iRay needs to render 10 times faster before becoming the standard
Damanyo
Posts: 44
seems Iray is being treated as the standard now (which is inappropriate!). I appreciate the quality results we get with iRay, but I can't afford the time! iRay takes 20 times as long to render as 3Delight, that makes it a luxury item for people with the time to spend!
Post edited by Damanyo on
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Comments
Iray requires an nVidia graphics card for faster rendering.
And a good one with lots of Ram. So far, my 4GB 970's doing ok but I either need to get a 6GB card or a 2nd computer to work on while the other is rendering LOL.
Iray is faster for me. My normal promo renders usually take 18-20 hours to render in 3Delight. It only takes just under 5 hours with Iray and get a lot better quality. Try adjusting your settings.
OP whats your setup? if you do not have an nvidea card it's going to take forever and even tho i do not render complex scenes it taked me at leat 5 hours to render and it all depens on the size of the image i make and it only uses the cpu since i do not have an nvidea card. the more complex a scene is the longer it will take.
I've got an Nvidia.... 860m. On a laptop. It still generally gets me results pretty quickly.
I'm with Frank on this one. I was doing some test renders in 3dl last week and everything was taking almost as long to process through all the textures as comparable Iray renders were taking me. I also spent 3 weeks recently on my very elderly computer which does have a nvidia card but one so old it might as well not be. I had to pay much more attention to how I lit things (because that speeds it up or slows it down dramatically) and be prepared to be patient when I did renders with people because they tend to slow me down. Still faster than trying to use uber environment and reflection in 3dl though
Quoting Frank 0314
My 4-core Gen-5 i7 laptop with no video card renders the full scenes with one character in 3Delight in under an hour. I only tested the new Newsroom set with one V7, clothes and props. But there are quite a few relective surfaces. My 6-core i7 PC renders 3Delight very, very fast. For Iray, there is an nVidia 970 and a Titan Z in my PC. In Iray, I still have renders that quit at 60% after 3 hours (I can't seem to get my render settings above 3 hours. I cranked the seconds to the max, but it quits after 3 hours.)
The lighting in 3Delight vs. Iray is very different. I hate to start experimenting with lighting and surfaces in 3Delight.
Wow, I really appreciate the comments and dialog this post has generated! I truly hope PAs like ironman13 see this and see that different people in the community have varied preferences for 3Delight and iRay. There are some great items being offered for purchase, but I won't buy them if they only come with iRay materials!
The limitations some people have would require them to make significant reinvestment in hardware to use iRay, in addition to additional time. For some of us 3Delight still makes the most sense and we need 3Delight materials for props! The three images I've attached are examples of renders I made with 3Delight and iRay. The first on left is 3Delight (18 sec) - middle is iRay (5 mins - 11 sec) (something weird happened to the eyes, never had that happen prior) - then on the right is iRay (with iRay eye materials) (14 mins - 57sec) (don't know why it went dark, never had that happen prior) {46+ times longer render time}.
I look forward to reading more comments!
Why is it "inappropriate?" The marketplace will determine what people want. If the people buying stuff want more Iray products, then that's what the content creators will make. That being said, I also like 3Delight. I really prefer to buy products that have textures for both, and REALLY want vendors to list whether an item has both textures available.
As for the image above, it looks to me like you need to adjust your Iray render settings (look in Tone Mapping and increase the ISO/Film Sensitivity or your f stop). And, from what I can see in the middle image, it looks like your texture is not optimized for Iray. The skin in both renders looks a little plastic to me. If you're going to burn render time with Iray, you should use textures designed to get the most from it.
I don't really understand this insistence on vendor supplied materials for any render engine. Most vendor supplied materials are, at best, a suggestion in my opinion. Granted... some are exceptional, but those are in the minority in my opinion. If you really like something, make your own materials for it. There are enough material preset types of packages available that you ought to be able to find one that works for your style and use that to develop your own. Its not hard.
Think about this: master painters used to make their own paint! Grinding the hard ingredients, mixing with whatever liquids they needed. They even stretched their own canvases.
And we complain about what materials are provided.
And, while it may seem otherwise, this post is not directed at the OP (DiggrDude); you are far from alone in this opinion of what vendors should provide in a product. I just don't understand it, myself. But...I guess not all kids took apart their toys, either.
evilded777:
Not to be argumentative, but to respond to each of your points:
I also have been living with a Mac that is OK but Apple will probably never offer Nvida cards. Lray or iRay or whichever it is supposed to be is massively slow. I have been able to optimze 3Delight so I can at least work and learn and even make some very nice renders without buying a $10,000 new computer with a $3,000 double wide video card. Or having to go back to Windows to even get an Nvida card in the $800 cheap seats range. I really appreciate the vendors that supply not only materials for both render engines, AND even are now marking them with little icons or notes so the materials are easy to tell apart. And I am rapidly learning their names.
Suggestion: Perhaps what is needed is a DAZ script that will take a loaded selected iteml and redefine its loaded materials and material definition and simplify them it to a 3Delight standard configuration. (without of course damaging the product file version). I have seen things like this floating about or what seem to be things like this in some packages. There are tricks to do this. But a simple easy to find script to "Make Selected Item Materials 3Delight" that is as intelligent about it as possible would be most handy. It is possble such things have already been made and I have not found them yet.
IRay apparently also makes more sense to Reality 4.2 enabling it to convert surfaces to its internal system more easily (more clues apparently?) And I can render in Reality 4.2 rather well with what I have because it does not need a double wide graphics card that costs more than my computer. So I may have a serious use for the IRay definitions as well.
I suspect a lot of DAZ users are trying to decide if they are going to get into DAZ or similar programs deep enough to try to upgrade to more computer power. This same argument might be applied to G3 characters but there you have all sorts of products to adapt to and from older Gens and preserve your investment in clothing, poses and animations.
I look forward to at some more computer power and am searching for the upgrade that makes most sense in my price range, but that probably will never have an Nvida Card since I use Macs for everything else. So I am more likely to get serious about Reality 4.2 and rely on CPU power and tons of RAM. I am starting to get it to work nicely for me both in DAZ and POSER.
I would hate for this to become some kind of DAZ Caste system with 3rd class citizens being the 3Delight users and those who need G2 characters and even Gen4 Genesis characters to be able to get their hardware up to the point where they can learn the thousands of things needed to try to get into a program like DAZ. (or render an animation between now and 2020 to learn how that works) I do not recall the DAZ product description saying "Must have $10,000 computer or better to play and learn."
So thanks to the vendors who provide both materials and even if the stock set loads for lRay, include the 3Delight materials to resurface the components of the scene to get it to render for them.
I suspect a lot of the people around here have to "Do What they Can with What They've Got" at least until they decide if this is going to be a more and more serious road. During that time a 3-5 min. render the dozens of times you need to fix something yet again or spend the hours needed to learn how to master lighting (with render after render to see shadows and so forth and learn angles etc.) before trying to grind out a masterpiece is what is needed.
And I wonder how many people download DAZ, notice it is so slow it is no fun at all and just wander off before learning why and giving it a chance. I was on the verge of just trashing the whole thing before I found the render settings causing my problems and learned enough about all the different kinds of surfaces and materials to massively reduce my render times while greatly increasing my render quality into a range I could live with by carefully managing such things.
It is true vendors can do what they want. But there are also all those who "Pay's their money and Take's their pick."
Even Pixar with all Disney's money, an army of people and a ton of GPU/CPU farms, rendering a movie takes months!!
it's only a matter of time for the tecnology comes in a faster way, patience is a key.
For a studio, rendering is able to be done 'faster' by using not 'better' machines, but MORE machines.
If it takes an hour to render a scene, that means it would take 24 hrs to render 1 second of 'film'. To get a single computer that would be capable of rendering all 24 frames in that hour would be outrageously expensive, even if it is technologically fesable. So, instead, to get everything done in 1 hr...render each frame on its own computer...so throw 24 'ordinary' computers at the problem. Now, you can get 24 seconds of film rendered in a day...or about 1 minute in 3 days (you can speed that up by throwing even more machines at it, but even that has limits).
Great comments everyone! I'm glad to hear other users thoughts on this subject! Thank you all for sharing with passion and civility; I appreciate this community even more now!
Thanks: daywalker03, kaotkbliss, frank0314, Gordon228, thistledownsname, Khory, bueller1998_df4ca4b697 for your comments and getting the dialog going!
mmitchell_houston - "inappropriate" because 3Delight is still the preferred render engine for many of us. Iray only could cause some of us to feel like we have to conform or give-up! And I am really advocating for products that have textures for both, and REALLY want vendors to list whether an item has both textures available or not (many do and I truly appreciate that). Thanks for the settings tips!
evilded777 - I'm a hobbyist that lacks the skills to make my own materials. I marvel at the artistry that I see in many materials. I just think that PAs shouldn't assume that iRay is the standard and leave many of us out.
MW_HNL & Zilvergrafix & mjc1016 - right, I'm glad there is iRay and that there are some in this community with the resources to make the most of it. But don't want the PAs to leave the rest of us out.
I really hope that the PAs reads these comments and that this dialog motivates them (positively)!
And there's part of the problem...you have convinced yourself that it is hard. It's not. Most of the hard work has already been done...the shaders have that covered, even the base, DazDefault shader is good enough for most things. Also, all the other hard work, like UV unwrapping, creating the diffuse color map and any control maps is also done. Even the material zones to assign those maps to are still valid. 95% of the works is done! Plugging in the diffuse, bump/displacement/normal and opacity maps is pretty easy. Tweaking the settings to get what you want, also isn't that difficult...most folks do a bit of that, anyway. Then File > Save As > Material Preset...whole process takes a few minutes to maybe an hour and gives you a completely reusable, just lke an 'included' one, preset that you don't have to touch again, other than to apply it.
I too would prefer NO presets at all...just the maps and the item. Because that way, it's pretty renderer neutral. Even with presets for both, they are still just someone's suggestion/opion of what the item looks like.
Not including 3DL materials doesn't mean the item won't work...heck, sometimes the Iray materials will be just fine, with no adjustments (other times, well...what the cat dragged in last night probalby looks better), It just means that you are free to create your own presets.
Now, another thing...there is very little difference in render times between Iray and 3DL, in CPU mode...when all things are equal. Iray, by the very nature of the type of renderer it is, includes things that 3DL does not do, by default...one of the main ones is full global illumination (bounce light, ambient occlusion, color bleeding). So, if a render in Iray is taking 10 hrs in CPU and 3DL is taking 10 minutes, there is a darn close to 100% chance that they are NOT equivalent renders...there's probably none of the GI effects and maybe not even proper shadows in the 3DL render. And comparing them without having the same features enabled is an 'apples and oranges' thing...it's simply not valid.
Running Iray in CPU only mode does not require any 'better' hardware than 3Delight. Now, the reason Iray seems to 'require' expensive hardware is that in order for it to actually use a video card for rendering, the entire scene MUST fit into the card's memory. The only cards that come with very large amounts of memory are the 'high end' ones. If it wasn't for that limitation, any Nvidia card would boost performance (yes, even the really cheap ones that are CUDA capable (the second limitation), directly proportional to the number of CUDA cores. The more cores the faster the render...but that is really closer to the more machines used, in my last post.
I have a very noticeable boost in speed with a cheap, several generation old, 1 GB card...but I keep the scenes rendered on it to well bellow the memory cap.
Reality user here also, just a heads up, according to Paolo using iray or 3delight mats makes no difference to reality. For me the ability to launch a render and keep working on a scene is a big reason I no longer use 3delight (Ive never looked at iray as it came out when I was too far down the reality rabbit hole). And being able to see the render results for even the most complex scenes in minutes to know whether something needs fixing, also key.
In regards to the OP, I have no dog in that specific hunt but somewhat related - my main interest is seeing better quality skins for G3 figures, dont care if iray or 3delight, I just do not get why the best skins are still for V4 figures (milan series for ex), and the G3 (and G2) skins just are not very good. Some better than others sure, but none I have found are 'excellent'. And those I cannot make myself.
On my side many people told me i must buy a new PC, mine is not enough good to use Iray on a good way, i don't and won't have the funds to get a new one,
On another hand, I REALLY prefer the renders with 3DLight, i intend to get close to a graphic novel style than a photo realistic kind of images.
I would be interested to try Iray sometimes, but ONLY sometimes
Ced
I've noticed before that this forum is something of an echo chamber, with so many people scrambling to assert that everything's fantastic whenever someone raises an issue like this.
I'm with the OP here: My few experiments with IRay have taken a really long time, even with a decent rig and an NVidia card.I tend to work with scenes involving large numbers of figures; I squeeze up to five or six figures into one render and it takes multiple renders post-worked together to complete a scene. My initial test renders with IRay only included two figures but still took longer than 3Delight would have needed to do six. I just don't have that much time.
An on the subject of forced conversion to IRay; Have I misunderstood something, or do I need to re-invest in new textures and lighting specifically designed for IRay, if I want to be able to use all my older content? To me that seems like a shameless cash-grab, especially given that so much content now is only intended for use with IRay. It simply means that I'm inclined to look else-where for my content.
DS will automatically convert shaders between 3DL and Iray, although its faster and gives you more control to do the conversion before rendering. Fancy shaders won't necessarily translate well, but the automatic translation usually does a decent job. A custom conversion will be better, but it isn't mandatory.
No...but Iray optimized materials will be faster/work better.
There are two ways of doing that (3 if you count the autoconversion) without buying anything. Applying the Iray UberBase to everything and then tweaking, instead of letting the automatic on-the-fly conversion occur. Or using the various Iray materials that match the originals the closest and applying those already somewhat tweaked presets. All of them can be applied by ctl-clicking (cmd-click on a Mac) and selecting Ignore to leave the original texture maps in place.
I've noticed people new to the forum tend to say things like this before realizing just how much they don't know how things work. In time, many of them realize that people aren't just reflexively defending the status quo, but have arrived at an educated view of things based on experience and evidence.
Iray, like all physically-based renderers, takes a lot longer than a basic 3DL renderer, because everything is being modeled very accurately/realistically. Of COURSE it takes longer.
But, you know, if you start pushing 3DL toward more realism, with things like bounce lights, haze, and mesh lights, you'll find that render times can balloon out fast.
Now, mind you, I REALLY like 3DL and have come back to it after using Iray for a while.
The way I put it:
You can go from 0-60 (in 'realism') very fast in Iray, compared to 3DL. However, once you get past the initial burst, both approaches require a lot of skill and experience (mainly in lighting and optimizing renders).
3DL has the advantage of being unrealistic easily, when you want it, and being able to do all sorts of crazy unrealistic things. (Like cartoon renders)
Iray can do some really subtle realistic stuff, like caustics, that 3DL struggles with.
I wouldn't say I'm new to the forum as such- I've been here a while. I just don't post very often, partly because of responses like that.
I'm not arguing that IRay shouldn't be slow- nor I think is the OP. The point is that IRay doesn't suit every user, especially those of us who work with larger or more complex scenes, or are unwilling to lay out sustantial ammounts of cash to optimise all of their existing libraries to work with the new system. The OP's perfectly reasonable point is that IRay seems to be becoming the 'expected standard' render engine and new content is starting to reflect this. I don't want to use IRay and I don't want the choices available in the marketplace to try and force me to.
Please remember to address the topic, not the poster.
and you are not forced to use them if you don't like, there are many external render engines available for you to explore, a simple OBJ export from DS and a simple OBJ import on such external render engines and you will do fine.
iRay is not competing with other render engines,and surely Nvidia is not 100% focused on make iRay the best of all mother render engines, is a CUDA benefit, and indirect plataform for general purpose, Nvidia will not go to starve if people choose Luxrender or Vray, the big bite of Nvidia is hardware,
Admit it: you just wanted to bust my chops. :)
Just because you CAN buy your paints doesn't always mean you should. I buy materials presets that are versatile and well done so I don't have to do them all from scratch. But I rarely use any important materials "out of the box". They are too important to be completely left up to someone else. And those masters who started buying paints, probably still mixed their own colors.
And just because I may say something with directness and lack of subtelty does not mean I am inflexible, nor does it mean I am an expert. I am a perpetual student. I simply write in a very direct manner.
Loving the dialog, seeing a shift in the MarketPlace; very cool. Here, here ChallyII; that's what I'm talking about, Iray is a great option, we just want it to remain optional! Thanks everyone!
It is optional, and even when items and characters come with only Iray materials, it's possible to use them in 3Delight, as has been pointed out.
I'm currently rendering Iray scenes with anywhere from 2-5 genesis 2 figures, Urban future 1, 2x Urban future 2, UF 3, UF 4, 6x Dystopian city blocks, a couple dozen miniman/miniwoman, a half dozen vehicles plus various other props and tons of lights (I like to put a light where there is a model for one)
These scenes take me around an hour and a half to render at most and I have my time set to 4 hours, samples set to like 10,000 and convergence ratio left at 95%
My rig is no where near top of the line (I've got 16GB ram, an AMD athlon 2 X3 - only a tripple core and a GTX 970 nvidia card)
Oh, and I mostly just use the default shaders, I only convert to Iray when I want emmissive lights.
I'm not saying Iray is better than other render engines, as Tim said, it's really user preference and Iray is mine. It works for me and my setup seems to handle it pretty well.
Many of us would like to have the option of using 3Delight materials off the shelf (as is the option with the majority of PA items), by selecting those material options. Iray materials generally render ugly in 3Delight; and yes, they can be tweeked to render better in 3Delight (if someone has the knowledge, time and inclination to do that). I appreciate that many people in this community have knowledge, time and inclination to tweek materials, and even make their own, but all of us do not.