Iray with NO PAIN Advice

kyoto kid · December 2016

...Mec4D had a neutral HDRI environment which was free. I use it for as a basis for soft studio lighting when proofing characters in Iray.

Not sure if that was a limited offer or not

mjc1016 · December 2016

There's quite a few in my list...(see sig)

AllenArt · December 2016

There is someone on DA named zbyg that has some studio HDRI that are very good and that I use all the time.

Laurie

Sensual Art · December 2016

zaz777 said:

mrinal said:

I guess that could be done in Daz studio itself using a sphere primitive (with d-formers or scaling) with emissive surface and the cone primitive with black diffuse.

I often use an emissive torus for very soft shadows.

The question is - Since the sphere/torus emits light in all direction, does the emission behind the camera (off subject) impact rendering speed (basically, is that cone necessary)?

One thing you have to remember about emissive surfaces in iray, and most other renderers, is that the more polygons you have in the emissive surface, the slower the render will be and most likely the noisier it will be.

Think of it as if each polygon was its own light, so a low resolution sphere could easily have a few hundred or more than 1,000 polygons in it. That is almost guaranteed to slow your renders and introduce more noise.

Use emissives, but keep the polygon count as low as possible.

Again, from SickleYield's tutorial (Part 3, 1st para) at DeviantArt http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Getting-Started-With-Iray-519725115

...Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This sounds interesting. I assumed that each polygon acts as its own light source and the more light sources I have in my scene the easier it would be for I-ray to render the scene though I believe computationally it might be more expensive.

Havos · December 2016

>>> Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This is only true up to a certain point. If you add a huge number to a scene it will definitely start to slow the render. As stated early in this thread, put an emission surface on a high poly object, and each poly acts as a separate light source, and your render will slow as a result.

mjc1016 · December 2016

mrinal said:

This sounds interesting. I assumed that each polygon acts as its own light source and the more light sources I have in my scene the easier it would be for I-ray to render the scene though I believe computationally it might be more expensive.

It's a bit more complex than that...

More light (not necessarily lights...amount, not number of 'lamps) will improve speed...to a point. And there is also a number of light sources that is optimal...too few and it takes longer, too many and it take a lot longer. A simple sphere can push it to that 'a lot' group.

So the fewer polygons used in 'mesh' lights the better, because yes, each poly counts. The higher the base levels, the better.

It seems that the often given recomendation is to adjust tone mapping to 'brighten' dim scenes. While that may help the over all 'look' it's not really going to shorten render times. Upping the amount of light and using the tone mapping to 'dim' the scene WILL usually shorten the render time (as long as you don't go overboard on the number of sources).

And to confuse things even more...there is no set formula for how much/how many is going to be 'enough' and boost the speed or 'too much' and cut the speed. Also mixing the 'dome'/hdri into the mix changes the balance...

Sensual Art · December 2016

Havos said:

>>> Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This is only true up to a certain point. If you add a huge number to a scene it will definitely start to slow the render. As stated early in this thread, put an emission surface on a high poly object, and each poly acts as a separate light source, and your render will slow as a result.

Then how is this calculated for emissisive shaders like http://www.daz3d.com/dg-iray-sci-fi-surface-lights-shader?

As the description says, they are designed for hallways. But from the logical explanation so far it seems they are going to be pretty expensive and slow to render. Am I correct in that deduction?

Also, is a mesh light with N surface polys same as (render time-wise) having N different directional light sources?

mjc1016 · December 2016

mrinal said:

Havos said:

>>> Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This is only true up to a certain point. If you add a huge number to a scene it will definitely start to slow the render. As stated early in this thread, put an emission surface on a high poly object, and each poly acts as a separate light source, and your render will slow as a result.

Then how is this calculated for emissisive shaders like http://www.daz3d.com/dg-iray-sci-fi-surface-lights-shader?

As the description says, they are designed for hallways. But from the logical explanation so far it seems they are going to be pretty expensive and slow to render. Am I correct in that deduction?

Also, is a mesh light with N surface polys same as (render time-wise) having N different directional light sources?

You can create multiple 'lights' on a single polygon by using a mask texture. So in effect, you can have multiple 'lights' but virtually no render time 'hit'. The down side...each one is not independently controllable. But for a ceiling of panels, it wouldn't matter all that much.

And no, there isn't really a formula. A single poly mesh and single photometric light are practically identical. But multiples don't have a direct correleation...like 2 polys isn't 2x as long as a single.

And remember, there is also the point where more will reduce time...so you have that threshold to factor in, too.

And there is also the fact that surfaces have an impact as will whether or not the scene is completely enclosed/completely open or something in between.

Sensual Art · December 2016

mjc1016 said:

mrinal said:

Havos said:

>>> Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This is only true up to a certain point. If you add a huge number to a scene it will definitely start to slow the render. As stated early in this thread, put an emission surface on a high poly object, and each poly acts as a separate light source, and your render will slow as a result.

Then how is this calculated for emissisive shaders like http://www.daz3d.com/dg-iray-sci-fi-surface-lights-shader?

As the description says, they are designed for hallways. But from the logical explanation so far it seems they are going to be pretty expensive and slow to render. Am I correct in that deduction?

Also, is a mesh light with N surface polys same as (render time-wise) having N different directional light sources?

You can create multiple 'lights' on a single polygon by using a mask texture. So in effect, you can have multiple 'lights' but virtually no render time 'hit'. The down side...each one is not independently controllable. But for a ceiling of panels, it wouldn't matter all that much.

And no, there isn't really a formula. A single poly mesh and single photometric light are practically identical. But multiples don't have a direct correleation...like 2 polys isn't 2x as long as a single.

And remember, there is also the point where more will reduce time...so you have that threshold to factor in, too.

And there is also the fact that surfaces have an impact as will whether or not the scene is completely enclosed/completely open or something in between.

So, the iray light shaders are fine for planar surfaces with fewer polys as they use masking to simulate multiple sources. Also, you are right that the correlation is not linear, because I was able to achieve reasonable render times (less than an hour on my 980M for 1920x1080 size) with two emissive tori - one on camera and the other around subject (I am still getting around to like shadows!).

mjc1016 · December 2016

Way back when Iray was first introduced, I did a lot of 'after hours' renders...set up simple scenes on my machine and transfrred them to the HTPC when it wasn't being used for watching things to run, testing out emissives/photometric lights and how to compare them. I couldn't come up with any kind of direct relationship as to where the 'point of diminishing returns' occurred...other than at some point adding more impacts the times and that impact can be steep.

The one concrete conclusion I did reach...simple geometry is faster than complex and geometry based lights hit that 'point' quicker than photometrics.

wolf359 · December 2016

"Overlooked as excellent portraiture lighting are HRDi freebies, especially HRDIs of bright sunrises and sunsets (there is a thread in the freebie section)"

Hi I Dont render in Iray ,no,Nvidia Card,
( I Prefer Vray & Cycles), but I Do use HDR lighting most of the time.
We have a few free HDR Library management utilities for Cycles and Vray and C4D native
You literally click and Load .
In fact the Vray version Auto sets all GI render parameters for each environment you load.

Has anyone created a similar utility for managing& loading HDR libraries in Daz Studio??

fastbike1 · December 2016

Why don't you sort your content and put Iray lighting in a separate folder? In my experience, Smart Content has never been very smart or worth the trouble. For me it is/was much better to have Content Library folders that make sense. I'm not talking about creating categories (that seem to cause people lots of metadata issues), but just organizing your content in a logical order.

Fauvist said:

Karibou said:

Fauvist said:

Render on left is iray render using something called UberEnvironment2. Render on right is a 3Delight render using 3 distant lights that took me about 1 minute to set up. I did nothing else - just loaded the character, dress, and hair, - the light, and hit render. (the Monique iray eyes wouldn't render in 3Delight - or they were taking a really really long time.)

Uber Environment isn't set up to work in Iray. It's purpose was to simulate real-world lighting by calculating ambient occlusion and a few other things in 3delight.

When I click on Smart Content, then on Lights, I get hundreds of lights. How do I know if they are for iray or not? When I type the word Iray to filter the results, nothing shows up. There must be iray lights in there somewhere.

Ostadan · December 2016

For uninteresting but adequate indoor lighting, I sometimes just put a large (ceiling-sized) plane overhead, add the Emissive iray shader and turn it up to a suitable level (experiment with the right value - it will depend on how high the plane is).

nonesuch00 · December 2016

Well I just trying using the Sun-Sky at 20:00 on 24 December at the GPS of International Falls and it was way, way, way to dark, like being in a cave like at Wyandotte Cave when they turn out the lights to show you what pitch dark really is...in real life, the moon & sun, even when cloudy, nighttime, and a new moon - give off tremdendous amounts of ambient light.

Anyway, I am using a Night Sky HDRI freebie and it gives out a much more realistic amount of ambient light for nighttime, and it was even taken in a suburb so the light pollution from the suburb and the nearby city is lessened but still present. I turn off the rendering of the iRay dome and use the HRDI just as a nightime light source.

It is surprisingly difficult to find a picture to use as a background of the night sky and of sufficient scale to use in a render. They all have much blurring when you view them at full size.

Fauvist · December 2016

nonesuch00 said:

It is surprisingly difficult to find a picture to use as a background of the night sky and of sufficient scale to use in a render. They all have much blurring when you view them at full size.

I buy stock photos. You can get them at very high resolution. And there are images of everything you can imagine. They are very inexpensive, and mostly royalty free. I've got them from 123rf.com, and shutterstock.com. Sometimes I load them as a texture to a plane so I can position the image where I want it, or I render with no background and save with transparency (like .png), and then in Photoshop I just layer the render over the image of the background.

Fauvist · December 2016

fastbike1 said:

Why don't you sort your content and put Iray lighting in a separate folder? In my experience, Smart Content has never been very smart or worth the trouble. For me it is/was much better to have Content Library folders that make sense. I'm not talking about creating categories (that seem to cause people lots of metadata issues), but just organizing your content in a logical order.

I don't know how to sort my content into folders. I'm afraid to move anything. Nothing seems to be straightforward. Every time I want to do something it's a brand new mystery to solve.

Joe Webb · December 2016

Fauvist said:

fastbike1 said:

Why don't you sort your content and put Iray lighting in a separate folder? In my experience, Smart Content has never been very smart or worth the trouble. For me it is/was much better to have Content Library folders that make sense. I'm not talking about creating categories (that seem to cause people lots of metadata issues), but just organizing your content in a logical order.

I don't know how to sort my content into folders. I'm afraid to move anything. Nothing seems to be straightforward. Every time I want to do something it's a brand new mystery to solve.

There is a steep learning curve. I think DAZ has the easiest but it's no walk in the park. In the end its just "seat time" - you sit at your computer and work at it and figure it out. Its hard to actualy break anything and if you mess everything up: delete it all and redownload and start from scratch. Its all there.

AllenArt · December 2016

Fauvist said:

fastbike1 said:

Why don't you sort your content and put Iray lighting in a separate folder? In my experience, Smart Content has never been very smart or worth the trouble. For me it is/was much better to have Content Library folders that make sense. I'm not talking about creating categories (that seem to cause people lots of metadata issues), but just organizing your content in a logical order.

I don't know how to sort my content into folders. I'm afraid to move anything. Nothing seems to be straightforward. Every time I want to do something it's a brand new mystery to solve.

You're mostly safe so long as you don't move anything in "data" or "Runtime"

Laurie

nonesuch00 · December 2016

Fauvist said:

nonesuch00 said:

It is surprisingly difficult to find a picture to use as a background of the night sky and of sufficient scale to use in a render. They all have much blurring when you view them at full size.

I buy stock photos. You can get them at very high resolution. And there are images of everything you can imagine. They are very inexpensive, and mostly royalty free. I've got them from 123rf.com, and shutterstock.com. Sometimes I load them as a texture to a plane so I can position the image where I want it, or I render with no background and save with transparency (like .png), and then in Photoshop I just layer the render over the image of the background.

Thanks, I will look.

Fauvist · December 2016

nemesis10 said:

I though about what products helped me understand iRay lighting

That's a lot of really useful information. Thank you!

Fauvist · December 2016

mjc1016 said:

mrinal said:

Havos said:

>>> Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This is only true up to a certain point. If you add a huge number to a scene it will definitely start to slow the render. As stated early in this thread, put an emission surface on a high poly object, and each poly acts as a separate light source, and your render will slow as a result.

Then how is this calculated for emissisive shaders like http://www.daz3d.com/dg-iray-sci-fi-surface-lights-shader?

As the description says, they are designed for hallways. But from the logical explanation so far it seems they are going to be pretty expensive and slow to render. Am I correct in that deduction?

Also, is a mesh light with N surface polys same as (render time-wise) having N different directional light sources?

You can create multiple 'lights' on a single polygon by using a mask texture. So in effect, you can have multiple 'lights' but virtually no render time 'hit'. The down side...each one is not independently controllable. But for a ceiling of panels, it wouldn't matter all that much.

And no, there isn't really a formula. A single poly mesh and single photometric light are practically identical. But multiples don't have a direct correleation...like 2 polys isn't 2x as long as a single.

And remember, there is also the point where more will reduce time...so you have that threshold to factor in, too.

And there is also the fact that surfaces have an impact as will whether or not the scene is completely enclosed/completely open or something in between.

How do you make a mask texutre? Where do you load the mask texture?

Thanks!

nonesuch00 · December 2016

Fauvist said:

mjc1016 said:

mrinal said:

Havos said:

>>> Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This is only true up to a certain point. If you add a huge number to a scene it will definitely start to slow the render. As stated early in this thread, put an emission surface on a high poly object, and each poly acts as a separate light source, and your render will slow as a result.

Then how is this calculated for emissisive shaders like http://www.daz3d.com/dg-iray-sci-fi-surface-lights-shader?

As the description says, they are designed for hallways. But from the logical explanation so far it seems they are going to be pretty expensive and slow to render. Am I correct in that deduction?

Also, is a mesh light with N surface polys same as (render time-wise) having N different directional light sources?

You can create multiple 'lights' on a single polygon by using a mask texture. So in effect, you can have multiple 'lights' but virtually no render time 'hit'. The down side...each one is not independently controllable. But for a ceiling of panels, it wouldn't matter all that much.

And no, there isn't really a formula. A single poly mesh and single photometric light are practically identical. But multiples don't have a direct correleation...like 2 polys isn't 2x as long as a single.

And remember, there is also the point where more will reduce time...so you have that threshold to factor in, too.

And there is also the fact that surfaces have an impact as will whether or not the scene is completely enclosed/completely open or something in between.

How do you make a mask texutre? Where do you load the mask texture?

Thanks!

You add a 2 color alpha mask in the cut-out section of the surfaces is the easiest way I believe. You can create the cut-out in Gimp or Photoshop

mjc1016 · December 2016

nonesuch00 said:

Fauvist said:

mjc1016 said:

mrinal said:

Havos said:

>>> Iray renders faster with more lights in the scene, not less. Never hesitate to add more lights.

This is only true up to a certain point. If you add a huge number to a scene it will definitely start to slow the render. As stated early in this thread, put an emission surface on a high poly object, and each poly acts as a separate light source, and your render will slow as a result.

Then how is this calculated for emissisive shaders like http://www.daz3d.com/dg-iray-sci-fi-surface-lights-shader?

As the description says, they are designed for hallways. But from the logical explanation so far it seems they are going to be pretty expensive and slow to render. Am I correct in that deduction?

Also, is a mesh light with N surface polys same as (render time-wise) having N different directional light sources?

You can create multiple 'lights' on a single polygon by using a mask texture. So in effect, you can have multiple 'lights' but virtually no render time 'hit'. The down side...each one is not independently controllable. But for a ceiling of panels, it wouldn't matter all that much.

And no, there isn't really a formula. A single poly mesh and single photometric light are practically identical. But multiples don't have a direct correleation...like 2 polys isn't 2x as long as a single.

And remember, there is also the point where more will reduce time...so you have that threshold to factor in, too.

And there is also the fact that surfaces have an impact as will whether or not the scene is completely enclosed/completely open or something in between.

How do you make a mask texutre? Where do you load the mask texture?

Thanks!

You add a 2 color alpha mask in the cut-out section of the surfaces is the easiest way I believe. You can create the cut-out in Gimp or Photoshop

What nonesuch said...

IceDragonArt · December 2016

Fauvist said:

fastbike1 said:

Why don't you sort your content and put Iray lighting in a separate folder? In my experience, Smart Content has never been very smart or worth the trouble. For me it is/was much better to have Content Library folders that make sense. I'm not talking about creating categories (that seem to cause people lots of metadata issues), but just organizing your content in a logical order.

I don't know how to sort my content into folders. I'm afraid to move anything. Nothing seems to be straightforward. Every time I want to do something it's a brand new mystery to solve.

You don't have to move anything you can just create categories. They don't move the actual files they just let you organize things so you can find them. Just pick a light set (or whatever) and right click on the picture icons. A box will pop up, choose categorize. It will give you the option to name your category. and you can add sub categoreis to stuff as well.
For instance, you can do Lights/Iray/Name of Set and/or Lights/3Delight/Sky Dome/ Nave of vendor or whatever makes sense to you. I don't use Smart Content but I have put every single item in library into categories so I can find them.

Fauvist · December 2016

Ice Dragon Art said:

Fauvist said:

fastbike1 said:

Why don't you sort your content and put Iray lighting in a separate folder? In my experience, Smart Content has never been very smart or worth the trouble. For me it is/was much better to have Content Library folders that make sense. I'm not talking about creating categories (that seem to cause people lots of metadata issues), but just organizing your content in a logical order.

I don't know how to sort my content into folders. I'm afraid to move anything. Nothing seems to be straightforward. Every time I want to do something it's a brand new mystery to solve.

You don't have to move anything you can just create categories. They don't move the actual files they just let you organize things so you can find them. Just pick a light set (or whatever) and right click on the picture icons. A box will pop up, choose categorize. It will give you the option to name your category. and you can add sub categoreis to stuff as well.
For instance, you can do Lights/Iray/Name of Set and/or Lights/3Delight/Sky Dome/ Nave of vendor or whatever makes sense to you. I don't use Smart Content but I have put every single item in library into categories so I can find them.

It sounds like a good idea, but when you click on the icon and catagorize something, where do find it? Do you have to make a folder? Does the icon appear in two places?

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