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Yea I do the same thing. I have a default startup scene that has render settings adjusted so that Iray runs to 90% completion (because not much ever seems to happen between 90-95%) auto headlamp set always off, and the default dome is rotated to 35% (this puts the light coming down from the top left instead of behind the default camera position on the top right.) One day I'll probably swap it for a better HDRi but test renders are usually to see how characters or clothing renders so I like knowing that the default settings should always look pretty good as a baseline.
I don't know about in the past, but in 4.8 if you have a startup scene, load into Studio, change something, and then hit Save, it will still open the dialogue rather than autosaving over your startup file (just tested it with both menu save and ctrl+s.) Maybe it was an issue in a previous patch that has since been fixed?
People seem to have trouble locating this: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/new_features/4_8/start
Because a new features page isn't really where people go for an in depth guide to rendering settings. It's also not particularly easy to located even if you knew to look there of all places for a rendering guide. Starting from the main menu on the docs site you get the choice of User Guide, Reference Guide which we're meant to know is different somehow, then technical pages which aren't really help for normal users.
Actually if you click Help/Dcocumentation Center (wiki)/Daz Studio it takes you to a page where only options are v4.x and v3.x. The selections for v4.x are as follows. New Features is listed under documentation.
Documentation
New Features - This section presents a brief overview of the new features added to a version of the application.
User Guide - These documents provide tutorials, videos and tips to teach you how to use DAZ Studio to create works of art.
Reference Guide - This section breaks down DAZ Studio. Here, you will find what something is called, where you can find it, and more technical information regarding Studio's many features. After finding instructions in the User Guide, you can refer here for more specific information.
Yes, there is a lot of information there about the features and functionality of the Studio application. Unfortunately, the documentation detailing Iray is somewhat less than substantive, and in a number of cases, incomplete at best.
The Studio open on the side there is really easy to miss, but yes, I've seen those sections before.
New Features is not a reliable place to go for learning about an actual feature. People will almost only ever go to it looking for documentation on what was new on each version. Once 4.9 is released that Iray information will be relegated behind a link at the bottom of the 4.9 page, and who is going to check every single patch release to look for information on a specific topic?
User Guide is great for brand new users (and I read all of it when first starting Studio) but obviously not geared towards more experienced users, not does it even admit the existence of Iray. Its render settings section is only about 3DL without actually calling it that, which I found really confusing when I was starting out. I assume it's because it's out of date.
Reference Guide contains the following sections:
Terms (Glossary)
User Interface (UI)
Plugins
Technical Articles
Scripting
User Interface Styling
Some of these pages have useful information - most of them say they're outdated revisions at the top and most of the links lead to permission denied pages.
After much stubbornness and many dead end links, I did eventually stumble across the Iray help page, though, and it has some good stuff on it:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/render_settings/engine/nvidia_iray/start
Just kidding. However the Iray Shader page does actually have quite a lot of good documentation if you can ever find it:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/surfaces/shaders/iray_uber_shader/start
There certainly are gems of hidden information in the documentation center. The problem is that they are hidden. Aside from the beginner guide (and there's the excellent interactive guide in studio that covers most of it too.) items are located all over the place.
...the big advantage with Iray for me is I don't have to "fake" lighting. If I have props in a scene that would emit light, I can make them do so easily without having to build a whole array of spot and point lights. True it can take longer to render, but the results are so much better, even compared to UE.
While I worked for years with 3DL, I found Iray to be fairly easy to pick up, particularly since I worked with photography (using that stuff called "film") and the fact it too is integrated into the Daz programme using the same controls and UI.
The one downside for me (besides not having a GPU with enough memory for rendering the types of scenes I create) is not being able to use the Iray Sun with existing Skydomes. As I have an old Nvidia GPU (only 1 GB) I rarely if ever work in Iray view mode which is pretty much necessary when setting up a scene using HDRIs.
...I've played both, as well as concert organ, orchestral percussion, and single reeds (clarinet/saxophone).Each has their own unique set of challenges (try playing a Bach Fuge on the organ where the feet have to be able to play what the hands do).
Where I got lost with 3DL was Scripted Rendering, the Shader Mixer, and RSL. Yes, you could get some really fantastic results but I felt like, in a way, I was dealing more with Blender than Daz. Way too "technical" for my tastes. Another thing that made me look for an alternative to 3DL was the 4.7 update which broke several of the main tools I used. At first I turned to Reality/Lux, but the glacial rendering times as well as instabilities in the 4.0+ update made me almost want to hang it all up. Fortunately a few weeks after I uninstalled Reality and Lux and went back to 3DL, Iray appeared on the scene.
I really haven't looked back since.
And if you're learning to play the bagpipes, you're going to sound like a screeching cat no matter what you do!
Just a warning: almost every form of rendering OUTSIDE the Poser/Daz "verse" is moving almost entirely to PBR based rendering - Metalness / Roughness / Albedo instead of specular diffuse and reflectivity, just as an example.
I would be happy if IRAY would just render instead of crashing DA or crashing DS AND making me hard reboot my computerr.....
Somewhere, at some point, you will find a very similar post by me saying the same thing pretty much. This time, Daz Studio IS NOT user friendly like it used to be since "IRAY" - It's a mystery jigsaw puzzle that will take SOME OF US... months to figure... I love DS... but it HATE how HOW they have made using IRAY!
Can't... they would risk plagerism then... Paolo would not be happy! So they had to make their own way, BUT - looks like a genius with a high complicated IQ set it up... because my lamen's brain... is completely lost!
Iray simply follows the same concepts of any of the PBA render engines so people don't need to learn from Paolo as there is scads of free information out on the internet already about PBR. Where do you think the PA's learned it? We did a basic search on PBR and read things like this: http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice ; or these https://www.allegorithmic.com/pbr-guide. A few words are different but by and large it is the same concepts and ideals that we have always worked with.
They may be more complex and nuanced than standard DS shaders, but i found the old AOA or Uber shaders to be just as puzzling. Aside from reading up on the shaders - My advice would be to start with what you know - Diff, spec, glossy roughness. After that you can mess around with sliders and use interactive viewing to get an idea of what everything does (even if it's a vague idea). For instance, fabrics - i wouldnt use anything more than a diffuse map, a touch of spec and mid to high roughness. As mentioned above, PBR is becoming the standard across current gen engines and renderers, so it's best to get in some reading time.
Irays surface settings maybe a tad complex, but they are a far cry from messing around with cry engine or UE4.
I find I understand iray seetings fairly easily, but I am coming from a houdini backround, so I am very used to PBR. It was a pain in the ass to learn though for the first time, same with the light settings, learning to use the camera as you would a real camera, setting ISO and Fstop, and shutter speed.
The thing that really bugs me, is that iray seems to be poorly optimized for texture maps or something. I started out testing stuff, rendering one full figure with clothes and hair fit in my 2Gb Vram just fine, but two will not. Somehow I can play fallout 4 at ultra settings, with lots of 4k texture mods, CBBE people running around no problem, never dipping below 50 FPS expcept when it gets really crouded. But two genesis 3 girls, and it chokes.
I think that vendors should start offering more texture resolution setting option, with the push toward GPU rendering. Sure, end user can do it, but the vendor already knows where they put the maps, and we have to hunt for them. CPU iray is flat out garbage, iray made to sell high end nvidia cards, period. In mantra(A CPU PBR) I can render two full genesis 3 girls way faster than iray can render one with CPU.
The speed of iray when it works got me interested, plus it's a lot easier than having to pose > export > locate all the maps that don't export properly with the export map option(pisses me off to no end that bug), import, set up lighting > build new shaders, plug in the maps > render. I was really interested in Iray until I actually stopped testing it, and started trying to make art with it.
I am running a test now, had to export, locate all maps, now in the process of halfing them, see if that helps it fit in the Vram.
Hey there, Have you tried faststone photo resizer? It's free, and what i use when i want to reduce texture resolution en masse. You can do it by individual percentage or give everything an absolute texture size across the board. It does everything in bulk, so if you get a new g3 character with massive maps, you can just reduce the whole folder in one batch process. Just make sure you back up the originals.
Thanks, I will take a look at that for sure. I been doing it in photoshop one by one. Yeah, best practice is to copy and paste maps to a subfolder before resizing, only problem is that doing that for everything is gonna really start to bloat the runtime texture folder.
It just dawned on me, I wonder if daz is planning on adding mipmapping to iray render, that is one of the things that helps a lot in games. The map automatically resizes itself with an algorithm, depending how close to the camera the object is.
1. Games, especially hi-res replacement textures make use of mipmapped/compressed textures. Art rendering is an etriely different beast. You DO NOT want to compromise testures...so yes, they will take up much more video memory. Plus in a game there is a lot more reuse of the textures and a lot more swapping them in and out. It is not a flaw nor is it something that the vendors should have to worry about. 2 GB is reather low for art rendering...4 GB is really the bottom end.
2. It is not a bug that not all maps are loaded/'exported properly'. It is a limitation of the format used. If it is an obj export, that is very limited and very few maps will actually be used (diffuse, bump and transparency (and that one may/maynot be 'right') are the 'standards specified' ones).
3. Shader/material set up should never be considered when looking at whether or not the export 'worked'. No two renderers speak the same materials language, so saying that you have to set up materials again when using a different renderer, when using something other than the one they are native to, is not a bug/fault/problem...it's just a fact of life. There are open/'common formats that can be used instead of the proprietary shading languages that are currently used. They just aren't...it is not something that Daz can do much about, they didn't create the problem and don't make any of the renderers used.
Do it KD, photoshopping them one by one will drive you to drink, i swear. The original files are obviously quite bloated but if oyu reduce everything by 50% (2k skin maps) you're not contributing much to the file size.
Mipmapping is a good idea, but doesnt it work like LODs? As in, the further the character is from the camera, the lower the texture resolution? I don't know how much help that would be at render-time vs real-time. Then again, when doing large scenes i usually keep characters close to the camera at 4k, then characters at the back at around 1k. Maybe you can already do that with the current LOD system?
Yeah, exactly like LoD, except with texture maps.
1) I disagree, to a certain point. You do not really need a 4k map for rendering a midground or background person/clothing/whatever, unless you are kinda crazy like me and like to render at insane resloutions a lot. I guess I am just sick and tired of it all really. I have been trying to find a great pipeline to make my art for years, always hitting brick walls everywhere lol. I wish I was rich enough to afford the kinds of machines I see some people using, might make things a lot easier. I don't have a crappy PC, I don't think, but certainly not one of those 16 core beasts with 10 980Ti cards haha.
2)Is there any one format I can choose to get it to spit all the maps out, or even a combo? As it stands now, I export as obj, and mostly I get diffuse maps, some transmaps, rarely get bump or spec though, and have to go hunting for them. I would love just an export all texture used button, that would be helpful.
3) I understand that about renders, used cycles(in fact, if I recall correctly, you wrote a very helpful script that exported figures to blender, thanks, I used that at one time), maya mray, maya vray, houdini mantra now, just getting into iray. I wish I was really good at coding, and could write my own export/import stuff for say houdini. My big probelm with houdini is getting skin looking anything near realistic. I saw Iray renders, and was like woah. Now I am hitting the vram brick wall, and the brick wall of no dynamic strand hair. I can't win, maybe I should just give up this realism kick and just do stylized :D
I've personally just gotten used to editing every item i purchase. My products on daz for example are highly optimized and don't use massive textures because it does have a knock on effect to your render time - which is fine if you want a superior render i might add.
I'd say - when you get a new character, env or piece of clothing. Go through the skins, textures and light setups, then save them out as a scene subset and *that* is your new figure/prop/clothing. Then you know when you pull it into a scene, you don't have to mess around with settings again. For the same render price (time) as a fully decked out g3f with an HDRI, i could render a closed room full of figures - by re-using skins, not using so much sub-division, taking out the sss, dropping the texture resolution on some items. Iray and i are on good terms again, you just work to its strengths.
Sure why not. I mean I already do go through every product before installation to fix crappy icons, make tooltip icons and streamline folder structure at the very least lol. Sometimes I wonder if I am really saving that much time buying stuff, I mean I know when I buy a good character set I am, it takes forever to make good people, I suppose that is why we end up buying less and less each month. It would probably double my time of installation, but as you say, done once and never done again. It's just all the stuff I already have installed that would be an issue lol.
Bah, as an update, after halving all the textures, still no go for loading two into vram :(.
Oh, sorry for kinda hijacking your thread Angel - Wings, I probably should have started my own
This is true kinda. I am thankful I was able to afford what I got, even if it isn't all top of the line hardware and I envy those that get a new rig every year or 2 a bit lol.
Yeah it has gotten a tad more expensive. I bought an octocore cpu for 3dl, then IRAY popped up so i swapped out my radeon card for a gtx 970. I was a little bit niave, and it really struggled on its own. Now i've got a Gtx Titan x and the 970 running side by side, and even now i still have to be careful when it comes to scene composition. A scene can still take 2 minutes or two hours depending on how much leg work you do behind the scenes.
Mantra has absolutely spoiled me when it comes to amazing render times on cpu, and I only have a i5 2500(not 2500k). Huge images of full environments rendered in a few hours as opposed to a few days. It looks at millions of polies and bellylaughs at it and renders away. I guess I am going to have to dive back into that, i tried for a few weeks to get skin shader that looked well with my genesis people textures. I am great at making environments and such, people and animals, I am horrible. Maybe I will give 3delight in studio a chance for a week, maybe I will have better luck understanding it now than when I tried it a few years back. Decisions, decision, I am just sick of wasting time lol.
nice find
Just chipping in here to say that I am surprised Daz Studio doesn't have tool tips with all of these crazy named options they have (like the OP said, it feels like it was done purposely to confuse people). I thought Daz Studio was more user friend than Poser but that's clearly not the case. Maybe someone will make a "tooltip pack" for sale.