DAZ Studio Pro BETA [Project Iradium] - version 4.8.0.9!

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  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,040
    edited March 2015


    I remember some craze about 'Sharing' system ram way back, tho I'm not seeing anything about that mess now. Is hoping the snake oil has decreased. I noticed a Gt 730 with 4GB ram, and took a double take, (Didn't them only have 2GB or 1GB, lol).
    The 740 and 730 were originally released with about 1GB RAM, but both are now available with 4GB RAM.

    Note virtually all NVIDIA cards report 4GB or more RAM, as long as you are not looking for Dedicated VRAM (On the NVIDIA Control Panel) and it is fair as they can use that RAM for normal use, just not CUDA use.

    And that is why I still have this 43 watt 8600GT. Trying to get accurate info on the ram is nearly impossible, unless the card is going for more then a few hundred USD. It did not consume 200 plus watts on the desktop. Some older cards either idled or went full throttle, no in between, and the desktop alone would keep the thing at full throttle. As well as the deceptive advertising about the cards with limited vram detailed specs allot of places. hence my skepticism regarding the 730 and 740.

    Do they really have that on the card, or dose it suck it from system ram, lol. Example GT 730 pic. Where, do they fit 4GB of RAM chips on that card, given the ram-density of chips at the time? And a better question regarding the RAM address traces. If the chip was launched with 2GB max, did it ever have the address traces to even function with more vram? It at least looks tempting for driving my monitors, with possibly a second card for Iray, possibly.

    I've a current generation EVGA GT 740; Iray is reporting this as having "4096 MB installed, 3956 MB available, display attached'; so the current 740s do indeed have 4 GB on the card (I've blown at least one render after hitting 3.6 GB in use on the card). For $120, not a bad card - although in future it will be relegated to just driving the monitors.

    Post edited by namffuak on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    edited December 1969

    Vaskania said:

    I believe iRay also needs a min VRAM of 4GB.

    No, it doesn't, if the scene fits into the VRAM.

    Correct. We have been recommending 4GB because 2GB is walking a fine edge with one figure in the scene while 4GB fits most typical scenes. (3-4 figures with clothes and hair plus an environment.) But if you are careful you can get away with 2GB. (SIngle monitor, turn off Aero, use Texture atlas, etc.)
    Texture Atlas seems to be causing some kind of memory leak for me. After I use texture atlas to consolidate texture files for a model, all of the textures used by and generated by Texture Atlas seem to remain in memory. They show up in the list on the surfaces tab when I click on the arrow on a map to see the texture map in use and other maps in the scene. Deleting the model from the scene and running the Purge Memory script does not get rid of them. Even clearing the scene by selecting "New" does not get rid of the old textures. I have Automatically Refresh Images checked, too. Manual refresh didn't help either. Only closing the DAZ Studio application and reopening it gets rid of them. I submitted a help request. I'm using 4.8.0.9.
  • DestinysGardenDestinysGarden Posts: 2,549
    edited December 1969

    I've done some sample renders for a comparison between render engines.
    My computer: HP Windows 7, 2nd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM (2.2 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.1 GHz, 1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7690M GDDR5 Discrete Graphics(TM) [HDMI, VGA], 8GB DDR3 RAM. Three years old at this point.

    First render 3Delight
    Monique default skin, out of box, no adjustments. Hair used one of my velvet shaders based on UberSurface. Clothes and metal bits are UberSurface based for 3DL.
    Lights-Photo Studio Point and Shoot 2, default set up
    Render time 13 minutes.

    Second render Iray
    Auto conversion from above on skin and hair, no adjustments. Metals from Iray shaders. Clothes are Iray shaders adjusted to mimic results from 3DL render. Lights-Photo Studio Point and Shoot 2 for Iray beta version (exposure value 12.)
    Resolved to 45%, 906 iterations. Render time 57 minutes. (Probably could have killed it about 10 minutes earlier.)

    Third render LuxRender using Luxus bridge
    Auto conversion from above 3DL surfaces on skin and hair. Metals and clothes are Lux Shaders that I did not spend time on adjusting. I just went for similar colors to give the same feel.
    Lights -Photo Studio Point and Shoot 2, default settings that automatically call on included LuxRender settings.
    Resolved to 203.33 S/P, 286% EFF. Render time 2 hours 57 minutes.

    I will leave it in your hands to determine which render is "best."

    moniquelux.jpg
    600 x 800 - 288K
    moniqueiray.jpg
    600 x 800 - 306K
    monique3dl.jpg
    600 x 800 - 259K
  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412
    edited March 2015

    DG, I love it. There is so much stuff from the beginning of the month I have yet to pull out and run, and some of it is there in the renders of yours. If Point and Shoot 2, is that good already, then I got the wrong one, if that is possible, lol. The backdrops work, yes, yes, yes... Still I like the renders, and the surface conversions you did, they look allot better then my attempts.
    (EDIT)
    namffuak, thanks for the info, I was understandably skeptic of the appearance of the cards vs the claimed amount of VRAM on other sites.

    Post edited by ZarconDeeGrissom on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,514
    edited December 1969

    4) Added Decay and Intensity Scale controls to default spot and point lights; 3Delight.

    ...does this mean there is fallof on the spotlights now?
  • SpitSpit Posts: 2,342
    edited December 1969

    I've done some sample renders for a comparison between render engines.
    My computer: HP Windows 7, 2nd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM (2.2 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.1 GHz, 1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7690M GDDR5 Discrete Graphics(TM) [HDMI, VGA], 8GB DDR3 RAM. Three years old at this point.

    First render 3Delight
    Monique default skin, out of box, no adjustments. Hair used one of my velvet shaders based on UberSurface. Clothes and metal bits are UberSurface based for 3DL.
    Lights-Photo Studio Point and Shoot 2, default set up
    Render time 13 minutes.

    Second render Iray
    Auto conversion from above on skin and hair, no adjustments. Metals from Iray shaders. Clothes are Iray shaders adjusted to mimic results from 3DL render. Lights-Photo Studio Point and Shoot 2 for Iray beta version (exposure value 12.)
    Resolved to 45%, 906 iterations. Render time 57 minutes. (Probably could have killed it about 10 minutes earlier.)

    Third render LuxRender using Luxus bridge
    Auto conversion from above 3DL surfaces on skin and hair. Metals and clothes are Lux Shaders that I did not spend time on adjusting. I just went for similar colors to give the same feel.
    Lights -Photo Studio Point and Shoot 2, default settings that automatically call on included LuxRender settings.
    Resolved to 203.33 S/P, 286% EFF. Render time 2 hours 57 minutes.

    I will leave it in your hands to determine which render is "best."

    Oh my. All good stuff but I slightly prefer the 3Delight image here. Even though the iray one pops, it's almost too intense. The lux one's dress looks like plastic while the 3Delight dress comes out the softest.

  • Lissa_xyzLissa_xyz Posts: 6,116
    edited December 1969

    I have to go to the opposite way of Spit on this one. I love the Iray render. Because a) it does pop more, but also b) I think it would be easier to mimic the 3DL in post using the Iray render as a base than it would be to mimic Iray using the 3DL render as a base.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,514
    edited December 1969

    mtl1 said:
    Just to let people know: 4GB variants of the 750Ti and 960 are starting to come out, so there may be a "mid-tier" alternative to the budget 740 and the more expensive cards out soon.
    All this hype about a meager 4GB on video cards. I must have some serious misgivings of how many generation 6 HD figures you can cram into 4GB, after my Windows 32bit experience.
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/588194/
    6 plane primitives as the scene and a sphere (no texture maps), 5 menu spotlights, a point-light in a primitive sphere, a single G2F figure (not HD), a shirt, and skirt.
    Add hair, and instant blue-screen of death.

    how many generation 6 HD figures, cloths and hair, can you cram into 4GB? 2 with no scene at all? And what about the scene?

    Some were having difficulties with some scenes eating up all the ram (no figures, just the scene product).

    This is why I believe the correct amount of ram is as much as can be afforded
    ...yeah, but who has 2.500$ for a Quadro K5200 (8 GB) or 5,000$ for a Quadro K6000 (12 GB)? Heck, even 1,000$ for a Titan Black (6 GB) is more than many of us can afford.

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412
    edited March 2015

    Kyoto Kid said:
    mtl1 said:
    Just to let people know: 4GB variants of the 750Ti and 960 are starting to come out, so there may be a "mid-tier" alternative to the budget 740 and the more expensive cards out soon.
    All this hype about a meager 4GB on video cards. I must have some serious misgivings of how many generation 6 HD figures you can cram into 4GB, after my Windows 32bit experience.
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/588194/
    6 plane primitives as the scene and a sphere (no texture maps), 5 menu spotlights, a point-light in a primitive sphere, a single G2F figure (not HD), a shirt, and skirt.
    Add hair, and instant blue-screen of death.

    how many unique generation 6 HD figures, cloths and hair, can you cram into 4GB? 2 with no scene at all? And what about the scene?

    Some were having difficulties with some scenes eating up all the ram (no figures, just the scene product).

    This is why I believe the correct amount of ram is as much as can be afforded
    ...yeah, but who has 2.500$ for a Quadro K5200 (8 GB) or 5,000$ for a Quadro K6000 (12 GB)? Heck, even 1,000$ for a Titan Black (6 GB) is more than many of us can afford. not me, lol. Give me a few less then that thousand CUDA cores, and more VRAM. It would be more productive for me, and probably consume far less Watts.

    Post edited by ZarconDeeGrissom on
  • SpyroRueSpyroRue Posts: 5,020
    edited March 2015

    I've been hassled somewhat with a bug or two, where when I cancel an iray render it will randomly freeze DS and make it unresponsive, resulting in a crash. This with near certainly also tends to occur when iray itself stops making progress for some reason with the render, when you see iterations stop increasing, and nothing but time passes (usually it is early in the render). I don't know why this is happening or what to do to avoid it, I'm not maxing VRam, and daz itself is barely using any other resources. I am using both the graphics card (GTX 980) and cpu with iray.

    On another note, The AUX viewport keeps refusing to stay minimized in city limits. I collapse the tab and when I'm not looking it returns lol Only a very minor issue though haha

    Post edited by SpyroRue on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited March 2015

    SpyroRue said:
    I've been hassled somewhat with a bug or two, where when I cancel an iray render it will randomly freeze DS and make it unresponsive, resulting in a crash. This with near certainly also tends to occur when iray itself stops making progress for some reason with the render, when you see iterations stop increasing, and nothing but time passes (usually it is early in the render). I don't know why this is happening or what to do to avoid it, I'm not maxing VRam, and daz itself is barely using any other resources. I am using both the graphics card (GTX 980) and cpu with iray.

    On another note, The AUX viewport keeps refusing to stay minimized in city limits. I collapse the tab and when I'm not looking it returns lol Only a very minor issue though haha


    I've had the same problem with DS Beta becoming unresponsive, and I'm running renders with CPU only. I thought it was a memory issue until it happened again the other night with a simple scene that's rendered many times as I test and tweak the Iray shaders on my character. The worst part of it is DAZ Studio doesn't generate a crash report for the developers. :(
    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • ScarletX1969ScarletX1969 Posts: 587
    edited December 1969

    One thing I would love to see if it doesn't already exist...is Iray capable of network rendering? I did a test render on my rig and it slowed it down significantly...so I'm betting it's a resource hog like most renderers. And I have a Quad core processor with 8GB of Ram running a 64bit OS.

    My video card is pretty beefy too. :) So I'm just curious. LuxRender don't slow down my computer near as much.

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited December 1969

    Vaskania, thanks for the link, I lost my charts... :blank: ah a while ago :red: in highschool.

    Vaskania said:

    I believe iRay also needs a min VRAM of 4GB.

    No, it doesn't, if the scene fits into the VRAM.

    Correct. We have been recommending 4GB because 2GB is walking a fine edge with one figure in the scene while 4GB fits most typical scenes. (3-4 figures with clothes and hair plus an environment.) But if you are careful you can get away with 2GB. (Single monitor, turn off Aero, use Texture atlas, etc.) Thank you. That was the kind of info that was lacking. My pathetic 43 watt 8600GT can't even count that high using all it's CUDA cores.

    So a 4GB card could do about half my kind of stuff consistently, the six figure line-ups may be pushing it to far (depending on how many HD's, and number of color scale cubes).

    And forget about stuff like "Wrong Gate address", 28 daz dragons, Farewell LN, etc. The kind of stuff I do rarely.

    So, Watt budget (50 watts full tilt), 4+GB, and non-obstructive in a recording studio when it is just on desktop and Sonar. (scratching chin)Note you can squeeze more than that out of 4GB of RAM, same scenario, as what I mentioned with 2GB.

    Note that the Titan just had its RAM doubled, and last fall the Quadros (except the K6000, which does not have a new generation of card yet) almost all had their RAM doubled. That tends to imply Video RAM is going to go up in later models of this generation of GeForce cards. (One of the people at the office just got a new laptop and it has a 970M with 6GB of RAM in it.) Note that is speculation on my part. :)

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited March 2015

    Kyoto Kid said:
    4) Added Decay and Intensity Scale controls to default spot and point lights; 3Delight.

    ...does this mean there is fallof on the spotlights now?For the old, base, 3Delight Spotlights, yes.
    Post edited by DAZ_Spooky on
  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited March 2015

    dsexton72 said:
    One thing I would love to see if it doesn't already exist...is Iray capable of network rendering? I did a test render on my rig and it slowed it down significantly...so I'm betting it's a resource hog like most renderers. And I have a Quad core processor with 8GB of Ram running a 64bit OS.

    My video card is pretty beefy too. :) So I'm just curious. LuxRender don't slow down my computer near as much.

    Network rendering? It is not something that has been implemented, yet, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIMcQDcJiIc

    Note that a VCA is a "Visual Computing Appliance" Each one holds 8 of NVIDIA's K6000 cards. (And the bottom left frame is using 16 VCAs.) They are not cheap, at $50,000 each, but it does demonstrate that the only limitation with speed for Iray is how much hardware you can throw at it.

    Post edited by DAZ_Spooky on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,198
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    4) Added Decay and Intensity Scale controls to default spot and point lights; 3Delight.

    ...does this mean there is fallof on the spotlights now?
    For the old, base, 3Delight Spotlights, yes.

    Set Decay to 2 for real-world inverse square falloff

  • Cliff BowmanCliff Bowman Posts: 1,677
    edited December 1969

    dsexton72 said:
    One thing I would love to see if it doesn't already exist...is Iray capable of network rendering?
    ...
    Network rendering? It is not something that has been implemented, yet

    I may be starting (starting??) to sound like a broken record, but please do feel free to implement network rendering. It's easier for me, personally, to throw more PCs at a problem than for me to rush out and buy new videos cards (and the PSU/s to power them).

    Cheers,

    Cliff

  • ScarletX1969ScarletX1969 Posts: 587
    edited December 1969

    Note that a VCA is a "Visual Computing Appliance" Each one holds 8 of NVIDIA's K6000 cards. (And the bottom left frame is using 16 VCAs.) They are not cheap, at $50,000 each, but it does demonstrate that the only limitation with speed for Iray is how much hardware you can throw at it.

    Yeah, we gonna pass on the purchase of VCAs. LOL! I realize that most of the products like this aren't totally geared toward hobbyists and enthusiasts, but the idea of throwing more money at an item to get better, faster renders seems counter productive to those of us in this group.

    People who do this for a living may disagree. But, I can't argue with the results. My test render using IRAY looks great.

  • SpitSpit Posts: 2,342
    edited December 1969

    ACross said:
    SpyroRue said:
    I've been hassled somewhat with a bug or two, where when I cancel an iray render it will randomly freeze DS and make it unresponsive, resulting in a crash. This with near certainly also tends to occur when iray itself stops making progress for some reason with the render, when you see iterations stop increasing, and nothing but time passes (usually it is early in the render). I don't know why this is happening or what to do to avoid it, I'm not maxing VRam, and daz itself is barely using any other resources. I am using both the graphics card (GTX 980) and cpu with iray.

    On another note, The AUX viewport keeps refusing to stay minimized in city limits. I collapse the tab and when I'm not looking it returns lol Only a very minor issue though haha


    I've had the same problem with DS Beta becoming unresponsive, and I'm running renders with CPU only. I thought it was a memory issue until it happened again the other night with a simple scene that's rendered many times as I test and tweak the Iray shaders on my character. The worst part of it is DAZ Studio doesn't generate a crash report for the developers. :(

    I had the same problem without doing anything. I opened the beta (the first one--haven't installed the 2nd one yet) and let it just sit there a while after doing a grab with the snip tool. Came back and DS Beta was unresponsive.

    I suspect there's something to that, ie, when the rendering 'seems' to stop, the graphics chip is busy but nothing else is, just like my leaving Studio unattended? Weird though. Do either of you have a GPU monitor to check if the chip is actually doing something during that time?

  • SpitSpit Posts: 2,342
    edited December 1969

    Vaskania said:
    I have to go to the opposite way of Spit on this one. I love the Iray render. Because a) it does pop more, but also b) I think it would be easier to mimic the 3DL in post using the Iray render as a base than it would be to mimic Iray using the 3DL render as a base.

    Good point.

  • SpitSpit Posts: 2,342
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    mtl1 said:
    Just to let people know: 4GB variants of the 750Ti and 960 are starting to come out, so there may be a "mid-tier" alternative to the budget 740 and the more expensive cards out soon.
    All this hype about a meager 4GB on video cards. I must have some serious misgivings of how many generation 6 HD figures you can cram into 4GB, after my Windows 32bit experience.
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/588194/
    6 plane primitives as the scene and a sphere (no texture maps), 5 menu spotlights, a point-light in a primitive sphere, a single G2F figure (not HD), a shirt, and skirt.
    Add hair, and instant blue-screen of death.

    how many unique generation 6 HD figures, cloths and hair, can you cram into 4GB? 2 with no scene at all? And what about the scene?

    Some were having difficulties with some scenes eating up all the ram (no figures, just the scene product).

    This is why I believe the correct amount of ram is as much as can be afforded


    ...yeah, but who has 2.500$ for a Quadro K5200 (8 GB) or 5,000$ for a Quadro K6000 (12 GB)? Heck, even 1,000$ for a Titan Black (6 GB) is more than many of us can afford. not me, lol. Give me a few less then that thousand CUDA cores, and more VRAM. It would be more productive for me, and probably consume far less Watts.

    Emphasis mine. WATTs are the reason I currently have an i5 and a weak card. I wish I knew an electrician who could tell me what's safe for me in my aluminum wired apt. They did some work on the outlets a few years ago so that the aluminum wiring connects with copper at the outlet, but last winter there were too many bangs when the aluminum wiring which shrinks when cooling separated from the copper. It's scary. Once it turned on the dishwasher along with the bang and I was right in front of it at the time.

    My microwave oven is only 500 WATTS and it just turned 29!! It's a great little bugger (GE Spacesaver) and I'm afraid to replace it. So I'm going to think long and hard about my next PC.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,514
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    4) Added Decay and Intensity Scale controls to default spot and point lights; 3Delight.

    ...does this mean there is fallof on the spotlights now?
    For the old, base, 3Delight Spotlights, yes.
    ...sweet, as I still use 3DL for my storybook work.
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,514
    edited March 2015

    ...OK have the .0.9 update in the DIM. Haven't installed yet after reading here that some are having issues with it.


    As to updated GPU's any news on the desktop version of the 970 having it's VRAM increased?

    Also the PCI slots on my MB are only PCI 2.0 x16, yet the newer GPUs are PCI 3.0. As I understand they will still work, but at what cost in performance? Not about to rip my system apart to install a new MB at the moment.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,198
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    ...OK have the .0.9 update in the DIM. Haven't installed yet after reading here that some are having issues with it.


    As to updated GPU's any news on the desktop version of the 970 having it's VRAM increased?

    Also the PCI slots on my MB are only PCI 2.0 x16, yet the newer GPUs are PCI 3.0. As I understand they will still work, but at what cost in performance? Not about to rip my system apart to install a new MB at the moment.

    As I understand it, there isn't an enormous amount of data passed back and forth during the render process so, as long as your memory holds the scene, the number of cores and the video memory speed are going to be the bottlenecks, not the interface bandwidth.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,514
    edited December 1969

    ...excellent, thanks for the info.

    Just checked around and from what I read,it sounds like the desktop version of the GTX 970/980 series will be boosted to 8 GB this fall, so, have plenty of time to save up for one.

  • Joe CotterJoe Cotter Posts: 3,258
    edited December 1969

    Just firing up DAZ again for first time in while and have done reinstall since. I have a lot of content downloaded but the DIM, thought pointed to the folder, doesn't see any of it as downloaded. Is there a way to get the DIM to recognize that I've already got content downloaded?

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,565
    edited December 1969

    Gedd said:
    Just firing up DAZ again for first time in while and have done reinstall since. I have a lot of content downloaded but the DIM, thought pointed to the folder, doesn't see any of it as downloaded. Is there a way to get the DIM to recognize that I've already got content downloaded?

    Was it installed with DIM on another machine, or is this stuff installed with the old installers?

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,565
    edited December 1969

    Or do you mean you downloaded the zips but DIM isn't recognizing them as downloaded?

  • Joe CotterJoe Cotter Posts: 3,258
    edited December 1969

    VRAM hasn't existed on video cards for almost 10 years!!! ;p

  • Joe CotterJoe Cotter Posts: 3,258
    edited March 2015

    The packages were downloaded using DIM to a folder, the system was wiped and reloaded, and now the DIM doesn't recognize that anything was downloaded even though the path for download in the DIM points to the same folder I previously was downloading to (using the DIM.) As a side note, I believe the JSON file might have been overwritten when I downloaded 4.8 beta/content.

    Post edited by Joe Cotter on
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