Somebody buy the iray speed tutorial and then explain what it is.
Griffin Avid
Posts: 3,818
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-turbo-x2-10-speed-tutorial
I apologize in advance for being one of those customers who needs more (EVERY question and concern addressed) or better (simpler for my basic understandings of what goes on under the hood) information about a product before I buy it.
Basically, this is the part where I become a jerk (for a while) until I feel better.
Tired of slow Iray rendering speed?
Yes.
Iray Turbo will let you render twice as fast (up to 10 times as fast), using 6 core tricks, and 3 bonus tricks, without changing your graphics card or PC--and most importantly, WITHOUT sacrificing quality!
So there's probably a requirement about my Windows version or processor etc...
Imagine a situation when your render takes 7 hours to complete, and you cut down that rendering time to only 55 minutes, while preserving all the quality?
Or a render that usually takes you 2 hours to complete, and you manage to pull it off in only a few minutes?
THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE PROCESS and would make DAZ the ultimate and probably allow me to finally do ANIMATION>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Showcases some never before released methods that will SHOCK you, and give you that extra rendering speed when you need it the most.
Sounds too good to be true.
So I'm wondering .......
1) Is this a complicated set of instructions like "Replace the normal map and switch out the Daz transient map with the negative reflective bump by inverting the modifier coefficient.
2) Or repeats a motif -- "Select every item in your scene and chance the surface settings and textures and materials and...and, well, manually do what Scene Optimizer already does"
3) Why is there no sample video or opening clip so I can even see what the video is? Is it a screen capture and voice over? Is it a guy sitting in a chair doing a podcast? [sorta kidding] I'd like one clip to get excited about.
4) Why isn't this product a Script or a preset or a render settings or...or....? What is it that I'm doing 'as a trick' that can't be done with a script or automated?
5) Do I have to basically mix and match techniques to figure out what kind of savings I get? If there isn't a way to MEASURE my savings, in time and speed (I realize Daz doesn't have this ability) and you don't know until you know. I'm basically doing what I do now. (I don't have iray rendering live) and is EXPERIMENT. Try stuff, see what the render does and make adjustments.
6) Is this better/faster than Scene Optimizer? That's a huge question and probably can't be answered until I buy this and MASTER IT. I say master it because I'd need to really know what I'm doing. And I wouldn't for a while until I rendered previous Monster Renders and see what I get. Or someone who's really keen with Daz makes some kind of review/comparison series.
7) I have about 20 Dreamlight Products. I don't always know what they are. Lights for other products. HDRI stuff that's NOT a 3D set. A 3D set that's amazing. I usually take the plunge. lol
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Their newest product that iray https://www.daz3d.com/quick-iray-outdoor-presets ; this thing is the ultimate. Does what it says on the can. Simple and easy and as deep as you want to get for that day you feel like being a scientist.
So I do believe in them, but there's a lot of times I'm required to rely on trust since product descriptions for most Daz products are always the minimal. No documentation etc...
I wish I was friends with a beta tester who could tell me the real deal on some of these products.
And the return thing doesn't work so well because I don't always use what I purchase within 30 days.
I buy some stuff for the future, now, while it's on sale.
HELP!
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Comments
Greetings,
I'm going to guess it's got stuff like:
I've not found Dreamlight tutorials to be useful past an initial level of familiarity, but they are often discounted DEEPLY, and so it's sometimes worth it.
-- Morgan
p.s. Each of the things I've listed are manual processes that's relatively difficult to write a script specifically for, which might explain why it's not a script package. I can easily imagine more manual processes that are more art than engineering, to get render times down and keep quality at a decent level.
Thank you, sir!
Great questions. I would like to know as well before buying.
And if it works on CPU only computers...
The advice Val dispenses will work a little on CPU computers, Wonderland, but speed saving will be more noticeable with a good GPU. It's contrary to the people who always think you have to have huge render settings. So in that regard it will help CPU renders some. CypherFOX is close in their guesses but I've only watched a couple so far, so I don't know completely, but CF is in the right direction.
It's a series of video tutes on topics he lists as he has done in other video tutes. Yes, he shows you the screen and tells you what he's doing and why. You can find other videos he's done in the Dreamlight channel on youtube to get an idea what they are like. They are not hard to follow.
Hm,
I somehow hear dreamlight giggle listening to our speculations about what the secret of this promissed drastic increase of render speed would be.
Do you really think, more light is more render speed?
So increasing light intensity without compensating it in the tonemapping only causes overlighting. At first you'll notice the colors of the bright areas changing in a weird way. Next you get lost of the fine details in contrast. Finally all gets that much into the saturation, that even the best picture manipulation experts (only in Hollywood the NCIS experts dream they can) can't do anything to bring the lost details back.
iRay isn't counting photons. The most sensitive area is all which is mostly indirectly lighted. OK, you can add some artificial lights or ghost lights. But this is changing the original set and the outcome in an unnatural way. If you want to stay realistic, you only can use the physical light props of your set.
Rendering environment and characters seperatly might be a nice idea. But what about the shadows, your characters throw against walls or furniture? And please don't forget that your environment bounces a lot of light back on your characters. Doing so is a real loss of quality and big change of the overall outcome.
You can try to avoid complex light emitting ressources, you may use lightsources like point lights or spot lights without any physical dimensions. But that way you only have hard shadows. One good hint is to use low-poly meshes for lighting to get soft shadows. But this only saves marginal render time.
In earlier versions there was the architectural sampler available. That speeded up the render for about 30%. But with the later versions of iRay it isn't supported anymore and suspended next.
You can try do something about the geometry details of your surfaces. But you for sure will experience a noticable loss of quality of these surfaces. I did and reported about it here in the forum. All thiese against the promis of the advertisement.
For the character's skin you can do without using translucenvy / transmission effects. This renders way quicker, but is not only a loss of realistic look, it is a loss of quality, too.
I really would dreamlight offer a test. He may take one of my sets and prove that his methods and tricks are able to save over 80% of rendertime with identical HW environment without any quality loss, nor any change of the outcome on a CPU-only platform with a memory occupation of more than 20GB for the render engine as he promisses in his product advertisement.
I think, most of the tricks, possibilities and arguments were already discussed and demonstrated in several discussions over here in the forums.
So far, everything I've seen in the videos I've watched works. Substantial time savings, too. I'll have to see about the rest of the videos when I get through them. Some of the ideas have been discussed before but the render settings get ignored by many as seen here often. Many run them way too high.
How complex are the tips? Is it just settings that need to be chagned, or does it involve going in and changing around textures and bump maps and other highly complex and time consuming things?
His suggested ways to set render settings are a breeze, but you'll have to test render anyway to get the results you want, which you'd do anyway. But it can save substantial time with his settings. I've been doing something similar for a while to save time and I get pretty good renders in several minutes. Many users go way too high for too long for no good results. His way of reducing textures and reducing geometry usage in memory is pretty simple. It's the end result you are going for. There are a couple things I would do differently to reduce noise, but his way using Photoshop works and you could do it in the GIMP. I still have more videos to go through.
I wouldn't expect (or want) you to spill the product's details on the thread, but what about the claim 'never before released methods that will SHOCK you'? Is there really anything that could be considered new or even remotely shocking here?
I just checked Kevin's "Activity" and it looks like he joined 14 years ago - wow! So I'm guessing if HE'S learning stuff from the tutorial, there might be some new methods there. lol
I wonder if it will get rid of the grain in my renders, will buy if it does
As for the settings, I wonder why NVidia (or DAZ for that matter) haven't made these the default settings, if they don't reduce quality. I can't imagine they dont know this, and I assume they do want to make their products work optimally, in order to beat their competitors?
I don't think Nvidia can't be held responsible for the settings within a given program. At least I'm assuming there is some variance between programs, models, and textures, despite the use of the same render engine, so they (Nvidia) would have no control over the exact settings. As for DAZ, these are the same folks putting out a plethora of orange G8 characters, Taoz. Not sure what their thinking is these days.
This is my question also. Is anything actually new or is this all stuff like "resize maps" and "put a bunch of extra lights in your scene" and "render larger at lower quality" and "tweak render settings" and "make sure your scene fits in your video card" and "post process to reduce noise" that have all been discussed at length many times?
Well I doubt it's the same people that are programming DS that create those orange characters. I'd think that the DS programmers know what they're doing and that they would be interested in making IRay as fast as possible, as this would make both DS and Iray more attractive. Would be interesting to get a comment from them about this.
Yes I wouldn't mind knowing what's in it to, would love to get some of those render speeds down !!!
can tutorials be refunded ?
Yes, they are like all other items in regards of return.
Wait what? For real? What if someone buy it, view it all in 30 days and then demand a refund?
It's just the nature of refunds. You could just as easily return a non-tutorial product and simply not delete it from your HD.
Everyone has their own moral compass. In spite of the news, many people have a decent compass, at least enough where companies like Daz (which rely a little on trust and human decency) don't go out of business. :)
I hope DIM / Connect can detect if someone keeps a refunded package installed, so DAZ can at least be aware of when they're dealing with a pirate.
A company like Daz that assumes it's customer base is not out to rip them off will be right more often than not. Business policies based on that assumption will keep people here and encourage loyalty. Dishonest folks are everywhere but make up a small percentage of our community. I hope.
I always have two problems with tutorial videos like this series.
Firstly, they are in 720P, not 1080P true high definition. My eyesight has never been brilliant and it's not improved with age.
Secondly, they are often done with the the darkside screen style. This is even less poor eyesight friendly than 720P.
Cheers,
Alex.
I'll buy it. Give me three or four days to watch the content and experiment.
I have purchased many dreamlight tutorials in the past. The one constant positive about Val's content is that, I always learn something I didn't know, even if its something small. The one constant negative is he incorporates his mistakes as he goes along. Mistakes in my opinion should edit out and then presented as an additional topics or not covered at all.
Check back with you all later.
Well, reviewing this product and experimenting didn't require 3 or 4 days. Everything Val shows in his tutorial in fact does turbo your render times down.
What I personally found of value from the videos and experimenting and validating his concepts:
1) Render settings: Before Val's video, I used them and saw evidence of what goes faster and slower but never had a solid explanation as to why. With Val's explanation added with my own user experience, I found render settings to be most valuable of all the tips he provides. I'll definitely make use of this.
2) Light: Second best take away is Val's explanation of light. I'll be using this tip also.
3) Backgrounds: This tips works, I just can't see myself using it for my the type of images I create with the exception that a background matches the setting I want. That would be a rare occurance because most of my renders are dome only with a few props in the scene.
4) Image size: This tip works well too and Val give a great explanation with mathematics to back it up, but I won't use it because I have my own image size standards I set for my projects.
5) Depth of field: This tip works. I won't use it because its not compatible with my workflow.
6) A photoshop technique: which I will not reveal because it would spoil the product, but I won't use it because its not compatible with my workflow, but it will most definitely lower your render time.
If you are new to daz studio you will likely get the most value from this product. You may also get the most value from this product if you use daz studio for any length of time but lack conceputal understanding of some render fucntions and setting up a scene in the context of lowering your render time.
Val provides more video content than just the six concepts I stated here but the core of the product are these six tips. I don't want to go into how he does it because that would spoil the product. Like I say before, whenever I buy one of his tutorials I always get something from it. I may not always use his advice but i will definitely have knowledge that I didn't have before.
For the price the product is selling as of today as a PC+ member, I think it is worth it to go ahead buy it.
@jaxprog Thank you for the in-depth review. I'm glad to know that the tutorial sounds worthwhile. :)
Thank you for the in depth review, and for not spoiling his tips. This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for, and makes me feel better about going ahead and picking it up yesterday. I haven't had a chance to go through it yet though.
Well done Jaxprog. We need more threads like this- with helpful insights pros/cons around products with vague descriptions and such.