IRAY render Setting presets

Griffin Avid

Surprised no one's thought of this as a product. Something that runs the gamut of 'quick render test" to 'high quality in a few hours'. lol

1) The manual for iRay seems pretty light as a definitive guide. Some features and options not mentioned , explained or discussed.

2) researching leads me to tutorials where even the author uses phrases like "I'm not sure, but..." "It seems" and "as far as I can tell" Some end with 'I'll test this more later...'

3) Forum threads that are supposed to answer questions about better render times NEVER discuss iRay settings and always circle around computer specs.

4) Everything else (number of objects, lighting, skydome, cameras, backdrops, surfaces, shaders, etc) is named as factors to tweak, but never iRay itself.

5) It seems since 4.9X version of Daz dropped- all previous info is outdated- with references to menus and options that no longer exist.

6) Every blog/resource/lesson that claims or uses "guide/help IRAY render times" as a tag is more about the artists compositional skills than about, you know, render times.

7) Since so many new products in the Daz store are exclusive to IRAY, you'd think there'd be lots of info and support surrounding its use. Support would count as a few rendering presets that cover a lot of scenarios. 

8) Or another product that is a rendering engine that sits between IRAY and 3Delight. Compatible with iRay but less intensive...

​9) IRAY doesn't let some products show you a texture shaded scene before rendering. So a pre-render/draft setting with textures would be useful. 

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I mean, you could set the rendering up by computer specs, where your set up picks a decent rendering option that's useable.

i.e.there could be a range of options like GPU, ram etc....

Or a wide range with vague quality sliders, like from 1 to 10.

I'd like to trade quality for speed if I could figure out how to do it.

Also since some of the pros like to cite film or photography as an exact working system that's 1 for 1 simulated by IRAY, I'd like all the tools then that are available. I use white balance. Where is that as a tool? I have light meters. Where is that? Those would be the tools you'd use to figure what needs adjusting in your scene. Maybe that as an add on product, unless it's available already and the search engine didn't find it or I missed it somewhere.

 

If it sounds strange, imagine an add-on that scans your scene and gives you details based on chose camera and other settings. Some apps have pre-flight checks. We could use that. Some results would indicate a dark scene etc....then you'd know what to work on BEFORE rendering. 

 

Enough for now...

father1776

I can't give you good settings....I don't own your computer.

There are so many variables involved with settings (ya it is a pain, agreed)

any suggestion I would bring up would be useless without my set up.

(FYI, running with a beefed up laptop so my render time is very long with no way to change it)

a good manual would be nice.

good luck though.

 

Griffin Avid

Well okay I give you my specs and then what? Not to be rude, but do you simply suggest I get a better [insert hardware aspect] to beef up my system? That's how most of these threads go. I see someone say Daz is slow or problematic and someone says " get this card, get more ram, get a better gpu/cpu etc. three threads down, someone has speed problems with the same specs suggested as above and the advice is 'the same thing : 'an even more powerful machine'. It's a never ending ladder of steps for buying better computer hardware.

 

i just upgraded to a GeForce 1060 card, 16 gigs ram and an i7 cpu. 3delight looked great and was quick Before I upgraded. Seeing so many items and add-ons using IRAy, I started using that to render. Many of my products do not render without it. Hello terra-dome 3 and the 8 add ins I bought for it ????

Lets cut to the meat.

no where does Daz suggest recommended specs for using their products. Daz is free and thats the hook. Free software. The store is the gotcha where you will spend those thousands buying generations of clothing props figures etc...not to mention all the software add-ons that would probably be free if the software cost something at the onset. Who knows.

 

the add speak says get started today and that's all you will do out of the box. Get started.

who really dives into this with a super rig? Every other pursuit and discipline has a shallow end of the pool. Once you work with IRAy products you are certainly headed in to deep waters. That's cool but somewhere there should be a caution like " you can buy this but unless you have x-specs forget about rendering in one session. Prepare to set and forget and watch a movie and come back." Lol 

 

thats why I think more support should be lofted at getting lesser set ups rendering quickly or sufficiently fast enough to make iRay viable.

i understand pros but some people on here are just starting out - technically the most important customer- and they direct information and not a study in graphic technologies to make hair and skin look like the art advertised on the box.????

Please someone think about a product that adds lots of preset and maybe even an offline outside the box component to help scan your system and optimize your render settings. Nvidia should probably help in that arena. And seeing how much work Daz is putting behind advertising iRay, they should be something to make rendering easier to get going.

 

finally, I'm not a graphic artist by trade or training. I am a guy with stories. That's all. It seemed Daz was the best/easiest way to get an engine to help tell stories. I think it was that way until IRAY added a steeper hardware and software curve.

id love to get you input on what I could do. I'm watching a video about IRAY and hoping that's a start. It says 15 frames per second for the start which is an old flash trick. We'll see. Thanks for reading.

Griffin Avid

So far this is the best working thing I've seen. This might be the place to start in making the presets package.

 

How To Render Faster in Iray

kaotkbliss

Even something such as a list things that increase render times and possible alternatives, perhaps from worst affenders to least or something. Like I've noticed that anytime I add a geoshell, Iray render times increase pretty drastically. Or maybe it's just the geoshell with the Iray water shader applied. It could even be the water shader itself. Items with large trans-maps tend to increase render times, or perhaps it's just the semi-transparent items that increase it.

Anyways, if there was a list like this one could mentally go through there scene while looking at the list and get a general idea of how their render time will be affected. And with possible alternatives to use, might be able to switch out some of their items for others, or use other methods to decrease render times on their own (and learn in the process)

Oso3D

Volume effects will slow down renders.

This is mostly going to kick in if you have Thin Shell: Off (because the item is then treated like a volume rather than a, well, thin shell). Refraction and Subsurface scattering will slow things down further.

Emission will slow down renders, based on how many facets the emitting surface has. A single 1 polygon plane emitting light isn't so bad. The entire surface of a Subd4 human figure emitting light is going to slooooow down.

Lack of light will slow down render completion because the engine has less to work with. It is better to flood a scene with light until things are well lit and then adjust the tone range in an image editor. If you use Photoshop or something similar, use Iray Canvas to output a 32 bit EXR beauty image. You can then adjust brightness with no artifacts (there's only so much you can adjust an 8 bit image).

It's better to start with a well lit scene and darken it. Ghost lights or just generally using photographer tricks to add diffuse light into the scene will help preserve the look of a dim scene without actually making it dim.

 

Griffin Avid

I just found two products that do have presets, Wow. Going to look into these....

This one does lighting (as you also mentioned)

I have this : http://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit

And this one has presets, like I suggested.

http://www.daz3d.com/render-studio-iray

It says : Five pre-set, ready to render scenes (Just add figures) are also included. Along with a full selection of Iray render settings from an extremely fast 'Draft' setting to a full production 'Ultra' setting. A 10 page PDF usereguide is included to help you get up and running within minutes.