Hi, I tried making some renders but the rendering took ages on my high end pc. It kind of made me stop. Are there alternative programs that are faster at rendering and good too?
Faster alternatives to Poser/DAZ Studio?
- Thread starter Lobbly
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- Aug 17, 2019
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Were you using the GPU or CPU? Is your GPU Nvidia (AMD doesn't work to well with Daz.)? What are you rendering? How many figures are you rendering? How is your lighting? Most importantly, what's your baseline for a 'high-end' PC? What's your definition of 'ages'?
The reality is you aren't going to find anything quite as easy to use as Daz while matching the quality it can achieve. Sure, you could use Maya, but if you think Daz is slow, then I don't know what you'll think of that. You could use Honey Select or Koikatsu, but you'll be sacrificing visual quality in a lot of ways. It'll certainly be faster, but it won't exactly look better. So, if you're using a 'high end' PC and don't want to use Daz, that'll leave you with Blender. You can transfer Daz figures over to Blender and render your scenes via Eevee or Cycles, but that also means dealing with the pain that is Diffeomorphic (probably spelt wrong.) or the joke of an 'official bridge' by Daz. Then there's learning Blender itself, which'll probably take a solid year in and of itself to cohesively pick up.
If you're just looking for ease of use and good results, learn how to optimize Daz. If you're looking for just straight ease of use, Honey Select 1 or 2/KoiKatsu. If you're willing to play the long game and take the time to learn what is a massive program, learn Blender. Could be a bonus to have on an application later if/when you learn it. In short, all of them (short of HS/KK) are going to be slow at rendering if the object(s) and/or lighting isn't optimized.
The reality is you aren't going to find anything quite as easy to use as Daz while matching the quality it can achieve. Sure, you could use Maya, but if you think Daz is slow, then I don't know what you'll think of that. You could use Honey Select or Koikatsu, but you'll be sacrificing visual quality in a lot of ways. It'll certainly be faster, but it won't exactly look better. So, if you're using a 'high end' PC and don't want to use Daz, that'll leave you with Blender. You can transfer Daz figures over to Blender and render your scenes via Eevee or Cycles, but that also means dealing with the pain that is Diffeomorphic (probably spelt wrong.) or the joke of an 'official bridge' by Daz. Then there's learning Blender itself, which'll probably take a solid year in and of itself to cohesively pick up.
If you're just looking for ease of use and good results, learn how to optimize Daz. If you're looking for just straight ease of use, Honey Select 1 or 2/KoiKatsu. If you're willing to play the long game and take the time to learn what is a massive program, learn Blender. Could be a bonus to have on an application later if/when you learn it. In short, all of them (short of HS/KK) are going to be slow at rendering if the object(s) and/or lighting isn't optimized.
- Jun 19, 2018
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You can save time on Daz renders if you reduce the number of samples you use and make use of denoizing solutions. Daz has a built in features to deal with noise, but there are also third party solutions like the drag n drop denoiser for windows.
As an example, I rendered a creature at 10 and 1000 samples for demonstration.
Here it is at 1000 samples, which took 2 minutes to render:
And here it is at 10 samples which rendered instantly:
You can see that the 10 sample render has a lot of noise to it. I then took the noisy 10 sample render and put it through a denoiser to get the following result:
Here's the denoised 10 sample (left) right next to the 1000 sample render:
You lose a little bit of detail, of course, but the 10 sample render looks comparable to the 1000 sample render at a fraction of the render time.
As an example, I rendered a creature at 10 and 1000 samples for demonstration.
Here it is at 1000 samples, which took 2 minutes to render:
And here it is at 10 samples which rendered instantly:
You can see that the 10 sample render has a lot of noise to it. I then took the noisy 10 sample render and put it through a denoiser to get the following result:
Here's the denoised 10 sample (left) right next to the 1000 sample render:
You lose a little bit of detail, of course, but the 10 sample render looks comparable to the 1000 sample render at a fraction of the render time.
- Jul 20, 2018
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My tip would be to use a batch renderer (like ManFriday's Render Queue) and render overnight or any other time you aren't at your PC.
You can still render with 3DL (via Daz3D).
While not as good as Iray, you can achieve decent renders in seconds.
Main problem is you need a bit of general shader knowledge, as there is no UberShader (one 'global' shader to rules them all) ergo each surfaces need it's own shader (tweaking with Daz3D/Shader Mixer is suicide club tho).
There is Blender/Eevee, that is really awesome
, but again you need a bit of general shader knowledge, as well as how to back and forth with Daz/Blender.
- Aug 17, 2019
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There's nothing wrong with denoisers (outside of the aforementioned loss of detail), but the integrated Daz denoiser is the worst of the options out there. It takes out quite a lot more detail than the Drag n' Drop denoiser, but the bigger issue is that you only get the denoised copy of the render.
Generally speaking, you want to drop the original noisy layer into Photohsop/Photopea/GIMP and then bring in the denoised version of the render and put it above the noisy layer. From there, you lower the opacity of the denoised render until you can find the best happy-medium between noise and skin detail. You can also play around with Layer Masks, as well.
- Apr 13, 2021
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10 samples?
That sounds so little but it looks great.
I have right now 1000 and use denoiser after.
Maybe i should give 10 a shot.
- Apr 13, 2021
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Just like to add that mesh lights take a long time to render. At least that is my experience.
So if you setup you own light but still have mesh lights on this will take longer than if you just use your own lights.
I find DaZ not that slow really. Everything has to be rendered and that takes time. The lesser of objects you have in that frame the better it is. But this is of course sometimes hard to do.
Also, the figures. I wasn't aware of that in the beginning but with each figure added to the frame or scene, it will take more time to load and render. Plus all their own layers of added customization (Makeup, skin etc..) will add to the time to render.
I don't know the other programs though i heard about them.
I am fine with DAZ as it is. I think it looks quite good for the most part. So i am not spending additional time to enhance them in Gimp or whatever.
And yes, having a NVidia GFX card is essential. Also to check the render settings GPU instead of CPU.
- Aug 17, 2019
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From my experience, at a purely technical standpoint, mesh lights take slightly longer to render. Though, there's a shit ton of variables that can influence that in a number of ways. From hardware to software running in the background, to the heat in your room on that day.
That said, all other things being equal within a properly optimized and lit scene, the difference in render times is going to most likely be within minutes for an actual scene. Just for a quick comparison. Using Michael 8.1 HD against a black background, both renders below are only using a single light of each type on the right side. It produces some subtle differences in the way the skin reacts with the light but are otherwise generally the same. The Ghost Light (SY Invisilight) ended up being just slightly faster.
- Apr 13, 2021
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I notice that it takes longer if there are a lot of mesh lights. Sometimes i can not even turn them off but then, do you really want to turn them off?
I am ok with the speed for the most part. Since i customize my characters, this all takes a little longer to load. Not sure if it affects the render time though. I think i read somewhere from someone that each layer on a characters adds more time to the render.
I am not really a time fetishist. Mostly, i render over night anyway.
But these renders look fantastic. Seems not much time difference, or? I think by the sample amount my machine would take way more time. Though i have tried it.
Is this just the basic figure? I will try that on my machine to see how long that will take. Just for fun.
I haven't even tried to render in a higher resolution that HD yet but i think i read that suppose to be the better way.
Haven't really used the Scene Optimization. Shame on me. Really.
- Aug 17, 2019
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It's
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, though I'm sure how much the add-on is putting in here. Well, I knew when did those renders above, it was going to be a simple scene. No background, just the figure and lights. So, it generally didn't need anything more than 1500 samples, and even then, I let both renders go to completion. Both looked visibly done before the 1500 samples were complete. I probably could've clicked cancel on both renders halfway through and nobody would've known the difference.
But, yeah, this kind of stuff is generally pretty dependent on hardware. For 4K, I'm usually doing 6000 samples, but often finish/'cancel' the render earlier than its intended completion because it looks done. But after a while you start to pick up when rendering longer isn't going to fix the noise in a render, or something of that sort.
It technically is. Rendering in 2K/4K is going to create a higher level of detail that's preserved when you scale down to 1080p for Ren'py. But the honest truth of it is that most people aren't going to be able to tell the difference if a render was done in 4K and scaled down to 1080p vs a native 1080p render. This stands especially true for a lower-end system, where a 4K render would take the better of a day or two to render fully, which just simply isn't worth it nor efficient when a 1080p render can be done in a couple of hours, if not less.
- Apr 13, 2021
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Thats a lot of samples.
I know, when i started, i got kind of jittery because it took so long but that was with my old gfx card which wasn't supported. Even today, i don't like it too long.
Especially when i do re-edits and re-render these pictures. So that could be 40-50 render which i run over night.
At the moment i do try 500 and see if this makes a big difference in quality. Before i had 1000.
From what i learned, the program runs like a terminator. Never stopping unless you tell it to.
I think if you have way better gfx than i have, it probably makes sense to go higher. Though i am asking myself every time if a player even notice anything. If the poses are not right or they don't like what they see it's bye bye anyway no matter the quality.
But at the same time i like good quality but i think i am more in the camp "good enough".
At the moment i am staying with Gen8 as this seems to have the most on everything.
Gen3 has some poses i like that are not available for Gen8. Strangely.
I wonder if with Gen8 it got softer?
This is my thought.
I don't think i have seen a game that plays in higher resolution than HD. There are 4K offering to install if you pay for it, but i am not sure if it's worth it.
Probably is, if you have a big screen. I still have only a 24" screen so to me it doesn't make sense.
Though i would be curious what the user base actually has.
Bottom line is, quality is always good but you have the right equipment. I hope HD will be fine enough.
- Sep 12, 2021
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Yes, I can vouch that having several mesh lights dramatically increases the render time. Also, and that won't surprise anybody, the more lights there are, the more time needed.
In the last few days I've been experimenting with a very simple scene: two G8 figures, a few clothes (not many... this being that kind of forum), one emissive light (a torch) and one stone wall, very bumpy.
Well, as MissFortune said, there are still many other variables, visible and invisible, and even if nothing changes in the scene but the position of camera and light, render times vary wildly, from 20 minutes to more than one hour (convergence 95% - CPU renders on an old machine, this isn't done professionally).
And the time I got the emissive surface near the backdrop the time skyrocketed (I stopped at 80% after 4 hours). In hindsight, it was obvious that the more details you're shining over, the more your light rays are bumping back and forth for the screen, the more the render will take.
Surprisingly, at least for me, adding a faint spotlight to "help" the emissive surface in difficult shots didn't affect the render time, not noticeably.
- Apr 13, 2021
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There is the technique that you have two separate scenes. One with the environment and one with figures.
You build you scene, but you save them separately from each other. That way the render time will increase and you can just merge them with your favorite software later on and alter the figures accordingly to your liking. Just have to pay attention to the shadow.
This takes of course more work than just stuff everything in the scene but it can help lighting the figure better as the environment could be dark. Really dark.
I think these are the most difficult render actually. A dark environment where you want to highlight the figure.
But as i was told, lighten them up. Reality is only an illusion and it's true. People want to see the figures.
The lighter the whole scene is, the faster it goes. At least if the environment is smaller or at least has not so much details and addons.
Also, another technique i seen on a video somewhere was to increase the distance of the lightsource to get a more softer light touching the figure.
1000m or so.
I found that most fascinating.
Dropping down to 500 samples did actually work for me. Still got the details but i doubt i would go lower than that. Most shots are in lighted environment anyway.
I think the darker it is, the more samples you may need or you just have to do the two scene option.
Light and DAZ. This is really something to master and even i am not there yet. I am using most of the time Ghostlight One which is pretty handy and easy. SY's version is great too but a little more complicated. I always have problem with the plane thats in there. Mostly for light that suppose to cast through a window.
p.s. i don't know much really. Sometimes i feel like i like to just use a hammer.
- Sep 12, 2021
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Except when your scene includes mirrors, shining armors and swords, newly restored bronze statuettes, glass bakery display cases or even just too much jewelry on the ladies.
Shining armors and swords, newly restored bronze statuettes [...] or even just too much jewelry on the ladies, does not need to reflect your whole world to be credible - simple texture tweak can do wonder here. Otherwise every engine that use camera culling would have commited sudoku.Except when your scene includes mirrors, shining armors and swords, newly restored bronze statuettes, glass bakery display cases or even just too much jewelry on the ladies.
Imho glass/windows/mirror are the annoying ones. Lot can be avoided with a bit common sense (a mirror facing a window is not a smart idea), a more or less small downgrade in quality (a bit of roughness on that window reflection) but sometime not really avoidable or culling simply doesn't work well.
That said, section planes should be your main weapon against rendering time imho - especially with Iray.
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- Apr 13, 2021
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I have to investigate that.
Cutting rendering times in half? Heresy i say.
There are so many things that are available in DAZ that still haven't discovered. That is one of them.
Well, culling is as old as 3D engines go, even path tracer. Look for "Iray interior cam" or something among that, it's a camera mounted with 5 section planes (you can show/hide those planes depending on what you're trying to do).I have to investigate that.
Cutting rendering times in half? Heresy i say.
There are so many things that are available in DAZ that still haven't discovered. That is one of them.
Now if you take the culling road, while fast, it won't make a good render alone. For interior, you may want to setup a neutral ambient lighting env. (ambient that create no shadows nor highlight).
-Open MSpaint
-Create a 512*512px square
-Fill with a greyscale color (lets say RGB 100,100,100)
-Save & slot it under environment map
Cam-culled scene with ambient:
Cam-culled scene, with just few (awful) emissives from the props (scene only):
Exact same scene with a small greyscale map (dome+scene):
Last screen is your 'flat' base of work (3m29s for 4k on 3090 with 95% convergence, px convergence is great for benchmarking). You still have to bring your spotlights/emissives/subject(s) to bring it life. I used this workflow a lot when I had a 2070, to chain render for small dumb prototype.
Also if you use this workflow, don't use guided sampling, it seems subpar on every cases.
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