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Comments
Yes, I still use 3DL.
Sort of I require it; Although I only render in 3DL (due to existing content and material compatibility issues and features not available in iray), I haven't had an opportunity to install and try the script to convert Iray to 3DL, which perhaps may allow me to use some iray products. However it will not convert everything, and I don't know yet what all it can/can't convert, or how easily it will fit into my workflow. Some objects that I would change the shader on it doesn't matter if they are Iray or 3DL or completely untextured though. Anything I can't (or can't easily) convet to 3DL and need the supplied materials would be a no-go for me personally. I understand and accept that the world has left me behind and moved on to Iray though.
It will convert a good 90% of the stuff out there.
The exceptions include unique shaders, like TerraDome3's terrain thing, and I THINK PBR Weighted or Glossy/Specular Iray shaders (though you can convert them to Metallicity first). It also won't do anything with emission (obviously), or most volume stuff (like refraction/glass).
That said, chances are pretty high it will help with most of it, and if you are handy with 3DL you can work with the rest. (Like whether you want to turn candles into meshlights or use UE2 and ambient channel indirect light or use ambient and place lightsources or...)
You'd think I was making money off that script. ;)
But seriously, after many months of being UTTERLY frustrated whenever I wanted to quickly flip over to 3DL with content... it's such a relief.
no
no
yes
i do not understand the last question
I still use 3Delight and have no plans to stop. I like the results I get from it way more than those I get from Iray.
As for materials, having both is definitely a plus, and though having Iray materials only has been the deciding factor several times for items I was not 100% convinced about.
On the other hand, I totally understand vendors not wanting to spend the time to create good 3Delight materials if they don't get enough return on it, so it's not blocking for me. I've been there long enough to remember the time when there were no DS materials included with products, so if I really like a product I'll buy it anyway and create my own materials.
I really appreciate your continuing to make the 3Delight mats.
Only 3DLight for me, at least until IRay's render times aren't that long!
I use 3Delight and for the longest time, only 3Delight. I am starting to learn Iray.
For the most part, I like the color saturation in 3Delight better than Iray, and hair looks better in 3DL as well.
I love Iray's emissive shaders and lighting.
Really, both render engines are great and we should keep both.
I wrote an extensive collection of custom shaders for 3DL in DS (along with scripts to apply them) for use by my NPR algorithms. This functionality cannot be duplicated in Iray, so I require 3DL. If 3DL were to disappear from DS, it would likely mark the end of my journey in DS, as I'm fairly certain that I would choose to rebuild the system on another platform.
That being said, the wealth of content and ease of use in DS is great, and I also currently enjoy rendering in Iray, too.
- Greg
My new custom PC has a GeForce GTX 1060 card with 3GB, but I'm still using 3Delight (actually, I'm not sure if even this new card, the most powerful graphics card I've ever had on any of my systems, has quite the oomph required to run IRay effectively).
Yes and yes (provisionally). I tried going through Iray and found it so difficult to figure out compared to 3Delight. Granted, I started about a year or so before Iray came out, so my steep learning curve had been with 3Delight. The lighting with Iray was, I found, so very in-depth (similar to Reality) that, although the results were nice, it was too unpleasant to deal with. I have always found 3Delight to be so much easier and user-friendly. I love the tricks you can do with the lights that you just can’t (that I’m aware of) do with Iray. I really have no desire to put in the tremendous effort to learn a new rendering engine when I already did that (and still do) with the one I started with.
Yes I still use it.
Do I require it? Depends what you mean by that. I require it to be an option, if Daz bring out a version of Studio without 3DL I probably won't upgrade to it. I do buy stuff that only has Iray materials but I prefer ones that have 3DL as well.
I move between 3DL and Iray depending on the picture I am trying to create and my mood at the time. I've bought quite a few shaders, lights and special effects that are 3DL only and I don't want to lose them, I've got stuff that is Iray only. I'm greedy, I like to have both.
I use both.
Yes and yes. In fact, I've gone back to more 3DL renders in recent months. Got tired of slow Iray renders.
And I am gratefull to you for that. Your stuff is top class anyway, which makes it a real bonus for me.
Vinny
Yes, Yes, and more so YES! -- Iray is basically unusable (its glacially slow)for me on my current setup, and I refuse to pay more $$$ for a video card than my entire system cost, simply to use Iray.. Besides, I feel its wrong to have to use proprietary hardware simply to render from an app.. Theoretcially it should be able to run Iray as OpenCL (Vray RT does), but iray exists to sell hardware, IMHO..
Iray renders realistic scenes as fast if not faster than 3DL does, even in CPU mode. Again, when people say 3DL is faster, they are comparing simplified lighting and less realistic renders to more powerful ones; by the time you push 3DL to the level of realism Iray starts with, you end up taking a very long time.
There are certainly good reasons to prefer 3DL and if you don't want highly photorealistic images, then great, but the whole 'Iray is slower' thing is wildly misleading.
For me, photorealism doesn't give me what I want. I like the vague digital art look of 3Delight.
Based on my own experience, and for my system, I fully agree. Almost all my scene-setups are to complex to fit in my 2GB GTX680. And using UE and UA-lights in 3DL requires settings that take long to render. So Iray in CPU only mode, or 3DL with UE/UA, both take their time...
As much extra as 3DL users pay for things that have iRay included which they don't need or want ?
Personally I prefer 3DL I'm not looking for super realistic ,and I'm still learning 3DL so why jump to something else?
There are two arguments here that don't make a lot of sense to me.
The time factor. It depends on your system, so there is a huge variation in time. For myself and people without good graphics cards, 3DL is much faster, especially if you understand the lighting requirements. I always use LightDome Pro-R, and that renders out 7 plus passes of a scene, usually in only a few minutes each. A typical scene in iRay renders in hours, for only one pass, so I have no control over result beyond what I hoped by preview screen was showing me, therefore I render out several such scenes with different lighting. But its an apples and oranges thing, there is no comparison between a graphics card optimized for iRay and a computer that doesn't have that.
Price. How much can consumers save if the PA didn't do a 3DL texture? DAZ prices are aimed at mass consumption - they are low. Add in sales and the pricing is really low and (I'm sure) depend on lots of units moving for the PAs to make a decent return. I sincerly doubt you'd see any price drop on new items if they did not include 3DL textures. This is just an assumnption on my part, but I think pricing is based on what will maximize sales, not on the man-hours spent on creating a specific element of a product.
Before anyone gets their hackles raised, I'm just trying to point out there are a huge number of variables in making a choice between using iRay and 3DL. Outcome, artistic vision, is our basic, shared decisive factor.
Running on an AMD (and on ArchLinux with Wine) and new to Daz as of December.
Iray works well (so far) on my freshly setup 64bit Daz Studio install (not tried it since December, seems rather stable, the ui even has fewer quirks - still problems with CMS although 32bit works flawlessly), and after waiting on a 25 hour 3DL render over the weekend (and that natively on Linux from a .rib file), the approx 2 hour wait doesn't seem that bad at the moment, and I do like the results I'm getting so far.
I'm also thinking of adding Lux render to my selection of choices with Luxus or Reality.
I'd like to see many products continue to preferably contain both material options, or an add-on available as an extra. I'd also like to see more specifially Lux materials available.
I like the choice. 3Delight is still my default currentlyy, and products that don't have 3DL materials are not considered at present.
...3DL takes longer than Iray in CPU mode? Well maybe when using Uberenviroment. That pic I posted above took around 15 min to render in 3DL (Daz 4.8) whereas in Iray, it took around two and a half hours and the surfaces, even though like I mentioned were all manually converted (which took a lot of time by itself) looked terrible in comparison.
...true, UE does take longer, however I use AoA's advanced lights and set up my own AO/bounce lighting which still renders much quicker than Iray in CPU mode.
...
I'm honestly baffled at the 'Iray takes way longer always,' because that's just not been my experience, and I'm talking about Iray CPU mode. I mean, SOMETIMES it does, particularly if you use emissives and SSS and other stuff.
But I've frequently had to redo 3DL scenes as Iray simply because Iray is faster in that given instance (even in CPU mode).
And if you try to do meshlights, fog, and/or emissive-like effects in 3DL, 3DL will take a very long time.
For example, this render took 5 minutes in Iray. In CPU mode. At double size (then I blurred it a little, shrunk it).
How? Well, I turned off all the emissives, and there aren't any volume effects. So, there you go. You want to compare apples to apples, you need to compare Iray without all the fancy stuff to 3DL without all the fancy stuff.
AOA's lights are not bounce lighting. I specifically mentioned that *for me* proper bounce lighting is a requirement and therefore Iray is just as fast if not faster. Telling me "yeah but if you don't use bounce lighting in 3delight its way faster" while technically true is ultimately irrelevant given that I already stated that regardless of render engine I will be using bounce lighting
I don't remember what, exactly, I was testing for, but I've found my default 3DL lighting and Iray to be roughly equal. (I have a GeForce GTX 960 for my video card, so this is not CPU only)
Both of the attached pictures had the ceiling lights set as Emissives (Marishan's Emissive for the 3DL, Iray Emissive for Iray). The 3DL was also lit with just an AoA ambient light, while the Iray was just sun/sky through the window.
3DL took 8 minutes, Iray took 9 (Iray one also had all the original materials replaced with Iray Presets, while 3DL was out of the box Poser materials, except the mirror, which I did adjust for better results in 3DL)