Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part IV
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...same here.
Thanks Jag, I appreciate it. :)
There's one general tip I can give for using Iray, and it's the same one that Dreamlight tries to pound through everyone's head (and with good reason, he's absolutely right) - lighting is EVERYTHING. That same image looked *awful* before I built a scene-sized cube from six planes and controlled the amount of light from the HDRI (which was a fairly dark interior) by hiding a few of them and turning the Exposure from 13 to 11. There are two spotlights in that scene, one from the upper left to cast the main light and one from behind the wing (which is why one appears more red than the other, it was a translucency test). When Iray was first introduced, I spent way too much time worrying about materials when the most important thing to master is the lighting.
...materials are still very important for you can have the greatest lighting setup, but if the materials look bad, the scene itself looks bad and whatever lighting you throw at it won't help make it look any better.
Of course that's generally true, but Iray does a pretty good job with default DAZ Studio materials. Materials are rarely "bad", and unless you're attempting something extremely photorealistic, you can still salvage an image if the specular or subsurface scattering aren't quite right. There is almost no salvaging an image with bad lighting.
I see, that's quite interesting. The way Cath is doing it is the best way she knows how within the realm of the PBR Metallicity/Roughness. For her, that was the way of doing it that gave her the best results. You can't deny that her results are very impressive. What you are describing is a way of doing it within the realm of the PBR Specular/Glossiness. I like the results I'm getting with what I'm doing and I'm far enough in that direction now that I want to proceed that way. It's a case of picking your weapon and going with what you feel gives you the results that you want. As the adage goes: If it feels good, do it!
Another thing, that Wikihuman Project is showing how it is done in Maya using V-Ray, and not Iray. The specular map that is used is very white and the Total Specular Additive is what happens to that map within the shader network in Maya. I think, if you want to do research, it is best to do it regarding the render engine you are actually using, which is Iray. I think confusion comes when you start looking at things that are best applied in other PBR's and indeed other software.
At the end of the day, we're artists, not all artists will use the same techniques. I don't think, per se, that any one technique is the complete wrong or right one. If you like a particular artist and you like that technique, research it and use it.
CHEERS!
Agree, she's a jewel.
Those expensive toys they are using produce a very detailed specular maps, what they do after that is the create some sort of "displacement map" where minimum height is at 40% and maximum height is at 60%, that's clever, it's like controlling contrast, apply that in Iray and you'll get similar results. That contrast adjustment in V-Ray occurs while they are shading a surface, I see that as bottle neck.
Exactly, but you always learn something of other techniques.
Streets of Asia 2
I decided to get my head down and really hone what I'd been learning, and I think it has paid off. As this is a render thread, I'll let it do the talking...
CHEERS!
Pretty nice, though not something I want to attempt with my current hardware. I'm yearning for my Strix, but, I just can't afford to overspend and want to get a good deal with someone I can trust.
CHEERS!
...been running test for a scene and for some reason the render process seems to hang at around 24% even after several hours. It keeps rendering, but repeats the same convergence percentage over and over and over again. I have several mesh lights (one chandelier with about a dozen bulbs and 5 individual lights) along with 4 spotlights and an HDRI sphere to be seen though the windows. The HDRI is not the cause, neither are the spotlights as I did tests with them turned off and the render still bogged down .
I let it go the overnight and in the morning (after 7+ hours) it only was at 56% convergence and it still looked a bit grainy. Felt like I was using LuxRender 1.3 (and I haven't installed Reality 4.1 yet)
The scene uses Magnus Manor (the front section with the Organ only). I can turn off/delete only so much of the set that isn't in camera view because of how it was constructed. Size of the test render is only 900 x 900. I'm also not using the Architectural Filter (whcih I understand slows the process down) and am running in "Speed" render mode
Crikey, my Railway Station scene is a lot more involved (including volumetrics) but it renders faster than this does (total convergence in about 5.5 hours at 1,600 x 1,200).
That is the best one you have done so far
I only CPU render but I do have a quad core i7
What about the materials? Perhaps try some texture compression, under Advanced in the render settings, try dialling down the maximum texture threshold. Is the Optix thingy on!? Then, maybe try different max sample settings.
Worth a punt...
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Yeah those i7's are pretty quick, I have a 6 core AMD but it's not as fast as the Intel, but, it is a darnsight cheaper. How long did that scene take to render?
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Thanks, it took ages to work everything out. Hopefully, now I have, I should do as well, if not better, again. They're staying naked and bald for the moment though as I still need a working computer for other things.
CHEERS!
...I always manually convert all materials to Iray before rendering. None of the content I used was old content. Not sure wht Optix is. Will have to look at that later as I am in the process of moving and have the workstation disconnected. Wondering if it might be the mesh lights as I have about 17, all using the Real Lights for Iray emissive shader settings.
Try what I suggested, just as a process of elimination.
CHEERS!
to be honest I didn't look but it was only a few hours I think.
...still don't know ehat "Optix" is.
Indeed. I was able to use Genesis textures in Blender Cycles long before Iray came to DAZ Studio. While the render engine will always influence the look of things, that will have more to do with algorithms than assets.
I think they talking about the optix prime acceleration.,,,it's on the Render Settings pane on the advanced tab there is a check box to enable it.It's supposed to work for CPU only in iray as well as to make GPU stuff faster.I keep forgeting to set it , so I don't use it much.
https://developer.nvidia.com/optix
Here ya go.
From what I've read it requires a GPU to speed up the render.
hmm,,well,I'm not sure.I'll give it a go after I let this render finish and compare the two and see what I get.
One of the Daz guys mentioned that it was supposed to in another thread. ( found it :) http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks/p3 )
Ok, you got step 1, now do step 2 and try the same model and shaders using only scene lights, remove dome lights or slide to zero.
Vray, iRay, and the others are just tools, the basic knowledge around all that tools will work for many of this external engines....even for Unreal Engine 4!
When I used Maxwell render, in that time was not even Uber Environment on Daz, neither the fake "gummy human SSS" on Poser, but the knowledge achieved on Maxwell Render got me understanding the concepts and "how to" processes for fast learning the incoming external render engines for Modo and Keyshot too.
and I recall "basic knowledge", because the other deal is the long journey to learn the software GUI, specially on Zbrush...and Unreal Engine 4...ugh!
The buildings etc probably aren't as complex as they first look. I think that's the way Stonemason designs them.
CHEERS!
Who says I want to do it that way!? It's about finding a way that works for you and making it do so. It's about art, not dictats and conventions.
CHEERS!
I've been working on V6HD :)
( With out Optix Prime: 2hours 20 min 429 itterations,,so ~3 samples per minute. )
I restarted the render with optix prime enabled, I'll check it in about an hour or so and see where it's at.
Well, your infinite posts of WIPs (I can't view in another way) with the same figure on the same conditions and trying to be like MEC4D got me to think in that way, but ok, no problem, ignore the advice.
Teen Josie with normal iray shaders provided.