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The assumption seems to be that everyone wants photo-realism and so everything is focused on IRAY because of this belief. I like 3delight because you can do a lot of non-photorealism very fast. My fear is that after a while not even 3delight skin shaders will be made for new characters... eventually everything will be IRAY only.
And if DAZ's license to use 3Delight ends...does this only affect new versions of DAZ Studio or all versions?
This is a basic scene, 3 mesh lights. it took 52 min on my i7 6700K 4.0Ghz. The noise filter was not enabled. Max samples was set to 5000. The room was a primative cube with a backdrop inside it. There is no postwork to the image.
Wow, you are very demanding.
Ok, I accept and give it a try. Here is a scene I am working on currently (WIP). It is a completely enclosed interior. Only light sources are from emission (screens, ceiling and light inside the boxes...) There are substantial numbers of reflective materials as well as SSS on some materials. There are two clothed figures and many propos in there. The room is built from Stonemasons SciFi construction kit.
To see what I get I have rendered this scene using Iray in DS 4.9 with only my CPU (i7 3930K 3.2GHz). I stopped the render at 1 hour (~50% converged). There are still some noisy shadows, but I think that it is already pretty good given the difficulty/complexity of the setup. I am using my own optimized render settings. It take another ~30 minutes to get to 90% convergence and smooth shadows. Using my GPUs, I can render the same setup in under 10 minutes.
Anyway, just an example for fun.
Ciao
TD
Sorry thd777 did you attach an image? I don't see an attachment. Nevertheless, I am impressed if you managed the scene you describe - even at 50% convergence - in an hour. Also 90% in 90 minutes would impress me further.
Mattymanx - not really what I asked for (no furniture, only one figure, etc.) but still better than I was able to get in that time limit using only CPU. Clearly I don't have the IRay experience that you do but that goes to show that your original comment about IRay ease of use is not quite so accurate.
EDIT: I see it now, thanks.
For some reason the image doesn't wanna upload. I am still trying... It just gets stuck on "Uploading..."
Ok, image upload finally worked. See my post above.
TD
This is an interesting discussion. I use both (and am equally bad at both still being very new) and my render times are all over the board on both 3Delight and Iray. I have had scenes (relatively complex) take hours in 3Delight and literally less than 10 minutes in Iray - Exact same scene but with the materials etc changed to Iray using whatever that script that comes with the program. Then I have had other scenes, do the exact opposite and render in 3Delight in minutes and take 2 or 3 hours with Iray. Both, however, render far more quickly on my pc than on my laptop. My Pc was roughly $1100 straight out of the box last May (nothing too fancy but as much memory as I could afford since I also game on that machine, I know, different stuff but that was before I discovered the wonders of 3dart) It does have a Nvidea card... The laptop is roughly 3-4 years old, was about $1200 when I got it, also with the intention of running games on it. It can handle the newest games (although its starting to slow down just a tiny bit) but the difference in render times for 3dart is obvious. It also tends to get bogged down when I am putting together a super complicated scene with lots of of stuff in it while the pc does not.
Among the things I do to speed up iray:
Lower max path until stuff starts looking bad, then add one.
Lower image compression until just before it's noticeable.
Hide anything nonvisible (particularly body parts concealed by clothing.
Shut off all SSS and translucence on skin for medium to large scenes.
Keep for closeups.
Base resolution or Subd 1 for medium to large scenes.
Use light primitives wherever possible and be sparing about emissives.
Avoid volume effects (which are generally sss)
Where possible, transparency through opacity and not refraction.
Sorry, its all I had time to do. For the record, I have only been using Iray for a few weeks. My old PC could not use it no matter what I tried.
Perhaps I'm just not getting the hang of IRay then. I spent a long time getting used to 3Delight but only really got decent results when I bought AoA Lights. Reality was quite slow in earlier versions and R4 was a nightmare for me but R4.2 is finally doing the job. I'm using an iMac with 24GB RAM and an i7 CPU but, even after some really helpful advice from the good people here, I could not get a decent performance. Maybe Iray and Mac don't play nicely?
Thank you (and TD) for taking the time to run a render. Much appreciated.
Ok, the following render took 1 hour on my Alienware X51 (with 16 GB RAM). It hit 56% convergence, with caustic filter on and the default firefly/noise stuff.
Totally enclosed space, the ceiling was made into an emissive object, and the sphere is an actual sphere primitive with the emissive shader applied to it, not a light primitive preset.
Glass, metal, two clothed figures.
Yeah, there's still some speckling. There are various tricks I could use to render it without spending a lot more time -- I could clean it up with postwork, render it larger and then shrink it down, etc.
With my GTX 970, the same convergence is hit in 8 minutes. In 27 minutes it hit 97% convergence. (Second image)
Mind you, the total cost of my computer (not counting peripherals) is about $1000. (Alienware X51, two 8 GB RAM chips, GTX 970)
It was stated at the time of the Iray launch (twelve months ago?) that Daz had just renewed its contract for 3Delight. I don't know how long the contract runs, but that doesn't sound like imminent abandonment.
It's at least a 3 yr...it was mentioned on the old forums (the ones before the last forum software change)...probably around the last time it was renewed.
I have to say that you are getting faster results than I could - even with a GTX970 in a PC I was getting nowhere after an hour. I has quite a discussion with Richard about this but, in the end, returned the GTX970 and continued with Luxrender. I still think Luxrender is quicker and cleaner (less noise) in CPU mode but I am truly surprised at these results - especially the CPU resullts. IRay CPU has been a source of frustration for me every time I have tried it - even following the various tutorials and advice.
Again, thank you for taking the trouble to render your scene.
You are confusing shaders with presets...as of right now, there are 3 common and several less commonly used shaders for 3Delight in Studio. The main ones are the DazDefault, omniUberSurface and AoA SSS. There are some custom ones that are built using Shader Mixer and the Poseworks series. AoA currently has the most support for characters. All the various characters for G3F and M, with all the different skin textures are NOT different shaders...they are all using the AoA SSS shader....it's the same shader!
In fact, there hasn't been a new 'skin' shader for 3Delight in several years (with wide support...AoA's in May 2013; practically no support...Tofusan's SSS shader of around 2 yrs ago)
Marble: Now, mind you, that's through very judicious shortcuts. For example, most people don't think to shut off SSS/translucency, and feel that 'but... but that's all that realism!'
The experience comes from recognizing when it doesn't matter much and skipping it.
Also, all that being said... I'm finding I can get nearly equivalent results through judicious, careful shortcuts and cut render times WAY less.
Out of curiousity, I tried to emulate my earlier render in 3DL. Normally I'd use AoA lights and bounce lights, but tried to copy as much as possible -- the sphere and ceiling are uberarealights (I made the entire room blurry/reflective raytrace to enhance bounce of the meshlights, which I believe don't play nice with bounce?)
8 1/2 minutes.
So, for what it's worth, I think there's a good argument for attempting realistic renders using 3DL, when you can't have top of the line NVIDIA cards and speed is a concern.
Edit to add the actual picture. And yes, the skins look kind of meh, but it's proof of concept, man. ;)
...I uninstalled reality because of all the instability I was experiencing with ver 4. Almost quit 3D altogether as the Daz 4.7 update crippled two of my most useful tools, the Atmospheric Cameras, and Advanced Lights (the latter with regards to SSS flagging) when shortly afterwards, Iray was introduced in the 4.8 Beta. I find I have been able to get much further along with Iray in a shorter amount of time. particularly though having worked with Lux previously. I actually like the fact that the settings for Iray appear in the Surfaces tab instead of a separate UI.
...here you go.
Eight Mesh Lights 6 figures, 5 Photometric Spots, Metallic Reflectivity, total time just under 5 hours in CPU only mode (only have a 1 GB GPU).
Seeing some of the comments about ease of use... really not that much harder than 3Delight, neither is really a click and go solution. Either can be if one sticks to premade sets and settings, but we know that only goes so far.
Really it's another tool in the toolbox. There are things I can do in Iray that I've yet to learn how to do in Luxrender (either through Reality or Luxus) and there's things in 3Delight I don't think are possible in Iray. Heck I keep Poser around because sometimes I use its sketch renderer for things I can't get either Iray or 3delight to do. B
One thing folks don't seem to understand is that the licensing is probably for new feature updates for 3Delight, and tech support for incorporation of the software render into DAZ Studio. I doubt that the developer would expect them to rip the support for it out if DAZ ever decided not to update beyond a certain revision of the core 3Delight code.
There is another way to significantly speed up indoor iRay renders, although this method has had a lot of bad press in these forums, and that is to put the camera headlight on, and reduce the exposure. This way I can get many renders close to noise free in 5-10 mins using my GTX970, or 50-100 mins using CPU alone. The final effect is similar to using a good flash with a real camera (ie the shadows head away from the camera), which maybe not what you want, but is realistic if you want it to look like a photo taken by a camera (remember that most people use a flash when taking a pic indoors).
Actually, treating it like a flash makes a lot of sense...