anyone here got scene optimizer? i may have to try it. i watched a video about noise in renders and someone has done a video showing the denoiser and how many iterations it took to get the image, tbh it looks really good but im not sure if it works for everyone. im trying a couple now with denoiser to see.
Scene Optimizer: https://f95zone.to/threads/scene-optimizer-mar-2019.9973/ - download link here, but it's well worth the money if you can afford to drop money on DAZ stuff.
Scene Optimizer: https://f95zone.to/threads/scene-optimizer-mar-2019.9973/ - download link here, but it's well worth the money if you can afford to drop money on DAZ stuff.
Keep in mind, the denoiser can help get rid of noise, but it kills detail (especially stuff like small details on skin). I've found good results with Intel's Open Image Denoiser, since it's not as overzealous as Nvidia's one that's built into DAZ. But I don't remember where I found the download link for an executable/installer. Sorry
As far as scene lights are concerned... there are three main ways to put light into a scene:
There are really no limits I'm aware of on how many lights can be in the scene (Iray rendering is very different than the way game engines work, in which you do need to limit the number of lights. Usually.) Indeed, if you're using mesh lights, how do you even say "how many" lights you're using? You might have 3 meshes, each with 2 or 3 emissive surfaces, which are spread over 100 or 100,000 polygons. So, "
- Lights (point lights, spotlights, etc) placed into a scene. These are pretty simple, but I've personally found them to increase noise by a surprising amount.
- Emissive materials (AKA mesh lights). This simply means any surface on a model in your scene which emits light ("emission color" and related properties in the "Surfaces" tab). Most environments you download will be lit with this technique. To change this kind of lighting, you'll have to find the models in the scene that have emissive surfaces, and edit their color or intensity or whatever, in the "Surfaces" tab. I've started using mesh lights instead of spotlights/pointlights to add extra light in my scenes, and I've found them to be less noisy, but of course your results will vary based on the geometry/materials in the scene.
- Lighting from the HDRI/background of the scene. This is the least noisy/fastest kind of lighting, but of course it's not always an option if you want an interior scene. I've found good HDRIs from the Asset Releases forum here as well as
You must be registered to see the links.- Also worth mentioning is a type of mesh light called a "ghost light", which is just a surface that emits light but which also has its opacity cranked down to near zero so you can't see it. These are good if you want a light source positioned so it's in the frame, but don't want it to actually be visible in the render. Note that the latest versions of DAZ changed how these work, and I'm not sure about the details.
You must be registered to see the links" is the wrong way to think about optimization in DAZ.
Rather, what makes your scene render quickly is the physical amount of light surface that exists in the scene. A scene that's lit by several large emissive meshes will render much faster than the same scene lit by a tiny, super-bright light bulb filament. Of course, there's a tradeoff here: large light sources will make the scene lighting look "flatter" and less intense.
There are also more complicated things about scene geometry/materials/shaders that make the scene slower or faster to render, and I haven't begun to understand all of it. The best thing to do might just be to try out different environments until you find one you like the look of, which also renders quickly enough for you.
That's the frustrating thing about rendering - everything is a tradeoff, and there's no magic solution to give you an amazing image quickly (except maybe buying 8 RTX 3090s lol)
Good luck!
)
Changes made to the latest version of Daz require you to use different settings for ghost/mesh lights than in the past. Watch this video posted last month:
Oh wait i just got the exr versions and put them in a custom folder in daz and they worked great, its only on the outside though lighting up the set.. ill download the other ones soon.
