Daz 4.9 beta IRay performance
PA_ThePhilosopher
Posts: 1,039
Hey guys,
For those who have downloaded the 4.9 beta, I was curious if you have yet tested the performance of the updated iRay engine. I am considering updating to beta, but only if I offers significant improvement in IRay.
Thanks.
Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on
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Comments
I haven't noticed a performance upgrade, though I haven't explicitly done time tests.
However, there IS a particularly nasty bug in 4.8 that 4.9 fixes, so there's that.
In the long beta threads there are posts on speed improvements...but more importantly are Iray fixes.
But, it is still a beta and there may be other problems. It's not really ready for production use, so a side-by-side install would probably be a better idea, rather than replacing 4.8 with it.
I've seen less cases where the IRay renderer would totally lock up and the interactive IRay renderer lags less when making changes to the scene. Performance with 4.9 will also depend on exactly what you have in your scene. In one of the beta threads a developer had mentioned how much SSS you use would be one factor.
Initially I saw a slight improvement; that changed though.
SSS is apparently the culprit, but as I almost always use a little, then slower render-times.
Which bug would that be?
One of the nasty ones that was fixed deals with improper calculation for SSS. But there were several other Iray bugs that are fixed in the updated version of Iray that is in the beta.
There were also bugs that were fixed where some older content (not sure if was the textures or the geometry or the shaders) would crash when converted to IRay.
The one that really hit me was, I THINK, what RobotHeadArt refers to.
All I know is that certain models would crash Daz whenever you applied Iray Metallicity value above 0. (Like the Dystopian Drones and, I THINK, the Marcoor frigate thingie)
Given many characters in my webcomic are Dystopian Drone models, it caused a lot of problems.
I was going to ask the same question...lol I have not experienced any issues with 4.8, though it doas take a lot of ram to render Iray
Thank you all for the info on the crashes.
Interesting. I didn't realize a side-by-side install was possible. How does one do that? Simply download an install it to a different folder?
.
yes but only a release candidate and a beta can be installed at any one time.
I've got both 4.8 and 4.9 pro installed (so both release candidates as far as I know) on different drives. When downloading 4.9, there's a link toward the bottom where you can just download an .exe file. Run it and then select installation directory.
Edit: Wait, can you not have two release candidates installed because it violates TOS, or because it supposedly doesn't work? If it's the former, I've got no problem uninstalling 4.9.
My first IRay render with 4.9 (just three G3M characters) crashed my system, sort of. Keyboard and mouse became unresponsive (mouse pointer sometimes moved a bit, with delay) and constant disk activity. After 10 minutes I gave up and shut down the system. Never seen this with 4.8.
Oops, didn't see this was about the beta. What I say above is actually about the final release...
FWIW, i did about a dozen 1K x 1.5K and 3 2K x 3K renders last night, without any issues. Machine acted the same as with 4.8, but did seem a bit faster on rendering.
Our of curiosity, has anyone experimented with voumentric light yet? Evidently, it is much easier now, not having to worry about keeping the camera outside the voulme object, correct?
Having two release versions of Daz Studio installed at the same time is unsupported because they both use the same registry keys / local user paths to store configurations. In a lot of cases they will coexist just fine, but other times there can be problems.
If you install one from the Public Beta series in DIM and the other from the actual release in DIM then they are configured to store their configurations in different paths / registry keys and so they can coexist as happily as possible. While I don't recommend running the public beta for a long time if you are concerned about 4.9 and it's impact on what you are doing (or just want to do head-to-head testing) then installing the 4.9 public beta while you keep the full release 4.9 waiting should give you a good way to stick your toe in the water on 4.9 while leaving 4.8 around. Now note that the 4.9 release has some fixes and will get new fixes that won't pop up in the final 4.9 beta, but for now it should be fairly even (except for installing offline packages).
Of course running in Linux through WINE, I can do as many versions as I want side by side...just create a new 'prefix' for each one (it's like a separate install of Windows...each has its own registry/appdata)....
But that again, is 'unsupported'...
Taozen, who were you rendering? I don't have my Gen3M loaded yet (I am starting from scratch on my new computer and cataloging as I go, customizing content. In 4.8 of course, as 4.9 scrambled it!) and I can test those three if I have the hair, clothing, figures. I can do it on 4.8 and 4.9
You were able to get studio running in linux?
'nuff said....
I was trying to make some G3M Growing Up samples with G3M characters for someone who requested it:
Aiden - age 5-6
Jared - age 9-10
Dash - Young Teen
Also used Urban Model poses on all.
But I just tried again now, the problem seems to be too little RAM (only have 8 GB on this machine) so it starts swapping to disk - even with the swap file on a separate disk the swapping totally locks up the system (one of the downsides of the outdated PC architecture). I checked the RAM use while IRay was rendering, it quickly went from 2+ to 7+ GB used RAM so I stopped it there while there still was some mouse response.
I then tried with an old test scene I'd saved, with six G2F characters with hairs and fully clothed, and let it run to see what happened. It swapped for 30 minutes, then I got a "Low on memory" error and DS shut down. Probably hit the limit of the swap file also (8 GB).
Interesting to see that the same scene renders fine in 3Delight using only a few hundred MB RAM with the default settings, while IRay seems to require more than 10 GB. IRay seems to be a real RAM hog.
But thanks for trying to help - guess I'll have to get myself together to build that IRay optimized machine I've been thinking of for a long time.
Yes, JCThomas, dual versions DO work ok.
I also have both 4.8 and 4.9 pro RCs installed and running simultaneously. I have 3 versions on my notebook; 4.6 RC, 4.8 RC, & 4.9 RC. And 3 versions on my desktop; 4.8 RC, 4.9 RC and 4.9.0.61 Beta. They all run fine together ( except for the bugs each one has on their own).
DAZ_Rawb has pointed out the reasons DAZ doesn't support multiple versions, so try this at your own risk. A backup of your registry would also be prudent.
I can understand that they don't want to deal with the potental interference of different versions, but it seems like it would not be hard to program DS to allow multiple versions. Other software installs multiple versions without wiping out. And the RC and Beta do it now anyway.
If someone wants to try it, Here is a link that shows how to install dual NON-Beta versions of DS on the same PC.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/69782/version-4-8-and-4-9-on-the-same-pc#latest
Have fun !
I'm SO jealous. Have not had success getting DS to run in Linux, yet. Still working on it.
I'm waiting on a new hard drive to try and get the 64 bit version working...
Ah, didn't notice the 32 bit there. The 64 bit is the one I'm trying to get working currently.
Exactly what was fixed in 4.9 for Iray? I haven't had any problems with any of my renders using 4.8 so won't be upgrading for awhile, but I am curious as to what the bugs in 4.8 were that 4.9 apparently fixes.
edit: other than memory that is and that was a hardware problem (not enough) and a Windows problem (memory limitation). Not any problems with 4.8 specifically
There were certain objects that would crash if you tried to render - I was unable to do any renders with either Starship Vampire or SciFi Tactical Stronghold Room (or any objects from it!) until I caved and got the 4.9 Beta as I needed to use those sets/ships. Not sure how wide it went there were other objects/figures that crashed it as well.