Iray vs Reality Render
unknownmystery445
Posts: 414
in The Commons
Hi, can someone kindly put a side by side rendered image using the two? Or post an image done in reality? I'm really curious of how realistic an image can look using reality enhine, now I know it all depends on the lighting etc but I'm really curious about how an image looks when rendered in reality. The promo images of the reality in the shop are really realitsic and good
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I think, if you dig, there was at least one thread on this a while back. The problem is that the engines are different so it is hard, going on impossible, to set up a "fair" comparison.
https://www.google.com/search?q=iray+vs+reality&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4j9ax-d3UAhWP2YMKHVHyALsQ_AUICigB&biw=2560&bih=1307
The problem with this is that someone needs to be decently skilled with both renderers.
It's really all in the skillz of the individual, both iray and reality are capable of producing exceptionally realistic and stunning results, in the right hands.
There's a reality gallery over at deviantart featuring reality renders from numerous artists thats worth a look to see whats possible:http://reality-plug-in.deviantart.com/
And heres a link to an artist who uses both reality and iray, currently she is playing with iray but I mention because her 'thing' is realism and I think her work is a good example of whats possible from both engines, not a side by side per se but a comparison nonetheless (no blatant nudity but possible not safe for work). http://karisma9195.deviantart.com/
FYI she does hair in post, neither reality nor iray can overcome the hair prop achilles heel. And she tells you which renderer she used for each image.
I will say that reality's materials system is far far simpler than irays. But iray is more plug and play friendly, products are iray ready out of the box, this is not true for reality at all, reality has presets that it applies to daz surfaces but more often than not you will have to go in and adjust surface settings. But I would think that iray requires some fiddling in the surface settings also or everyones iray renders would all be amazing all the time. But thats not the case at all. Up to the individual, just depends which materials interface you want to 'master'.
I prefer Lux but because I can use it on multiple systems and multiple software packages I own and it lets me farm renders over my SOHO and have about 16/32 cores and beastly amounts of RAM. The 12 GB cap on most GPU's which are far outside my price range to begin with was the deal breaker for me on Iray as even a 4GB card would be an investment that the most noble buy it now, ask for forgiveness later would not pan out for me. e.g. move over skinny dog, a fat dog ins moving in.
My preferences is due to the fact I use Lux in more software than use DS for these days and I'm comfortable with the work flow, especially on epic projects and I can adjust lights easley while I'm deep into rendering. My understanding is you can do this in Iray as well, but i think it requires something in pre-setup to allow it to happen. Since Studio is embracing Iray the limit for me is all my systems would need Nvidia cards going forward and I still cant Network render without paying some service for it, where as Lux will do it out of the box. Also Iray is proprietary, any support will be centralized for Nvidia products, Iray is open source and not tied to any single developers product. That being said Iray support in DS will be far more comprehensive coming from Daz3d.
Now if they would only concentrate on documentation which has been lacking for years from Daz.
@gederix "But I would think that iray requires some fiddling in the surface settings also or everyones iray renders would all be amazing all the time."
I've got a minor quibble with this. After looking at a lot of images and reasing a lot of posts, plus personal experience, I don't think "stock" Iray materials at issues with most renders. i think the problem is more that most/many/a lot of folks don't understand lighting and light and how it affects scenes.
I think Reality was easier to work with but for me & what I do was a major pain in the @ss. I built a beast of a machine that works well with iray so that's where i am staying..
I agree that lighting is extremely important to the final product, but IMHO if you do not understand the surfaces/materials interface for the renderer you are using, and how to play with them meaningfully, you will struggle to maintain any kind of consistency, and really struggle to improve.
What I liked about Reality was that I could let Luxus run in the background while I did other stuff on the same computer (including daz studio). Setting the materials and lights correctly was a major nuisance to me though, and since moving to Iray I haven't really looked back.
Here is just such a test. The first link is to a Realty render. The second is to the same in Iray.
Reality: http://nathanomir.deviantart.com/art/Aura-Lockhaven-Closeup-Reality-688665165
Iray: http://nathanomir.deviantart.com/art/Aura-Lockhaven-Closeup-Iray-688665329
I'm still learning Iray, as I didn't have a machine that could run it until this past April. The HDRI used in the two is obviously different.
It isn't a fair comparison, really. Both handle skin equally well, but in different ways. It's a matter of personal taste. I use both, but not for the same type scenes. Personally, I think Iray's skins are deeper, and Reality's are crisper. Iray handles light emitting sources better, while Reality handles multiple characters better (CPU based). Which engine I use depends on the final image in mind.
I've never been able to achieve photorealism, so I stopped trying.
after years of trying many render engines I came to a conclusion, use the most comfortable for you, is a mere tool, and nothing else.
...no one render engine will be able to reproduce Realism, that is up to you.
and NO, Tarkin is not realistical IMHO.
My understanding is Reality/Lux has a preference for AMD/ATI gpus? Is this true? Or will it use a Nvidia?
...as I understand it is supposed to however there apparently were development issues with the old versions of LuxRender. The one downside was if there wasn't enough VRAM, the process would simply crash rather than dump to the CPU and system memory like Iray does.
CPU rendering in Lux was geologically slow. True, Reality 4.3 (which integrated Lux 1.5) introduced the "speed boost "(which varied depending on how "new" your CPU was at the time) but the trade off was a decrease in render quality.
As Odaa mentions, the factor I liked about Reality was the ability to render in background, as well as run it with the scene and even the Daz programme closed (which saved on system resource load) as well as the ability to pause and restart the process. With Iray integrated into the software, one has to keep everything related open which takes resources away from other tasks even when rendering on the GPU.
For Iray work I am looking to use two machines, one for rendering and the other for scene assembly each with mirrored library/runtime setups and configurations on each, so I can work on new scenes while one of my "epic" scenes is "cooking" in Iray.
Or have one copy of your Daz Content on a network share. The mapped drive letter would have to be the same for both computers.
...hmmm, I will networking both machines through a common router Need to figure how that is done, as the content drive is in the original system. That would free up the D drive in the build system.for other uses. I also have a 4 GB Maxwell card in that one for render tests.
I used Reality/Lux for years, right from its launch. I've never owned an AMD/ATI gpu. I can't remember the details now but I certainly don't remember a preference for those devices. The majority of users that I interacted with were using Nvidia. It's legacy software now—I'd thought of going back to it in the early days of Iray (which I resisted for a while) but that's certainly not going to happen now. It's a shame, I guess, but in practice Reality/Lux couldn't compete with Iray in terms of users. If I wanted to investigate another render system it would be Octane.
Has Reality not been updated in ages? Almost like it's been abandoned and it was riddled with problems had to do all these workarounds glacier long render times. Mind you it may have been better with my i7 10 core processor. Its been too long and produce same results with iray wich is constantly being worked on.
...sadly it has not. A week ago I went to the Reality Forums to see if there was any word aboiut updating to the new LuxCore 2.0/2.1 engine. Paolo mentioned something last year about an update being in the works hwoever I went back to get a link to that post, wasn't able to find it..
Paolo had a good run. The other advantage with iray is alot of DS mats will tranfer to iray without need to be converted..
So will Luxcore work with Reality and Luxus, or will I just have stick with the older version of LuxRender?
Sorry, by re-reading this thread, I'm assuming that's a no. I'm still new to this Luxus/LuxRender/Reality stuff ^^'
Both of those links 404 me.
So you have to convert your 3Delight materials when using Reality\Luxrender?
I've just used the Iray version of Anneka Demon in Reality, and I quite like how she turned out.
I wanted to make her red skin more vibrant, so I used one of the settings in Film Response. The other one is without.
But it all comes down to personal preference.
Luxcore is currently working with reality/luxus, it is the renderer used when you select accelerated rendering modes in the render settings. If you select no acceleration it uses classic luxrender. The reason reality has not been updated in ages is luxcore, when the next version is release we should see a new reality version soon after. The problem for me with luxcore is not any decrease in quality, it was that once I put too many things in the scene it would simply fail, error out. Switch to luxrender, problem resolved.
Reality - for the most part - automatically converts 3delight surfaces however it is helpful to be able to adjust things yourself, and also for dealing with things that do not convert properly. Like iray currently, it takes me about 5 minutes to completely convert say a G8 figure to reality.
I stick with reality because my rig is pretty much rendering 24/7 and I need to be able to use it.
...well, it still is good to convert materials before rendering, even if it's just using the universal Iray Uber-shader, as letting the engine do the conversion adds to rendering time. Granted, more significant if lie myself you were stuck with only CPU rendering. Also, bump and displacement scales are different between Iray and 3DL so you still have to make manual adjustments.
If there are any refection maps (usually older content) those need to be removed and an appropriate metallic or glass shader needs to be applied to that surface. Some older materials (particularly Poser ones) have the Ambient channel active for a wide range of surfaces, which in the conversion, becomes the Emissive channel which can add a glow to the surface (as well as can impact render time). That needs to be turned off. The lighting model also should be adjusted as most materials use "plastic" which adds a degree of glossiness to the surface in Iray that can look incorrect. I usually change anything like skin, cloth and other soft/dull materials to "Matte", metallic surfaces to "Metal" while keeping others like glass set to "Plastic" (of course making additional adjustments in Iray).