A few questions after my first render in DAZ (Render multiple cameras over night, CPU use etc)

[SnubbLR]

Finally making my first thread on this forum after lurking for years.

Did my first render today, after trying to figure out how to add non-daz content into daz for days.. It's not great I know, but I am willing to continue learning.

I've got a few questions that came up, and hopefully a kind soul can answer them

1. When rendering in Iray, I max out my CPU while my GPU is barely idling by. I tried messing around with GPU selection/OptiX Prime in advanced rendering settings but with little success. After selecting my GPU for rendering, my CPU stays around 40%, and GPU 40% as well. Is this normal? Id prefer my GPU working 100% to speed things up. RTX 2080, i7-9700k. I read somewhere that if the render is too big, CPU might take over, which brings me to my second question:

2. An aspect ratio of 16:9 and a pixel count of 1600:900, is that considered normal in community standards? Render time for that is about 10 min or so. I've read horror stories of people rendering overnight, which brings me to my next question:

3. After setting up a bunch of cameras around my first scene, I couldn't find the option to render multiple cameras in succession over night. I always assumed that was what people were doing over night. After extensive googling, no one even mentions rendering multiple cameras over night.. Is there a way/script? To me it feels tedious to sit and manually start a new render every 10 min.

I appreciate all your help. You guys are all awesome.

 

[osanaiko]

Quick answers to your questions:

1. It's considered best to only enable GPU in the render settings advanced menu. The GPU is many many times better at calculating render than the CPU (like 98% vs 2%), and this setting leaves your CPU available so the computer UI is responsive during the render.
If you are having your render "fall back" to CPU even after chosing GPU only, it is likely you have too much content in your one scene for your GPU memory size. i.e. if you have 8GB GPU memory, you might fit only 1 building environment and 3 characters with high-resolution iray meterials.
There are ways to reduce memory consumption (look up "Scene Optimizer") but it is a constant battle - hence why many Daz "pro" users recommend using a card with 11GB GPU memory like the 1080ti, even if it is not as fast as the latest RTX.

2. Different games use different screen images sizes. 1600x900 is quite common. It depends on your target. Keep in mind that consistently making images that are "breathtaking" will need a lot of effort both in Daz and then in post-editing. So trying to win the internetz with awesome renders is not always the best path. Smaller images render faster, game package size is smaller, and if your story is good and images are sexy, no-one complains that they can't see every individual pussy hair. But then again, a gorgeous "full hd" game is also attractive. What do I know, i've never published a game lol.

3. A bunch of cameras in one scene that you render one after another? that's a relatively unusual technique. Are you trying to do some ghetto animation by linking a series of different "still" images into a movie loop?
Anyway, if you have a series of images to render (not necessarily even the same scenes), you setup each scene and save it with the correct camera (and everything else lol) selected to a separate Scene DUF file in a specific folder. Then you can use a "Batch Renderer" plugin/script to automatically "start Daz, load the saved scene file, run the render, save output, shutdown daz, wait a while until the GPU memory is all freed," and this is repeated for each save file.
Look up "Batch Render" for this.


More generally, good that you are getting started in this hobby, but be aware that there is a LOT to learn.
The Daz documentation is not good and the learning resources at patchy at best.
There are many excellent and skilled users in this forum, just ask in this subforum: https://f95zone.to/threads/3d-software-help-and-assistance-ask-away.11702/
Also the official Daz forums (

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) are helpful with lots of archived information, and if you ask intelligently you can potentially get assistance from some "legends" like Sickleyeild, Chohole, or the "official" daz community guy Richard haseltine.

 

[mickydoo]

Just to add

1920x1080 is what you should be rendering at, it fits on 99.9% of computer screens

Don't use OptiX Prime, if you get the latest version of daz it has not even have that option in it anymore

 

[Droid Productions]

1080p (1920x1080) seems a standard right now. Some people are rendering it at 4K for future-proofing the asset pipeline; YMMW.

Overnight batch rendering:

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or
https://f95zone.to/threads/batch-renderer-for-daz-studio.8190/

Make sure you get DAZ 4.12; it's significantly faster than the previous versions. Go to rendering/advanced, and disable the CPU to retain control over your PC while rendering.

It'll use a lot of CPU while setting up the render; after that it should shift most of the weight to GPU. You can still occasionally see it falling back to CPU if you've got too many assets for it to fit in GPU memory. You really don't want that, so if that's happening, disable off-screen geometry, replace it with shadow-casters if you still need it to block light, and look at the scene optimizer.
https://f95zone.to/threads/scene-optimizer-mar-2019.9973/

I usually have a base-line system set up, when I'm creating a new character I'll just merge that in. It contains the cameras I use (so I have a standardized set of lenses/output dimensions, etc for different scenarios), the HDRI and lights. If you're just getting started, Paper Tiger's Precision HDRI lights is a great resource
https://f95zone.to/threads/paper-tigers-precision-revolution-hdri-lighting.36863/

Hope that helps!

 

[Hamfist]

I think I just learned more in this thread than I did while intentionally searching for information sifting through 245 pages of replies on random threads, thanks Abuuu for asking and to everyone that answered him, this was highly educational.

 

[lancelotdulak]

As they said .. problem 1 was your render falling back to cpu because it was using more ram than your gpu has. Rendering via cpu will be mindnumbingly slow.. you really need a minimum of a gtx 1060 or youre going to quit in frustration.

Theres a plugin called scene optimiser that can help a LOT with ram by resizing textures etc. ON a lot of things large textures dont even help anyway.

I suggest you do test renders of everything. Just do smaller renders to find flaws in the scene . Sucks to do a 2 hour render and then discover your model is hovering .25 inches off the couch. Or has their arm stuck through a chair. Or a lamp is floating in midair. When youre sure the scene is what you want rendered save it as a permanent scene.. use separate folders for different things. Like standard scenes, a model for your characters, one for a game youre making. And save the renders anyway... makes it much easier to remember what was in a scene when you can see the thumbnail. Then you could drop everything into a folder for overnight rendering with one of the batch render plugins.

As you just started actually rendering etc. Learn what is in the shaping tab, the surfaces tab and how to select surfaces. That will help you a lot

 

[WillTylor]

I use an RTX 2080 as well, and it took me some time to figure out why I could only render using my CPU. With RTX's you have to make sure you have the Nvidia studio driver installed! If you have a game driver installed, you will not be able to render with the GPU. You can get the studio driver at

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[Porcus Dev]

...Sucks to do a 2 hour render and then discover your model is hovering .25 inches off the couch. Or has their arm stuck through a chair. Or a lamp is floating in midair...

For these "little" things you see after hours of rendering, there's "Spot Render"

 

[lancelotdulak]

For these "little" things you see after hours of rendering, there's "Spot Render"

Very good tip but when your model is floating a foot of the couch thats a giant "spot"

 

[AdultCandy]

Answers >

1. You have an 8 gigabyte graphic card, that should be sufficient to render the scenes you posted with your GPU. Check if there is more going on outside the camera like: plants, other figures etc. These things tend to really crank up the amount of mb your GPU needs. Also have a look at render settings > environment. Does it say sun/sky? This is the standard built in environment light for DAZ which is quit heavy and maby not be neccesary for an indoor scene. Consider using a lighter HDRI or a distant light outside the windows.

2. If you're starting on a project I'd go for 1920x1080, because the performance difference with 1600x900 is not that big and it allows for more versatility. (You don't want to render everything again when you find out 1600x900 doesn't cut it)

3. If you want to do multiple renders or even a scene. Don't sit through them, it's a waste of time. I use

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which is cheap and does the job. So you save every camera view as a seperate scene, put them in one folder and load the folder with Render-a-lot. Make sure you set a maximum amount of time (like 1800 sec) under rendersettings > progressive rendering, so your pc doesn't waste to much time on renders that are done but haven't reached 100% convergent ratio yet (which is totally unnecessary, because if it looks finished it probaly is).

I hope this helps!