Anyone else sad so many items are now only iRay?

mikael-aronsson · September 2017

The rationale I occasionally see mentioned by artists who prefer biased engines like 3DL and Firefly is that they enjoy utilizing long-established cheats to get results that are comparable to un-biased engines like Iray and Octane. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I do find it curiously ironic.

Calling IRAY an unbiased renderer is also a bit ironic, there is no such thing, well actually some research institutions have light simulators that can simulate single light beams close to unbiased but that's about it, every single renderer in existance today are biased.

I don't use 3DL at all, but many people using an "unbiased" renderer to get realistic results do it to get control over the result, IRAY can only do "realistic" you have very little control over the result in terms of "realism", with many "biased" renderers you get a lot of artistic control over the results, removing unwanted shadows, negative lights, things that are not visible in reflections and so on, there can be many reasons for doing it, speaking for myself I can't even get most scenes to fit in GPU memory, and when that happens IRAY is not so fun any more, the term "realistic" can have different meaning for different people.

LeatherGryphon · September 2017

Spit said:

I'm not looking for photoreal. In fact I didn't get Stonemason's Venice because it was too realistic. I prefer rendered (or painted) backdrops to photos as well. That a vendor prefers their stuff's look in iRay over 3DL is meaningless to me.

I'm just looking for the basics. ie, UH2 plus relevant images in their proper slots which can be done early in the process and set aside. You can state on the product page that 3DL BASIC materials are applied but will need work to look anything close to the promos.

Yeah, I don't give a hoot about photoreal, it's an ideal for professionals, but there's a lot of us amateurs out here who don't need to, and aren't willing to, buy into it.

wolf359 · September 2017

"I don't use 3DL at all, but many people using an "unbiased"
renderer to get realistic results do it to get control over the
result, IRAY can only do "realistic"
you have very little control over the result in
terms of "realism", with many "biased"
renderers you get a lot of artistic control
over the results, removing unwanted shadows,
negative lights, things that are not visible in
reflections and so on, there can be many reasons
for doing it, speaking for myself
I can't even get most scenes to fit in GPU
memory, and when that happens
IRAY is not so fun any more, the term "realistic"

I dont use 3DL or IRay
However I hate the dumb brute force approach DAZ studios IRay
takes to path tracing
for stills Blender cycles node based branched path tracer
gives one way more control over the outcome and has many options
to optimize performance.

mjc1016 · September 2017

maclean said:

but when it comes to glass, metals and a few other surfaces, 3DL never quite matches up to Iray.

That is only somewhat true...3DL is quite capable of very good glass and metal, even using PBR materials. Studio, on the other hand is not, as it does not have the proper shaders AND getting those shaders INTO Studio is nigh on to impossible, without writing ALL the support scripts from scratch, by hand AND precompiling the shader in the standalone version of 3DL.

And 3DL itself has much more in the way of lights/lighting options, than is accessible through Studio.

scorpio · September 2017

Spit said:

...

I'm just looking for the basics. ie, UH2 plus relevant images in their proper slots which can be done early in the process and set aside. You can state on the product page that 3DL BASIC materials are applied but will need work to look anything close to the promos.

UH2 is hardly a basic shader, and there are going to be times when the 3dl shaders are never going to look even similar to the Iray promos.

Llynara · September 2017

I fell in love with Dry Mud Desert when it came out, and for a while, there was only a 3Delight version. I combined it with an Iray render back in March and it turned out pretty good. I don't think there was even any postwork. I've learned a lot since then and could rework it. The PA had to completely redo the shaders for the Iray version, which is now out. Sometimes it is fun to combine the Iray and 3Delight in postwork. Seems to work well with backgrounds.

tkdrobert · September 2017

I use 3DL for comic style renders, but I like IRAY lighting and I love Terra Dome 3. Some cartoon shaders are slowly making their way into the shop for IRAY. If I can get enough Iray toon shaders to do my comic work and look the way I want, I would use only IRAY. I'm experiementing with a cartoon render right now that's in IRAY. I'm using a lot of post work though. We'll see how it turns out.

manekiNeko · September 2017

yes i'm sad. even if:
- iray looks awesome & often far more realistic than 3dl
- many beautiful effects and appearances looking striking in iray can't remotedly be realized/imitated with 3dl
- there are scripts, tutorials, threads about converting iray to 3dl
- going with times, things change and blah

and i have huge respect for those creators who make the effort to provide both settings/materials (yes, i can understand the pain of someone who has created amazing surfaces in iray for their newest product and has to cry at the best "equivalent" they manage in 3dl...). i hope there will still be many who do. because while there are ways to convert, it doesn't mean that personally i have time, patience and skills to convert every single piece of a complex product (i have already paid money for).
my wishlist is phenomenal because i can't afford much - and iray-only items are NOT the next that will go.
reason: when i can eventually buy myself a decent system working with iray without frying through, i dunno if daz/DS will still exist :(

hence: i really hope daz won't make iray the only DS standard/render engine any time soon! (it would mean i'd definitely stop updating DS)

Spit · September 2017

scorpio said:

Spit said:

...

I'm just looking for the basics. ie, UH2 plus relevant images in their proper slots which can be done early in the process and set aside. You can state on the product page that 3DL BASIC materials are applied but will need work to look anything close to the promos.

UH2 is hardly a basic shader, and there are going to be times when the 3dl shaders are never going to look even similar to the Iray promos.

And what, exactly, is wrong with that? I think most 'newbies' are using iRay but us 'oldtimers' know pretty much what we're getting (and choosing). And it's choice that makes the biggest difference to me. If I want to do still lifes with glass or photoreal portraits I'll use iRay. I don't so I don't.

DarwinsMishap · September 2017

kyoto kid said:

DarwinsMishap said:

RawArt said:

I still make an extra set of Material presets for 3dl....but I tell ya, it is hard.

Not because of the work, but because when you make something look so cool in iray, it gets painful to look at a 3dl version that cannot get close to as cool. The 3dl settings are so limited compared to iray. (and i find 3dl takes longer to render than iray does...I pull my hair out waiting on my test renders to check and tweak my 3dl material settings)

+5 with my system, the 3DL takes 3x as long as the Iray renders, and most of my Iray renders are 4-8 hours for high end rendering.

...is that with UE? I've had "straight" 3DL renders take under 30 min, even for a fairly busy scene.

Nope, just a 3 point light system (fill and two spot lights) and a figure with hair, clothing and accessories. Granted, when I compress the textures it helps a little, but that transmapped (or mesh) hair kills every time. The old system that I had before this one was a decade old and it'd take 4 hours to Iray render the same scene with the same lights just changed to photometric while the 3DL scene took almost 8. Now, that scene takes a half hour on my new system with Iray, and two hours in 3DL. I could just not be optimizing the scene correctly for the 3DL, though I followed a lighting tutorial strictly for 3DL and took out the UE lights to test it. There was only a 10 minute add on for the UE lighting that was supposed to be in it.

I'd test more, but honestly- no time.

mjc1016 · September 2017

DarwinsMishap said:

kyoto kid said:

DarwinsMishap said:

RawArt said:

I still make an extra set of Material presets for 3dl....but I tell ya, it is hard.

Not because of the work, but because when you make something look so cool in iray, it gets painful to look at a 3dl version that cannot get close to as cool. The 3dl settings are so limited compared to iray. (and i find 3dl takes longer to render than iray does...I pull my hair out waiting on my test renders to check and tweak my 3dl material settings)

+5 with my system, the 3DL takes 3x as long as the Iray renders, and most of my Iray renders are 4-8 hours for high end rendering.

...is that with UE? I've had "straight" 3DL renders take under 30 min, even for a fairly busy scene.

Nope, just a 3 point light system (fill and two spot lights) and a figure with hair, clothing and accessories. Granted, when I compress the textures it helps a little, but that transmapped (or mesh) hair kills every time. The old system that I had before this one was a decade old and it'd take 4 hours to Iray render the same scene with the same lights just changed to photometric while the 3DL scene took almost 8. Now, that scene takes a half hour on my new system with Iray, and two hours in 3DL. I could just not be optimizing the scene correctly for the 3DL, though I followed a lighting tutorial strictly for 3DL and took out the UE lights to test it. There was only a 10 minute add on for the UE lighting that was supposed to be in it.

I'd test more, but honestly- no time.

two things...simply changing the occlusion settings on the hair AND running in Progressive mode should nearly halve the time it takes to render hair!

Ivy · September 2017

Taking a page from DaWaterRat Book trying some examples. this is what I came up with when working on some Halloween renders . I did this pirate render in both 3delight & IRAY

1st i started with 3delight

Content used M4 Skeletons & texture , M4- Beard , M4 Pirate outfit, w/ Dave Jones texture maps, ADS pirate ship for daz and poser. a cloud props from stonemasons wintery terrain . Glasseye skydome & texture, Glasseye ue2 light preset with one distant light source added for color dept. and 1 point of light to light up the coin box. render time 2 min 34 seconds 900 x 1440 .99kb

Daz blocks me from uploading images so this is a off site gallery post.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2nd render SAME Content used: converted with Uber Iray shaders, M4 Skeletons & texture , M4- Beard , M4 Pirate outfit, w/ Dave Jones texture maps, ADS pirate ship for daz and poser. coin box I used MEC4D PBS gold shaders . cloud props from stonemasons wintery terrain pre rendered. Glasseye skydome & texture for match background. 1 photometric spotlight positioned where the moon is set at 3000000 lumens, color temp 7500k Iray as light source. dome / sky set on. no map used global settings time of day 7/2016 9;30 pm. tone map color set to #44401 - firefly filter set on luminance filters set on and at 300% filter setting lanczos filtering at 1.8 - render time 3 min 12 seconds 900 x 1440 .106kb

comments?

Ivy · September 2017

maclean said:

Ivy said:

.

RawArt said:

Ivy said:

maclean said:

I guess that just shows how much stuff changes over time. I must be missing something. I mean not to long ago there was once a time that all the pa's and venders created was 3dl mats until iray came out. this is just my opinion . But it seems if the pa's & venders that were always use to making 3dl mats before iray came out to begin with, then as a PA' to me it would sense to make those 3delight mats first, then just. convert them to iray using uber-iray setting I would think doing 3dl first and converting to iray would be easier, then there would be mats settings for both render engines for the product or be easier to use in a third party software as well.. . to me it appears that Daz has gone specialized just for the iray render engine only now?, In which case I guess that would cut other software and render engines from using these products anyway. that can't be good for sales to folks that don;t use daz iray. is it? I dunno? I'm not a PA or a vender so I don't really know what I am talking about when creating products. I am just going by my own experience from using 3dl and Iray and converting mats for my own use. So if I ( A flunky) can convert mats, then I would think it would be a cinch for a PA to booster their sales. but like I said I'm not a PA or a vender so I don't really know what I am talking about when creating products, I just use them.....if i can.

Actually that would not be easier or make sense. The Iray setup can do alot of things that are not able to be done with 3dl, so the iray setup is much more complicated. Then the iray settings would have to be dumbed down to make the 3dl version. It is easier to dumb things down than to make them more complicated. So one would generally start with the iray settings, then convert to 3dl.

But all pa's have different approaches, so the path for one may be different than for another.

"before iray came out Pa's made all content for 3delight with no problems and your saying building model for those same 3dl mats is harder than using Iray mats?

The reason it's harder is that instead of just making 3DL materials, you try to recreate (as closely as possible) the Iray materials. That may be easy for some things, but when it comes to glass, metals and a few other surfaces, 3DL never quite matches up to Iray. And trying to get the same lighting in both render engines so you can make a decent comparison isn't easy either.

Why bother? Why not just make ordinary 3DL materials? Well, because most promo renders are now done in Iray, and a customer who uses 3DL will look at the results and be disappointed. And of course, most PAs hate to put out sub-standard work.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, if I have a prop pack with 30 - 50 props in it, all with multiple materials, plus presets, I have to convert hundreds of materials, and save a complete new folder of props and presets.

Thanks for the reply. I missed this post you made . I want to mention that I am a huge fan of your content. and I believe i have bought about all you exterior and interior props.. I use them all the time the work great in scene for anime. its just i like options so for me its much easier to convert stuff to iray than it is to 3dl.. But i am a hobbyist not a PA. so I understand you gotta do what makes the moola . But I do think its great you guys listen to us hobby people and how we use your content we buy. even though you may not agree of with some of what we request..lol .. no hard feelings

Mattymanx · September 2017

Ivy said:

Taking a page from DaWaterRat Book trying some examples. this is what I came up with when working on some Halloween renders . I did this pirate render in both 3delight & IRAY
comments?

Everyone is going to have varied results. Just because you can do two simular looking images does not mean one is greater then the other. The Iray version could have been done in 3DL very easily. And comparing the two render engines is another "apples & oranges" comparison since there a lot of different settings in each that can affect render times and end results. For example, if you want more realism with metal, glass and reflections in 3Delight, you're going to pay for it in time as you increase light bounce and shadow samples for added realism. Whereas in Iray the lighting is realistic period, and metal and glass materials behave more naturally. A good example of Iray being faster is this render. It only took about an hour in Iray - https://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/0/7/07-furrawri-x95-daz3d.jpg - To recreate that in 3Delight within Daz Studio would take far too long if you wanted the same level of light and reflection bounce. Now in 3Delight, this image took about a day to render and was done with the AoA fog camera - https://mattymanx.deviantart.com/art/Elly03-548610295 - and this one took 24hours to render in 3DL cause of the hair - https://mattymanx.deviantart.com/art/Elly-04-550913498 - The only Iray render that I have done was 4 hours and it was indoor with indirect lighting using a lot of mesh lights (a lot of mesh lights) I know not everyone wants realism, which is fine, but in that case, as others have already stated, it is easier to dumb down the high end shader for the simpler look that they want.

DaWaterRat · September 2017

To be fair, what I was comparing was doing a special effect (shadows being deliberately wrong) and comparing how much effort that took in 3DL (longer render, but I only had to do one, minimal postwork needed) vs Iray (shorter render time, but more system resources used and required multiple renders that totaled how long it took to do the one in 3DL, more time on postwork required) I wasn't really trying to compare overall speeds of Iray vs. 3DL with what was otherwise "real" objects reacting normally with the lights. I chose the elements I did because I had complete 3DL and Iray setups from the vendors for both, so it wasn't even me optimizing 3DL shaders for Iray. Strictly plug and play.

Now, my objective was more to establish that 3DL still has a certain value beyond aesthetics, because there are certain effects that Iray just can't do (like have an invisible object cast a shadow, and have a visible obect not cast a shadow), just as there are things that 3DL as made available in DS can't do. I wasn't trying to imply, or even ask, if one was objectively "better" than the other, because "better" is all based on what you're trying to achieve and how much effort you need to expend to do it.

It was more making a case that the effort of dumbing down Iray shaders for 3DL does, at least for me, have some value beyond liking the look better.

Ivy · September 2017

Thanks for the replays guys, this has been stimulating discussion. this is my last post in this thread itsgetting to hot.. What I was more or less trying to show examples of how easy 3dl to iray conversions can be compared to converting iray to 3dl . . .I understand most daz users are still render operators, where some users like me tend to like & need more options and I tend to patronize venders or artist who go that extra mile to fore fill that need for more options. I don't see why all this gravity & brow beating in this discussion about requesting keeping options alive?!

So I will say this again as I do not want to start a "Iray is better than 3delight war discussion and get this thread locked.. " I DON'T CARE what you people use or buy or prefer to use. or want to make to sell in your store. IMO its all a matter of personal preference period!, there is no right or wrong what someone wants to use. I under stand people are passionate about their art, I get it.. I am a hobby user ( not PA or a professional 3d artist. just a grandmother that uses daz to pass time away. & I thought daz was geared for hobby users like me. . I consider myself a average user of Daz Studio. So when I go to spend my money I prefer options over being locked into one render option over another. or one character choice over another etc etc... I don't have to rely on iray to get good results and i don't need 3dl to make animations or cartoons. I do like using daz.studio alot . But i would also like to use the daz products I spent hard earned money on in another 3d software choices without having to go through a bunch of bull shit to use it. which has been more and more a hassle trying to do using new daz iray only products. AS a hobby consumer & buyer of daz products, like most of you people . I buy what I can use ( which lately has been nothing.) I don't care what other people buy or prefer use. just like most of you people don't care what my preferred use of the daz products are.. so if my opinion of requesting dual shader option is such a inconvenient to do for a PA . then please do not cater to or listen to such silly request to make dual textures. who cares ...Ha! I just know in the last year my spending is almost nothing . when it use to be over a $100 a month. not that it matter to anyone really.. But then again one vender maybe reading these comments as a lurker. and is willing to go that extra mile to keep their customer returning & happy. ( there are some pa's like that.) So please I don;t want to start a Iray is better than 3DL war . I don't care . Pa's don't need to dumb down anything for my use of their products.,I just want options whether you provide them or not is entirely up to you. But what is dumb IMO is not listening to your customers request. and responding to them in a 3d forum by telling customers its not worth your time or effort to keep them coming back is like telling your customers go else where to shop your opinions/request & concerns do not matter. ... FYI that is how it feels sometimes in these thread discussions. that why I tend to stay out of them.

Faveral · September 2017

For my part I don't think either one is better than the other. I personally like Iray better as far as lighting goes. It looks way more natural without requiring tons of tricks 3dl requires to achieve similar results. On the other hand, I like displacement in 3dl. It sucks in I ray.... OVerall I find Iray easier to work with. Even as a beginner you can make decent to good pix in Iray, whereas you have to already have a good handle on 3dl to make decent renders

3Diva · September 2017

Ivy said:

Thanks for the replays guys, this has been stimulating discussion. this is my last post in this thread itsgetting to hot.. What I was more or less trying to show examples of how easy 3dl to iray conversions can be compared to converting iray to 3dl . . .I understand most daz users are still render operators, where some users like me tend to like & need more options and I tend to patronize venders or artist who go that extra mile to fore fill that need for more options. I don't see why all this gravity & brow beating in this discussion about requesting keeping options alive?!

So I will say this again as I do not want to start a "Iray is better than 3delight war discussion and get this thread locked.. " I DON'T CARE what you people use or buy or prefer to use. or want to make to sell in your store. IMO its all a matter of personal preference period!, there is no right or wrong what someone wants to use. I under stand people are passionate about their art, I get it.. I am a hobby user ( not PA or a professional 3d artist. just a grandmother that uses daz to pass time away. & I thought daz was geared for hobby users like me. . I consider myself a average user of Daz Studio. So when I go to spend my money I prefer options over being locked into one render option over another. or one character choice over another etc etc... I don't have to rely on iray to get good results and i don't need 3dl to make animations or cartoons. I do like using daz.studio alot . But i would also like to use the daz products I spent hard earned money on in another 3d software choices without having to go through a bunch of bull shit to use it. which has been more and more a hassle trying to do using new daz iray only products. AS a hobby consumer & buyer of daz products, like most of you people . I buy what I can use ( which lately has been nothing.) I don't care what other people buy or prefer use. just like most of you people don't care what my preferred use of the daz products are.. so if my opinion of requesting dual shader option is such a inconvenient to do for a PA . then please do not cater to or listen to such silly request to make dual textures. who cares ...Ha! I just know in the last year my spending is almost nothing . when it use to be over a $100 a month. not that it matter to anyone really.. But then again one vender maybe reading these comments as a lurker. and is willing to go that extra mile to keep their customer returning & happy. ( there are some pa's like that.) So please I don;t want to start a Iray is better than 3DL war . I don't care . Pa's don't need to dumb down anything for my use of their products.,I just want options whether you provide them or not is entirely up to you. But what is dumb IMO is not listening to your customers request. and responding to them in a 3d forum by telling customers its not worth your time or effort to keep them coming back is like telling your customers go else where to shop your opinions/request & concerns do not matter. ... FYI that is how it feels sometimes in these thread discussions. that why I tend to stay out of them.

I hope you didn't feel personally attacked. I know some (maybe most) get passionate about what they do and don't like. lol I'm sure the PAs have a lot of choices to weigh when it comes to what they create - the time and work that goes into two sets of mats and settings and material presets, etc vs how many sales they may lose by not doing mats for two different render engines. I'm sure it's not an easy choice and in the end they have to do what's right for them, just as the customer has to do what's right for themselves as well. :)

Sven Dullah · September 2017

Ok, so I´ve been following this discussion and cannot keep my mouth shut any longer, just a short statement:

I use 3DL. I do not buy Iray only products. When I check out a new product the first thing I do is scroll down and if I

see the "optimized for Iray" it´s over and out. That is my choice and my right.

The PAs that make Iray only products seem to get along just fine without my support so it is all good

Eagle99 · September 2017

I'm a new PA that came to Daz Studio with Iray, because it just blew me away when I saw the first Iray renders.

So I started learning how Iray shaders and rendering works and never used 3Delight.

Many industry standard products for 3d Artist using the metallicity/roughness shader workflow now, that's similar to the one used in Daz Studio with Iray.

Even Blender has implemented one in the 2.79 version.

So from an PA perspective, this seems the way to go now.

If I would have been familiar with 3Delight I would of course add a shader option for that to my products.

But as I'm not, I decided to skip that. It feels a bit like learning an outdated technique, even though there still seems to be a demand for it.

I think it's better to deliver no 3Delight shader than a floppy one, just to have one.

I have to feel comfy in what I'm doing when including something in the product. If not, I better skip it.

The effort I put into my first product was already high as I was still learning many things during production, so I had to come to an end some day... ;-)

From a buyers perspective I also expect that everything included in the product I buy has at least some kind of good standard.

And that's what I want to deliver as a PA.

Kind regards, Eagle99

3Diva · September 2017

Eagle99 said:

I'm a new PA that came to Daz Studio with Iray, because it just blew me away when I saw the first Iray renders.

So I started learning how Iray shaders and rendering works and never used 3Delight.

Many industry standard products for 3d Artist using the metallicity/roughness shader workflow now, that's similar to the one used in Daz Studio with Iray.

Even Blender has implemented one in the 2.79 version.

So from an PA perspective, this seems the way to go now.

If I would have been familiar with 3Delight I would of course add a shader option for that to my products.

But as I'm not, I decided to skip that. It feels a bit like learning an outdated technique, even though there still seems to be a demand for it.

I think it's better to deliver no 3Delight shader than a floppy one, just to have one.

I have to feel comfy in what I'm doing when including something in the product. If not, I better skip it.

The effort I put into my first product was already high as I was still learning many things during production, so I had to come to an end some day... ;-)

From a buyers perspective I also expect that everything included in the product I buy has at least some kind of good standard.

And that's what I want to deliver as a PA.

Kind regards, Eagle99

Your bike and poses look great. They're on my wish list. Congratulations on becoming a PA! :)

Eagle99 · September 2017

Thank you! .. click here to continue...

cherpenbeck · September 2017

And I do very sincerely wish there was a way to find and differ iray and 3DL textures more easily. Some vendors make both versions (and I like 3DL!), but don't mark which one is what.

Taoz · September 2017

Llynara said:

I fell in love with Dry Mud Desert when it came out, and for a while, there was only a 3Delight version. I combined it with an Iray render back in March and it turned out pretty good. I don't think there was even any postwork. I've learned a lot since then and could rework it. The PA had to completely redo the shaders for the Iray version, which is now out. Sometimes it is fun to combine the Iray and 3Delight in postwork. Seems to work well with backgrounds.

I like Dry Mud Desert too, except that the sky has compression artifacts, which is a spoiler IMO.

Taoz · September 2017

Just tried to see how old Sadie looked in Iray - not so good. Then I tried 3DL, but somehow it seems that she doesn't look like she used to, in DS. Or maybe I just confuse DS and Poser, which I used to use to render her I think (currently don't have it installed, so can't check).

She doesn't look like on the promos either, everything looks a bit dull, and the hair has spots like if the shaders settings are wrong. In fact, she looks much better in the viewport than rendered, IMO.

I wonder if it has to do with changes to 3DL since she was released? The product page says she's for both DS and Poser.

Graze · September 2017

manekiNeko said:

hence: i really hope daz won't make iray the only DS standard/render engine any time soon! (it would mean i'd definitely stop updating DS)

This weeks 2 freebies are iray only . . . .

FSMCDesigns · September 2017

bicc39 said:

Anyone else sad so many items are now only iRay?

No.

This! LOL

mikael-aronsson said:

The rationale I occasionally see mentioned by artists who prefer biased engines like 3DL and Firefly is that they enjoy utilizing long-established cheats to get results that are comparable to un-biased engines like Iray and Octane. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I do find it curiously ironic.

Calling IRAY an unbiased renderer is also a bit ironic, there is no such thing, well actually some research institutions have light simulators that can simulate single light beams close to unbiased but that's about it, every single renderer in existance today are biased.

I don't use 3DL at all, but many people using an "unbiased" renderer to get realistic results do it to get control over the result, IRAY can only do "realistic" you have very little control over the result in terms of "realism", with many "biased" renderers you get a lot of artistic control over the results, removing unwanted shadows, negative lights, things that are not visible in reflections and so on, there can be many reasons for doing it, speaking for myself I can't even get most scenes to fit in GPU memory, and when that happens IRAY is not so fun any more, the term "realistic" can have different meaning for different people.

This is exactly why I use IRAY, I don't want to second guess lighting and shadows, I want the renderer to do it's math and provide this for me based on how I set up the scene and the surfaces

Nyghtfall3D · September 2017

mikael-aronsson said:

The rationale I occasionally see mentioned by artists who prefer biased engines like 3DL and Firefly is that they enjoy utilizing long-established cheats to get results that are comparable to un-biased engines like Iray and Octane. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I do find it curiously ironic.

Calling IRAY an unbiased renderer is also a bit ironic, there is no such thing... every single renderer in existance today are biased.

Ahem...

From Lifewire.com:

What is the Difference Between Biased Rendering and Unbiased Rendering?

Unbiased - Unbiased renderers like Maxwell, Indigo, and Luxrender are typically hailed as "physically accurate" render engines. Although "physically accurate" is something of a misnomer (nothing in CG is truly physically accurate), the term is meant to imply that an unbiased renderer calculates the path of light as accurately as is statistically possible within the confines of current-gen rendering algorithms. In other words, no systematic error or "bias" is willfully introduced. Any variance will manifest as noise, but given enough time an unbiased renderer will eventually converge on a mathematically "correct" result.

Biased - Biased renderers, on the other hand, make certain concessions in the interest of efficiency. Instead of chugging away until a sound result has been reached, biased renderers will introduce sample bias, and use subtle interpolation or blurring to reduce render time. Biased renderers can typically be fine-tuned more than their unbiased counterparts, and in the right hands, a biased renderer can potentially produce a thoroughly accurate result with significantly less CPU time.

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In the context of those definitions, Iray would be considered an unbiased renderer.

mikael-aronsson said:

I don't use 3DL at all, but many people using an "unbiased" renderer to get realistic results do it to get control over the result, IRAY can only do "realistic" you have very little control over the result in terms of "realism"...

The way you've written this, I find myself interpreting it as your suggesting Iray's programming isn't particularly accurate, and that people who use it have little control over improving whatever results they're trying to achieve.

mikael-aronsson said:

... with many "biased" renderers you get a lot of artistic control over the results, removing unwanted shadows...

This is why I prefer unbiased renderers. As someone with a strong interest in photorealism, the idea of removing unwanted shadows sounds like an oxymoron to me. Light in the real world casts shadows, whether we want it to or not, and so should every light in my art.

FSMCDesigns said:

This is exactly why I use IRAY, I don't want to second guess lighting and shadows, I want the renderer to do its math and provide this for me based on how I set up the scene and surfaces.

:: finger on nose, points to FSMCDesigns ::

Before Reality and Iray were available and we were limited to 3DL and Firefly, I hated trying to decide how soft or sharp my shadows should be . Engines like Iray eliminate the guesswork.

mikael-aronsson said:

... speaking for myself I can't even get most scenes to fit in GPU memory, and when that happens IRAY is not so fun any more, the term "realistic" can have different meaning for different people.

That's a fair point, and I can certainly understand the frustration of running out of VRAM.

Mistara · September 2017

try finding luxus shaders, talk about hard up for shaders

dreaming of a Vray plugin and shaders

Vray Vray Vray

oh noes, just had a memory of the V hamster scene

scorpio · September 2017

Taoz said:

Just tried to see how old Sadie looked in Iray - not so good. Then I tried 3DL, but somehow it seems that she doesn't look like she used to, in DS. Or maybe I just confuse DS and Poser, which I used to use to render her I think (currently don't have it installed, so can't check).

She doesn't look like on the promos either, everything looks a bit dull, and the hair has spots like if the shaders settings are wrong. In fact, she looks much better in the viewport than rendered, IMO.

I wonder if it has to do with changes to 3DL since she was released? The product page says she's for both DS and Poser.

The original Sadie is an older figure and its possible that although she works in DS she doesn't have DS mat settings she would have been optimised for Poser, DS optimisation wasn't a a priority or even a requirment in the past.

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Anyone else sad so many items are now only iRay?

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