Iray Manual (Render Settings Explained) ?

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  • AJ2112AJ2112 Posts: 1,416
    edited June 2015

    I believe a manual would be a blessing. In the meantime, DS should set up a section, strictly for 3Delight and IRay. Assign admins, moderators or veterans with tremendous knowledge to answer questions. Only DS staff can answer questions, opposed to hundreds of members with varying learning curve/experience.

    I'll give a perfect example, before Jaderail passed away, Jaderail became an Admin answering all questions in newbie section. Jaderail practically taught me how to use Daz studio. If I had a question, I was confident Jaderail would answer. If he didn't have the answer, he would guide newbie in the right direction, via other members, links, wiki, etc..... Jaderail was very, very dedicated in the newbie section.

    Novica is another, whom was dedicated in assisting newbies, and still continues to do so.

    Daz needs same specific type knowledgeable staff members, for 3Delight and IRay, also Daz could create sub sections such as 3Delight lighting, Iray lighting, IRay HDR, etc..... This will illuminate ton's of varying learning curves.

    After Jaderail passed, I lost intrest in Daz 3Delight, switched over to Reality. All newbies ask is, guidance to learn the basics. Paolo over at Reality, developer of Reality, answers every question. From all my knowledge acquired from Reality, I transfer to IRay.

    I stopped asking questions here, cause most are overlooked or I discover answer on accident, before my post is answered.

    I agree with majority of feedback on this thread.

    Post edited by AJ2112 on
  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 11,139
    edited June 2015

    PDSmith said:
    chohole said:

    Are you Volunteering?

    Chohole, this was my point for this whole thread. I work in an industry where Engineers take what they make, and turn around and work side by side with technical engineers to make a manual that covers what exactly what it is they have and how to use it.

    Asking the masses to make what DAZ's programers/engineers know better than the rest us shouldn't be part of the process.
    ...

    I agree with your issue and recognize all the counterpoints in this thread none of which float my boat. 3D design is like piloting. In 1916 you could learn to fly with a half-hour of instruction and a couple words of warning and a couple of bumpy landings. 15 years ago DAZ Studio was like that 1916 airplane. Now DAZ is churning out Boeing 747s with a full console full of complex instrumentation. The learning process is significantly longer because the whole modern concept of 3D is that much more complex.

    In 1975 I started out doing 3D work just shortly after Orville and Wilber put wings on a bicycle (continuing my piloting analogy) so I had some idea of what was going on. But my career took another direction and I forgot about 3D concepts for nearly a quarter century. So in 1999, it took me a little time and research to figure out how to use the early versions of Carrara, Poser and then DAZ Studio. It wasn't too difficult, the vehicle was now more like a Piper Cub mail plane instead of a box kite but still had wooden propellers and cloth covered wings and a compass for instrumentation. I used the forum as a learning tool. Over the years DAZ Studio has continued to grow and add more and more sophisticated accessories and features. Some manuals have been produced but the base knowledge of how to read the manuals (assuming that they are even well written, informative and complete) has gotten more complex. Now it's reached a point where one needs an engineering degree in 3D technology to read the contents page of the manual (such as it is).

    This is all fine for the commercial pilots flying between the capitals of the world, but what about the weekend warriors and their quick jaunts to the next city? I've tried to keep up but when I look up at my vehicle now and it's the size of a football field and I would need four years of formal education and training to use it properly but only have hand-me-down snatches of tricks-of-the-trade and anecdotal experiences I get the shivers when thinking about taking off.

    I recognize how we got here. It's the "Just one more thing to know" syndrome. Not difficult to learn one more thing. But there comes a point that the next straw will break the camel's back, or the entire load is lost because you can't keep it tied together.

    Perhaps it would be a good idea for DAZ to connect itself with a professional 3D school, with on-line classes?

    Personally, I think I'm going to find the end of a burnt stick and start drawing on my cave wall. %-P

    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
  • BarubaryBarubary Posts: 1,200
    edited December 1969

    Well the nice thing about a manual is, even if you don't read it front to back, if need to know something specific it's usually easy to find in there (assuming it's a well made manual of course). Finding something in the forums, on the other hand, even with the help of google, can be a bit of a challenge. And even then, given the amount of smattering and assumptions in here, you may still turn up with no helpful information at all.

    Assuming that DAZ, being what they are, can not or doesn't want to create a manual for Iray, maybe a wiki wouldn't be such a bad idea. It's probably easier to handle for them and at the very least it's easier for users to navigate than the forums. Could even implement it in the help section of Studio.

  • ZelrothZelroth Posts: 910
    edited December 1969

    I have used Studio on and off for years, and usually still feel like just a step above newbie/beginner.

    Many times over the years, I have used the forums to attempt to learn this aspect of studio or that "new" product and have tried many methods to keep my garnered information straight - copying text into a word document and printing it, starting a notebook and trying to put related info on the same page, writing out by hand various hints and tricks (and then usually losing said notes), and probably others that haven't worked nearly as well. I have yet to find one method that actually works for me, since I tend to read the forums most often when I am not conveniently near my DAZ computers. That is the one bad thing about smart phones and tablets.

    I have roamed the many threads trying to find particular information and generally getting distracted by "oh, I didn't think of that or know that that was possible" I agree that having all the information and "tips and tricks" in one place would be extremely helpful. But from my own experiences, I know how time consuming just gathering all that info can be, let alone trying to organize it into a sensible manner. I am VERY thankful that all of the relevant threads are listed in one place, and I also would appreciate it all being centrally located in one place, but then I would appreciate winning the lottery without having to purchase tickets also.

  • tl155180tl155180 Posts: 994
    edited December 1969

    Zelroth said:
    I agree that having all the information and "tips and tricks" in one place would be extremely helpful. But from my own experiences, I know how time consuming just gathering all that info can be, let alone trying to organize it into a sensible manner.

    It was difficult for you because you were trying to learn the info as you collected it. The people at Daz already know it - its just a matter of them disseminating and teaching it to other people more effectively than they currently do.

  • shadowhawk1shadowhawk1 Posts: 2,184
    edited June 2015

    dead post

    Post edited by shadowhawk1 on
  • PDSmithPDSmith Posts: 712
    edited December 1969

    So, I ask this simple question to those with DAZ at the beginning of their handle.

    Is there a chance of a manual or guide that will explains how to work with Iray?

    We're a graphics oriented community so technical verbiage only goes so far. Imagery and showing how something works, dial effects from one extreme to the other and in moderation, and it's effect in some cases I believe would go a long way.

    I'd do it, but it would be filled with guess work, mistakes, opinions, and a plethora of errors since I haven't a clue how Iray works. Trust me, the phone calls between me and the engineers/experts would be annoying and long winded, I'm a retired paralegal for JAG. :-)

    -Paul

  • RobotHeadArtRobotHeadArt Posts: 904
    edited December 1969

    Not exactly a manual from a DAZ perspective, there is at least some documentation of a technical nature on how Iray works on Nvidia's site.

    http://www.migenius.com/doc/realityserver/latest/resources/general/iray/manual/index.html#/concept/iray_photoreal_render_mode.html

    http://www.nvidia-arc.com/products/iray/technical-documentation.html

  • MarshianMarshian Posts: 1,459
    edited December 1969

    This is extremely helpful: render_settings/engine/nvidia_iray/environment
    Just descriptions/definitions of the options for a specific tab.

    More like this would be great!

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited June 2015

    Here's the whole Iray documentation section so far here. Still a work in progress but promising!

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/render_settings/engine/nvidia_iray/start

    Post edited by Kevin Sanderson on
  • StrixowlStrixowl Posts: 301
    edited December 1969

    The most useable Iray tutes I've found are by SickleYield on the Deviant Art site and YouTube. There straight forward and make sense. She could do a whole manual I bet'cha :-)

  • Fixme12Fixme12 Posts: 589
    edited July 2015

    it's indeed up to daz to come up with these kind of info and resources and not the community here on the forum,  searching thrue forum posts is lot's of wasted time!

    there are a few IRAY tutorials over at http://basic3dtraining.com/product-category/dazstudioiray/
    some have some insance prices $149 for just a short tutorial not even Gnomon handle such prices for it's Pro tutorials,
    guess anything higher as $50 sounds more like IRAY milking out 3d noobs.
     

    Post edited by Fixme12 on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    awesomefb said:

    I believe a manual would be a blessing. In the meantime, DS should set up a section, strictly for 3Delight and IRay. Assign admins, moderators or veterans with tremendous knowledge to answer questions. Only DS staff can answer questions, opposed to hundreds of members with varying learning curve/experience.

    I'll give a perfect example, before Jaderail passed away, Jaderail became an Admin answering all questions in newbie section. Jaderail practically taught me how to use Daz studio. If I had a question, I was confident Jaderail would answer. If he didn't have the answer, he would guide newbie in the right direction, via other members, links, wiki, etc..... Jaderail was very, very dedicated in the newbie section.

    Novica is another, whom was dedicated in assisting newbies, and still continues to do so.

     

     

    Late to the party, so please excuse the tardiness. That was a very sweet thing to say, thank you so much!  I can't remember how to do things if I leave them for awhile, then it's like, "Uh oh...I used to know how to do that." So I started posting the how-to's so I could also benefit from it again later. For folks starting out with iRay like me,  I did an experiment with the Exposure Value, Shutter Speed, F/Stop and how they relate to each other (including Film ISO) with a couple renders posted, only a few days ago. I gave the exact settings so anyone reading this who is totally lost, pop over, it'll tell you exactly what sliders to play with. 

    I have to totally agree the iRay threads are difficult at best because they don't start at the beginning- everyone has different levels of expertise and use terms which others don't comprehend, or assume we know something and base their questions at a lofty level. I googled iRay trying to find a book at Amazon without any luck. 

    Regarding Jaderail, he was busy in all the forum sections, that dude is the closest to Forum Superman we'll ever have!   

  • bohemian3bohemian3 Posts: 1,021
    edited July 2015

    Yes, a separate board for both iRay and 3Delight should have happened day one.  It's been frustrating seeing all the info for iRay scattered.  Really, this reluctance to open a new board when it clearly makes sense is just tiresome.

    I've posted this link in multiple discussions, some documentation I threw up on my OneDrive.  It is the IRay manual for 3dS Max which does in fact exist, so the first five pages don't apply to DAZ users but after that the settings section does.  The great thing are the images of the various settings that have proved invaluable to me:

    http://1drv.ms/1fusbTE

     

    Post edited by bohemian3 on
  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    Fixme12 said:

    it's indeed up to daz to come up with these kind of info and resources and not the community here on the forum,  searching thrue forum posts is lot's of wasted time!

    there are a few IRAY tutorials over at http://basic3dtraining.com/product-category/dazstudioiray/
    some have some insance prices $149 for just a short tutorial not even Gnomon handle such prices for it's Pro tutorials,
    guess anything higher as $50 sounds more like IRAY milking out 3d noobs.
     

    I don't know which ones you looked at on the Dreamlight site, but they are fairly long and divided into sections. I recently downloaded another older set that was going to expire soon and it took quite a while as the files are huge (if you run the videos full screen, you can easily make everything out). Usually Val starts selling them at around $17 - $29, which is not too bad, before boosting the price, and he has gotten better at doing them (the higher price is probably to encourage lots of early sales as I'm sure he doesn't get too many people paying the full price... his regular customers probably buy early (as I sometimes  do). He does have deep sales which are a bargain if you were too late to learn about the tutes, and usually they sell for less for a while when he puts them in the DAZ Store. Many of his older ones have been free for a time or at times. His plus is he's been a photographer and videographer for years so he can't avoid giving you some good pro tips on lighting and setting up shots. The biggest take away for me is his insistence on you not rendering the whole doggone scene at once and instead render elements and composite, such as a light at a time, the background and forground separate, etc. - things DAZ Users seem to always ignore even though that's how the big studios do it. The time savings can be substantial and it's definitely less wear and tear on your computer. Sickleyield's are pretty good, but some things are based on her opinion -- a YMMV thing... for example, flat primitives as light sources render faster than spheres as light sources, but she prefers the look of sphere's reflecting in her character's eyes. So it's that kind of thing, but you do get a good sense of how things work.

    Iray is a moving target of sorts as changes have been made, but DAZ has been working on the online docs.

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    bohemian3 said:

    Yes, a separate board for both iRay and 3Delight should have happened day one.  It's been frustrating seeing all the info for iRay scattered.  Really, this reluctance to open a new board when it clearly makes sense is just tiresome.

    I've posted this link in multiple discussions, some documentation I threw up on my OneDrive.  It is the IRay manual for 3dS Max which does in fact exist, so the first five pages don't apply to DAZ users but after that the settings section does.  The great thing are the images of the various settings that have proved invaluable to me:

    http://1drv.ms/1fusbTE

     

    Thanks for posting! I haven't seen this before. 

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,142

    If there were a wiki we could dump stuff into, that would be awesome.

    An iRay Wiki would be a really good idea..... 

  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232
    bohemian3 said:
    I've posted this link in multiple discussions, some documentation I threw up on my OneDrive.  It is the IRay manual for 3dS Max which does in fact exist, so the first five pages don't apply to DAZ users but after that the settings section does.  The great thing are the images of the various settings that have proved invaluable to me:

    http://1drv.ms/1fusbTE

    Thanks for posting! I haven't seen this before. 

    I'll second that — I only got a couple of pages past the 3DS MAX-specific part, and I was already learning stuff I hadn't had a clue about since I started digging into 4.8. I understood it a lot better than what there is so far of DAZ's own Iray documentation.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    Why not just put up the link to the PDF from the dev blog?

    http://blog.irayrender.com/post/83815598089/iray-material-plugin-updated-for-3dsmax-2015

  • bohemian3bohemian3 Posts: 1,021
    mjc1016 said:

    Why not just put up the link to the PDF from the dev blog?

    http://blog.irayrender.com/post/83815598089/iray-material-plugin-updated-for-3dsmax-2015

    Thanks... forgot where I found it! 

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643

    Here's a nother PDF explaining materials, how not to get noise, etc. http://www.irayrender.com/fileadmin/filemount/editor/PDF/Preparing_Content_iray_24.pdf

  • Ive done some reading and the most information on IRay settings I have found are in the Programmers Manual.

    Progressive Rendering Tab

    Min Update Samples

    Controls the minimum number of samples that need to be rendered per render call in the progressive render loop.

    Update Interval

    The update interval time in seconds is compared to the rendering time since the beginning of this batch render call. This acts as a hint to the renderer. Longer times will generally increase rendering efficiency, while shorter times yield more frequent updates.

    Min Samples

    Controls the minimum number of samples that need to be rendered before the progressive render loop is allowed to terminate by any of the termination criteria.

    Max Samples

    The maximum number of samples is compared to the number of samples since the beginning of this progression. The render call will return 1 if the rendering loop is terminated by this termination criterion.


    Max Time (secs)

    The maximum time in seconds is compared to the rendering time since the beginning of this progression. The render call will return 1 if the rendering loop is terminated by this termination criterion.

    Rendering Quality Enabled

    The convergence quality estimate is only available in the non-interactive render mode and can, in addition, be enabled and disabled with this attribute. If disabled, rendering will not stop based on the convergence quality and no progress messages will be issued for the current convergence quality.


    Rendering Quality

    A convergence estimate for a pixel has to reach a certain threshold before a pixel is considered converged. This attribute is a relative quality factor for this threshold. A higher quality setting asks for better converged pixels, which means a longer rendering time. Render times will change roughly linearly with the given value, i.e., doubling the quality roughly doubles the render time.


    Rendering Converged Ratio

    If the progressive rendering quality is enabled, this attribute specifies a threshold that controls the stopping criterion for progressive rendering. As soon as the ratio of converged pixels of the entire image is above this given threshold, Iray Photoreal returns the final result for forthcoming render requests. Additionally, the render call will return 1 in this case indicating to the application that further render calls will have no more effect. Note that setting this attribute to a value larger than the default of 0.95 can lead to extremely long render times.

     

    Optimization Tab Settings

    Max Path Length

    Bounds the maximum number of vertices (bounces) of light paths to contribute to the result. Since this setting cuts off indirect lighting contributions (one example would be the headlight of a car that depends on a lot of indirect effects to look correct), it should only be applied when the rendering has to be accelerated at the expense of physical accuracy.


    Caustic Sampler

    The Iray Photoreal caustic sampler can be used to improve the quality of caustics in typical turntable scenes. When enabled, Iray Photoreal will augment the default sampler with a dedicated caustic sampler, designed to improve capturing caustic effects. In terms of light path expressions, the caustic sampler was designed to handle paths with the signature E D .* S L much better.

    Architectural Sampler

    The Iray Photoreal architectural sampler can be used to improve the convergence speed of difficult scenes, as such complicated lighting scenarios can then be handled much more efficiently with this sampler. A common scene type that profits from this specialized sampler is indoor architectural visualization, especially if it is mostly illuminated by indirect lighting. One specific example would be a room that is illuminated by light sources placed in neighboring rooms or by outdoor lighting (such as the Sun and Sky model) shining through a small window.

     

    Filtering Tab Settings

    Firefly Filter Enable

    Controls a built-in filter to reduce bright spots that may occur under some difficult lighting conditions. Such bright undesired pixels are often called ``fireflies''.

    Nominal Luminence

    The nominal luminance is a hint to Iray Photoreal on what is considered a "reasonable" luminance level when viewing the scene. This luminance level is used internally to tune the firefly filter and error estimate. When the nominal luminance value is set to 0, Iray Photoreal will estimate the nominal luminance value from the tonemapper settings. If a user application applies its own tonemapping without using the built-in tonemappers, it is strongly advised to provide a nominal luminance.

    Noise Filter Enable

    This specialized post filter reduces initial high variance noise without sacrificing overall sharpness. It is particularly useful for removing isolated bright or very dark pixels that result from certain kinds of disadvantageous chains of scattering events. This filter is intended to be used only during the initial rendering phase, mainly to smoothen out the yet unfinished simulation results. Note that the overall rendering performance can be reduced noticably on low-end CPU cores.


    Noise Degrain Filtering

    Selects one of several additional post filters that can reduce low frequency noise without sacrificing overall sharpness. These are intended to be used in the final stage of the rendering phase, mainly to reduce remaining subtle grain in difficult areas of a scene. There are five different filters to select from

    Modes 1 to 3 are working very conservative and should thus be safe to use in general, modes 4 and 5 are considered to be more agressive and should be used with caution, especially if the scene features fine details in either geometry or applied materials. As these filters can be tweaked during the rendering process, it is recommended to experiment with different radius settings to achieve best results.

    Noise Degrain Radius

    This value should be reduced if the filter smoothens out edges, and increased if some noise still remains in the image.

    Noise Degrain Blur Difference

    Modes 4 and 5 feature an additional setting that limits the influence of neighboring pixels if the brightness is too different.

     

    I will post up more if anyone is interested.  But these are the ones I was looking for more info on.

  • Thank you Dave.  This is exactly what I was looking for!

  • Roman_K2Roman_K2 Posts: 1,198
    Khory said:

    I think it is less and less common to see text documentation for anything these days.

    I have one book, I think by Jeremy Birn... arghh! It turns out I have the first edition OF THREE! (Amazon link). Ho ho ho, Ka-CHING Ka-CHING etc.

    I guess I prefer at least a bit of hard copy. So much easier to pull out of your top jacket pocket on the trail, or to read with a candle or battery-powered torch when the mains go out. Even Wikipedia generates a print-formatted PDF on request, right from the main entry page that you happen to be on.

    I have bookmarked the "Iray: Start Here" thread, thanks.

    As I mentioned in the Technical Help (nuts n bolts) forum this week, some of the Iray documentation language is a bit arcane, eg. how can a mesh have a "pixel density". (This was in the section on adjusting the bump settings for Iray.)

  • Roman_K2Roman_K2 Posts: 1,198
    edited December 2016
    tl155180 said:

    ....I had to wade through hundreds and hundreds of posts that were nothing but "accolades and random information", as Paul so aptly puts it, in order to find the few helpful comments I needed. This is extremely time consuming...

    I'm a pretty chatty guy so I stand accused. A couple of points (1) back in the early 1950's when this all started, John von Neumann specified (and I think preferred) a system of more-fluid information pools rather than rigid pre-categorization.

    (2) As someone wrote not long ago: "Google is your friend, for finding things in the forums". They accept Boolean search - "AND", "OR", and "but NOT" in the form of the minus sign. Doesn't say much about Forums software design, I know.

    (3) Progressive reference or serial numbers on each post. 'Nuff said. In my major center here the Legislative Assembly (regional parliament) the web page has a number on every PARAGRAPH. So if someone farts the incident literally has an official number assigned to it.

    (4) An alphabetical index A-Z, with proximity references.

    Example: one of the biggest things going anywhere (certainly in dollar value) is the tumult in Washington. Hard to understand. What are the background issues?

    In a proper alphabetical index of these sorts of surprise situations the word or name "TRUMP" would of necessity be preceded by the name TrumAN. - Ah! The OTHER surprise President, who'd have thought of it. Now I wonder what happened that time, and/or if there were any lingering effects?

    An A-to-Z index is a powerful tool.

    Sorry about the one or two very minor edits.

    Post edited by Roman_K2 on
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