3D Software Help and Assistance. Ask Away.

[MissFortune]

I'm looking to try my hand at making some 3dcg art/renders/whatever you call them. What are the best/most popular programs and where/how should I start?

Do you mean making scenes, like the ones you see in games (VNs)? Or are you actually looking to make figures and models? They're two very different things. That being said, I'm going to roll with the assumption that you're looking to make the renders you see in games/VNs (Being a DIK, Sisterly Lust, etc.). I'm also going to assume you have a relatively beefy PC and Nvidia GPU (1660 Ti being the least I'd recommend, 20 series a good happy medium, 30 series will make life a lot easier.). If you're working on a lower end PC, you can still use Daz (see below), but it's going to be bit of a struggle. You can try looking into KoiKatsu (spelling is probably wrong) or Honey Select 1 or 2.

Daz is going to be the program you use, especially for a beginner. Then there's the assets. The Daz Marketplace, Renderosity, and Renderotica are where you're going to be buying assets (or you can pirate them. Which I'm morally against, but who cares what I think?), there are others but those three are probably the best of the bunch. YouTube tutorials for the UI and basic lighting techniques (regular photo/film lighting tutorials can also apply to Daz, as well. Though it may take a bit more work.) Beyond that, it's just learning lighting, posing/expressing the figures in a natural way, and just sort of putting it all together as you get a better understanding of it all.

If you're just making renders, then Daz and some sort of editor should be more than enough. Photoshop, Affinity, and Photopea being what I recommend. The latter of the three being a free, online clone of Photoshop. Lightroom could be good, too. That'd be where I start.

Maybe if you're into it, you can jump into Source Film Maker or Blender later, but neither are going to be as easy as Daz.

 

[Akkanero]

Do you mean making scenes...

Thankyou very much for pointing the way

 

[tripod70]

I thought I would ask here. I know there is an overwhelming wealth of DAZ knowledge here. I have an issue that has popped up here in the last week or so that is driving me crazy. Which is actually a short walk rather than a drive...
I am using DAZ V4.15.0.2 Pro

Just a couple of weeks ago I noticed that my render time to increase to the point that it is almost unusable. I have the renders set short by most standards so I can get things done quickly or updates would be months apart. I am getting exceptable renders for a VN I think.

Progressive Setting: Min=1
interval=5sec
Min Samples=100
Max samples=800
Max Time=270sec
Quality=On
Quality=2
Post SSIM=OFF (or ON it makes no difference it seems)

I have the currant ver of Nvidia Studio drivers installed.

What used to take only 5 min 20 secs @ 500 to 700 Iterations of the 800 now takes more than 45 minutes to just get to the Min 100 iterations where it finishes. ??

I have watched the GPU on the Nvidia monitor and it is running at 99/100% during the render period like always has. I can tell within 45 sec to a minute if it is working right or not by the sound. When the RTX 3080 kicks in it sounds like a jet. That doesn't happen now. The CPU monitor is as always around 8 to 12% . It isn't reverting back to CPU mode or DAZ would say so ( I think, or it used to. ) and the CPU would run WAO. The machine is an Alianware R11 with 11Gen i9, and the RTX 3080.

I have looked, and looked with Zero luck trying some info on the various DAZ forums. Which by the way is mostly useless.....

Does any one out here have any idea what I could try to get this thing back to how it was, and should be???????

HELP me Obi-Wan Kenobi !
Any help appreciated thanks

 

[linkinn]

I'am not sure if this will fix it for you, but you should disable Post SSIM, it disables your Render Quality settings as far as i know and replaces it with an intern logic of when Daz thinks your render is done.

Again, i might be wrong, i did some tests when they introduced it on Daz and never touched SSIM again.


Couple questions:

Did you check your rendering resolution? The only thing that can shoot your render time that high from nowhere is resolution (other than hardware problems) as far as i know.

Is this scene you are rendering a new one that you never rendered before? New environment, etc.

 

[MissFortune]

I have watched the GPU on the Nvidia monitor and it is running at 99/100% during the render period like always has. I can tell within 45 sec to a minute if it is working right or not by the sound. When the RTX 3080 kicks in it sounds like a jet. That doesn't happen now. The CPU monitor is as always around 8 to 12% . It isn't reverting back to CPU mode or DAZ would say so ( I think, or it used to. ) and the CPU would run WAO. The machine is an Alianware R11 with 11Gen i9, and the RTX 3080.

That poor GPU. . .that being said, it's entirely possible that your renders are being throttled due to heat as there's little to no air coming in through an R11. That isn't a great case, and is likely slowly killing your components much faster than a normal case would. There's absolutely no reason a 3080 should be taking that long to render anything. Even most 4K renders are close to done at nearly a half-hour. That kind of hardware should be moving a lot more quickly than 45 minutes. Something is up there.

First, double check your CPU fallback settings. Render Settings > Advanced > Make sure all CPU options are unchecked. If they are checked, uncheck them. Like so:



I basically have the same-esque system, only with a 10th Gen i7 and external, non-prebuilt hardware (technical term is escaping me). My settings are basically like this (below) at 4K, or even 2K. Gives me the freedom to cancel a render once I feel it's good enough to be presented in a VN.



The thing is, I've had some renders taken twenty minutes and I've had others take an hour or longer. It all really varies with how many characters and lights are in your scenes, along with stuff like fur or reflections bouncing everywhere. Lights themselves can be a killer when rendering new scenes.

 

[osanaiko]

tripod70

The way to know for sure why a render falls back to CPU is to look at the DAZ Logs.

You can open the logs via the menu: Help -> Troubleshooting -> View Log File

I recommend you turn off Iray viewport preview, as when that is enabled you get both Renders and Preview log entries in the file which makes it confusing.

It will be full of info about loading scenes/figures and previous renders. None of that is relevant for this issue, so delete everything in the log file and save the file. Close the file and then reopen from the menu.

Then start the render.

You will see a part where it is loading all the data. Then there will be a part about memory etc. Finally it will start having regular repeating entries as the render progresses.

In the "memory" section you can see if it uses GPU or falls back to CPU. Normally there is a line about "not enough memory" if that is the problem.

There are several other threads about how to reduce memory usage of your scene if that is the cause of the fallback.

Here's an example of the log for a render that is working in the GPU only, no fallback:

Spoiler

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Here is the log when the scene memory requirement exceeds the GPU capacity (with no CPU fallback allowed)

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And finally an example where GPU memory is exceeded and CPU fallback is enabled

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Possible note of interest, I had to load a complete environment and 6 characters (2 usind HD variant) all with different clothing and Hair to exceed the 12gb memory on my 3060 card.

If I used a product like "scene optimizer" to reduce the texture image size of some of the assets, It would be possible to easily fit more characters in a single render. However, with so many characters the scene load time and render setup time was very long, about ~6 minutes.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

I thought I would ask here. I know there is an overwhelming wealth of DAZ knowledge here. I have an issue that has popped up here in the last week or so that is driving me crazy. Which is actually a short walk rather than a drive...
I am using DAZ V4.15.0.2 Pro

Just a couple of weeks ago I noticed that my render time to increase to the point that it is almost unusable. I have the renders set short by most standards so I can get things done quickly or updates would be months apart. I am getting exceptable renders for a VN I think.

Progressive Setting: Min=1
interval=5sec
Min Samples=100
Max samples=800
Max Time=270sec
Quality=On
Quality=2
Post SSIM=OFF (or ON it makes no difference it seems)
View attachment 1804726
I have the currant ver of Nvidia Studio drivers installed.

What used to take only 5 min 20 secs @ 500 to 700 Iterations of the 800 now takes more than 45 minutes to just get to the Min 100 iterations where it finishes. ??

I have watched the GPU on the Nvidia monitor and it is running at 99/100% during the render period like always has. I can tell within 45 sec to a minute if it is working right or not by the sound. When the RTX 3080 kicks in it sounds like a jet. That doesn't happen now. The CPU monitor is as always around 8 to 12% . It isn't reverting back to CPU mode or DAZ would say so ( I think, or it used to. ) and the CPU would run WAO. The machine is an Alianware R11 with 11Gen i9, and the RTX 3080.

I have looked, and looked with Zero luck trying some info on the various DAZ forums. Which by the way is mostly useless.....

Does any one out here have any idea what I could try to get this thing back to how it was, and should be???????

HELP me Obi-Wan Kenobi !
Any help appreciated thanks

Sounds like you may be falling back to CPU rendering and what fan you're hearing is your CPU cooler firing up. Follow Missfortune's advice.
Turn off render quality. Set iterations somewhere between 500-1000. A 3080 should be able to make short work of most optimized scenes. Start using iRay section plane nodes with "Camera Cutaway". It's a game changer.

 

[tripod70]

Thanks for all of the replies. I am looking into it again and so far Nada!! I have already looked at the log... It shows right 5.5Gb mem,,, not enough to swamp the GPU. Like mentioned the GPU is running at 98 to 100% and CPU is 8 to 12% during rendering according to log and task manager and Nvidia Performance Monitor ( Alt+R ) which is hand in hand with the Alienware Performance Monitor. I am sure it isn't reverting back to CPU Mode. I have had that happen early on before, and it is very noticeable.. Still totally stumped. I don't think it is heat?? I have the case open for that with circulation. I noticed right after getting this machine that the cooling through put was seriously lacking.. I am suspecting there was an update in Win 10 that screwed something bigtime up. I have heard of the updates from MS to do that from many people, and it did it two or three times to me with Comm channels.
I view, and render in Texture Shaded. Either through Camera, or Viewport.

Start using iRay section plane nodes with "Camera Cutaway". It's a game changer.

I am not sure how to try that??
I will get a screen shot of what I am talking about in a bit of the monitor, and add it here as an example..


Still trying to finger it out

 

[MissFortune]

Thanks for all of the replies. I am looking into it again and so far Nada!! I have already looked at the log... It shows right 5.5Gb mem,,, not enough to swamp the GPU. Like mentioned the GPU is running at 98 to 100% and CPU is 8 to 12% during rendering according to log and task manager and Nvidia Performance Monitor ( Alt+R ) which is hand in hand with the Alienware Performance Monitor. I am sure it isn't reverting back to CPU Mode. I have had that happen early on before, and it is very noticeable.. Still totally stumped. I don't think it is heat?? I have the case open for that with circulation.

I am suspecting there was an update in Win 10 that screwed something bigtime up. I have heard of the updates from MS to do that from many people, and it did it two or three times to me with Comm channels.

Okay, so you've (at least it appears so) counted out the CPU fallback. Opening the case up is going to be better for air circulation for sure, and the GPU doesn't really appear to be throttling at all. So, that's out. I've never experienced Windows updates making Daz screwy, so I can't really speak to that, either. Maybe someone else can handle that more there. You said you already have the latest Nvidia drivers installed, so you can cross that off.

I view, and render in Texture Shaded. Either through Camera, or Viewport.

I'm not certain what you mean by this. You should be rendering via Iray (Render Settings > Engine: Nvidia Iray). While rendering, your viewport should be in Texture Shaded. Though, you may be already doing this and I misunderstood the context of what you're saying here. Ignore this, if so.

I am using DAZ V4.15.0.2 Pro

The more I look, the more I wonder if this is the issue. Nivida recently addressed transparency issue with Ghost Lights in a new update (though, I'm not sure if that was via Daz itself or via their studio drivers.). But seeing as 4.20 (and maybe 4.16? Unsure. Skipped it.) changed how Ghost Lights worked, there might be some confliction going on between the drivers and software. Though, I could just as easily be wrong about that. I'd hold off on updating and see if you can get it back in working order first.

 

[tripod70]

I'm not certain what you mean by this. You should be rendering via Iray (Render Settings > Engine: Nvidia Iray). While rendering, your viewport should be in Texture Shaded. Though, you may be already doing this and I misunderstood the context of what you're saying here. Ignore this, if so.

Yes that is what I meant.. Sorry bout that.

The more I look, the more I wonder if this is the issue. Nivida recently addressed transparency issue with Ghost Lights in a new update (though, I'm not sure if that was via Daz itself or via their studio drivers.). But seeing as 4.20 (and maybe 4.16? Unsure. Skipped it.) changed how Ghost Lights worked, there might be some confliction going on between the drivers and software. Though, I could just as easily be wrong about that. I'd hold off on updating and see if you can get it back in working order first.

I just did the Nvidia update Tuesday. The previous driver version was 3 to 4 months old. I do that on purpose. I only get or do driver updates if needed. Just because the manufacture says you need it. If things are working the way it should or you want it. Doesn't mean you have to. I have also found that 'N . E . W' doesn't mean 'G . O . O . D' From what I have read, or think I have read on the DAZ forum the trouble in, and with V4.20 is in DAZ itself... Nvidia's update compensated for the ghost light thing, but I could have misunderstood that also. My mind is muddled from reading all of it...

Still working on it. I did manage to get an update to the game out on Patron, but it took three days to get the last 7 renders and scripted.... That SUCKS!!!!!
Thanks for the replying

 

[Cyanchan]

DAZ face options won't open, I can't adjust the expression.

Help me, please.

 

[fyl3toys]

DAZ face options won't open, I can't adjust the expression.
View attachment 1808241
Help me, please.

Maybe because you are under Shaping and not Posing?

 

[Cyanchan]

Maybe because you are under Shaping and not Posing?

oh I understand, thanks a lot!

 

[tripod70]

DAZ face options won't open, I can't adjust the expression.
View attachment 1808241
Help me, please.

I usually do that under 'Parameters' tab..

 

[tripod70]

Yes that is what I meant.. Sorry bout that.



I just did the Nvidia update Tuesday. The previous driver version was 3 to 4 months old. I do that on purpose. I only get or do driver updates if needed. Just because the manufacture says you need it. If things are working the way it should or you want it. Doesn't mean you have to. I have also found that 'N . E . W' doesn't mean 'G . O . O . D' From what I have read, or think I have read on the DAZ forum the trouble in, and with V4.20 is in DAZ itself... Nvidia's update compensated for the ghost light thing, but I could have misunderstood that also. My mind is muddled from reading all of it...

Still working on it. I did manage to get an update to the game out on Patron, but it took three days to get the last 7 renders and scripted.... That SUCKS!!!!!
Thanks for the replying

I still haven't found a complete solution to my problem.... I am beginning to think it could be in the Duf file for the scenes ????!! Can't figure out though how all of the sets act the same I will hate to try and rebuild a start set, but may have to.
Still digging!!!!!

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

I still haven't found a complete solution to my problem.... I am beginning to think it could be in the Duf file for the scenes ????!! Can't figure out though how all of the sets act the same I will hate to try and rebuild a start set, but may have to.
Still digging!!!!!

This probably isn't a solution but have you checked your GPU fan curve?

 

[tripod70]

This probably isn't a solution but have you checked your GPU fan curve?

Yeah it seems to be working properly with other scene sets, or .duf files. I'm beginning to really think that something may have corrupted the one that started giving me this head ache... Funny thing is though. That at least two files from two periods are acting the same way. I may try reinstalling the assets for the offending scene set.
Still a little baffled over it...

 

[GingerSweetGirl]

Ok guys, I'm kinda at a loss and I need some guidance.

My problems all began when I decided I wanted to shift my pirated assets over to my D drive. As I've discovered, this is a very popular, and tricky, thing to do. I've followed the instructions as best I can, but I'm hitting a dead end and frustration is getting in the way at this point.

Specifically, my problem is this: after I set up the new location to install to in DIM...what do I do next? In the videos or explanations I see, DIM has the files immediately ready for download/installation. But that isn't the case for me, so I'm at a loss for how to even get the process started and I'm extremely frustrated. I'm not a coder, but it doesn't feel like a program should be this unintuitive in 2022. It reminds me a lot of Arc GIS, just a stupidly unintiutive program.

I feel like I'm missing something stupid obvious, but I lack the vocabulary to properly search for it. Just for fun, I'll attach an image of my DIM to show how it's set up.

 

[fyl3toys]

Ok guys, I'm kinda at a loss and I need some guidance.

Did you point Daz to your content library? Edit>Preferences>Content>Content Directory Manager

 

[GingerSweetGirl]

Did you point Daz to your content library? Edit>Preferences>Content>Content Directory Manager

...
I fucking had Daz pointing to the wrong folder in the directory. I was so focused on DIM that I hadn't double checked Daz.

I'm both relieved, thankful to you, and EXTREMELY irritated.

Actually, while I'm asking stupid questions, I have one more. What's the difference between Daz Studio Formats and Poser Formats in the Content Directory Manager? Right now I only have Daz pointing at the folder I want under Studio Formats. Do I need to also direct Daz to look for the folder under Poser Formats?