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In this case, it is about personal level of experience, not the capabilities of either engine. They are not the same, but, by definition, since they are both physically based, produce the same results, given equal shaders and equal lighting.
There are things Lux does, from a perspective of how it is used that Iray doesn't do, just as there are things that Iray does that Lux does not.
For example, pause, walk away and resums some other time. Granted this is important when you measure a completed render in days instead of seconds to minutes. Luxdoes this Iray doesn't.
You can adjust your camera or lights during a render with Lux, but Iray has interactive mode, which, while not quite the same as the final render is close, and with reasonable hardware, close to real time, further Iray is not limited to lights and cameras, but also allows shader changes, pose changes, prop changes, clothing changes, etc.
Oh and the comment about auto exposure? Iray viewport has a little tool next to the mode selector that allows you to pick an area or a point and it will automaticaly adjust the camera for better tonemapping. :)
I am not saying Reality is a bad choice. I am not saying that the workflow isn't different. I am saying that many of you spent considerable time learning the skills to use Lux, and before you judge Iray, you might want to learn to use it first.
That's in the viewport, prior to rendering. There's no auto exposure function in the render window.
Let's say I've been rendering something for a couple hours, and I'm not happy with the tonemapping. Until now, I've done all the adjustments myself, and haven't had Lux calculate them for me, yet. I start fiddling with the settings again, but am not getting the look I want. Finally, I decide to see what Lux can come up with. With just one click, two hours into my render, Lux calculates an ideal solution for me to work with.
Two hours later, I switch to Lux's Lighting tab to make some adjustments to a couple groups of mesh lights I created. My adjustments have made the scene appear washed out. No problem. Switch back to Tonemapping, click Estimate Settings, the scene looks great.
I'm not judging Iray. I think it's a wonderfully fast engine. For that reason alone, I've spent the last three months learning how to use it. I've simply realized how much I miss certain aspects of Lux that Iray doesn't have, and am really hoping Realty 4.1 lives up to the hype on increased render speed.
You and me both. If after all that it does not that would suck. The way I look @ it if I have to learn iray so be it I was able to learn this.
And I'm not saying iRay is bad, but those things it does that are sort of like Lux yet are not the same is why I've decided to stay with Lux. That, the difference in final quality, and the ability to farm out the renders to other machines. My setup is 1 development machine and two render machines. Works pretty well and fast even by Lux standards. The pose, clothes, and prop change capability of iRay is neat, but doesn't really help me since all that is determined long before render time. If I'm making those sorts of changes post-render, I didn't do my due diligence in determining what I wanted in the scene.
Nyghtfall's description of what you can do while you render in lux is what's kept me using it and I've had the town loosing power in bad weather and finding my hours of rendering were safely up-to-date in my render folder too. I've heard of the 800 hour renders, month long renders, but the longest I've ever let something run is 18 hours and it's because I started at night and left the computer on while I went to work. and (if I didn't screw something up) came back to a render that had more than enough time to bake.
I render large scenes (~2400x3800) with no shortage of pollys and at this point my 12GB system needs either Studio running or Lux, but not both at the same time so anything short of a Titan is not going to work for some of what I do if I port it to Iray. Thats not a knock against Iray; it looks really cool and I wish I could try it with a responsive card but both my systems won't take advantage of it's speed without a large monetary investment and system RAM is less than half the price of a low end 4GB GPU if I need to upgrade to 24GB which looks like the direction I'm moving to
I'm glad Daz decided to implement Iray even if I can't take full advantage of it. The Studio software has gone through being a 3Delight only affair (I never got POVRay to work, and I tried!) to having three options for LuxRender, Octane, and an amazing (and free) exporter to Blender Cycles. All we need now is a port to Pixar RenderMan (SUBTLE HINT!) and it's the perfect complement to those of us who won't get the speed benefits of Iray.
...well from my experience, depending on the scene, Iray in CPU mode has been noticeably faster than even 3DL with UE, in some cases, significantly so. With several of my more useful tools for 3DL crippled since the 4.7 update, Iray has pretty much become my go to engine. Oh it would be great to have a Titan X or two (would need a bigger PSU to support both) however I've become rather satisfied with the performance and workflow using Iray the last several months.
As mentioned, 3DL for Daz is not the complete package either and to develop high quality custom shaders is no simple task as well. In the four or so months that I've been working with Iray, I feel I have actually learned more about working with and setting up surfaces than I did over a much longer time with Reality and Lux. Sometimes things just "click", for you as Iray does in my case.
Yeah, when it comes to extreme render times I'll admit I'm impatient for one, because I don't like having my system's resources taken up for days which makes it more difficult to work on other projects. I also don't like running my system at peak loads for extended periods of time as it puts a lot of wear on the components. I purchased an extra large case with a half dozen fans just so everything inside had more breathing room and good airflow. I'm in this by the skin of my teeth, it took me nearly eighteen months of research, saving, getting parts as I could afford them, so yes I am a bit overcautious when it comes to caring for my system. Crikey, I am still trying to figure out how to scrape up the resources to upgrade my system's memory to 24 GB and get Win7 to Pro to support it while at the same time not finding myself out on the street. I don't have the option of a render farm to dump jobs to so I can let them cook for days or weeks while moving on to another project, I only have one system to do it all on. So when I can start a render process before turning in for the night and wake up the next morning to find it completed, it gives me a very satisfying feeling of accomplishment.
It sets the render specs, not just the viewport.
What you can do while you render in LUX just demonstrates the inefficiency of the render engine. You can, manually, do that with any render engine, if you wish, but to have the render engine not use all the power assigned to it is a bug, not a feature.
Actually, in this case it IS a feature...it's intentional behavior, so therefore it is a feature.
I have to admit, despite Iray's drawbacks, I am getting stupid spoiled by its rendering speed.
I rendered a recent project with Iray because most of the content came with Iray mats, and I didn't want to bother tweaking their 3Delight counterparts in Reality. It finished in two hours, Sunday morning. I'm certain it would still be cooking in Lux.
Like bobvan, my experience with Reality came in handy while setting it up.
It's buried in the forums...in amongst the dev discussions...and some complaints from forumites about the stupidity of it being a feature. But, yeah, it's a 'feature'...throttled by default...a blasted feature.
I've been working with iray pretty extensively lately. Am on the verge of going back to Reality since the speed has improved. Why? Because the render speed isn't all it's cracked up to be for iray if you want to do really lifelike renders of any considerable resolution. Increase min and max displacement for skin and tack the subd to 3/4, along with adjusting the render params to a satisfactory quality, means six to eight hours of my computer being unusable whereas with Reality and Lux, I can start the render on my main box and move it to secondary machines when I need the monster (my work PC). Still takes twice as long on Lux, but I'm not down at any time.
The trick to Iray, I find, is to never, ever, use Displacement. Like all rules it can be broken, but you reeeeeally need to think long and hard about it.
....yeah, but without proper displacement, a lot of surfaces tend to lack texture detail.
Excuse the noob question but is displacement the same thing as normal also known as bump maps?
The default min & max displacement along with the default render subd level means a model that moves permanently into the uncanny valley regardless how long the max time, samples, and high the rendering quality and converged ratio, which defeats the entire purpose of going with an unbiased render.
Iray uses Normal maps and bump maps, not displacement
No they are different. See this:
http://blog.digitaltutors.com/bump-normal-and-displacement-maps/
And welcome!
Setting min and max displacement properly can make a world of difference how your model renders in iray. I should have clarified when I said displacement. :)
...so then why am I currently looking at an item using an Iray shader and there is a Displacement Strength channel that says "choose map" just below the Cutout Opacity one?
It uses them, it just doesn't use them WELL.
I've struggled and struggled and... it's just not worth using, almost every time.
A decently detailed model with bump and normal should be sufficient. If it isn't, displacement is going to be a very resource-intensive and often lacking fix.
EDIT:
Iray does not use microfacet displacement. It needs a lot of geometry inorder to make displacement work as a result. Therefore in place of that it uses bump and normal maps. If I am correct, the displacement channel in DS for Iray is there to pick up the displacement maps when you apply the Iray uber shader to any surface.
Hence my return to Reality and Lux for those renders that must be photoreal. Bump and normal will only go so far. For that extra mile Iray simply takes too long which is ironic considering its speed is supposed to be an advantage. I guess it is for when something less than professional is okay.
...the trouble is, it doesn't as my bus stop scene illustrated, all the surfaces look uniform and flat with no texture detail compared to the 3DL version.
So manually edit it then.
I found out the difference in bump vs normal vs displacement today. Very cool those are I think I will read more on normal maps.
...all the textures used in the scene by hand in a 2D programme?
As glacial and buggy as R4/Lux was, at least the textures looked better.
No, sorry, the surface in DS.
...I input the values and maps and nothing appeared to happen, everything remaind flat and smooth.
Have you put a value in the "SubD displacement level" in the SURFACE settings? Not the one in Parameters/General/Mesh Resolution!