3Delight vs Iray
Richard John S
Posts: 391
I know this is a controversial subject, but what are your opinions on the two different rendering engines? Which one do you like better? I have had experience in both now, and I still like 3Delight better. It just has a different kind of shine which I like. Iray is pretty good and can make things look somewhat realistic, but I feel it lacks something that 3Delight has. I feel that 3Delight had more character in the renderings. It's like a kind of eye candy that shines out with 3Delight.
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iray looks toonish to me. texture details seem washed out.
i'm willing to be prooved wrong :)
In your own renders or in others? It sounds like a lighting issue, or possibly over-SSS
In your own renders or in others? It sounds like a lighting issue, or possibly over-SSS
others. goin by the promos mostly.
i bought a Cory character skin. was a bit shocking to look at the skin img from the texture folder compared to the promo. and compared to my 3de results.
dramatic or traumatic :lol:
I find the output from Iray to be fantastic, but there are still some things that it just can't do (or, at least, I have not been able to get it to do). My workflow includes multiple render passes (for color, diffuse light, AO, raytraced shadows, fresnel, z-depth, etc.) which are all processed after rendering (automated by scripts). This more non-linear rendering approach allows for independent processing of the separate channels, which has several advantages:
1. making changes for a single render pass and re-rendering just that pass while keeping the others (saving time)
2. processing the fresnel and z-depth passes independently to create edge masks for use in processing
3. processing render passes independently (such as rendering the ambient occlusion using a lower number of samples for faster rendering, and then applying noise reduction to remove the grain without having the noise reduction adversely effect any of the other render passes)
Etc.
These are only a few of the benefits, and it should be noted that the requirements for system resources during rendering of the individual passes are drastically reduced using this approach as well. Right now, I'm running a script in DAZ Studio that renders 7 separate passes. I've also got Photoshop open, and 22 chrome windows (including this one). All this on a modest 4 core box with 8GB RAM.
For these reasons, I still find 3DL to be extremely useful and hope that DAZ Studio's support for it never ceases.
- Greg
this is a simple view of the two.
3delight: Awesome render engine and frees up the artist's creativity, not bound by realism.
Iray: Photoreal realism in the right hands.
I like both. :)
The End.
3Delight: Movie Studio
Iray: High end photo studio
others. goin by the promos mostly.
i bought a Cory character skin. was a bit shocking to look at the skin img from the texture folder compared to the promo. and compared to my 3de results.
dramatic or traumatic :lol:
Could you give the urls to some examples of what you find as toonish? I'm curious as to what you saw that made you say this, please.
I am madly in love with Iray, don't even render in 3Delight now if I can help it. And I used to do all my promos in 3Delight, even when other artists were using Octane and Maxwell.
http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/art/Beautiful-Skin-Iray-Bundle-Promo-541803804?q=gallery:SickleYield&qo=1
http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/art/Healthy-Flesh-2-Iray-Skin-Demo-541461294?q=gallery:SickleYield&qo=2
http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/art/Healthy-Flesh-Iray-Skin-Demo-540350196?q=gallery:SickleYield&qo=3
Lifelike rendering in Iray is 100% about the lighting and shaders, just as attractive non-photoreal render in 3Delight is. Which one you prefer really depends on what you want to do - if you really like toon or stylized renders, and you're already planning to postwork your water and smoke, etc., 3Delight is by far the better solution. If you want to get something that can be mistaken for a photo if you squint, without much postwork, you want to use Iray.
In my experience a good fantasy/sf render is possible in either engine, though I still do those in Iray because it's easier to get good fog effects, I love the bloom filter, and I just prefer its lighting. You don't know how much girlish squealing there was over here when I realized what mesh lights were. Uber mesh lighting has NEVER EVER worked the way I wanted in 3Delight.
Great question! While I'm a complete Iray n00b, I'm excited by the possibilities of what it can do when I see more talented artists post their work. DAZ_Spooky posted a pic here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53695/P60 of a sci-fi station (not sure which one) but the lighting is absolutely gorgeous. That picture alone made me want to start playing with Iray as soon as I saw it. Personally, I'm still not sure what I'm doing, but I'm having fun experimenting. I daydream of doing a 'derelict' version of that image with only half the lights working, and some at 1/2 brightness, and something lurking in the corridor.... point being, I think bounce lighting is much easier to do in iray -- you don't have to think about it.
That said, I can produce works of stunning mediocrity in 3delight, and since I know far more about it, for the time being, it's my 'go-to' renderer. I know how to use it, and I mostly know what results I can get. For any of the perceived 'shortcomings' of 3delight, I guarantee that one of our wonderful PAs has a product to help you overcome it. Also, there are insanely talented artists (right here on these forums and in the gallery) producing amazing stuff in 3DL.
So my advice? Play with both! Experiment. I don't think one is 'better' than the other, and best of all they're both free!
In simple terms, Iray is great for shiny stuff and liquids. For skin, I'm not convinced that the extra render time produces significantly better results than 3Delight.
Are you basing that on most of the iRay renders you see on the forum? Most of those are by people who haven't tweaked the skin settings. Take a look at Mec4D's renders and you will see the difference when the skin is properly setup.
Are you basing that on most of the iRay renders you see on the forum? Most of those are by people who haven't tweaked the skin settings. Take a look at Mec4D's renders and you will see the difference when the skin is properly setup.
Lights and shaders, lights and shaders! They make all the difference.
Lights and shaders, lights and shaders! They make all the difference.
But... but... but you still have to tweak those shaders! :-)
BTW, thanks for the tutorial videos.
Shaders and lights...
That even makes a big difference in 3DL, too...BIG one... :P
Yep. In every engine, probably.
You're welcome, nDelphi! Boy, I had no idea when I did those tutorials that they'd be the most popular thing I've ever done.
These are not just tweaked shaders but also teaked textures in Photoshop. Without that I would never have gotten these photoreal renders:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/57355/P495/#844164
One of the things you will bump up against is how different bump, displacement, and normal maps behave in iRay. Anyway, this was one of my biggest challenge.
The product is this one, a Poser only product. no DS materials whatsoever:
http://www.daz3d.com/olympia-cityscape
3Delight vs iRay?, no, they are 2 different ways to approach a render.
First of all, 3Delight is wider in shaders inside Daz universe, more support of them, more tricky than iRay in my perspective and gives very good results if you take the long learning curve for yourself about all the shader technology that 3Delight offers.
Second, iRay, well, for me was much easier to manage because I've used many external render engines in the past, since Modo, Kerkythea, Keyshot, Maxwell Render, and even Unreal Engine 4!, I can asure that iRay is a very good photorealistic render engine inside DazStudio for begginers due to the easy menu of selections and options, if only I could select a bad point on iRay would be the ton of "Glossy / Roughness" options inside Surface Panel, making a real confusion with similar options like Top Coat Film and Base Thin Film and more..."Glossy Roughness"??? OMG!!
in resume, and my personal experience, both are great render engines, and is only a tool for your creativity, your choice of one render or the other won't make you a great artist, that depends on YOU, only, believe me.
at this moment, iRay is not a Make Art button, remember that.
Are you basing that on most of the iRay renders you see on the forum? Most of those are by people who haven't tweaked the skin settings. Take a look at Mec4D's renders and you will see the difference when the skin is properly setup.
From what I have seen from all unbiased rendering engines, Iray included, its impossible to achieve the same results with 3Delight for metals and liquids. There is simply no comparison.
With skin though, I think its possible to achieve a very high degree of realism in 3Delight using AoA and HSS/omUberSurace shaders (and AoA lights or UberEnvironment2).
For me, the additional render time incurred with Iray (for skin) is not justified (say 10 - 15 minutes for 3Delight versus a couple of hours for Iray for a barely perceptible difference).
Even with my 1 GB 440, Iray is not that slow. There has to be something wrong with your light set up or something...
Even with my 1 GB 440, Iray is not that slow. There has to be something wrong with your light set up or something...
Could completely happen if it's an AMD setup.
Could completely happen if it's an AMD setup.
The machine with the 440 IS an AMD setup...and it's not even an FX series...it's one of the older A series. So, by rights it SHOULD be a snail...and Iray is always faster than 3DL on that machine.
And this isn't the only one...and some of the others that have said this have given system specs...and they were running i7s. So it HAS to be materials and lighting...
Side note....AoA's SSS shader, at least in the default set up (G3F) IS NOT ENERGY CONSERVING, so it's actually acting as an emitter/ambient light SOURCE...Iray's skin is...all Iray shaders/materials, by default are energy conserving.
Hello All,
Just peeking in as I wanted to read about the differences myself. I am new to Daz 3D and I have version 4.10 and it was set to Iray from the start. For a while I was doing everything in Iray until I bought a prop / room that was 3Delight (later I found there is an Iray upgrade, but it costs extra). While the room rendered OK in Iray, there were issues with the lighting. Naturally I wanted to seek help here on it and that was when I was introduced to 3Delight. I was told that the room would look better and the lighting would behave better in 3Delight. So naturally I switched over. Right off the bat my machine was having trouble rendering it...slowly block by block came up on the render screen going from top to bottom. This right away put me off on 3Delight as with Iray the screen came up all at once, but in lower resolution.
Pausing for a bit to mention my machine, it is an i7 6700 4ghz machine...so I got the processor speed, the problem is that I am not using a graphics card and only using the HD video that is built into the processor.
The end result is that there was no end result. The render never completed under 3Delight. It got about 1/5th the way through and caused my system to hang. After testing this 3 times and having if fail at the same point, I just went back to Iray.
So the fact that I can't get 3Delight to work right on my system is leaving a bad taste in my mouth with this form of rendering.
I have seen videos that compare 3Delight to Iray and from what I seen I definitely like Iray more as it seems more photorealistic.
BUT I would like to get 3Delight to work so I can do a proper comparison myself.
I think I'd be more inclined to give Iray a chance if I could turn off the damn progressive rendering. I don't want to play games of "what is this image" trying to see what I'm looking at through the noise. I really hate progressive rendering.
jukingeo, 3Delight can do awesome things, but with the vanilla defaults, you may run into issues. Tip 1, turn on your Aux viewport to get a quicker idea of what your render will look like. How? https://www.versluis.com/2015/05/how-to-use-the-interactive-preview-renderer-in-daz-studio/ 3Delight is all CPU not GPU.
Check out this very long thread packed with much info. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55128/3delight-laboratory-thread-tips-questions-experiments
There are some render scripts and advanced lighting available over in the AWEShading Kit thread. There are freebies and the full commerical kit. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/280441/awe-shading-kit-for-daz-studio-and-3delight-commercial/p1
There are only a few people who know how to properly use 3Delight in this forum. Mustakettu85 and wowie are the experts and a few other knowledgable souls like Parris and Sven. I'm not so much of an expert, but I can recognize those who do know.
I never learned 3Delight and don’t understand how to light it. Some of the renders I’ve seen look OK by people who know how to light in 3Delight but many look awful! Skin looks really bad to me in most 3Delight renders and scenes look more story-bookish to me while IRay can look totally photorealistic. IRay looks great right out of the box even with default settings with the included HDRI. And it’s actually fun to play with your own lighting because you can see the effects live on your screen as you tweak instead of having to wait till it renders.
IRay has actually taught me a lot about lighting. I notice it more in movies, I was even pointing out lighting errors at a museum on some of the masters’ portraits LOL.
I used to use 3DL before Iray came out and yes it is a lot more work and learning than Iray but very flexible compared to the realism restraints of Iray. Not to show off but to show how much fun 3DL can be, here are all my 3DL renders https://www.deviantart.com/itiseyemeeszark/gallery/33596074/Daz-Studio
You could try progressive mode, found in the render settings pane/editor. Depending on your scene it can be a lot quicker than the regular render mode, and can be used for fast previewing also.
As mentioned, 3DL is a cpu renderer, your graphics card won't make a difference;) Tests seem to indicate that aweSurface with scripted pathtracing renders twice as fast as IRay on cpu, with comparable realism. Sidenote: awe is still very new, and certainly not a one click solution yet. The first official version has been released, but it's still being developed.
You didn't tell us what product it was, nor the lighting being used. There are many tricks for speeding up rendering with 3DL, and a number of products that also help(AoA lights, IBL-master). If you are using the UberEnvironment2 together with the AoA SSS shaders on skin and hair, you will be looking at the progress bar for a long time:)
As Kevin said, you can use interactive preview with 3DL. And yeah I've seen a lot of bad looking skins in both renderers;) And a lot of good looking too!
IMO 3DL can produce realism on pair with IRay, but it's easier to dumb down when you don't need realism, just fast renders.
Very nice renders indeed:)
...however some of us prefer the more "storybook" appearance particularly for illustration purposes. Yeah you can do it with Iray but it takes more effort (usually in post) than with 3DL.
As I've mentioned elsewhere (possibly earlier in this thread) I used to paint in oils and was very concerned about making sure light and shadow angles matched. The one nice part, I didn't have to be concerned all the numeric values of bump, displacement, radiance, SSS, occlusion & such, so I could concentrate more on the composition and subject matter in my works.
...lovely gallery there.
thank you Sven and kyoto. If I had a choice I would still use 3DL but I don't have much time to play these days