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I do more than pinups. I have several sci-fi images on this forum and even photoreal stuff. I can tell you that what type of materials you have in the scene can take longer in different scenes depending on the environment and how the light is hitting it, in the same render engine. I don't measure comparisons on materials at all. I kind of use an overall scene experience to guide me.
I was only suggesting a quick test scene since your iRay scenes seemed be taking such a long time. It is difficult to make a direct time comparision between different renderers, as the light and shader settings can have a huge effect on the total render time. It is likely you can speed up your scene in iRay somewhat, but it is not trivial to know what it is you must change to achieve this.
I'm really sorry - I re-read my comment and it doesn't read like I meant it to come across. I have seen your work and it is quality. I think I'm agreeing with what you are saying here.
Not trivial is an understatement :) I'd stick to Reality if I wasn't having so many problems with it. Even so, I feel I might just put up with them because, right now, it seems like the best of a set of imperfect choices.
By the way, the IRay render decided to finish at around 2 hours and 50% convergence. I'm assuming there must be a cut-off in terms of time and/or iterations?
IRay render time scales with the number of light sources as well as the number of polys. There are several ways to optimize this: decimate (which will look horrible), path length, and so forth. If I remember correctly, you can also limit the max number of samples as well as the convergence limit.
About the progress bar and linearity: it's definitely not linear. It all depends on how Iray does its forward calculations with respect to the error of its previous iterations, but that's locked inside a black box...
Yes, there's a setting within the optimization part that can limit the length of a render.
Not a problem. Actual physical film in an actual physical camera uses tiny grains of chemicals that react to light; the different film speeds have different grain sizes, hence the picture quality issues with high film speeds. Cameras in a D|S scene don't use chemicals, so all you need to worry about is adjusting the light and/or camera settings to get the right amount of simulated light onto the simulated film. If the render's still grainy, you need to tweak the settings a bit more.
From what I'm seeing, I would suggest you consider diving into Cycles. It's like the best of 3Dlight and IRay combined. That isn't to say it's better then either as that does make the learning curve a little steeper (jack of all trades...) but it does give options one doesnt get going with 3DLight as is in DS or IRay (being a strict PBR environment.) Besides many options in the render engine itself, there is the compositor which allows much of what people try to achieve in the render engine to be instead accomplished in a much faster post environment. To get these benefits means spending the time learning the environment however, and as much as I applaud mjc1016's script, one would need to well beyond using any script to realize Cycles full potential.
I've posted a few questions on his thread today. Funny that one person said the opposite to you - i.e. that I should go for IRay, not Cycles. However, I was impressed by the speed of Cycles and the quality of the materials that did convert correctly. As you say, it will take some dedication to learn but the more I see of Blender, he more I want to get into it. I don't even know what a compositor is so that will give you an idea of how far I need to go.
I'm somewhat daunted by what I see when I google Blender Cycles - the node system with all that spaghetti is scary stuff.
A few questions about your scene:
Not mine...I couldn't write a script that complex, in less than about 5 yrs...it belongs to mcj...
Ha that splains it. I had several renders that shut off at 5% but I had the numbers really cranked up high. The render looked completed. I just wanted the skin to refine a bit more Im still trying to figure out how to have it run until I decide to shut it off.. There have been suggestions but none have panned out..
I can see the advantage to both iray renders under an hour but makes your machine run like a furnace. Lux 6 plus hours but machine runs much cooler..
I'm not sure I know how to make it scene only but, as I recall, I switched off Draw Dome and for the environment map I selected "None".
I've seen comments both ways about lights: more = slower and more = quicker. From what I've been told previously, the engine takes longer picking out materials that are poorly lit so having lights more lights helps. I can't say either way, of course.
Another thing that I wonder about is whether objects made invisible in DAZ Studio are still calculated in the render, even though they are not rendered. I've been advised before to delete rather than make invisible.
I don't think they mean more lights, but a brighter scene vs a dimmer one. My experience with iRay and LuxRender is that the more lights in the scene the longer it takes to render. For example, a space ship where I converted every instrumentation panel as an emissive light source in LuxRender would take longer than the same scene with them non-emissive.
You know I dont know if its cause my systam and card but I dont need to hide/delete what is not seen..
Scene only is one of the options near/with the Draw Dome.
More LIGHT = faster.
More LIGHTS = slower (actually it should be more LAMPS or light sources).
"More light" is "more lumiance, not more light sources.
You change the setting at the Environment Mode (Marked by A).
Also, "Draw Dome" is not the same as "Draw Ground". The ground is default "on", while the dome is default "off". Please check the Mark B.
As for the question of having the render run as long as you like, please check out Mark C.
This are the default cut-off settings for the render. Whichever is hit first will cause the render to stop. All you need to do is set those sliders to a higher value, and the image will render longer. For example, you could change the convergence to 99,9%, and change the render time from 14400 seconds (equals 2 hours), to double or triple of that value. But then you will probably still increase the total samples value.
I think about lighting in terms of bounces. Even lighting that doesn't rely on a lot of bounce light is what is fast. Adding lights has some footprint, but depending on where they are they can make up for that. Think of a 3delight render without any sort of ambient light and 1 or 2 spotlights with raytracing. Think of all the black areas, Iray fills those areas by having the light bounce but every bounce takes some calculation (more if theres something like refraction translucency or transparency involved) If you have an area where the light needs 8 bounces to ever get there. Its going to take a lot longer.
If you are doing a lot of indoor renders lit by windows one advantage of cycles is they have recently implemented portals which do help with that sort of thing. Now if only they'd get some adaptive sampling running.
With great power comes great responsibility (and a learning curve.)
Actually, the person you mentioned and I don't disagree really, we just come to different conclusions. I'll explain. Basically I agree with everything that was said in the post mentioned with one difference. The time tweaking the materials is mostly in the beginning. Also, I wasn't saying to go with Cycles, but to consider it. Here are some points that need to be considered in what I was suggesting:
So, when you put all the pieces together, it really depends on if you agree with the above assessments and more importantly if so, how it works or doesn't for your particular situation.
There is one other thing to note. I'm not saying to make a permanent switch to Cycles over IRay. I think they both have their purpose and space.* I'm saying that given your current situation you may want to consider going with Cycles for now and perhaps coming back to IRay at some point in the future, or even use both depending on the situation. The time learning Cycles wouldn't be wasted as it would develop a much deeper understanding of rendering environments. Plus, there's other benefits of Cycles, like Freestyle.
* (I really like IRay and see a strong future for it.)
Oh, and there's the compositor. ;)
You dont get it. I have tried it all I cranked up all those numbers to ridiculous values I was also told to put the time to -1 so it will keep going. Crank up samples turn quality & convergence off and crank the samples. No matter what I can never go past 70 minutes. BTW this is on both my systems...
You don't turn quality & convergence off, but increase the value to make it render longer.
and sorry for my incompetence in understanding you.
Yes this can't be emphasized enough. It helps in any render engine environment that implements it. I don't remember if IRay does portals yet or not.
No worries love how this community helps each other out. I have a a new scene with default numbers so I will try again... Forgot to add nothing was wrong with how the renders finished I just wanted some skin go a bit longer. Im never happy lux is too long and iray does not go long enough LOL!
In Render Settings > Progressive Rendering, there are three settings that determine when Iray stops. Max Samples, (default: 5000,) Max Time, (default: 7200 seconds,) and Rendering Converged Ratio, (default 95%.) Iray stops rendering when it reaches one of these three. I usually set these to 15000, 0 and 100%, respectively. (A "0" in Max Time turns "off" that constraint. But a "0" in the other two just stops the render immediately.)
FYI, you can further increase the amount of rendering by increasing the Quality setting, very handy for getting more detail in dark areas, especially with a dark scene. While it is not possible, as far as I know, to set Iray to render indefinitely, you can come close by increasing the Quality setting to a high number.
Emissive objects slow down rendering. Although I've yet to tinker with it, I've read path length affects the render time as well, (as stated upthread by mtl1.) Using the Architechural Sampler, under Render Settings > Optimization will also slow down "inside" or close-up renders, though it can speed things up on outside scenes, if your camera is not close to the subject. The Caustic Sampler will slow things down a lot and, according to DAZ_Spooky, (I think,) was created specifically for rendering jewelry and the like. I've played with it. Now I avoid it. Not worth the extra rendering time for the kinds of scenes I render.
Contrary to what was stated upthread, I have personally seen the render time decrease by adding another spotlight to a scene. But it wasn't a fully enclosed indoor scene, so that might make a difference.
I hope some of this is helpful.
I ran into an interesting thing setting up a scene this weekend. It was an indoor scene, night with muted lighting. I put a bookshelf in a dimly lit corner of the room. Increased my render time a bit. then I added items to the bookshelf (books, picture frames). Increased my render time significantly. I imagine the hit would not have been nearly as bad if the bookshelf was getting more light. So, in this case, I figure adding a light which illuminated the bookshelf would have decreased my render time (not that I will do that in this case because that was the look I was going for).
I guess that's a long winded example that there are no absolutes in regard to the effect of adding light sources - in some cases the additional calculations will increase render times, in other cases illuminating dark areas containing non-trivial detail with additional light sources might reduce render times.
Increase the Quality setting. It sounds like your system is robust enough to hit the Rendering Converged Ratio relatively fast. (I'm both jealous and envious.) I've gone from 99% converged to 86% converged by just changing Quality to a 2.
L'Adair I tried that it was going even faster perhaps cause I have decent cards & systems?
I think it may be my system here some stats perhaps I am ot doing something right? For the most part the renders look complete. There is some very minor skin noise left on occasion. I would of liked it to run a bit longer at times..
@marble
I think you may be destined for failure. Macs in general seem to be having more trouble with Iray even in CPU mode. I don't know enough about Macs and Iray to make a guess about the issue being users rather than machine. Frankly though it looks like you have something else going on.
While I have a good Nvidia card in my PC, the only difference between CPU and GPU render is speed.There is no visible difference.
Don't close the window at the end of your render. Click on the little arrow to the left of the window to access the render settings. Increase "Quality" to 50. Does the "Resume" button become available? If not, keep increasing it until the button becomes available. (Limits are off on the Quality parameter.) Then click on Resume. What happens then?