What I don't like about iRay
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Posts: 1,204
The surface controls are so un-user-friendly, you hardly understand what you are doing, even as an experienced Daz user I'm totally lost. I have this theory that it was designed that way, to make you get fed up and buy shaders. You practicly have to have a degree, just to make fabric not look like hardened plastic. :/
I don't mean to sound whiny. But it's annoying the way the surfaces are so vague about what they actually do. Maybe a delayed window tip to give a better description of the surface control your curser is hovering over would be nice.
Like if I had my mouse over Glossy Reflectivity for like 3 seconds. A small description would pop up and explain what "Glossy Reflectivity" means in terms normal people can understand.
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The new surfaces can be a bit intimidating at first, but one positive is that often complexity can mean more possibilities of what's possible in the longer term.
Here are some resources that might help you to feeling more comfortable with them.
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/surfaces/shaders/iray_uber_shader/start
http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Iray-Surfaces-And-What-They-Mean-519346747
For what it's worth, I'm finding Iray stuff easier to learn than 3DL stuff.
Because with 3DL stuff, a lot of stuff had no connection to the real world and I just had to sort of come up with an elaborate pile of adjustments to hit some target.
Metallicity - This is a main property of the PBR Metallicity/Roughness shader. The default 0 value (off) sets the shader up as a dielectric (or non-metal) surface. Setting the value to 1 (on) gives the surface the properties of metal. When turned on, the metal properties will over-ride all other shader properties with the exception of Refraction Weight.
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That would be a good popup window. This is photoshopped, but to give you an idea of what I mean. Lets say I held my mouse over Metallacity for 3 seconds. This would pop up.
I have to agree. I am used to Reality and Luxrender and can figure out what each setting means in the Reality dialogue, but with Iray, even though I can get some good results at times, I feel like I have no control, that it's all pretty much controlled by what the vendor set up or using a preset.
Thanks for the links Design Anvil, will give those a read and see if it helps.
Mind you, I find Daz's lack of anything approaching reasonable documentation to be a major 'cost' of using DS.
Agree.
I can't count how many times I was lost with uberenviorment 2.1 and had to learn by trial and error because nothing was properly documented. The only thing I learned from the documents is that occlusion samples make it look nicer. lol...
Oh but they are quick to release light presets for money... Of course. But they dont tell you how to make your own. You have to desect the light presets you buy to figure out how it was done. Same can be said about the shaders. The only way to get a proper understanding of how to make things look nice, is by desecting what you've purchaced.
I can't say the same is true for Reality. Paolo runs a great company, and documents his program very well, and if you have a problem. Runtime DNA is quick to help you solve the problem, and if it's the program, Paolo is quick to update his program with a patch. I have a lot of respect for Reality and Lux renderer.
I've learned to accept that we have two choices:
Continue enjoying a free program, or
Pay upwards of $500 for each major upgrade so they can hire a staff of writers to create a (good) manual.
EDIT: If it wasn't free, I would've never gotten started with 3D art, so I have to thank them for that. Nevertheless, to Angel's point, they could most certainly learn a lot from Paolo.
Oh sure. That's why I frame it as a cost.
I remember when 4.0 was released in 2011. It was the first time they tried charging anything for DS. They wanted $430 for the Pro version, or $230 for the Advanced. I couldn't afford either, so I upgraded to Poser Pro 2012 for $150.
As for Iray, the learning curve is quite a bit steaper than Reality, but I've found that I like having more options to experiment with, and using an nVidia-based graphics card lets me take advantage of its render speed.
One tip I would like to offer anyone learning how to use Iray for the first time, start small. Create a primitive with only one surface - perhaps a sphere - apply the Iray Uber Surface shader to it, and use that to learn your way around. Keep in mind, you're not trying to create anything fancy, just learning what all of the options do.
Another tip: Load a simple figure with 3DL mats, apply the Iray Uber surface to one of its surfaces, and tell Iray to keep the texture maps. Study the modifications the shader made, and use what you learn to tweak them further.
Different people seem to find different things easy, personally I found Reality so buggy that the learning curve was way off the chart, it doesn't seem to have improved a great deal with updates, the advertised 20 times faster doesn't appear to actually work for most people, I didn't notice much af an increase in speed at all and although Paolo's custumer service is good it really depends on who you are, at times it appears as if he considerers some problems people have as criticisms and therefore won't address them.
Iray on the other hand, although not fast on my machine is hell of a lot quicker than Reality and for me is a great deal easier and more straightforward to work with and understand, it seems a lot more in keeping with 3DL than reality is.
Lights are all there within DS you don't have to make your own, setting up lights is just something you have to learn for each program and Daz don't not release documentation just so vendors can make money vendors make the products because people like one click solutions.
Daz have stated that because they update the programe often it would be difficult to keep documentation up to date.
The forums here hold a wealth of information on Iray and setting and surface and lighting. you just have to sift through it.
This is me too. Iray is really easy for me to adjust and get different results, but 3DL is just alien dials.
I find Iray fairly easy to figure out and just entered an image into the forum team render contest done in iray...
What I don't like about Iray and Luxrender. How slow they are in CPU only mode. Of course, for what they do, it is understandable.
I really need an NVidia card for Iray.
LOL! Can't agree more! :D
This is why I ran out and bought a second hand NVidia card for $80 after about a week of attempting to CPU Iray. Just make sure it has CUDA.
I certainly agree with the OP that the material settings of iRay Uber are not trivial to understand, with many sliders having similar names and having to work out what the relevance of top coat etc is.
For example with the default 3DL shader to make something transparent, or semi-transparent, like Water or Glass, you just reduced its Opacity, but with iRay Uber you have to reduce "Glossy Roughness" and increase the "Refraction Weight", not at all obvious.
What I do like about iRay is the light set up. Just place lights where they would be in real life, change the Tone Mapping to get the level of overall light you want and your done. You can then render at different angles in the scene, move the characters/props around, and not need to keep fiddling with spot lights etc to prevent certain parts of the scene coming out too dark, and other areas too light.
That said, if I did not have a decent nVidia card (in my case the GTX 970) I would still be rendering with 3DL. I do not have the patience for any render that significantly exceeds 30 mins.
Mind you, I just started learning 3DL stuff about a year ago, so the learning curve with THAT is fresh in my memory.
As for render times and labels, it also helps that I was starting to get into more complex 3DL shaders. So I was ALREADY setting refraction weight (with UberShader) if I wanted something to behave like actual glass (and you can still set opacity in Iray, renamed to Cutout -- I've actually found it useful to do so when I want 'windows' that don't actually distort). And then I was starting to use meshlights and fog effects... so I was getting hour+ renders in 3DL. Ugh.
Now all that SAID, there are definitely some things about 3DL that are worth using it over Iray, at least occasionally.
There are loads of special shaders and cameras that do cool things in 3DL that don't exist in Iray (not yet, possibly not ever). Procedural shaders, for example, or cartoon rendering.
If you want 'impossible' things, like light sources that don't show, or shadows from nothing, or other physically impossible things, while some of them can be pulled off in Iray, it's a lot easier in 3DL.
I like 3DL if I want to do a whole load of superfast renders where quality isn't really important, and I can see its appeal for heavily stylised images, but for general realism Iray is so much simpler for me. 3DL is like create a light, now choose if it has a shadow and what type, now choose what the shadow looks like ... with Iray you just make a light and the shadow is there and looks the way it should. I also really don't like how older skins, hairs, and eye reflections are shaded in one set pattern: it's supercool to see your hdri or background or whatever in a character's eyes and know that reflection or hair shine is there because it's meant to be in that lighting.
I have seen some really amazing pictures rendered with 3DL - I just have no idea how to do them and don't really have the inclination to learn when Iray exists and is actually designed for realism.
I really like 3Delight too. It has it's perks. If you don't mind it not being photoreal. It can net some great renders. One of my favorite 3Delight renders was this one of Skyler. I try to imagine it looking better in iray or reality, and I'm not sure if it would. http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/92233/
What I'd really love to have is a colour sheme for the lights, now to get a coloured light you have to trial and error with luminiscense and temperature and you have no idea about what you're doing. If you're turning something bluer or redder, brighter or duller. Or what happens to the shadows.
Just something like a RBG-scheme would be wonderful to have. Now, if you want an orange light you have to pull those pulleys up and down until you get somewhere near. And be content with pale ginger. But you can never have that perfect, saturated pumpkin light in iRay as in 3Dlight. And green light - forget it! And I so lack the ability to change direction of the light, to for instance having something lit from behind.
But I guess that's just me, I'm more for ambiences and emotions than daylight realism.
You can do all this in Iray. just move the light and set the light tint the same as you would in 3delight.
The thing is I don't know how to set a tint, because the colour numbering is not the same as the RGB scheme. luminiscense / temperature is something entirely different which secret I have yet to uncover.
Hera, you can just set temperature to 0 and set emission color to purple or whatever.
Heres Genesis 3 lit from behind by a green spot light from behind in Iray
You're overthinking, you literally do it the exact same way you do it in 3delight, as in you use the exact same slot.
I think of Iray and 3DL like learning to play the piano vs. the violin.
Piano, you have the comfort of knowing if you hit THAT note, you've hit a middle C. There's no learning curve to 'how do I make a middle C,' though you then have the basic mastery of reading sheet music and then trying to hit the keys.
Violin, hoo boy. You have a lot of learning just to stop sounding like a screeching cat.
But in both cases, once you hit a certain point, you have to sit down and figure out how lighting works and how to set up a good scene and so forth.
The question for me there is Iray the piano or the violin, I got a lot more screeching cats with 3delight (though to grossly extend this metaphor even further, by the time iray came around I was already pretty good at reading music)
Personally I think while they both have learning curves ts way easier to get to "passable" with Iray than 3delight, its just if you're already familiar with 3delight, Sometimes you forget how much time it took you to get to that point.
Iray is the piano in the example, yes. ;)
It's a lot easier to get a basically realistic, cool looking render in Iray. Buuuut... it can be easy to be lulled into complacency and then go 'wait, how did they do THAT render??' Because there's a looooot of learning and talent between playing chopsticks and playing like Vladimir Horowitz (best pianist evar).
This is a good point. Iray is specifically for "push button" rendering, intentionally designed so there are few controls.
Pixar's movies, considered some of the best examples of modern animation, uses a biased renderer, same as 3Delight is biased. There are reasons for using this type or renderer, but Pixar has a veritable army of CG experts who live, breathe, and eat the math involved in making their scenes look good. Even a biased renderer can produce a 100% realistic scene, but it's 1000x harder.
(Even if you don't like classical music, do yourself a favor and go
and turn off the sound and skip to minute 3 or so and just watch his HANDS. Like spastic spiders)