Render seems to stop at 1 hour 10 minutes or so, versus 2 hours before
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Okay, I had to reinstall Daz Studio recently due to having to revert my Windows 10 machine to factory (which removed all my non-Microsoft apps but kept my files intact) and have been doing renders again since, but the latest one of mine seems to be getting close to full convergance, but suddenly ending the render short of that... at about the 1 hour and 10 minute mark. In my previous settup, it always got to 2 hours and a couple minutes before quitting, if it hadn't gotten all the way to 100% convergence by then. I'm thinking something may have gotten joggled somewhere in my settings. Where would I go in settings to make sure my usual renders will go for the usual 2 hours before stopping?
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In your render settings, what is your Max Time set to?
(Pokes around in there to find where that is....) 7200 seconds, looks like.
That is the default, ie 2 hours.
All your settings are default. Are you sure it just hasn't stopped due to reaching the convergence value?
What does your log says for stopping the render?
Changing the time doesn't make it continue to render, just takes longer to finish uncomplete pictures i have found, I have removed limits locked it and had renders take 5 hours and it still stops rending in 30 minutes leaving half finished pictures, why does this editor do this? is it stopping the machines from rendering, you can see clearly at the start of the render the pixels changing then after 30 minutes the frame looks dead like no movement or change in picture when it should be gaining more focus & resolution, you can tell it's using your GPU still but not doing anything to the render, just what is this editor using the GPU for if it won't finish the picture in hours, This editor continues to waste my time it won't render shadows or low lit scenes, you need to blast the scene with a specific light because emissive light causes distortion in the render making it look unfinished & half rendered. You then spend hours adjusting light only to still have the picture stop rendering yet continue to use GPU power.
The default Convergence Ratio is 95%, not 100%.
Even though it looks like the render "stops", if you compare the noise in the shadows between a 15,000 sample render and a 50,000 sample render, you will definitely see an improvement. But you are correct in that a render reaches a point of diminishing returns where the effect is barely noticable.
Iray is an unbiased PBR engine. It attempts to accurately model how light bounces off surfaces. If there's not enough light rays, Iray can't do the calculations properly. There's no way around it; you need to learn how to light a scene effectively to get the most out of it.
Put point lights around the space to blanket the area with light, change the geometry to "Sphere", and make them 50cm or so. Then adjust the lumens to fit the mood. Instead of trying to remove lights, use the tonemapper to adjust the image's brightness. That way, Iray still has access to the light data so it can render effectively, but it's not visible in the final image.
Are you attaining your Max Samples before that? That will stop the render.
..Joe
Well, it was all the way up to 95 % or 96%, but had been getting slower and slower at progressing that... then suddenly it finished. I suppose it's possible it suddenly jumped from 96% to 100% all at once. The convergance had been progressing a lot more quickly early on into the render, and had gotten up to around 75% to 80% within maybe 25 or 30 minutes, then the progress got slower and slower... I guess maybe it's just something goofy-wierd with this scene. :D
Anyway, this is my first big render being done since I had to reinstall the programs, albeit I re-rendered this one several times while tweaking things in the scene. I guess I'm just trying to make sure something didn't get borked in the reinstall.
Nothing goofy about that, it's just the way it works.
It's extra tricky because regardless of how the you've got things set, the render will finish when it reaches the threshold of whichever setting allows it to finish first.
Yeah, I know this is the way it works. Over the probably thousands of renders I've done over the years, I've seen it often, say, take 30 minutes sitting at 0% convergance, or 1% convergance, then suddenly jump to 20% convergance and then progress from there, at some point jumping to 40%, then 50%, and so on.
On the other hand, today I was making a (different) render that was staying at 1 or 2% convergance for an hour and a half or more... and the render was very grainy, and then somewhere around maybe the 1 hour and 40 minute mark, with it still at more or less that same percentage of convergance, it suddenly exitted out of the render as if it had finished it (and I duitifully saved it), but it was still hugely grainy. I have never seen it stop rendering before the 2 hours and 1 minute mark if it was still at a very low convergance and still very grainy. Is there something screwy going on? 0o
If you're ever unsure why your render stopped, you should check your log file. It will tell you why the render terminated.
Example:
2021-05-11 10:16:57.717 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend info : Received update to 00657 iterations after 62.331s.
2021-05-11 10:16:57.724 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend info : Convergence threshold reached.
2021-05-11 10:16:58.773 Saved image: C:\Users\.....\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp\render\r.png
2021-05-11 10:16:58.777 Finished Rendering
You can see above, the render stopped because the Convergence threshold was reached. If your log file is large, just search for "Finished Rendering".
Without knowing how your scene was set up, it's impossible to say if your render taking so long to converge is reasonable. It's possible it was running on the cpu and not your video card because the scene didn't fit in your card's vram (this is another question your log file could answer).
Well, in my case, the relevant section at the end was:
2021-05-10 22:28:04.241 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04677 iterations after 5727.774s.
2021-05-10 22:28:53.970 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04680 iterations after 5777.502s.
2021-05-10 22:29:51.490 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: 3.57% of image converged
2021-05-10 22:29:51.657 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04763 iterations after 5835.189s.
2021-05-10 22:29:55.641 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04765 iterations after 5839.174s.
2021-05-10 22:30:27.416 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04766 iterations after 5870.948s.
2021-05-10 22:31:00.873 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04767 iterations after 5904.405s.
2021-05-10 22:31:06.450 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: 4.03% of image converged
2021-05-10 22:31:06.657 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04827 iterations after 5910.188s.
2021-05-10 22:31:32.746 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04828 iterations after 5936.277s.
2021-05-10 22:32:01.412 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: 4.36% of image converged
2021-05-10 22:32:01.593 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04872 iterations after 5965.126s.
2021-05-10 22:32:04.610 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04873 iterations after 5968.143s.
2021-05-10 22:32:36.169 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04874 iterations after 5999.702s.
2021-05-10 22:32:44.624 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: 4.52% of image converged
2021-05-10 22:32:44.846 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04907 iterations after 6008.379s.
2021-05-10 22:33:07.463 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04908 iterations after 6030.995s.
2021-05-10 22:33:14.191 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04931 iterations after 6037.724s.
2021-05-10 22:33:36.171 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: 4.79% of image converged
2021-05-10 22:33:36.252 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04948 iterations after 6059.785s.
2021-05-10 22:33:38.683 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04949 iterations after 6062.216s.
2021-05-10 22:33:52.907 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04962 iterations after 6076.439s.
2021-05-10 22:34:04.073 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04971 iterations after 6087.605s.
2021-05-10 22:34:10.497 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04972 iterations after 6094.029s.
2021-05-10 22:34:12.990 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: 4.99% of image converged
2021-05-10 22:34:12.990 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04979 iterations after 6096.523s.
2021-05-10 22:34:19.351 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04984 iterations after 6102.883s.
2021-05-10 22:34:24.387 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04988 iterations after 6107.919s.
2021-05-10 22:34:28.516 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04991 iterations after 6112.048s.
2021-05-10 22:34:30.933 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04993 iterations after 6114.466s.
2021-05-10 22:34:32.214 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04994 iterations after 6115.746s.
2021-05-10 22:34:33.447 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04995 iterations after 6116.979s.
2021-05-10 22:34:34.838 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04996 iterations after 6118.370s.
2021-05-10 22:34:36.049 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04997 iterations after 6119.581s.
2021-05-10 22:34:37.375 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04998 iterations after 6120.908s.
2021-05-10 22:34:38.655 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 04999 iterations after 6122.187s.
2021-05-10 22:34:41.472 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Received update to 05000 iterations after 6125.004s.
2021-05-10 22:34:41.472 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend progr: Maximum number of samples reached.
2021-05-10 22:34:44.923 Saved image: C:\Users\David\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp\render\r.png
2021-05-10 22:34:44.944 Finished Rendering
2021-05-10 22:34:45.023 Total Rendering Time: 1 hours 42 minutes 11.37 seconds
....and the scene was literally just one character standing over near the bathtub in the Art Nouveau Bathroom, with the in-scene lamps turned on.
The log tells you that you need to increase the maximum number of samples under your render settings (Max Samples) from the default 5k to a much larger number.
I don't have that set, but it looks to be a completely enclosed room, dimly lit by emissive lights. This is one of the slowest kinds of renders you can do in iray.
Some tips that might speed up the render:
1) Open the room - turn off the walls that aren't in camera view. Iray lights will bounce around forever unless they can "escape" the scene. Opening a wall or turning off the ceiling gives the light a chance to do this. NB - Be sure to either turn your Environment down very low or set it to Scene Only in your render settings, so the light from outside the room doesn't make the scene over bright.
2) Use more lights. I'm personally a fan of the Iray Light Probe Kit for scenes like that. It's easy to use, and you can set the probes up to emit just enough light to speed up the render without making it so bright it's no longer moody and atmospheric. Other people use ghost lights, or small point lights. The more light -- no matter how dim it appears to the eye -- that iray has to work with, the faster the render.
Good luck.