why are characters now Iray?
torque3656
Posts: 18
in The Commons
I notice many characters are being released now for G3F/G3M and are Iray. What does this mean as opposed to G3 characters that are NOT Iray?
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???
Characters released since G3 was introduced have been both iray and 3dl.
The product promos make a big thing of the fact that they have Iray textures becuase Iray is the shiny new toy that everyone wants to use. Most of them have 3Delight textures as well but they don't always mention this. There have been complaints in other threads about no 3Delight promo pics on some products and people asking in the forums if a particular product has 3Delight textures.
IRay also tends to render much faster, especially with an nVidia video card, so it's faster at making promos. That's probably the main reason we rarely see 3DL promos these days.
Long before IRay made it to DS, some of the promos were already being done in other renderers. Joelegecko was using Octane for some of his.
Iray is also a physically based renderer (pbr) such that light behaves realistically. Beyond being shiny and new (
It should be noted that 3DL can get very close to PBR, with the right options, shaders, lights, etc.
Iray makes it way easier out of the box.
Very, very close...
In 3DL terms it is called Physically Plausible...and yes, it requires the proper shaders and lights (as of right now, the physically plausible 3DL lights can't accept IES profiles...but that may change if there is a demand for it).
If you have a new machine, if you have an older one you should render in 3Delight, one or two users have written that their machine go to hell (means they get destroyed) while trying to render a scene in Iray.
With correct lights you can do 3
With the correct lighting you get as good renders as 3Delight (many Iray renders in the gallery look not better than 3Delight renders)
All my renders are in 3Delight and most of them haven`t more than 2 or 3 lights, one environment (sometime an UE sometimes an AoO Ambient) and one or two AoA spots or an AoA distant, only a view has more and then they are just there for having a lamp light of a lamp prop or a firelight for a flame and for that I use linear point lights with a low diameter nothing to iluminate a whole scene. And I use no SSS (SSS turned off). For me it is more fun to create a scene and set up the lighting as good as I can then to render out of the box (out of the box is no fun, it is boring)
I can not see why an iRay render on CPU would be any more likely to destroy a machine that a 3DL render, which also uses the CPU, it is just clock cycles, so no real difference. Naturally an iRay render may take longer, depending on the lighting set up of both, but any PC that can not run for a sustained period at max CPU has likely got a severe cooling issue.
...or someone is running overclocked. Not a good idea for rendering. Gaming doesn't sustain the load like a render engine.
Yeah, my laptop gets really hot from rendering.
The reason IRay may take longer at CPU rendering is there are more calculations to make since it is simulating real light. Biased renderers usually take shortcuts to fake it, which can speed up rendering in comparison.
With the death of my Nvidia card last month, I'm back to CPU Iraying too. It's so painful x.x
http://www.daz3d.com/brigitte-for-genesis-3-female The final promo shot isn't labelled Iray - so is that a 3DL render? It looks the same as all the others, but is the only one not labelled Iray. If it's 3DL that's damn impressive matching o.o
I'm glad I've rekindled an interest in 3DL before buying a new computer. It changes my focus on what to get (like I'm not sure I'll bother even getting a 980 Ti, let alone Titan).
I find the notion that Iray is dangerous to a card a bit... hard to swallow. But in any case, I'm enjoying exploring the 'nearly PBR' edge of 3DL.
I should add that I don't think Iray killed my card, just that the card died.
I've actually been going the opposite direction and been having fun with stylising renders more with 3DL rather than going for realism.
I'm also becoming interested in Cycles (especially with the freestyle options) buuut I've been holding off on starting that because scary.
Bear in mind that nVidia makes the chipsets on nVidia cards, other companies (with varying levels of quality control) build the cards. A lot of fried cards come from poor contact with the heatsink, inadequate cooling, unreliable fans, etc.
Iray doesn't kill the card, it just hastens the demise of an inferior built card.
Or one that regular maintenance isn't done on...keeping the fan clean is very important.
As written, until now I haven`t done any Iray Render and I am not sure if I will in the future because I like 3Delight.
For me it is not important to get a 100% photo equal render, I have no need to do a copy of real life.
Ix: I decided to really try to drill into 3DL again specifically for non-realistic stuff (specifically, a drawn render style).
In the process I discovered I could ALSO get pretty realistic stuff.
This is sort of my joke along those lines:
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Art-jumble-woman-589082799
That's pretty impressive.
I still don't really understand how you get 'outlines' for drawn render style things.
No matter how photoreal skin and other surfaces get, hair still needs a serious change in approach. The more realistic the scene is, the more the hair geometry shows.
Absolutely agree with this. Characters are now only getting marginal improvements and it's hard to imagine them becoming much better than they are, but hair is now miles and miles behind them in terms of technology. It's also really hard to do much with it (lying down or upside down characters, a character with a set hair you then want to have wet hair, etc.)
Hmmm that's interesting. I didn't even know that existed. Wishlisted for later, thanks~ Can't really tell how it works from the product page.
Blender has an option called Freestyle I've been wanting to play with where you can mark any edges as a freestyle line which will then render as solid lines (at least I think that's how it works.)
The last couple of pages in my webcomic are done using PWToon, if you are curious.
There's apparently something similar in Carrara.
Another thing to check out is ToonyCam Pro, Skunkville Noir, and a few other items. (I'm happy with PWToon, but I'm debating getting ToonyCam as well, just to have several options)
Iray will only kill a GPU if it is not cooled properly or if the GPU is powered by a marginal power supply unit. Unfortunately, there are A LOT of cards out there that are built for bursts of use such as would be expected from gaming and only have coolers that "look cool" instead of being truly efficient. Running a render can put the GPU at full power for extended periods of time. If either the machine's cooling or the GPU's cooling is deficient, then things can go wrong in a hurry. To understand the difference, take a look at a Quadro's cooling vs a GeForce. Quadro's use lots of metal in the casing of the cooler in addition to the heatsink. The casing even has "HOT" stickers on it to warn that touching it can burn. Quadros are designed to be pushed for extended periods. MOST GeForce cards are not much more than a heatsink with a plastic cowl holding the fans. NOT a good indicator of efficient cooling.
A marginal PSU will also kill the GPU. If the rail that the PCI-e power is provided from is unstable then the card can be damaged due to spikes and drops that can occur when the card is pulling 100% wattage for extended periods.
If you're using Iray and your scene isn't trivial, your machine should be LOUD. The fans in the PSU should be full bore and the fan(s) on the GPU should be at full power. If not, then you may want to investigate whether your card's setup is deficient.
Kendall
I purchased my latest PC in order to stop it from being very loud under load, hence I purchased from a site that specializes in creating quiet PC's. When I render CPU or GPU it never makes a sound (or none that I can hear), even at full load. I have monitored the GPU temperature during rendering and it stays steady, so I hope the GPU cooling is doing its job correctly.
Yes cheaper cards will make a lot of noise when rendering, but it does not always follow that no noise means your card is melting.
Patently not true, both for noise levels and fan speeds. Definitely not true for water cooled CPUs and/or watercooled GPUs. During renders, my GPU fans level out at a bit over 50% speed and hold the GPU temp at the design value of 80C. I've also built my machine to sufficent cooling capability to not need fans running full out ever.