Nothing but trouble with Blender (4.5)
Masterstroke
Posts: 2,298
Importing a scene from DAZ studio, check.
Render, check
Why does Blender crash with EEvee?
o.k. cycles instead
Why does Blender render only the left half of the in camera frame?
EDIT
Aaah, tiles. (Why tiles?)
How do I know when the Render is finished?
I don't see a render progress bar.
Post edited by Masterstroke on
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You may want to update to 4.5.3 which has many bug fixes. The progress bar is on top of the render window while you render, then goes away. You can also check the console for errors. Be aware that out of memory crashes are not considered a bug by the blender team, not sure why, so you may also want to check the task manager while rendering to see how it goes.
However, for generic questions on blender you may find better answers at https://blenderartists.org
window > toggle system console
Do I have to go through all this stressfull Difeomorphic install process again, or is there a way to take that over from 4.5?
The install process is the same for any addon, basically delete the old version first then overwrite with the new version, it takes me about one minute to update. The only extra thing is to add the daz content folders but that you only do once then it remains in the preferences. However I was talking of the blender version 4.5.3, not diffeomorphic.
how to update:
Render information including time will appear in the upper left corner of the render window. Will look kind of like the pic attched below. Eevee could've crashed for many reasons. I would imagine mostly becaue it ran out of VRAM to render the scene. Also, Eevee is basically (and Im skipping a lot here) like a game engine renderer. You CAN get good result with it, but it takes A LOT of work and trickery to do it. You have to really know what you are doing. Which bring me to another point. Knowing what you are doing.
It is absolutely required you understand that NOTHING in Blender is set up for you. Every step requires you do to something. Daz is essentially click and go setup. Blender is not. I am only saying this becasue if you are having problems at this stage you are goign to have even more going forward. It's the equvilant of jumping out of a Tesla and into a fighter jet. Do yourself a favor and do the Blender Guru;s doughnut tutorials. It wil run you through all the stuff you need to knwo about Blender.
Also don't take this as me saying "don't ask questions" do! Ask every question under th sun! I'm just saying you'll have a much easier time with a foundation to build on.
Thanks for your answers, guys.
My conclusion is, that Blender is still that "Sheldon Cooper" software.
All I need is a render stage for DAZ characters and scenes, that give more photo real results than DS' Iray render engine.
So what are the options for other rendering softwares, that won't cost you an arm and a leg?
Blender Guru has a really good Eevee tutorial that allows you to get near Cycles results with a fraction of the render time. However, the setup time is longer. Iray is very photoreal, but it depends on the materials and lighting. The engine itself is about as photoreal as a render engine can get. If you need a look that's close to path tracing but faster per frame, then Eevee is the engine for you to learn. However, if you don't wanna learn how to get the settings to work for you, then maybe try something like Unreal Engine or TwinMotion (both free). They are game engines, but they also use raytracing and other tricks under the hood to get things looking photorealistic.
There are some plugins for Blender like Octane, Vray, and Luxrender which are very photoreal, but they all require a learning curve, and again, it all depends on the materials and models. Truth is, even a clay render in some engines can look extremely convincing, that is a render without any materials or special treatments, but it's important to know the settings and also get the right lighting conditions.
I've seen some Eevee and Cycles renders that look very realistic. However, I've also seen Iray renders that look crazy realistic, too.
What gregsgraphics said is true. Iray is a good renderer. It can get phenominal results, but you have to know what you are doing. I use Blender becasuse I have been doing 3D for decades and Blender is more inline with my knowledge set. As well as how I am used to working. Daz is great, it's just not great for me. No matter what you use there is going to be a learning curve. No matter what renderer you use the quality of your render is purely dependant on the work you put into it. The means poper lighting setups, proper camera settings, and proper post processing. Every step plays a part and they all matter equally.
Also not tryign to discourage. Just stating the base facts of 3D art ingeneral. If it was easy people would be tryign to replace it with AI everywher they can.
You might recall better than I do, but I seem to remember Iray being a default render engine in 3dsmax some years ago, before it went into Daz. Iray was being used for HIGH END photorealistic archVIZ stuff, which tends to be so realistic it fools even CG guys. Interior design shots, architecture shots, that sort of thing is what Iray was known for before coming into DS, and the fact it was one of the first photoreal GPU engines made it special. I think the reason Autodesk dumped it from 3dsmax is because Nvidia wanted way too much for licensing. Not sure about that, because obviously it later became free for DS to license.
That I'm afraid is just not possible. Among other things photoreal results depend heavily on the materials, that of course are designed for iray, if you don't like the material in iray itself then it is unlikely you will like the material conversion for another engine, supposing that a conversion is available at all. Long story short your best option is to learn how to fix the iray materials to your needs.
p.s. You don't go to blender because it has better materials than iray, that will not happen, the material conversion is good enough but you may need some tweaking to fix it better. You go to blender because you have better animation options and modeling tools so you can modify the daz figure whatever you like. That is, blender is more for the artist who wants to customize and animate the daz figures, rather than the director who just wants to shoot a render.
Back in 2k, I decided to go with Cinema 4d. Its interface made the most sense to me. I skipped it with version 10, because it became unaffordable to me.
Besides, Maxon is now predator software like Autodesk and Adobe.
Switching from C4d to Blender, maybe that's why I struggle with Blender.
Those two softwares feel so fundamental different.
____
I reached a limit with settings in DAZ Studio by now.
DS lights have flaws. The more you use in a scene, the less photo real the render will look. An accumalation of flaws in the lights.
PBR skin shaders only look real with dark skin tones. There is no way to get a bright realistic skin tone with PBR skin shaders.
The camera settings are limited. There are no exposure settings with the cameras.
Yesterday, I remembered, that there is Nvidea Omniverse, only to find out, that it's gone.
So, there is only Blender left, obviously
I really can second that. Started with Poser. Used Bryce and Carrara, but finally changed to C4D / Vray and loved it.
When they chaged the pricing and license system, I abandoned C4D. Finally with the new interface, I started to use Blender, but I'm still struggling with the features.
I see amazing results with Blender, but the learning curve is not an easy one. Nevertheless, I will stay with Blender, transfer and improve my Daz content there. Diffeomorphic is the tool that makes it a lot easier.
I'm not familiar with the limitations of Iray in DS. That could certainly be an issue. Iray itself is a very capable render engine. It got its start in 3dsmax for several years before coming to DS. Blender is definitely capable of doing what you want, but the learning curve is going to be harder than what you might be used to in DS or C4D. Setting up materials with the node system is super powerful, but also very time-consuming and could be confusing.
Blender has come a long way since the old days with its UI and layout. However, it's constantly being upgraded, and things change often. It could take you a year to get used to the interface and the tools, especially for rendering and material setup, and especially if your goal is photorealism. It can obviously do what you want, even in Eevee, but it's gonna be a long road before it just works how you want it to every time. Not to discourage you, but just a warning.
The only free alternative is something like Unreal Engine, but that has its own steep learning curve.
Blender has other render engines that can function as add-ons. Vray is as good as any high-end modern render engine can get, and it's now available for Blender. Still, it's going to be more difficult to learn than Cycles or Eevee.
Daz studio should stop with 3D animation and stick with stills and simplify their software. Or make a fork of Blender that just works with Daz Assets. What was said about learning curve is correct. You need to get some tutorials under your belt if you want to get anything done in Blender. You could try Blender for Artists if you like buttons for everything you do in Blender. >>https://www.bforartists.de/<<; If you do learn Blender it has some great features that are only getting better. They just recently switched to Vulcan from Opengl, and I really like the video editor better than DaVince Resolve it is simpler and although you can do more with Davince>> I just need to do simple things with it. Oh learing DaVince is like learning Blender. So, just learn Blender to do video editing. LOL Good luck
Blender 4.5 and also Diffeo are working for me like a charme.
I would strongly advise you to learn how to use Blender and get the hang of it. You won't regret it, though there is a learning curve. E.g. tile-based rendering you discovered can give you a performance bump or not depending on your graphics hardware. It's pretty good for animation and set to get better with Blender's Project Baklava (improvements to the animation system for layered animation and so on), which may bring it up to the level of something like Maya.
Skin tones have always been a problem for me in Daz, due to iRay changes over the years older materials can look dull or grey. Learning how to tweak them to put some colour into them is also a useful skill, in both Daz and Blender.
Tile rendering is good because it uses much less vram, especially for very large pictures, though it's slower than a full frame.
I have been having lots of issues with 4.5.3 as well, constant crashing. I'm having trouble with older projects that were created with older versions of Blender and diffeomorphic. I have an RTX 4090, I'm not running out of memory. Very frustrating.
Well it is a long tradition of Blender to not be back compatible, especially major releases often introduce deprecated features. On one side this allows to keep the architecture "modern" and "slim", on the other side they [thoroughly mess up] old projects without a flinch. Personally I hate this aspect of blender, among others. But overall Blender is honestly one of the best tools around, and not because it is free.
The usual way to deal with it is to start and end a project with the same version of blender, addons included.
Yes, it was the Mental Ray.
But in 2017 Nvidia discontinued development of the program and Autodesk replace mental ray with Arnold. (maybe the best render engine for skin).
The most important element in a scene are always the lights, not the textures. In movies industry they spend 10 minutes to film a scene, but 10 hours to light that scene.