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Why use Blender to render?

JQPJQP Posts: 520
edited August 2018 in Daz Studio Discussion

I saw a censortube video showing how to export from DS to Blender for rendering. It's nice to know HOW to do this, but I first want to know WHY I would do this. Someone mentioned in the comments that Blender renders "an order of magnitude" (i.e., 10x) faster than iRay does. That's nice - I don't use Iray because it's way too slow for me - but it doesn't tell me how the renders look. Does anyone have a gallery of simple setups rendered in Blender and looking good? A site where people show off their Daz content rendered in Blender? Anything?

Also, I only skimmed the vid so I may have missed it, but I don't recall seeing anything about whether it was best to export 3DL textures, or iray textures, into Blender for rendering. Any thoughts on that would be welcome.

Post edited by JQP on

Comments

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited August 2018

    I don't know that there is really a giant leap in rendering quality or speed between Iray and Cycles at similar quality settings; cycles is definitely faster on my machine, but I've never read anything indicating that this is universal. The realtime EEVEE render engine coming in Blender 2.8 is absolutely faster than all three (3DL, Iray, Cycles) , but it's not strictly physically based (it cheats a bunch of things that Iray and Cycles do more realistically).

    I think the main reasons for taking DAZ assets into Blender for rendering would be if someone was just more familiar/comfortable in Blender, already had a scene set up in Blender and just wanted to add a couple things they bought here to it, or if they wanted quick in-scene access to Blender features that don't exist or aren't as robust in DAZ Studio.

    I have a few Cycles renders of DAZ assets in my gallery here:

    If you search the gallery for "blender" you get quite a few results you can look through (but read the description because some of them probably just have elements modeled in Blender and then imported to DS, which is the opposite direction from what you are asking about): https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/?q=blender&x=0&y=0

    There are also a bunch of Cycles renders of DAZ products in this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2877/mcjteleblender-daz-studio-scenes-animations-w-blender-s-cycles-engine#latest

    You probably want to use the Iray textures over the 3DL textures as they are more likely to include metal and roughness maps that can be plugged into the Cycles Principled BSDF shader to get roughly similar results.

     

    Post edited by MarkIsSleepy on
  • MaraunMaraun Posts: 10

    For me the main reason is render speed, iray is really slow.

    And liberty, you can do what you want, sculpt, create hair based on splines, special effects, create shaders, well you can do this in daz too but shader mixer is trash compared with blender nodes.

    ps. Sorry for my english.

  • JQPJQP Posts: 520

    Thanks for the info guys, it was helpful.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    You can use AMD cards. A big plus.

    You have more freedom to adjust the scene before rendering; I mean before even thinking about rendering, or after rendering and wanting to try something else.

    I much prefer Cycles's node system to Iray; I just haven't yet got a Cycles skin setup I like; I'm getting closer.

    ... Having said all that, often I can get the scene I want without resorting to loads of tweaks; then it's simple and straightforward to use Studio.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    A more general response to the OP's question would be: Why not use Blender (or one of the many other options available; the process would teach us lots of helpful stuff - and be frustrating too at times.)

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,929

    IRay is Great if you are invested in decent specced NVDIA graphics hardware.

    If you are not however
    Trying to get a clean render in  a reasonable time, with non NVDIA hardware,
    is a masochistic excercise in self flagellation IMHO.angry

    So yes,.. Blender is "an order of magnitude"faster than IRay, for me

    Also IRay is essentially a  brute force path tracer with little options for scene optimization particularly with regards to dialing down the number of bounces for reflectives and refractive materials where the defaults are unneccesarily high.

    Blender has all of these optimization options when you enable "branched path tracing" mode.

    IMHO the Principled Shader Node in Blender makes the Daz "ubershader" look like a cruel joke by comparision.

    With the free Teleblender script from "Mcasual"
    Your Daz materials are auto converted to Blender shader set ups
    upon scene import.
    Of course things will be even faster in blender when the new realtime EVEE officially arrives this Fall.  

  • JQPJQP Posts: 520

    Does Teleblender convert 3DL AND Iray, or is one of the two optimum, or what?

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