Daz3d Tips for optimizing animation's?

[Deleted member 167032]

One DAZ is a biaatch and will do this sometimes. Two sounds like your VRAm has run out. It seems DAZ builds up cache and doesn't like to release it.

IF it doesnt slow down much then leave it runnign on CPU but if its slowning down and you can see this clearly then revisit your render settings.

EDIT: Give us your pc specs quickly..

Hi mates,

First of all, thank you for giving me the best tips ever. I already started to put them to good use.

Now I have an issue... I started rendering the animation as a series of images and not as a movie.
The problem is that after the first image, it starts using the CPU instead of the GPU even if I have set it to render only with GPU.
I made a test of the scene by rendering an image as a test and it took 30 minutes to be completed with the min samples set to 2000 and full HD resolution. Render quality is set to Off.
If I render it as a movie, the same thing happens. First frame uses the GPU and after it switches to CPU.

Is there anything I can do?

 

[Deleted member 416612]

I am using:

GPU: Gygabyte Geforce GTX 1080 OC with 8 GB, 256 bit
CPU: I7 - 8700 Coffee Lake 3.70 ghz
RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR 4, 32 GB, 266 MHZ

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Okay then pretty impressive rig...

Try these settings... Chatterbox, Lexi's dev game me some tips and i read alot of DAZ forums and used their tips.
Im sure many devs will differ but overall these are solid settings. YOu can use any type of Resolution with them.
Play with max samples, best is to start with 500 and up it as you want quality to improve etc...
Sometimes when my VRAM is not enough i untick teh Rendering Quality Enable to OFF... but very few times.


Max Path Lenth noramlly on -1, but been given advice to use 7 for most renders by a well known DAZ Forum user.

Oh UPdate interval should be 60 and not 5...



Nominal Lumance i use 400 for inside and 500 for outside




Saturation is used to make your image pop abit more...

 

[Joraell]

I am using:

GPU: Gygabyte Geforce GTX 1080 OC with 8 GB, 256 bit
CPU: I7 - 8700 Coffee Lake 3.70 ghz
RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR 4, 32 GB, 266 MHZ

If switching to CPU. That means GPU don't have enough video memory, or DAz doesn't clean memorey effectively. Try this steps:
1/ restart computer. Yes stupid, but works at the most.
2/ Disable optiX optimization.
3/ Remove objects that is not visible in render.
4/ Use scene optimizer.
5/ Buy 11GB card

Littple tips to render animations. Don't know if anybody mentioned it here. I'm not read whole thread.
1/ Always hit render after viewport switched to iray and already poped out image.
2/ If you doying loops. Make first and last frame at the begining of animating and save it as keyframe.
3/ Cameras and lights do at the end.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

LOL.. to some advice Jorreal...

1/ restart computer. Yes stupid, but works at the most. (ACTUALLY works like a charm cuase DAZ keeps cache memory even after exit)
2/ Disable optiX optimization. (DId not know that would help it, rather i thought it speeds shit up)
3/ Remove objects that is not visible in render. (True)
4/ Use scene optimizer. (Ugh ive used Optimatix in many scenes adn fckd it up but yes it does work.)
5/ Buy 11GB card (LOL'd here obviously everyone's choice haha)

 

[Porcus Dev]

Okay then pretty impressive rig...

Try these settings... Chatterbox, Lexi's dev game me some tips and i read alot of DAZ forums and used their tips.
Im sure many devs will differ but overall these are solid settings. YOu can use any type of Resolution with them.
Play with max samples, best is to start with 500 and up it as you want quality to improve etc...
Sometimes when my VRAM is not enough i untick teh Rendering Quality Enable to OFF... but very few times.

View attachment 418882
Max Path Lenth noramlly on -1, but been given advice to use 7 for most renders by a well known DAZ Forum user.

Oh UPdate interval should be 60 and not 5...


View attachment 418884
Nominal Lumance i use 400 for inside and 500 for outside


View attachment 418885

Saturation is used to make your image pop abit more...

Are you sure those options can help reduce memory consumption? I think it's more to reduce rendering time

If switching to CPU. That means GPU don't have enough video memory, or DAz doesn't clean memorey effectively. Try this steps:
1/ restart computer. Yes stupid, but works at the most.
2/ Disable optiX optimization.
3/ Remove objects that is not visible in render.
4/ Use scene optimizer.
5/ Buy 11GB card

Littple tips to render animations. Don't know if anybody mentioned it here. I'm not read whole thread.
1/ Always hit render after viewport switched to iray and already poped out image.
2/ If you doying loops. Make first and last frame at the begining of animating and save it as keyframe.
3/ Cameras and lights do at the end.

I like point 5, I aim for it!

I have a question...

1/ Always hit render after viewport switched to iray and already poped out image.

Why?
Okay, when you preview with iray the scene will be loaded into memory, and when you press the render button it will start rendering immediately (scene is already loaded into memory); but it's the same as pressing the render button without previewing iray... DAZ will load the scene into memory and start making renders.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

TO quote.. yah it will load memory but ive gotten best quality form it without waiting for hours on end... BUT as ive said other devs will have their ideas which i'd like ot see myself and try... Always learning

 

[Porcus Dev]

Another interesting thing is to monitor memory consumption (with GPU-Z for example). If your limit is 7GB (8GB minus 1GB that is eaten by W10) and the scene occupies you as soon as you start 6,8GB, it is very possible that the rendering ends up jumping to CPU.
(BTW, I still use w7... if I paid for 11GB, I want my 11GB!! )

 

[Joraell]

Are you sure those options can help reduce memory consumption? I think it's more to reduce rendering time



I like point 5, I aim for it!

I have a question...

Why?
Okay, when you preview with iray the scene will be loaded into memory, and when you press the render button it will start rendering immediately (scene is already loaded into memory); but it's the same as pressing the render button without previewing iray... DAZ will load the scene into memory and start making renders.

Don't know if new versions do this another way, but in older if you rendering image by image animation withoutviewport active, GPU loading all textures every frame. Vitw viewport active only at first frame.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Don't know if new versions do this another way, but in older if you rendering image by image animation withoutviewport active, GPU loading all textures every frame. Vitw viewport active only at first frame.

From the version I started to use and following (4.10 to 4.12) the scene (and textures) are only loaded when starting the rendering; in the first frame, the following are rendered without loading it again

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Ive seen Jay Versluis mention this also, loading Iray viewport and then render immediately. Ive tried it a few times but not seen it faster etc...
I know batch rendering do not do this, jsut loads scene and render...

Don't know if new versions do this another way, but in older if you rendering image by image animation withoutviewport active, GPU loading all textures every frame. Vitw viewport active only at first frame.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Hi mates,

First of all, thank you for giving me the best tips ever. I already started to put them to good use.

Now I have an issue... I started rendering the animation as a series of images and not as a movie.
The problem is that after the first image, it starts using the CPU instead of the GPU even if I have set it to render only with GPU.
I made a test of the scene by rendering an image as a test and it took 30 minutes to be completed with the min samples set to 2000 and full HD resolution. Render quality is set to Off.
If I render it as a movie, the same thing happens. First frame uses the GPU and after it switches to CPU.

Is there anything I can do?

A simple solution to your problem that has not been discussed here ... because it's not entirely practical, but perhaps you can use in some case of short animations (no more than 30 frames) and that doesn't take long to render each frame, is ... render individually each frame
I know, it's not an ideal solution, especially if you want to do the renderings at night ... but maybe you can do it while you're programming or doing another task.

 

[Porcus Dev]

I think the best and quickest solution to your problem (apart from buying an 11GB card) is to use Scene Optimizer... you run it and reduce by half the textures of the farthest objects, and that's it!
(Although as mentioned, the first thing to do is to remove objects that aren't visible, of course. And I say delete because hiding them doesn't work, DAZ is going to load them in memory anyway)

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Correct...ive noticed hiding them doesnt work and loading times are reduced when you do not have all the extra stuff you dont need in a scene. Only disadvantage is that you have to keep a scene with all teh models/assets you want as a default so you can use that for next scene etc...

EDIT: IF i can give some advice....

I have a regular job. So at night i get home kiss the wife, make food and then start to work on the game. I setup scenes for batch renders.

Before work in morning I load up the batch renders and let it rip patato chip...
In the day at work i Anydesk into pc at home if you can do that, use your phone if you want to then i check if everything is going well on track.

If a render takes more than than normal time (my case close to an hour) not biggie as i cant work on the pc anyway. Only disadvantage is that i do less renders than maybe a faster rendering setup but that is fine for me. The amount of renders fits in with my bi monthly releases..

SO it's all down to what you want and how fast you think you need it.

I think the best and quickest solution to your problem (apart from buying an 11GB card) is to use Scene Optimizer... you run it and reduce by half the textures of the farthest objects, and that's it!
(Although as mentioned, the first thing to do is to remove objects that aren't visible, of course. And I say delete because hiding them doesn't work, DAZ is going to load them in memory anyway)

 

[recreation]

A simple trick: render only the environment without people. Wether as normal render or with a spherical camera, then use this render as hdri or background.

 

[Joraell]

A simple trick: render only the environment without people. Wether as normal render or with a spherical camera, then use this render as hdri or background.

for exteriors good. but in interiors this looks really cheap. And in exteriors this is not the best lookin too.

 

[Rich]

Now I have an issue... I started rendering the animation as a series of images and not as a movie.
The problem is that after the first image, it starts using the CPU instead of the GPU even if I have set it to render only with GPU.

As mgomez0077 says, there's a good chance this is a VRAM issue. There have been numerous people on the Daz forums complaining about the same problem. The general sense there is that Daz leaks a small amount of VRAM between frames, or else uses some extra memory going from frame 0 to frame 1, so if your scene is just barely fitting inside your GPU, the second frame blows its budget. You could probably confirm that by looking at your log - if you're running out of GPU VRAM, there will probably be an error after the first frame finishes and before the second frame begins. Most people there describe the same thing - first frame GPU, next frame CPU. I don't remember reports of "first 10 frames GPU, 11th frame CPU" so it might not technically be a leak, just "need some additional memory to switch frames." (Possibly it keeps all the textures in place, but when it loads the second frame's worth of mesh positions it hasn't cleared the first frame's worth yet or something like that.)

Anyway, if it a VRAM issue, then all the standard techniques for reducing a scene's footprints apply - hide or delete things that won't show up in or affect the render, reduce texture sizes using Scene Optimizer, etc.

One other thing that might help is to close Daz Studio, let your system rest for a minute or so to make sure that DS has fully exited (the program runs for a while after the window disappears) and then open up the file to be rendered and start the render. This way, if DS had built up any cruft during your editing session, it would be starting fresh.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

I did a 210 frame animation one of those you get on renderotica and i did what recreation suggested for interior and i have to say it came out pretty good. I used a plain and just added teh image to it. Getting it right size and lining up was tricky though.

for exteriors good. but in interiors this looks really cheap. And in exteriors this is not the best lookin too.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Agree totally...

I've decided to rather switch off the pc for few seconds rather than restart.. It should not but i think it still keep cache when you restart and I dont mean DAZ more like system ram.

As mgomez0077 says, there's a good chance this is a VRAM issue. There have been numerous people on the Daz forums complaining about the same problem. The general sense there is that Daz leaks a small amount of VRAM between frames, or else uses some extra memory going from frame 0 to frame 1, so if your scene is just barely fitting inside your GPU, the second frame blows its budget. You could probably confirm that by looking at your log - if you're running out of GPU VRAM, there will probably be an error after the first frame finishes and before the second frame begins. Most people there describe the same thing - first frame GPU, next frame CPU. I don't remember reports of "first 10 frames GPU, 11th frame CPU" so it might not technically be a leak, just "need some additional memory to switch frames." (Possibly it keeps all the textures in place, but when it loads the second frame's worth of mesh positions it hasn't cleared the first frame's worth yet or something like that.)

Anyway, if it a VRAM issue, then all the standard techniques for reducing a scene's footprints apply - hide or delete things that won't show up in or affect the render, reduce texture sizes using Scene Optimizer, etc.

One other thing that might help is to close Daz Studio, let your system rest for a minute or so to make sure that DS has fully exited (the program runs for a while after the window disappears) and then open up the file to be rendered and start the render. This way, if DS had built up any cruft during your editing session, it would be starting fresh.

 

[recreation]

Agree totally...

I've decided to rather switch off the pc for few seconds rather than restart.. It should not but i think it still keep cache when you restart and I dont mean DAZ more like system ram.

That's true, the longer the system runs, the more you, or the system does over time, the more ram it will use. It's not always nessecary to restart, but after a few hours I'd recommend it.

for exteriors good. but in interiors this looks really cheap. And in exteriors this is not the best lookin too.

I agree that it won't work for all scenes, but it totally depends on how the scene is setup, especially when you use that render as hdri with the original lighting, you often won't see any difference.