Your Favorite Cinematic Renderer
Apuat
Posts: 21
in The Commons
What's you favorite renderer for cinematic or photorealistic work. Iray, Octane, Arnold, Vray, Reality or something else.
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Using what software? With DS, Vray and Arnold aren't supported. With that in mind, of the three left my favorite is Octane. It has more flexibility and features than Iray like out of core textures, true volumetrics, dynamic hair (if you use Carrara), to name a few. Ocatne also has better performance, especially with multiple graphics cards, but you will typically have to do more shader editing than with Iray. Reality/Lux and Iray are both very good options, and they are all capable of outstanding results. If you are considering animation, motion blur is a huge plus with Octane.
It really depends on your software, skills, and what you want to do. They all have their strengths and weaknesses depending on what you are trying to achieve. My favorite is Octane, then Iray, then Reality/Lux. The goal I have in mind will usually dictate which one I use.
I love Vray, but the cost and the lack of interface in setting up DS materials is a huge deal breaker for me. Same for Mental Ray and Octane, although Octane is not as bad having a DS plugin, but still costs a bit and has texture limitations dependant on your GPU. Keyshot is great, just wish there was a bridge with a UI like Reality for material setup, but that pretty much goes with most othner unbiased renderers as well. I also like Kerkythea and Cycles for free options that give great results with the proper time and skills in setting up surfaces. Been wanting to give Indigo a try also
Even though Luxrender is slower than many of the others, the ability to change materials with the Reality interface makes it the top pick for me
Then there is Iray,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
If your refering to texture size, Octane no longer has texture limitations if you have a Fermi based GPU (4xx series) or newer (which you need to use either Iray or Octane). Starting with Octane Version 2 it has been able to use system RAM to store texture data, so you are only limited by your system RAM for textures, not GPU RAM like with Iray. With Octane 3 the max polygon limit has also been removed.
Thanks guys. I'm doing animation. I might be integrating Daz with Cinema 4D. So I might be rendering with Arnold in that program BUT before I do that I'm definitely considering getting Octane. I most certainly want to hear more experiences from others as well. For now, I'm reallying likeing Iray.
...yeah but 500$ is pretty steep for both the engine and plugin when you are on a fixed income.
I'd still also like a litle more GPU memory than I currently have but that is nearly 300$ for a GTX 970 4 GB as well as another 140$ to upgrade my system memory to 24 GB so nothing goes into swap mode. Keep in mind, I do "big" (as in polygon load and textures) scenes. So all in all I'm looking at nearly the price of a Titan-X which would give me 12 GB VRAM and over 3,000 cores.
What I like about Iray is I can work completely in Daz and it's lighting system. What I don't like about it is there needs to be a better way to make skin look more accurate and a better way to get bump and displacement to work properly (which is also an issue with skin in Iray). Right now it is guess and test render, guess and test render....again and again and agian.
Reality/Lux, I gave up on it as I don't have a SOTA i7 CPU that supports the speed boost in Lux 1.5 and R4 has some bugs in it that were really frustrating. Also, render times were just too glacial compared to Iray. I can get a high quality render with Iray in CPU mode in 4 - 5 hours whereas with Lux, even after 13 - 15 hours there is still a tonne of noise.
kyoto kid have you heard about NVIDIA's new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 & 1070 cards that are just as powerful as the Titan for considerably less?
There are long and technical discussions about those new cards here on this forum but, to cut a long story short, they do not (yet) have IRay support although they are working on it.
970 is a fairly good deal atm; £250, which is probably close to what it will be in dollars, seeing as companies forget there is an exchange rate when setting up prices.
I have a 970 to drive my monitors, and a 980ti for rendering. I've been considering getting another 980ti if the price dropped enough, but although there has been a big drop, not enough; basically the 980ti will drive my monitors when I upgrade to a 1080ti, but the other would become obsolete, and have relatively low resale I fear.
On balance, not a good enough deal for me; maybe better ones are coming though. :)
I would say iRay for DS or SuperFly for Poser. I cannot use Octane as my video card is too old which would make it too expensive as I would have to buy a new video card or a new computer plus the octane.
I do want to try out Luxrender as I have reality.
Reality 4.3 has luxrender built in fyi. Not sure exactly what version they started being packaged together though.
An alternative subscription based model for OctaneRender was announced at GTC 2016.
Roadmap checklist - state 2016 - 06 - 16:
- OctaneRender 3 has been released.
- Next step is releasing OctaneRender cloud
- Subscription based licenses will follow "in a few months" or "later this year" together with OctaneEngine (3.1 Release Cycle)
SE means OctaneRender standalone edition
Slide 52 of the GTC 2016 presentation:
source:
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54021&start=140#p277093
and
https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/news/octanerender-3-and-roadmap-update/
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Its hard not to love iray sinec the money you save can buy a high end video card. I own Octane and Reality both...but I only use iray because of the elegant integration.
Yeah, my vote is Iray not costing $800+ alone. ;)
I need a new computer, trying to hold out until things shake out with Pascal.
It is an elegant integration but unfortunately a limited one as soon as you are trying to take control and create exactly the look you want.
Simplified:
If you want to use presets use Iray.
If you want to create your own materials, lights, scenes use OctaneRender.
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The basic recommendation remains:
Explore Iray as much as you can.
When you start noticing that you reached the limits of the possibilites it is time to have a look at more advanced solutions like OctaneRender.
Some examples:
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- How do you set the point of focus in DAZ Studio Iray?
Move around the camera focus slider until finally the point of focus is where you want it?
In the OctaneRender for DAZ Studio plugin you use the focus tool and click on that surface in the OcDS viewport that should be in focus.
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- How do you check what exact effect changing material parameter has?
In Iray you can only look at the final image. There are endless forum threads about Iray skin settings that are debating which effect changing some settings may have but no way to actually illustrate the effect of just one parameter on the final image.
In OctaneRender you can actually render out passes in real time that show you the effect of any material settings you change.
If you are changing how glossy a skin is look at the direct and indirect reflection passes.
If you are changing subsurface scattering settings look at the SSS, Transmission and Refraction passes.
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- How do you check what exact effect each light has in the scene?
In OctaneRender you add lights to different layers (groups) that you can render out individually in realtime to check what effect changing the strenght of one light has on the whole scene.
You can of course also composite the light passes in photoshop and even leave out one light pass if you deceide you do not want it in the final compostion.
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- Compositing 3D elements with photographs
Try to combine a photograph of a table with a 3D glass object.
The glass is not only casting a shadow on the table but also a caustic effect.
How do you possibly want to render that out in Iray if there is no option to actually render out a reflection pass?
You do not only need matte objects to catch shadows. You also need matte objects to catch the reflections.
Have a look at the "render layers" feature of OctaneRender
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=44267
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How do you reduce noise in trouble areas?
Use the region render tool to focus rendering on trouble areas.
Switch to another area after your are happy with the result of the first.
Then resume rendering as normal
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You want a manual?
Sure, Otoy has that:
https://docs.otoy.com/#rOctaneRender%20Universe
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etc...
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OctaneRender has working solutions for advanced workflows that are not even scratched in Iray.
Otoy keeps pushing new features like OpenVDB, OctaneImager for post production effects that so far not even have been announced for Iray.
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Btw:
Add together all the money you spend for Iray addon plugins, Iray texture versions, shader collections, atmospheric & fog cameras, light setups.
You may find that you can actually save a lot of money by starting to create your own materials, lights, scenes in OctaneRender.
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Its probably more efficient if you download a demo version and try for yourselves...
https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/demo/
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There's no doubt that Octane is a powerful beast, but for someone who is creating a long form graphic novel (me), the speed of scene setup is crucial. Like I said, I own Octane. I WISH I had the time to learn to set scenes up like that, because they are magnificent...I just find that in my situation, iray gets me to a finished render faster.
BTW, if you are willing to teach me the way, I won't turn you down! ;)
Of course, I had to go look at my options as far as upgrading my octane...I am on v1. So I need to pay $160 to move to v3, and then I have to buy the daz plugin for $199, since I only have plugins for poser and cinema 4d. Sigh. Going broke again. I will need to do one this week and one the next i suppose.
For DAZ Studio related questions you can find tutorials, guides and many answers in the
OctaneRender for DAZ Studio forum section.
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=44
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For general OctaneRender related tutorials you find them either in the
Tutorial section:
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=51
or have a look at the Work in Progress area where users share their techniques:
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=6
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If you are not yet a registered customer you can also ask questions directly in the
Octane Student and Subscriber Forum › General Discussion
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=76
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...but only 8 GB and as I heard, support for Iray isn't available yet.
My scenes can get "big" as I tend to go for a "lived in" look, particularly outdoor scenes, as clean swept pavements, streets & such just are not realistic. I also use a lot of "in render" effects as my postwork skills are pretty basic (due to serious arthritis I don't have a steady enough hand to do detailed painting in a 2D programme). With 12 GB of physical memory (well, actually 11 after Windows) I find the render process dropping into swap mode more than occasionally, which is even more excruciatingly slow.
It is too bad that Iray doesn't split the load like Octane does if the process exceeds GPU memory. That would be a major bonus for those of us who cannot afford top of the line GPUs. then I could get by with a GTX 970 and the 24 GB physical memory kit.
One of the other benefits of Octane I see is like Lux, it renders outside of the Daz application so you don't have the raw scene file and Daz programme taking up memory resources (before I do a big Iray render job I switch the viewport to wireframe mode to reduce memory load as much as possible).
..yikes, more like 600$ for 3 with the plugin. Add 285$ for a GTX 970 and the 140$ for the memory upgrade and that would be the cost of a Titan-X.
Not into software by subscription, too much micro management.
With regards to your later post discussing the merits of Octane
I also do not perform multi pass rendering as again my postwork skills are pretty poor (which is why I never bought LDP - R when I was still working in 3DL). True, Iray in Daz is more limited. Would be nice If I could use Iray MDL which also lets you create your own shaders but it also means having to decipher the Daz Shader Mixer which to me looks like the FSM when it's having a "bad noodle day".
So how is Octane's shader builder set up? Is it similar to Carrara's system .
That also is one other benefit, Octane does work with Carrara as well. So can you get some kind of bundle deal for the SE version that includes both the Daz and Carrara plugins?
I used to be a big defender of Luxrender and Reality, but at this point I'm extremely reluctant to recommend it for the simple fact that it doesn't handle SubD geometries very efficiently -- memory sizes can reach astronomical values very quickly.
Thanks everyone. Especially linvanchene for your VERY comprehensive comparison. I had no idea the new NVIDIA cards don't support Iray. Got to tell my biz partner ASAP so he holds off of his purchase.
It is flexible in a way that you can "group" nodes together to reduce complexitiy to the level you feel comfortable with.
But at any time you also can break down nodes further into sub nodes for most parameters.
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OctaneRender standalone has a full scene based Node Graph Editor (NGE) that shows nodes for geometry, materials, environments, kernel and imager settings.
The OctaneRender for DAZ Studio plugin has a Node Graph Editor for creating materials.
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You can find the manual for the Node Graph Editor here:
https://docs.otoy.com/#60The%20Graph%20Editor
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-> Afaik such a combo bundle does not exist yet.
Certainly might be worth contacting Otoy support to ask.
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...so it uses the "spaghetti format" like Poser Material Room and Daz Shader Mixer/Builder does.
I prefer Carraras shader bulider UI as I find it more intuitive and I can instantly see the results..
To add to what linvanchini said, With the DS plugin, basic shaders are typically edited via a setup similar to DS and Carrara, but you can also use the NGE (Node Graph Editor) somewhat like Shader Builder nodes in DS and the shaders nodes in Poser) to create more complex shaders or change shader types (the NGE for shaders in the DS plugin is a lot like NGE in Octane Stand Alone). With the Carrara pligin, you use Carrara's material room to edit Octane shaders, so for Carrara users the learning curve isn't as steep as with the DS plugin because it's virtually the same, only with additional properties (though I found both quite easy to learn). The plugin for Carrara also feels more integrated directly into Carrara than the DS plugin.
What I really like about Octane (and the plugins) is that the Octane Render view port is much faster/responsive than Iray in DS. I like Iray a lot, and use it a lot, but as linvanchini noted in his most excellent post above, it simply does not have the advanced feature set that Octane does. Otoy's business is building professional rendering tools, and as someone who works for one of the big studios once said to me, Nvidia is a business built on making graphics cards and Iray is just a minor side business used to show off the utility of their graphics cards.
I should also note that during the development of the DS plugin for version 2, Otoy changed developers. The negative issues associated with the previous developer(s) have gone away, and the plugin is now very stable and being actively developed. Paul (face-off) is the new developer for the DS plugin, he is also the developer for the Poser plugin, and IIRC the Sketchup plugin, and is very responsive to the users. The developer for the Carrara plugin is outstanding as well providing fast support on the forums and quick fixes for any issues found. The manuals provided for both the plugins and the standalone are very good, with either plugin the standalone manual serves as a great addition to understanding and using Octane shaders.
Valid point. I hate node based material setups, one of the reasons I stopped using Poser.
Here's the question I have in mind whenever I read threads like this one. If I already have a GTX970 (as I do) but find the 4GB VRAM limit too restrictive for my IRay scenes, would I be better buying a 1070 (or 1080) - which would have more VRAM - or Octane which can offload textures to system RAM? And how much VRAM is taken up by polygons, especially with SubD?
At the moment, buying either is a wish but, hey, we can dream.
...kind of a six of one half dozen of the other situation when speaking strictly of cost. Though Octane has real volumetrics and will render outside the Daz application (which will save resources) as well as full control over shader creation. Also if the scene load exceeds the GPU memory it will dump textures to the CPU rather than dumping both the Geometry and Shader load to the CPU/physical memory. As I have been told even in this situation, it is still pretty fast.
A GTX 1080 will run about 650$ - 700$ (depending on vendor and country you live in) and as of yet does not support Iray rendering. To me it seems an "interim" solution (the latest GPU processor but with current generation memory) before Nvidia can smooth out the issues it is facing with HBM memory production schedules.
Personally, I'm waiting until they get the HBM production situation resolved. as most likely that will boost VRAM to 16 GB for a "Titan" branded card and 32 GB for the top of the line Quadro GPU.
It really depends on your current needs, how you prefer to work, and your near future goals. If you only use the default shaders provided by the vendor, hate to make your own, or don't improve/tweak the provided shaders to improve your renders, then Octane probably isn't for you. So basically if your preferred way to do things is load, pose, render with no, or minimal adjustments to shaders and you rely on preset lighting, you probably wouldn't enjoy Octane.
If you find yourself always trying to improve your renders by adjusting shaders, prefer to set up your own lighting rather than rely on presets, and/or prefer to render multiple passes (more than the minimal options Iray has) for post work, then you may really enjoy Octane. If you like (or plan on) building large/epic scenes, then Octane may also be more to your liking than Iray. Octane does not work your system as hard as Iray. With Iray, every GPU in your system will use one physical core or your CPU (if you are using an intel processor with hyperthreading enabled, it still consumes one full core per GPU, so on a quad core system with two GPU's, Iray will use 2 cores, or 50% of your CPU). With Octane, you will have very little CPU activity during rendering, even when using out of core textures (this gives you more processing power to do other things while rendering). So on a laptop, or a system with limited air flow, Octane will run cooler than Iray (on my laptop, with Octane the GPU runs about 5 degrees cooler , and the CPU ~10 degrees cooler than with Iray). For animators, motion blur is often a must have feature (or the ability to do a z-buffer render pass for post processed motion blur), Iray doesn't have motion blur, Octane does. In addition to the features mentioned by linvanchene, Otoy will also be integrating their high speed realtime pathtracer Brigade, as well as other significant enhancements into a future release(s) Octane 3x (https://home.otoy.com/octanerender-3-and-roadmap-update/). Another thing to consider is what KK mentioned, you can export your scenes from DS to render in Octane Standalone, thus making it possible to work on another project in DS while rendering.Having Octane plugins for many of the most popular 3D applications may also be important, for some people this is a huge plus because they can use the same render engine with different software. For example if you use DS. Carrara, and Poser, you could use the same render engine regardless of the application used. Oh, Ocatne also supports micropoly displacement.
It's hard for anyone but you to know exactly which path would be best, because it comes down to your personal preferences and needs. Iray is a fantastic render engine, and the products that support it "out of the box" in DS and it's ease of use make it very hard to justify purchasing Octane. But if you really need/want any of the features available in Octane, that aren't in Iray, then it definitely is worth the investment. The integration of Brigade into Octane could be a huge game changer!!
If you have to choose between VRAM and Octane go for VRAM first.
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While it is true that with Octane textures are not anymore an issue I found myself often in the position that I just want to add more geometry or higher subdivision levels.
G3F High Resolution at 68744 vertices - 807 MB VRAM
G3F at Subdivision level 3 (Required for HD details to show up) 1'090'700 vertices - 1258 MB VRAM
G3F at Subdivision level 4 (This would be the next leap in quality to show finer details) 4'357'308 vertices - 1888 MB VRAM
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Update / Edit:
removed parts that would go too far offtopic...
Let's leave it at that. you get the idea. ^_-
Iray for 3DS Max has had real motion blur for animation. I wish the DAZ version would get it. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-25648CF2-A60F-450F-8880-8ADCD2EB13FF-htm.html