United3dArtists Archive

jamesmc · Post by **jamesmc** » 27 May 2015, 17:06

Quick play with the Iray render engine in the new Daz 4.8.

Just loaded a 20 mb "Bike" FBX.
No lights added, just default settings.

took about 8 minutes
screen shot of the render with alpha background in first shot.

Will try and read the instructions later.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 28 May 2015, 00:48

Documentation and information for 4.8 Iradium / Iray

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/56756/

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/56788/

Edit: some more

Iray Uber Shader: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/s ... ader/start

Render Panel (not much there yet): http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/s ... iray/start

jamesmc · Post by **jamesmc** » 28 May 2015, 01:44

Finis wrote:Documentation and information for 4.8 Iradium / Iray

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/56756/

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/56788/

Thanks Finis! I salute you!

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 28 May 2015, 01:56

Welcome sir. Not much documentation there yet and it seems the Iray materials aren't there yet (this is a beta). That one thread hopefully will be updated with new doc stuff and when the missing Iray resources are added.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 01 Jun 2015, 03:19

I found the Iray shaders. Content Library tab (not smart content tab) -> Categories -> Shaders -> Iray

Render time of a simple test is not impressive. CPU + GPU mode pegs all cpu and gpu cores (gt 640, 380 cores, thanks customer who gave it to me) 3 minutes = less than 1% done. Test with caustics on (saw none) and architectural mode on. Might be faster without architectural mode. I think A mode is MLT which is slow.

RAYMAN · Post by **RAYMAN** » 01 Jun 2015, 21:17

There are a lot of renderengines out there and many of them are quite nice...but a few trump them with either speed or realistic renders or the amount of objects that you can use due to instancing.......its also sometimes a big difference what use they make of hardware.....well its aleays nice trying out new things......i'm into 3d printing lately...making tools for my work and sending the files to Germany...because I found a place with the best price....realy interesting times.....

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 10 Jun 2015, 13:08

That's cool Rayman.

Has anyone done anything more with the Iray rendering?

This thread (here) is being updated with new links to Daz-Iray info. The docs and info are a little more useful now.

pugman 1 · Post by **pugman 1** » 10 Jun 2015, 14:01

I use Marmoset toolbag 2 -very simple to use and very good

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 10 Jun 2015, 14:43

Pretty nice package Pugman. http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag

I watched most of this tut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5FZ5gS9v50 and it helped a lot.

I converted my Baby Hulk re-gifting picture to Iray Uber Shader as in the video and made two planes used as lights to emit light Iray style. The material conversion was great so using your old Daz scenes or stuff isn't a problem. Much better than re-texturing it all.

With gpu only render (GT 640, 380 cuda cores), photo real mode but archetectural mode and caustics off it took 9 minutes to finish this picture.
Gpu + cpu mode took about the same time.
With architectural mode on it was 34% done in 9 minutes. I believe that mode is MLT.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 13 Jun 2015, 03:19

Here's a character from Golden Age and Manta Submarine Ferry and ferry seats with different Iray lighting. Everything has the Iray uber shader.

I'll try Blender's cloth simulation on clothes sometime. Daz fits clothes fairly well but has no gravity or cloth simulation.

Edit: Images here vi ... 792#p46792

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 19 Jun 2015, 18:56

I played with this some more. So far the "gpu acceleration" is not providing much acceleration. It really is not much faster than old fashioned cpu rendering like 3Dlight or kerkythea. Simple tests showed the expected: cpu + gpu fastest, gpu only faster than cpu only (around 2x). My Gt 640 is a modest card and a room full of computers on a network each stuffed full of these would be fast but I think gpu rendering should be much much faster than cpu, like 10x, even with a lower end card.

These tests and pictures were done without caustics and "archetectural" mode (still not sure if that is MLT but it is sloooow).

Good things: easy to use for Daz users (bit of learning and finding the resources and how-to's a first), apply Iray Uber Shader converts old Daz items to Iray, makes pretty pictures. Iray shader works with 3Delight too but it doesn't like the new photometric lights.
Bad things: slow compared to expectations and hype.

With Blender Cycles in mind I tried overclocking my geforce with values recommended as moderate ones. Temps remained ok but it was unstable and the driver would crash soon. That made incredible improvement on tests focused on gaming stuff (frame rate on a test increased from 10 to 35!) but made no difference on photoreal mode in Daz during the time before driver crash.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 21 Jun 2015, 01:16

I made a simple test scene to compare Kerkythea and Iray speed. Disappointing but also informative. Iray keeps crashing my graphics card driver and gives no perceptible speed increase.

Test
Kerkythea: MLT+BPT, cpu only (it has no gpu mode)
Iray: photoreal with architectural mode and caustics and cpu+gpu.

I ran KT for an hour, saved picture, then ran Iray for an hour and visually compared pictures.

Results
After an hour of rendering the images were at about the same level of completeness by visual inspection. Then the driver crashed.

So for a GT 640 there is no gain in speed with Daz Iray. Sure you could throw a lot of hardware at it but a new 64 bit program using cpu plus gpu should be faster than an old free 32 bit cpu only program that is sort of a public beta test.

This also implies, though I didn't test, that Iray in cpu only mode is pitifully slow. That is unfortunate since due to crashing I'd have to run it in cpu only mode.

Credit though that crashes could come from 4.8 being a beta, I think, or since my card is not to minimum specs recommended. It did run for renders of two hours on other images.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 21 Jun 2015, 17:41

Here is a better test to see if gpu acceleration really helps with my setup.

I set Max Samples to 25 so the render would stop at 25 iterations. Then I rendered the scene above with cpu, gpu, and gpu + cpu and noted the time it took. Results:

25 iterations
cpu + gpu: render time 5m 21.39s, 12.86 seconds per iteration
cpu only: render time 5m 21.72s, 12.87 seconds per iteration
gpu only: render time 22m 5.32s, 53.01 seconds per iteration

So for my set up Iray is a cpu renderer with no practical benefit from the gpu. On the bright side it is not slower than Kerkythea as a cpu renderer. However, a 64 bit cpu renderer should be faster than a 32 bit one.

Graphics card is GT640, 2GB memory, 901MHz, 384 cuda cores.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 22 Jun 2015, 03:02

I did the test above again with architectural and caustics off. cpu only and gpu only timed about the same at just over 2 seconds. cpu + gpu was just over 1 second. So gpu render is really slow with one or both of those options on.

RAYMAN · Post by **RAYMAN** » 22 Jun 2015, 14:34

Finis wrote:I did the test above again with architectural and caustics off. cpu only and gpu only timed about the same at just over 2 seconds. cpu + gpu was just over 1 second. So gpu render is really slow with one or both of those options on.

And the real great drawback of Kerkythea is that its not fast!
Thea is better quality output and up to 5x faster.....with some sizes......actually almost realtime...you can try it out there is a working test version that only has the drawback of
watermarking........the only thing I fear is the development of Thea because Giannis is im Greece..and with all the trouble there ..well we will see.....
Ps you can load Kerkythea scenes directly into Thea and make a gpu render....

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 22 Jun 2015, 14:44

Thanks Rayman. I can't buy Thea so there's no point in trying it. It is great though!

I should stop playing with Daz-Iray and focus on my move to Blender and Cycles or other Blender compatible free/cheap rendering but since Daz-Iray is free and I already know how to use Daz it is easy for me to learn the Iray stuff ...

I found that caustics is the super slow thing. Architectural mode, possibly MLT, supposedly does caustics but the caustics option does it much better. So except for jewels or such I probably don't need to activate that.

Previous post said "seconds" but should have been "minutes".

RAYMAN · Post by **RAYMAN** » 23 Jun 2015, 12:47

Finis wrote:Thanks Rayman. I can't buy Thea so there's no point in trying it. It is great though!......

I should stop playing.....

Well playing around isnt cheap either..unless you think your
time isnt worth anything...and you have a bunch of solar panels
in your garden that make the electricity.....

A full size computer runs on 300 watt at almost full load and for
a simple render that runs over night......thats math....
Its a philosophical question....
I payed some money for a decent half dozen of tools and
they work well... I dont get grey hair over my tools anymore..
I dont spend time testing other then testing my work files...
...in the long run its about having fun and making money at the same
time.......its like gardening with the right tools ....and there are big
quality differences......

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 21 Jul 2015, 03:28

Iray can use all the Nvidia cards in your system but I found the video card driver crashes often when using all resources. I put my GT610 back in and it runs the screen while the GT640 and cpu render. That is stable.

Daz changed their forum. Big mess. I was going to post a little there. Maybe get fashion design advice for the dress from Golden Age. Not now. Even when they clean up the forum mess it now requires ajax.googleapis.com and google is evil. Maybe the search, when fixed, won't need that.

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