Tips & Tricks for Iray for newbies......

1246741

Comments

  • nightwolf1982nightwolf1982 Posts: 1,136
    edited December 1969

    I only have one standard distant light in the scene so far

  • Jason GalterioJason Galterio Posts: 2,562
    edited March 2015

    Yesterday I couldn't get a scene to render no matter what I did. I had a couple of Photometric Lights and a couple of Mesh Lights.

    The only things that would illuminate were the mesh lights. When I removed then and had just the Photometric Lights, the render would take a couple of seconds and then just be a black box. It was like the Photometric Lights were turned off.

    When I changed Environment Mode to Scene Only, all the lights started functioning properly. See attached image.

    Environment-Mode.jpg
    501 x 350 - 23K
    Post edited by Jason Galterio on
  • DzFireDzFire Posts: 1,473
    edited December 1969

    Help! Tried to switch to GPU rendering, and nothing is happening! When I hit render, the engine runs for about 7 seconds, then quits. Nothing gets rendered.

    I'm using an Nvidia Geforce GT 520 graphics card, and am in the middle of downloading the updated drivers.

    Update to the newest drivers (2-10-15). This fixed the problem on my older machine

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited December 1969

    Legionair said:
    Legionair said:
    Help! Tried to switch to GPU rendering, and nothing is happening! When I hit render, the engine runs for about 7 seconds, then quits. Nothing gets rendered.

    I'm using an Nvidia Geforce GT 520 graphics card, and am in the middle of downloading the updated drivers.

    It sounds like you are having the issue I was having with lights.

    What sort of lights do you have in your scene? If you are only using the Photometric ones, make sure you set your Mode to Scene Only.

    Yesterday I couldn't get a scene to render no matter what I did. I had a couple of Photometric Lights and a couple of Mesh Lights.

    The only things that would illuminate were the mesh lights. When I removed then and had just the Photometric Lights, the render would take a couple of seconds and then just be a black box. It was like the Photometric Lights were turned off.

    When I changed Environment Mode to Scene Only, all the lights started functioning properly. See attached image.Dome and scene gives you both. (So you can have an HDRI or Sun/Sky, plus lights in your scene.)

  • Jason GalterioJason Galterio Posts: 2,562
    edited December 1969

    Dome and scene gives you both. (So you can have an HDRI or Sun/Sky, plus lights in your scene.)

    Thanks, I will try that when I get home.

    I thought I did that but had no luck. I stepped through each Environment Mode until I hit on one that worked.

  • starionwolfstarionwolf Posts: 3,666
    edited March 2015

    Help! Tried to switch to GPU rendering, and nothing is happening! When I hit render, the engine runs for about 7 seconds, then quits. Nothing gets rendered.

    I'm using an Nvidia Geforce GT 520 graphics card, and am in the middle of downloading the updated drivers.

    The same thing happend to me.

    Have you tried rendering the sample scene? It is in: My Daz 3D Library -> Props -> Daz Material Ball.

    If Iray GPU doesn't render that scene then your video card is likely not compatible with Iray. The scene should render in CPU mode but it will render much slowly.

    edited for clarity

    Post edited by starionwolf on
  • adegneradegner Posts: 42
    edited December 1969

    genfro said:
    But iray can handle large scenes or it will be limited by Vram like octane?

    adegner.deviantart.com 7680 x 4800 full GPU

  • ben98120000ben98120000 Posts: 469
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    ...that didn't work, it turned off the sun completely. Now it looks like a late night picture shot with an over bright flash attachment..

    I just need the sun at a mid afternoon position. Cant use a regular Daz or AoA's distant light as they are shader based and there is no photometric distant light to use in place. There has to be some way to override the time/location function so you can just put the sun where you need it.

    Reality/Lux lets you do it.


    In your content library, daz studio formats, under render presets / iray there should be Sun Dial Set. Load it, go to scene tab to expand its selections (it haves 4 parts). Select the Sun Chain and in parameters tab adjust elevation and azimuth.
    Clip_17.jpg
    1024 x 738 - 286K
    Clip_16.jpg
    1024 x 738 - 299K
  • starionwolfstarionwolf Posts: 3,666
    edited December 1969

    I was wondering what the sun dial is used for. I thought it was supposed to be a prop of a clock. :red:

  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,039
    edited March 2015

    If you're having trouble getting specular highlights, check if you have a spec map texture in the Top Coat Color. This will make the Top Coat Color far too dark. Remove the spec map so that Top Coat Color is white, and adjust Top Coat Weight and Top Coat Roughness to taste.

    Capture.JPG
    704 x 804 - 48K
    Post edited by Zev0 on
  • KatherineKatherine Posts: 326
    edited December 1969

    Zev0 said:
    If you're having trouble getting specular highlights, check if you have a spec map texture in the Top Coat Color. This will make the Top Coat Color far too dark. Remove the spec map so that Top Coat Color is white, and adjust Top Coat Weight and Top Coat Roughness to taste.

    Nicely done Zev0 :)

    Kat

  • PulpArtstPulpArtst Posts: 88
    edited December 1969

    I'm looking at the Luminance Units cd/m^2 which from what I've read has a power level of 1/683 watt. So if you have a Luminance set of 5000 it would be about a 7 Watt lightbulb?

  • RiggswolfeRiggswolfe Posts: 899
    edited December 1969

    Zev0 said:
    If you're having trouble getting specular highlights, check if you have a spec map texture in the Top Coat Color. This will make the Top Coat Color far too dark. Remove the spec map so that Top Coat Color is white, and adjust Top Coat Weight and Top Coat Roughness to taste.

    I'm still confused by weight and roughness to be honest and what it is they do exactly....

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401
    edited December 1969

    Greetings,

    I'm still confused by weight and roughness to be honest and what it is they do exactly....
    I can't say as I'm particularly any better, but Sickleyield put up a list of them and their meanings which might help some.

    -- Morgan

  • DzFireDzFire Posts: 1,473
    edited December 1969

    applied rubber shaders to the tires keeping the texture maps. Same with the chrome, brushed aluminum. Solid glass for the windshield and glass thickness for the headlights. Gotta love Iray

    IrayTestCuda.jpg
    1300 x 1000 - 866K
  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,039
    edited March 2015

    Zev0 said:
    If you're having trouble getting specular highlights, check if you have a spec map texture in the Top Coat Color. This will make the Top Coat Color far too dark. Remove the spec map so that Top Coat Color is white, and adjust Top Coat Weight and Top Coat Roughness to taste.

    I'm still confused by weight and roughness to be honest and what it is they do exactly....

    Lol so am I:) All I know is with those two sliders you can get higher spec or even a lubed with oil appearance:)

    Post edited by Zev0 on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,219
    edited December 1969

    Zev0 said:
    Zev0 said:
    If you're having trouble getting specular highlights, check if you have a spec map texture in the Top Coat Color. This will make the Top Coat Color far too dark. Remove the spec map so that Top Coat Color is white, and adjust Top Coat Weight and Top Coat Roughness to taste.

    I'm still confused by weight and roughness to be honest and what it is they do exactly....

    Lol so am I:) All I know is with those two sliders you can get higher spec or even a lubed with oil appearance:)

    You could also use LIE to lighten the specular map without completely removing it - add a new layer in LIE, place it under the specular map and set it to solid white. Then select the specular map layer, set its blend mode to multiplicative, and adjust opacity to lighten the effect.

    LIE_Adjust_specular_map.JPG
    859 x 716 - 115K
  • StrixowlStrixowl Posts: 301
    edited December 1969

    Just trying to figure this out :-)

  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,039
    edited December 1969

    Hmm.......even changing the levels (high contrast) of the spec map hardly makes a difference when its plugged in..will have to do more research........

  • KatherineKatherine Posts: 326
    edited December 1969

    Weight - how much "weight" or consideration or percentage that property is given.

    Roughness - the higher numbers increase the "roughness" of the surface to the light reflection is less sharp.

    Those are described in the Docs :)

    Iray Uber Shader:

    Iray Uber Shader Documentation

    Kat

  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,039
    edited March 2015

    Does not read:) Only watches youtube vids:) Lol, I'll go through the docs again:)

    Post edited by Zev0 on
  • SpitSpit Posts: 2,342
    edited December 1969

    Got it installed and all and have found most things, not that I know what to do about 'em. I couldn't find the sun thing, but found the answer on the previous page (render settings folder) so that'll be next. I even figured out the backdrop and how to get the effects of a skydome without actually having one in the scene.

    IRay is much faster than I thought it would be. Of course there's nothing fancy here not even a single reflection so I may take that back soonly. This pic is washed out without enough contrast and doesn't look real. I had rendered this scene with 3Delight with an Uber plus one distant light this morning in anticipation and it looks much better.

    This is just the skylight and one photometric? spot. The 3Delight/Uber/Dist one took 2 1/2 minutes, the Iray 5. Only used CPU. I've got 144 CUDAS but only 1gig of non-shared vram so I didn't check the box for my video card (it wasn't checked by default which was probably trying to tell me something.)

    It's like there's too much light in the pic and I don't know the new vocabulary well enough to figure out what to do about it.

    By the way the upper right around the viewport is very crowded with tiny arrows and menus. LOL

    LittleCorner-LotsaMenus.PNG
    213 x 236 - 12K
    IRAY-CountryLiving.jpg
    800 x 400 - 53K
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited December 1969

    Cypherfox said:
    Greetings,
    You can slave the sun to a distant light. That's what I'm doing and it works nicely for me.

    I'm on an iPad so it's a pain to pull up the link, but I made a comment in the first page (I think) of this thread on how to do that.

    -- Morgan


    ...unfortunately, I had already deleted the original lights (all AoA Advanced lights) beforehand as I thought that the sun was part of the supplied dome (kind of like old LDP2 or any of the UE outdoor light sets) so I could just rotate it using the dome controls. However, that didn't work Did finally get it close to where I wanted after messing around for a while with the Day, hour, and time zone controls.

    What would be nice is if they included a control like Carrara or Bryce has for positioning the sun and sky. Would be so much simpler than having to look up the coordinates and +/- to GMT for the location you are using (in this case Zagreb, Croatia).

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited December 1969

    I assume Iray won't work with AoA's atmospheric camera. Are there any ways to do godrays with Iray?

    There is an additional way to do Godrays. Use an object, with the appropiate shader on it. and emission. (Note that there is a bug NVIDIA is working on where if multiple transmapped planes intersect they could cause a crash, so Stage FX may not, yet, be correct for this operation. :)
    ...what about UberVolume?
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    ...that didn't work, it turned off the sun completely. Now it looks like a late night picture shot with an over bright flash attachment..

    I just need the sun at a mid afternoon position. Cant use a regular Daz or AoA's distant light as they are shader based and there is no photometric distant light to use in place. There has to be some way to override the time/location function so you can just put the sun where you need it.

    Reality/Lux lets you do it.

    If you don't want to set the Lat-Long to Zagreb at 1300 on July 4th. You can place a null in your scene. (Leave it on Dome/Scene) scroll down to where it says as sun and use the drop down box until it chooses your null. Now where ever you put the null, that is where the sun comes from.
    ...when I use Dome/Scene though the scene renders dark. when I switch to sun - sky it renders correctly.
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    ...that didn't work, it turned off the sun completely. Now it looks like a late night picture shot with an over bright flash attachment..

    I just need the sun at a mid afternoon position. Cant use a regular Daz or AoA's distant light as they are shader based and there is no photometric distant light to use in place. There has to be some way to override the time/location function so you can just put the sun where you need it.

    Reality/Lux lets you do it.


    In your content library, daz studio formats, under render presets / iray there should be Sun Dial Set. Load it, go to scene tab to expand its selections (it haves 4 parts). Select the Sun Chain and in parameters tab adjust elevation and azimuth.
    ...thank you. I didn't see there was also a render presets in the content tab.
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited December 1969

    Zev0 said:
    Does not read:) Only watches youtube vids:) Lol, I'll go through the docs again:)

    ...I'm the opposite. My retention with printed matter is far better than video.
  • SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,495
    edited December 1969

    Could someone please explain how you get an interior scene with one emitter light to not be completely black? Do you always have to lower the Exposure value down to 0 or lower from it's default of 13? If I do that, the light emitting object becomes completely white. I expected the Exposure Value to use a base of 0 and we would make small adjustments like with a camera (+1, -1, etc). Why is 13 the default?

    Every time I think I'm making progress, it turns out I'm not. Using the sun gives easy and realistic results, but otherwise lights in Iray seem to have almost no strength at all.

    Any preset values would be very helpful, I just want something accurate to use as reference and a starting point.

  • nightwolf1982nightwolf1982 Posts: 1,136
    edited December 1969

    Looks like my Video Card is too old to handle Iray. Each render I've attempted causes the VC to crash.

    Either that or I'm just not getting the right settings.

  • DzFireDzFire Posts: 1,473
    edited December 1969

    Looks like my Video Card is too old to handle Iray. Each render I've attempted causes the VC to crash.

    Either that or I'm just not getting the right settings.

    What video card and OS are you using?

Sign In or Register to comment.