3D-Daz Daz3d Art - Show Us Your DazSkill

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Evil13

Engaged Member
Jun 4, 2019
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Guys, a question, does it take you a long time to render a scene with characters and a house?
How long is a piece of string?

Its going to depend on several factors which others more knowledgeable can go into, but you can also limit how many iterations you want to go through and how long you want it to render. My personal preference is 500 iterations and a time limit of 1200 seconds, but that works for me because I tend to go for closer scenes and strip away unnecessary assets in a scene.
 

luar111

Newbie
Nov 11, 2020
27
174
How long is a piece of string?

Its going to depend on several factors which others more knowledgeable can go into, but you can also limit how many iterations you want to go through and how long you want it to render. My personal preference is 500 iterations and a time limit of 1200 seconds, but that works for me because I tend to go for closer scenes and strip away unnecessary assets in a scene.
thanks for the advice
 

Spaceballz

Member
Sep 13, 2017
202
1,295
Guys, a question, does it take you a long time to render a scene with characters and a house?
Hi there, just like has been said before, it will depends on multiple factors how long a render will take. Since I favor quality over speed I always set my iteration (Passes) at Max (25000) and my time limit to 18000... now why I do this is because I want my renders to be as close to perfect as possible I also set my convergence ratio to 98%. So this means that however long or short, my render will stop when the comparison of the render will converge at 98%. Now if the scene is relatively empty except for the model. It will take just a couple minutes to reach 98% and be done. If I crowd the scene I can expect the render to take considerably longer. Sometimes 2-3 hours. The freedom that leaves me is that I can stop a render and save the file way before 98% if it looks good enough for me. I can always pass the resulting Image into an AI denoiser I got to ''clean up'' the image. If you set your iteration and elapsed time too low, your render might stop and look unfinished. Now the downside to do my way is that you can't do multiple renders at a time and have to monitor it if you're rendering a particularly heavy scene.

As for your specific question, Multiple characters and a whole house loaded in the scene might take a while, depending on your system. One thing that can help lowering the render time, is lets say you render in the living room of the house, you can disable or unload the rest of the house. That way your system doesn't have to hold a whole house in the memory when rendering.

Also, and I can't stress that enough, If you want speed and quality at the same time, you need a very powerful system. Surely a top of the line GPU (Like 4080Ti or 4090). More processing power, means more calculation can be done in a short amount of time. So it equates to more iterations can be calculated per seconds, which means a faster render. It's one of the reasons I render that way. My system isn't beefy enough to churn out renders by the crap load. I sport a measly RTX 3070Ti. So I've got to offset the low processing power with longer render times if I want quality renders. If quality isn't a priority for you and got a nice AI denoiser to pass your renders through after, you can lower the Iteration and Elapsed Time setting. Mainly you'll have to play around with the settings until you find the perfect balance between time and quality for your system.

Hope it helps and happy rendering my friend!
 
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Marcus_S

Active Member
Jul 30, 2017
531
1,120
Hi there, just like has been said before, it will depends on multiple factors how long a render will take. Since I favor quality over speed I always set my iteration (Passes) at Max (25000) and my time limit to 18000... now why I do this is because I want my renders to be as close to perfect as possible I also set my convergence ratio to 98%. So this means that however long or short, my render will stop when the comparison of the render will converge at 98%. Now if the scene is relatively empty except for the model. It will take just a couple minutes to reach 98% and be done. If I crowd the scene I can expect the render to take considerably longer. Sometimes 2-3 hours. The freedom that leaves me is that I can stop a render and save the file way before 98% if it looks good enough for me. I can always pass the resulting Image into an AI denoiser I got to ''clean up'' the image. If you set your iteration and elapsed time too low, your render might stop and look unfinished. Now the downside to do my way is that you can't do multiple renders at a time and have to monitor it if you're rendering a particularly heavy scene.

Also, and I can't stress that enough, If you want speed and quality at the same time, you need a very powerful system. Surely a top of the line GPU (Like 4080Ti or 4090). More processing power, means more calculation can be done in a short amount of time. So it equates to more iterations can be calculated per seconds, which means a faster render. It's one of the reasons I render that way. My system isn't beefy enough to churn out renders by the crap load. I sport a measly RTX 3070Ti. So I've got to offset the low processing power with longer render times if I want quality renders. If quality isn't a priority for you and got a nice AI denoiser to pass your renders through after, you can lower the Iteration and Elapsed Time setting. Mainly you'll have to play around with the settings until you find the perfect balance between time and quality for your system.

Hope it helps and happy rendering my friend!
What is convergence ratio? What does it mean, if my render is at 5-10% convergence, but has already done 3000 iterations? Will it look bad? Should I pay more attention to the convergence percentage?

Sorry for the multiple questions, but you seem helpful and experienced :)
 
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Spaceballz

Member
Sep 13, 2017
202
1,295
What is convergence ratio? What does it mean, if my render is at 5-10% convergence, but has already done 3000 iterations? Will it look bad? Should I pay more attention to the convergence percentage?

Sorry for the multiple questions, but you seem helpful and experienced :)
Alright, I'll try to explain it without getting confused myself while explaining it lol.

Basically the DAZ render engine when rendering, calculate each pixels and compare them with the original. Depending on the processing power of your computer it can calculate thousands of pixels per Iterations or a few hundred if your processing power is on the low side. Now when the rendering is taking place, it compares the pixels (Position, color, shade etc.) against the original in your viewport. When the rendering engine ''feels'' that a particular pixel is the closest possible to the original it considers it rendered and won't pass over it again. That process is cumulative, the more pixels are considered rendered, the closest the render is converging toward 100% ''perfect''. So when you say that your render is at 15% regardless of the amount of iteration has passed means that the rendering engine considers that 15% of the pixels are ''finished''. Now that doesn't mean that the render will look like crap. When calculating, it passes around on the same pixels multiple times, bringing it ever more closer to being considered ''finished''. So even at 15% if you see that the render is looking good for your purposes, you can stop it and clean it up after into Photoshop, GIMP or an AI Denoiser. For most of the renders people will do, 95% convergence ratio is perfectly acceptable, and sometimes I stop the rendering way before it reaches 98% (Like 50-60% when a render takes forever). I just clean it up afterwards in some other program. If the render is reasonably fast I let it go all the way to 98%.

Hope I wasn't to confusing with the explanation and hope it helps.
 

Marcus_S

Active Member
Jul 30, 2017
531
1,120
Alright, I'll try to explain it without getting confused myself while explaining it lol.

Basically the DAZ render engine when rendering, calculate each pixels and compare them with the original. Depending on the processing power of your computer it can calculate thousands of pixels per Iterations or a few hundred if your processing power is on the low side. Now when the rendering is taking place, it compares the pixels (Position, color, shade etc.) against the original in your viewport. When the rendering engine ''feels'' that a particular pixel is the closest possible to the original it considers it rendered and won't pass over it again. That process is cumulative, the more pixels are considered rendered, the closest the render is converging toward 100% ''perfect''. So when you say that your render is at 15% regardless of the amount of iteration has passed means that the rendering engine considers that 15% of the pixels are ''finished''. Now that doesn't mean that the render will look like crap. When calculating, it passes around on the same pixels multiple times, bringing it ever more closer to being considered ''finished''. So even at 15% if you see that the render is looking good for your purposes, you can stop it and clean it up after into Photoshop, GIMP or an AI Denoiser. For most of the renders people will do, 95% convergence ratio is perfectly acceptable, and sometimes I stop the rendering way before it reaches 98% (Like 50-60% when a render takes forever). I just clean it up afterwards in some other program. If the render is reasonably fast I let it go all the way to 98%.

Hope I wasn't to confusing with the explanation and hope it helps.
Thank you very much! No, it wasn't confusing at all.
 

Spaceballz

Member
Sep 13, 2017
202
1,295
Thank you very much! No, it wasn't confusing at all.
My pleasure my friend.

As I thought more on the subject, when you said that you render was at 3000 iterations and only at 10-15% convergence. It tells me either two things. Either you've got a lot going on in your scene or low processing power. There are creative ways to lowering the rendering time. You've got to keep in mind that everything you put in the scene makes the complexity of the rendering process go up. Every character, hair piece, clothes, shiny surfaces (Like shiny skins, latex, mirrors) Furniture, buildings all contribute to the complexity of the rendering process. Also darker scenes take more time than well lit scenes. If you have a lot of stuff loaded into the scene but is not in the frame of your rendering camera, get rid of it. You will see a difference.
this is especially important if you have a slow computer. At that point it becomes imperative that you load stuff only in your shot and leave everything else unloaded. One other thing you can do is render at lower resolutions, like 1080p or 1440p instead of 4K and stretch the image later on using an AI enlarger without loosing much quality. The amount of pixels to calculate increases with higher resolution which increase render time: 1080p is 2,073,600 pixels to calculate, 1440p is 3.7 million pixels to calculate and 4k is 8,294,400 pixels to calculate.
 
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Marcus_S

Active Member
Jul 30, 2017
531
1,120
My pleasure my friend.

As I thought more on the subject, when you said that you render was at 3000 iterations and only at 10-15% convergence. It tells me either two things. Either you've got a lot going on in your scene or low processing power. There are creative ways to lowering the rendering time. You've got to keep in mind that everything you put in the scene makes the complexity of the rendering process go up. Every character, hair piece, clothes, shiny surfaces (Like shiny skins, latex, mirrors) Furniture, buildings all contribute to the complexity of the rendering process. Also darker scenes take more time than well lit scenes. If you have a lot of stuff loaded into the scene but is not in the frame of your rendering camera, get rid of it. You will see a difference.
this is especially important if you have a slow computer. At that point it becomes imperative that you load stuff only in your shot and leave everything else unloaded. One other thing you can do is render at lower resolutions, like 1080p or 1440p instead of 4K and stretch the image later on using an AI enlarger without loosing much quality. The amount of pixels to calculate increases with higher resolution which increase render time: 1080p is 2,073,600 pixels to calculate, 1440p is 3.7 million pixels to calculate and 4k is 8,294,400 pixels to calculate.
Thank you again!

I have an RTX 4070, so that's okay I think. The resolution I use is usually 2K (1440p) or something around that. It's more about the things in the scene I think. Since I'm making a VN I use rooms or a house as environment.
I'll try to do something about the lighting to see if it helps. (Probably shouldn't start by making night time renders... FUCK!)
 
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