 150,000 Lumen. This is probably much too bright, you can see it's making her fingers translucent. But I wanted that harsh white edge and didn't notice the scattering on the fingers till after I rendred. Oops!
The simplest solution is to raise the amount of Lumen coming out of the spotlight. If it's very far away from what it's shining on, you may have to raise it a lot (perhaps in the millions). It works similarly to a light in the real world - a 40-watt table lamp placed five feet away from a model casts enough light to take a moody photo, however if you want to light up an entire street for a film-shoot with artificial moonlight, a 40-watt table lamp isn't going to do anything noticable. You need massive banks of lights on cranes powered by big generators to light the scene (very expensive). Luckily in the DAZ world, it's as cheap as placing your moon spotlight in the appropriate place and adding a few more zeros to the end of that light's Lumens parameter. If the moon spotlight is very far away from the scene, it's geometry is also going to have to be a very large disc to make the shadows softer. Trial and error is required to get the numbers right - if it's too dark, add another zero or two to your light's Lumens. Keep messing with it till you get it just right. I rarely dial in the exact amount of Lumens on the first try. If your graphics card can handle the live Iray render preview it makes lighting waaay easier since you can adjust the number of Lumens and light geometry size on the fly and keep tweaking while watching it update in real-time.
That's interesting,
Your render still looks like an Iray render, where the ones I did with a Daz light looked like they could have been done in 3Delight with a UE2 light. I do find it annoying sometimes when lighting tutorials don't give you the precise orientation of the lights. They tell you where in the scene to put them, but don't say how that relates to the x, y and z co-ordinates.
For me, I'd be more inclined to use other lights in an interior when there wasn't a window, you shouldn't need them for outdoor scenes.
CHEERS!
Well, here's another interesting thing,
It seems that Iray ignores HD. I dialled in a whole raft of HD morphs into this Darius and set the SubD to 4, and nothing came out in the render. If this is normal for Iray then HD isn't quite the big draw it once was and maybe I could save myself some money by not getting any more HD packs for future figures. Unless there's a sampler or other trick that gets Iray to recognise them that is.... Is there one?
CHEERS!
PS (I've included a 3Delight render to show how the HD should look.)
Rogerbee
Translucency Weight is in the top part of the shader.
Yes sorry I meant Top Coat Thin Film which gives the oily layer (sebum) some thickness and therefore should react to light better and spread the light more. The blue halo is coming from giving the top coat a thickness. However the are others functions of the shader that will effect the colour too and I am still trying to work out which ones there are. I have a feeling SSS colour may have an influence on the tip coat film colour but I do know IOR of the top coat film does have an influence of the colour.
The reason I am not providing any more info is that I am working on other paying projects and doing this in my spare time. But I also want to make sure I understand the shader first.
That's ok,
Mec4D recommends not adjusting that setting at all, ie leaving it at zero, should we try that!?
CHEERS!
I am not saying Cath is wrong or right as I am not in a position to do so due to my lack of understanding. The trouble is with this Iray Shader is that it isn't based on real world physics like the render engine is. And like 3DL we are still cheating so again there will be no wrong or right way to set things up. Even spec maps made for 3DL won't work properly.
True enough,
Is HD in Iray a waste of time then?
CHEERS!
HD has been working properly in Iray for me.
Here's a comparison of two Iray renders of Boris, one of Boris HD and one of Boris without HD. They're both at subD 4, though for most renders subD 2 or 3 is enough to see that the HD is working. I couldn't say why it isn't working on your Darius renders. You're sure his HD Head morphs are turned on, and not just his HD Body morphs? Also, in addition to turning "Render SubD Level" to 3 or 4, you have "Resolution Level" set to "High Resolution"?
I don't have any HD products to test. I know Sub-D works in Iray but without having HD products I can't say for sure. I found this thread about HD and Iray http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61556/so-the-new-hd-morph-details-are-underwhelming
Well that works well.
@Zilvergrafix "Day and Night, finally I achieved an image emitter, even the light is created from the image itself!"
Very nicely done. Convincing lighting.
They're not. The Distant (infinite), Point, and Spotlight lights are connected to built-in, native Iray light methods. They are programmatically defined, and as such are more efficient than mesh lights (you mention HDR in your post, but that has nothing to do with either the buit-in light types or mesh lights). They are not "Daz lights," but Iray lights that conveniently use the already familiar D|S light interfaces.
Except for special formed shapes, which then would exhibit a different light cone, there is no qualitative difference between mesh lights and Iray primitive lights, because they both are derived using the same ray tracing math (and for created shaped cones, it's better to use IES profiles, which are free and plentiful). The difference is that meshes are treated as hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands of individual light sources. Because of this, take longer to calculate and render.
If a certain render looks better using mesh lighting, it's simply because the Iray primitive light types aren't being used properly. You get "light" from a flashlight, but it's not very flatterting when used to make a portrait. Iray point and spot lights can be redefined in shape and size, making them highly flexible.
I'm not down on meshes for lights, but an over-use of them will only lead to slower renders, when that time could be used to improve the scene in other ways.
Yeah, the HD is all on, and he is High Resolution as Darius 6 HD defaults to it when loaded. When you see him untextured in the preview window everything is there. Mmm, mysterious...
CHEERS!
Well, it's each to their own there I guess. I'm tired of studio renders, I've been doing them since day one. Once I get a new GPU I'll have what I need to do the kind of scenes I want to.
CHEERS!
After watching one of Mec4D's videos where she used a texture from her Hunk megapack, I decided to do likewise. Back before Lee 6 was even conceived, I had done an Asian character, but never had a texture for him that looked right. Until now that is, I loaded her Hiroshi texture and I just love the results. Cath was working with HDR's from day one and her promo renders, even for her earliest characters, all looked brilliant. I really hope she does something new and optimised for Iray as they will be phenomenal.
CHEERS!
Nicely done! I really like the dark one!