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I finally broke down and purchased this utility, and just finished my first render with it. I chose one that overloaded my card and dumped down to CPU, then ran for 10 hours to only get to 20% convergence. I ran just the first option on the script, at 2x and not only does it fit on the card now, it ran for not quite 6 hours (I render everything at 3840x6827, so long renders are expected, and this one was a very complex environment with 6 Genesis 3 figures and several effects that I've noticed before have a significant impact) and got to full 95% convergence. Comparing the two renders side by side, there is no noticeable detail loss on the optimized one. On top of that, because of the much better convergence, the optimized render actually looks better than the original. It looks like I am definitely going to be a convert, and am thus far very glad I picked this utility up.
Wow, thats really nice from you! I thank you too!! Well writting down the manual is not the funniest moment when I make the product, but I think that not only it is helpful for the users, but also, it can help making a better product. Because when I am forced to explain how the product works, I am forced to have an external look at it, and sometimes it makes me reorganise things differently, add or remove options, etc, etc... I'm really happy to see that a few people read it, because when I write down the documentation, I am so often under the impression almost nobody will read it. Now with the few of you who answered, I'll be more confident next time I'll make a documentation :)
Thanks!!! That's it, I try to keep it intuitive as much as possible, so that everybody "in a hurry" is happy, but the manual is here for people who really like to or need to go further in the optimization.
6 Genesis 3 people on a 3840*6827 image !?! I should update my definition of what an heavy render is !!! I'm really happy for you it helped you so much :)
Thanks a lot for this feedback!
Indeed, in a lot of cases, clicking the first button can be enough to fit in your video cards the scenes which could not fit in, without any quality loss. A lot of elements in a scene come with the full size texture maps, which can be required for close ups, but which are far too big for your own render. This is why at the end there is no quality loss, because for instance, at the distance you see it, a 1024x1024 image is far enough.
I'm glad you liked the results of the optimizer, and I hope it will help you producing bigger scenes as you did before, and rendering faster the other ones!
Very glad you do a manual! I'm one of those who uses and appreciates them. Just wanted to put my vote/"thank you!" in . :)
Another vote and thank you for the manual. I tend to jump in and try things then read the manual (I know, I'm backwards lol) but I always appreciate directions!
Lol! Thanks!
Good to know.
I was wondering, if I made videos instead of paper manual, how people would react? Because in my opinion, showing directly in a video is more efficient, but I've read here and there that people prefer pdf, which can also be understood. Any opinion about that?
I don't think I need a tutorial, but I think it goes beyond 'prefer a pdf.' I _loathe_ video tutorials. Like, hate of a thousand suns.
I don't use Blender mostly because it requires a lot of instruction, and that is almost exclusively in the form of video. I'd rather save up $1000 to buy software.
The thing about video is that it can be hell for people with sensory or focus issues.
Personally, I hate them because if I need to remember the steps to do BLA I have to ... go back to the video tutorial and either take exhaustive notes (at which point I'm turning a video tutorial into my own pdf, so..) or try to remember where in the video it is. I have to try to copy links or see text that might be rather small or fuzzy. Blegh. Then that assumes the person speaks clearly and the pacing/flow of the tutorial actually works well.
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE
(But I love you!)
I prefer a PDF by far. I will watch videos if I'm truly desperate and there's nothing else. But I have to be truly desperate... Videos are not good for reference at all. And you have to pause them 10 million times. I think they're easier to make for the author, but much harder to use for the customer. I'm the type that is willing to pay for PDF if I have to, rather than watch a free video.
PDF for me all the way.
Interesting. I like them both about equally to be honest. I don't mind videos most of the time, as I usually have the video open on my laptop and the product open on my pc and I follow along, pausing as I need to. I'm definitely a visual learner. But I also like PDF's so I'm okay with it either way. Both is a bonus for me but I certainly would not expect that from a vendor.
My sentiments too. I can't see why there is such a dislike of video ... monkey see, monkey do ... the easiest way to learn. However, I get the point about forgetting - my short-term memory is all but shot these days so skipping back and forth can be a bother. A PDF manual can be of real value if it is well written. I have written a few myself and am aware of how easy it is to skip vital bits of information that leave people tearing their hair out. Or to make assumptions of prior knowledge that the reader doesn't have. That can be so frustrating.
I'm actually a very visual learner, but I prefer diagrams and pictures rather than video so I don't miss stuff.
First of all, let me say that I have a boatload (Queen Mary size) of video tutorials. So many that I am seriously thinking of trying out Dragon Naturally Speaking to convert them to text and then pdf -- because I have yet to find anything that can do searches in video. And if I can't do a search, I need to take screen captures and notes, and build my own index.
Good point about searches. The closest thing to that is the little preview window that follows the scrub slider at the bottom of many YouTube videos. Not really a search but it can save some time.
I'm a very visual learner too, but since I'm partially deaf I need some kind of subtitles for videos to be of any real use to me. In which case, whoever's doing all that writing would probably be better off just making a pdf instead :)
i really really prefer pdfs for learning or reference material.
bookmarking and flipping back and forth between two pages is easy.
you can print a pdf and make notes in the margins...or cross-index by noting other relevant page numbers there.
you can read a passage you don't quite understand as many times as you need to without dealing with rewind/stop/replay issues.
you don't have to turn the sound down on a pdf if you want to work with it while everyone else in the house is asleep.
etc...
:)
j
That 'boatload' I mentioned? Need a bigger boat. 139 GB, 4,055 files, 341 folders. In the primary tutorial directory. And then there's a stack of DVDs, and a bunch of Youtube videos I haven't sorted down yet.
Yeah. Search is a requirement.
Thank you ALL for answering!!!
Well I understand a lot of people prefer a written pdf, so this is what I'll go on proposing as a technical manual for my products.
I was thinking about making video tutorials, not manual help files, but tutorials. Now I have a doubt wether I should include in them a pdf too, but it is going to double, and even more the work... The paper version would not be enough, this would be about things I was used to teach to my students, and it is clear that a video support is important. I have to think about it, how to have everybody satisfied... I think in my software, I have a way to make a webpage which can link to places in the video, which could be useful for a precise index, but I never used it. Well I have to think about that... Thanks!
I don't know how easy this would be to add, but would it be possible to add an option to save as jpg?
I'm finding that a reasonable quality jpg is usually fine for a lot of textures, but some people use rather more memory-intensive pngs. And that adds up faaaast.
I mean, it's not hard to batch convert png to jpg... but then you have to go through and change image maps on everything. Ugh
and add having the ability to render in .MP4, .MKV or even HTML5. .AVI is too outdated for today's video standards
oops. i thought this was the "what features you want to have in DAZ Studio 5" thread. i had a lot of tabs open and i got them confused.
I'm not sure I can handle the format of the file, but as you say, batch converter exist. But then you don't have to change image maps on everything. What you have to do is, for instance but there are other technics, "Store" your scene using the store script, then batch convert your png to jpg. Then you have to edit the text file you stored (replace all .png by .jpg), and restore on the elements for which you want png to become jpg. By curiosity, what annoys you in png files?
Lol now worry at all !!
Simply that png files are generally bigger than jpg for no noticeable benefit. If I can cut all file sizes by half with a 'quality 10' jpg and it still looks fine, then I've just made a huge difference in fitting my scene on my GPU.
Looking over a scene I converted, in some cases jpg size is 1/4 the size of the png! And I'm looking at the maps side by side, cannot spot the difference
OK I understand. When trying to play with Env Maps (which initially was in the optimizer, but removed later on), I tried to convert hdr to tiff. But the quality loss was too huge. Now the way the script is written, it is not obvious to make an option to convert png to jpg. If there is a way to do it, a separate script would be preferable.
That's fine, the method you outlined works!
Now I'm muuuch less likely to hit my GPU RAM limit.
Now I'm running aground of 'oh, all these images were gamma 0 and now are gamma 1 and look wrong.' nngh
Can't be easy, can it.
Ok, sorry for the waste of time, further testing shows negligable memory savings from switching to jpg. I'm a doofus. ;)
(Because Daz converts to it's own internal format anyway so it doesn't actually matter much)
I was also really astonished you saw such a difference and was planning to have a look at it tonight... Good news it does not work, I'll be able to play overwatch instead of working :)
I confirm, that this is VERY IMPORTANT tool to have. Why? It is almost impossible to render something on GPU with 6GB VRAM without it. It almost always switch to CPU, because of memory requirements for scenes.
This tool helps very FAST and EASY to adjust scene that it will render on GPU. For me it usually takes a few click, where I pick downsize all background object by 2 and that is it.
I do not know if I do it right, but before I use it, I save copy of my DUF file, open it and select only "V3DSO 02 Scene Optimizer".
I do not restore anything after, because I am sure that original file has not been changed and so far I understand, it doesn´t rewrite original file in library, so ...
For those they want to see how it works, I found nice video on youtube. For me this video is better then manual, but that is me.
So thank you for this tool and I hope you will continue to improve it :)
I have just bought and started using Skin Builder 3 and when I completed a character with her new skin I ran the Scene Optimizer and all looked perfectly good. Except that SB3 creates temporary files which need cleaning out frequently (that one character created 1.8GB of tempory files). By clearing them out, however, the saved scene I created earlier with Scene Optimzer now doesn;t find the textures - I get lots of "file not found" errors. Can someone give me a hint on how to work around this problem - I know that people do use these two utilities together.