The Power of Iray Draw Mode
Nyghtfall3D
Posts: 813
I can't believe I'm writing this, but... Reality 4.1 is out now... and I don't care.
The more I learn how to use Iray, the more I find I really enjoy the ability to fine-tune every surface and light in a scene. I've especially fallen absolutely in love with Studio's powerful new Iray Draw Mode.
There's an Auxiliary Window pane you can open that displays a small image of your scene while you work, providing real-time feedback of changes to give you a preview of what your scene will look like. The Viewport offers the same draw modes, including one for Iray, and has become an invaluable function of my workflow. Thanks to it, I'm no longer relegated to changing some element of a material and relying on an obscure preview to gauge how it might look in Lux, or wait for Lux to load my scene and sample enough pixels for me to know if I need to try something else. Best of all, I know exactly what the finished image will look like before I click Render. While working on my last two projects, I used Iray draw mode extensively to set up and light my scenes, effectively eliminating any desire or need to make in-process adjustments to my lighting.
Thanks to that one feature, and Iray's render speed, I've finally found a workflow I'm happy with, and two key aspects of Lux that made it functionally superior for me are no longer an issue:
* Working on a scene in DAZ while it renders in Lux.
* Recovering from a power outage.
As soon as I can afford it, I'm going to replace my GTX 780 with a GTX 980 Ti.
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Comments
Im with you I think 4.1 is a bust. Im swapping out my AMD fire pro for a GTX980. I am working with a 980M in my laptop and get renders in 15 to 20 minutes nicer skin results too. Using draw is as good if not better then lux on the fly.
Long time ATI/AMD fan here; I bought a 970 to see how I got on with it about four months ago (maybe 3); I just purchsed a 980ti, and I love that too, even though the price was very unlovely. :) I don't tend to, but have on occasions used the auxillary window. I do like spot render though, and use that a lot.
I've often wondered what that small viewport was for - it just mimics the viewport so I've never really been able to see the point with it. Any tutorials out there for how to use it constructively?
UGH. I love the aux viewport and iray draw mode so, so, much. I've mentioned it in some other threads to, but I've always been a compulsive tweaker, so just setup and composition I would do about 50 test renders, and thats not not even getting into material setup. now I just have the aux viewport rendering whenever I'm working on materials and lights and its saving me so much time.
As for tips, I have my viewport in the top right. I'm working on a laptop with not muchof a GPU and 8gb of memory so I work extra hard to keep the memory usage down. If I'm working on lighting I will have only the main figure visible (definitely no hair) working on materials I'll again have just the object I'm working on visible. If I'm working on a tiling texture, I'll just use a simple sphere. But if you're careful you can use it for all of your lighting and material setup, which takes a lot of the guess work out of them.
One thing I should mention, now I've got a reasonable card for display purposes, it does make it viable to have the aux viewport as an IRAY previewer. It's best quite small; if I can afford another 980ti, I would; although I'll be waiting for Pascal, it looks like consumer cards will be up to 16GB, and professional 32GB. Fun times /nod
New Nvidia notebooks coming out "These notebooks use the same 2,048-core GM204 GPU found in our GeForce GTX 980 graphics cards"
Cool look forward to using the 980 that got popped in my tower
iray is for the win. Reality/luxrenderer is OK but its just another extra step you have to fiddle with. The fact is now that many items are made with iray in mind it just makes it so much easier. and to have the preview in the window even not so real time.. is a big plus as with reality you basicallly have to set up the scene. then press render then wait to render. it takes more time. with iray if you have a decent pc you can change the camerar around before you "render". a BIG plus in my opinon.
iray + daz studio i think is a combo that no other option at this time can beat for the program. :-p.
Reality lux still take one to two plus hours with using GPU boost no SSS and lights in 1 group...
Mmm, OK, think I've figured it out now, it is indeed faster yes...
Just be aware that while Iray is good it is putting a lot of strain on your video card and like everything you are shortening the life of your card faster, since in most respects consumer cards are designed for playing games and not intensive rendering that you get from Iray, Octane and Luxrender..
When moving things or lights about I usually close the Aux Viewport as it slows down the laptop when set to Iray and you have to wait for the Aux Viewport to update before continuing. I then open it again to let it update and I can see how the changes will look.
There is also the case of using it as an alternative render option without changing camera in the main viewport. Before pressing render, or using Ctrl R, click on the aux viewport (the yellow border switches from main viewport to aux, and clicking render will now render using the camera or perspective view selected in that particular viewport. It does mean that in the main viewport one doesn't have to switch to the specific camera.
(What would be awesome if it was possible to select a camera in render settings and that would be used for rendering no matter what was selected in either of the viewports: until one unticked the box, (or however it was turned off.))
Yes, I've noticed that, that can be handy in some situations.
That is exactly how the renderer/camera set up works in Terragen; you can move the camera around all you like but it will render the view you started with unless you click on a little update button to set the camera to render what you currently have in the viewport.
I mention this (albeit almost 2 years after this thread's creation) only as an indication that it is possible to program such a feature.............
Hm, don't really see the point. I mean, you can achieve the same just by using two or more cameras and shift between them?
Just be aware that while the Aux window is in Iray preview mode, it uses a fair amount of resources - even if it's hidden. Once your scene is tweaked, you should switch it to normal texture mode, or your render will be slower.