Best way to render characters outside DAZ Studio?

Comments

• background Posts: 589

  September 16 edited September 16

  There is the Octane render plugin for Studio which I think is free if you only want the DAZ plugin, but while there is material comversion you would most likely need to adjust some materials. My experience with it was that the renders were fast, the quality was as good or better than Iray. Being 'not' Iray then decals won't work ( unless you set up an Octane shader ), strand hair has to be converted to full geometry, anything with instancing has to be converted to full geometry ( I think ). After using it for a couple of years I switched back to Iray after I bought a more powerful GPU. It took as long to convert materials to octane as the time saved by not using Iray, of course that conversion only needs to be done once per item, so if you use the same items in a lot of renders, then saving time per render may be worth it. One of the things I really liked about Octane was how quickly it produces a decent image, at that time i was wasting time with Iray while it started rendering, only to realise there was some poke through or other problem which meant starting the render again. 

  I have found with Iray that it 'can' produce photo realistic renders, the products in the DAZ store and products in other stores vary massively as regards shaders and textures, so far too often  you can't put two characters in the same scene and have them look like they are from the same planet without adjusting things.

  Post edited by background on September 16
• kpr Posts: 297

  September 16

  With that requirements list - particular no monthly fee - and wanting to exclude Blender (and Cycles) then... [tumbleweed]
• Masterstroke Posts: 2,302

  September 17

  kpr said:

  With that requirements list - particular no monthly fee - and wanting to exclude Blender (and Cycles) then... [tumbleweed]

  I know, right? 
• Artini Posts: 10,304

  September 17

  Personally I think Daz Studio is the best for quality rendering.

  Otherwise I use Unity, mostly for animations and advanced possibility for scripting anything.

   
• crosswind Posts: 9,545

  September 17 edited September 17

  AFAIK, there's no other pipeline / renderer that can mostly meet what you require in "You DO need"... except for Blender (pipeline with DTB or Diffeo...) and UE (pipeline with latest bridge in here : https://github.com/David-Vodhanel/DazToUnreal/releases/). 

  Alternatively, if you like sort of style in here: https://blu1304.artstation.com/, then Renderman is one of the options. I'm learning it but "unfortunately" which is based on Blender... however it also supports other softwares.

  Post edited by crosswind on September 17
• WendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,047

  September 17

  why

  I mean there definitely are better renderers out there but not free and it is possible to export to them but you have iray already and nothing free is likely better without work and Blender is the obvious one in that catagory.

  I use Unreal Engine and Octane but I wouldn't actually say they are better than iray but are a fair bit of work getting there but I do animations and the extra work in my case is still faster than using iray on my PC because I do animations 
• crosswind Posts: 9,545

  September 17 edited September 17

  WendyLuvsCatz said:

  why

  I mean there definitely are better renderers out there but not free and it is possible to export to them but you have iray already and nothing free is likely better without work and Blender is the obvious one in that catagory.

  I use Unreal Engine and Octane but I wouldn't actually say they are better than iray but are a fair bit of work getting there but I do animations and the extra work in my case is still faster than using iray on my PC because I do animations 

  It seems that OP doesn't really care about free or paid (but better be perpetual license...?) but "what he DOES want" in the above list still shows a high demand, e.g. just the 1st point (- quick and easy SCENE export, import) may kick out most of the platforms / renderers, let alone: - support of geografts and geoshells; and - fully textured with material conversion to the host rendering software...

  ...while Blender has Diffeo, UE has DTU that Thomas and David have been spending lots of effort and time on developing the bridges to make it effective in terms the above point 1, at least.

  Marmoset, Renderman, Maya, C4D, so on and so forth, will cost more time 'n effort in terms of point 1 and 3, and making "geo-grafts and geoshells work" requires work arounds, etc. etc.

  Post edited by crosswind on September 17
• Afrodite-Ohki Posts: 33

  September 17

  Believe me: I'm opposite of Sheldon Cooper and I use Blender. It's not nearly as dependant on shortcuts as it used to be - though yes, there's a learning curve at the start there.

  Have you heard of B For Artist? It's a Blender version made specifically to go around that - every single thing has a menu command/button/something visual you don't have to memorize. All the menus have tidy color-coded icons to help you find stuff. All the repeated/weird placed menu commands have been repositioned to make more sense for a non-technical point of view. And it's also free.
• Masterstroke Posts: 2,302

  September 17

  To be clear, paid software is not the problem (within limits, of course)
  Monthly or annual subscriptions are the problem and a strict No Go!
• WendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,047

  September 26 edited September 26

  Mental Ray apparently

  I just remembered DAZ exports mi files

  is that in your budget Masterstroke?

  edit, apparently Nvidia bought and discontinued it

  but maybe something else imports the file

  Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on September 26
• Unseen Posts: 757

  September 26 edited September 27

  Perhaps this plugin (for Luxrender): ?

  https://github.com/danielbui78/reality

  It seems to be an updated version of Reality (Paolo Ciccone) by another person (danielbui78). Not tried it, though...

  Edit:

  Another DS plugin for LuxCoreRender (also by danielbui78):

  https://github.com/danielbui78/yaluxplug

  And another one (Luxrender):

  https://github.com/Omniflux/reality

  Not tried either.

  Hope this helps.

   

  JAWOTP

  Post edited by Unseen on September 27