Daz FIXED: Renders sometimes artifacting

[ApaGod]

The last 2 days i've started having these artifacts pop up in my renders...


My issue are these tiny artifacts popping up now and then, they are not on every single render, but the longer the render goes on for, the better chance that they happen.
(In the red circle, there is a tiny red spot)
I'm using daz 4.15 (So ghostlights still work), and i have an RTX 3090.

For the few renders that it has happened on i have simple put it into krita and manually removed it / painted over so it's invisible. But it's doing it in random frames of my animations now, and it scares me.

Anyone had this problem before themselves, or just know what is going on? I'm fearing that my GPU is dying... which sounds expensive...


EDIT:
My GPU never overheats, so i don't understand why it would be dying. Also the scenes it's happening in are optimized, so they barely take up any VRAM, so i'm nowhere near using the GPU to the max.

 

[MissFortune]

I'm fearing that my GPU is dying... which sounds expensive...

Well, your GPU isn't dying. That's assuming you aren't seeing this anywhere but Daz. GPU artifacting is far more noticeable:



Those are a bit extreme, but still closer to what you'd see with a dying GPU.

That all said, The easiest thing to do would be to look at the texture maps. Specifically, the base color, and any maps that look similar to the base color map. Zoom in, see if you can find anything red. It's very much unlikely, but maybe the texture was offset accidentally. Further, have you tried using a similar colored shader on the asset itself to see if it still comes up? If it goes away with another shader, you might want to think about rerendering with a new couch asset. Is there anything behind the couch that might be poking through? It almost looks as if it's reflecting off of her leggings/stockings. Again, very unlikely, but does hiding them change anything?

You also mention optimizing. If it's only showing up in the scenes that you optimize, then it's certainly possible that something in the process is creating it. Though, it'd be hard to say what. it's possible that the textures may be getting their resolution lowered too much, or something is happening to the maps in the process. Hell, I could see lighting possibly being an issue, as well. I've never really come across an issue like this, so I'm kinda just throwing blind here.

 

[osanaiko]

It's called a firefly, quite common depending on how the lighting is set up. It's an artifact of the rendering process when the stochastic ray sampler happens to land on an unlikely-but-still-possible value case for a pixel color.

There is a firefly filter setting in the iray render settings. Try playing with that.

Another simple way to fix is to photoedit them away if and when you notice them.

Another way is to render at a higher res (i.,e. 1.5x or 2x) and downsample (resize) to your desired res, the odd colored pixels will be drowned out by the averaging process of the pixels around them.

If you are not using the "AI denoiser" programs (not the daz built-in one which is not great, try the intel or nvidia ones), try setting to a low value so there is minimal effect on fine detail, and you'll probably find it still fixes the fireflies.

 

[MissFortune]

It's called a firefly

That's not really the typical look or behavior of a firefly, though, no? From my experience, they're usually either white or more orangeish for the darker renders/scenes. Not really an expert there, so I could easily be wrong, just haven't experienced this in particular.

 

[JuniorTheJunior]

I think both the replies so far have overlooked one small detail:

the longer the render goes on for, the better chance that they happen.

If it was a firefly, it would've gone away the longer you rendered - not appear. It also seems to be larger than a firefly would be, which is almost always a single pixel here and there.
Textures, lighting, poking through, all that would've had to be present in all of the renders where this happens, which, again:

they are not on every single render

To me, considering the randomness of it, it very well could be the GPU dying. The pictures MissFortune provided are not just artifacts, those are full-on crashes. Artifacts can and will appear as a few pixels on the screen (and it would gradually get worse from there, finally crashing like in the pictures). Although I'll say this: I've never had it "artifact" onto a render, but rather on the monitor output itself. So I'm not sure what's going on there.


If you are confident that the issue has only started happening over the last couple of days, only appears the longer you render and not just on single single specific scene but randomly, I'd say look into the GPU. Perhaps try downclocking it a little bit, see if that could help (likely not if the GPU is dying). Do some stress-testing and leave it on for a while, see if you notice any artifacts popping up on the screen during it.
What happens when you render the same scene again? Does it fix itself? If yes, then almost certainly a GPU issue. If not, look into other variables you may have changed over the past couple of days (new drivers, etc.).

 

[osanaiko]

That's not really the typical look or behavior of a firefly, though, no? From my experience, they're usually either white or more orangeish for the darker renders/scenes. Not really an expert there, so I could easily be wrong, just haven't experienced this in particular.

I'm not sure to be honest, and based on history there's every chance I'm wrong.

I don't think there's any reason a firefly has to be a specific color, it's just different to what you would expect from the material surface.

Regardless of what it's called, hopefully one of the suggestions I made will help OP move forward.

 

[osanaiko]

f it was a firefly, it would've gone away the longer you rendered - not appear. It also seems to be larger than a firefly would be, which is almost always a single pixel here and there.

I thought the opposite was true - if you have a material and lighting combination that is prone to "firefly", then the longer you render the more chance there is of fireflies... it's not the same as the grainy effect you get from a render which is too short (poorly converged) or too dark (not enough light to converge).

I agree the image artifact looks a bit larger than a normal firefly, but could that be because of the "fake" depth of field effect that Iray applies. (I can't find the reference now but i recall reading that the DOF effect in Daz iray is not a true focus simulation, but is instead a distance-keyed gaussian blur)

 

[JuniorTheJunior]

I thought the opposite was true - the longer you render the more chance there is of fireflies... it's not the same as the grainy effect you get from a render which is too short (poorly converged) or too dark (not enough light to converge).

I agree the image looks a bit larger than a normal firefly, but could that be because of the "fake" depth of field effect that Iray applies. (I can't find the reference now but i recall reading that the DOF effect in Daz iray is not a true focus simulation, but is instead a distance-keyed gaussian blur)

Oh wow, really? Huh, I didn't know that about DOF in Daz. It could be, but then again, if it was a fundamental problem such as that, I feel like others would've had experienced this at some point in the past (which I personally haven't).

You may be correct on the firefly behavior, but I think I'll stand my ground on that it's too big to be a firefly. It looks like a big chunk of red on the render rather than a pixel or two (which is how GPU artifacting looks like).

I think the OP can get to the bottom of it if they re-render the same scene a few times, and note down how long into the render the artifact appears (or if it does at all). GPU artifacting is somewhat random, sometimes it can calculate what it needs to, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[ApaGod]

they're usually either white or more orangeish

Yea they change colour, they are not always red, they chance from white to green and so on.

I'd say look into the GPU

It was the GPU. I didn't think a driver update would cause this, but it was.

If yes, then almost certainly a GPU issue. If not, look into other variables you may have changed over the past couple of days (new drivers

Yea apparently it might have been a driver, A new one was release 2 days ago for the RTX cards, but didn't think a driver update would create such consistent artifacts.
I think the GPU was doing as DAZ was telling it to, because yesterday i tried to re-render an image after artifacting and it created the EXACT same artifacts in the same spots.

But re rendered my 300 frames animation... again... and it seems to be gone for now!

I feel like others would've had experienced this at some point in the past

It must be a new behaviour with this specific version of Daz, and my GPU driver not being up to date with the Iray protocols or some shit.
The same way that Iray updated the lighting protocols, so Daz 4.21 or something doesn't do ghost lights as easily.

 

[JuniorTheJunior]

Yea they change colour, they are not always red, they chance from white to green and so on.

It was the GPU. I didn't think a driver update would cause this, but it was.

Yea apparently it might have been a driver, A new one was release 2 days ago for the RTX cards, but didn't think a driver update would create such consistent artifacts.
I think the GPU was doing as DAZ was telling it to, because yesterday i tried to re-render an image after artifacting and it created the EXACT same artifacts in the same spots.

But re rendered my 300 frames animation... again... and it seems to be gone for now!

It must be a new behaviour with this specific version of Daz, and my GPU driver not being up to date with the Iray protocols or some shit.
The same way that Iray updated the lighting protocols, so Daz 4.21 or something doesn't do ghost lights as easily.

Oh, awesome! Glad you fixed it and that it wasn't an hardware issue. Don't forget, drivers are as equally important as the hardware. They are the communication between the hardware and software, after all.

Overall, in my experience with Daz, once you find a Daz version+Nvidia Driver combo that works, try your best to never change it. "Don't fix it if it's not broken" to the extreme. Either the new Daz update doesn't work with Nvidia's drivers, or vice-versa. And sometimes, even when that works, that combo won't work with other render engines like OctaneRender...

Happy rendering!

 

[MissFortune]

It must be a new behaviour with this specific version of Daz, and my GPU driver not being up to date with the Iray protocols or some shit.
The same way that Iray updated the lighting protocols, so Daz 4.21 or something doesn't do ghost lights as easily.

4.15 is pretty old at this point, relatively speaking at least. It's possible that the newer drivers were conflicting with an older version of Daz that has effectively reached EOL as far as any kind of meaningful support goes.

As far as Ghost Lights go, there's a few out that work exactly like the original kits did - sans the volumetric/godray stuff. SY Invislights Iray work just as well as KindredArt's GL kits did pre-4.20, if you decide to you want to upgrade.

 

[ApaGod]

As far as Ghost Lights go, there's a few out that work exactly like the original kits did - sans the volumetric/godray stuff. SY Invislights Iray work just as well as KindredArt's GL kits did pre-4.20, if you decide to you want to upgrade.

I'm not that worried about upgrading no more. But all the scenes i've set up are already set up for 4.15 so just keeping it for that reason.
So if i ever finish my game, i'll upgrade and use all the volumetrics i can!

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Censoring the ass, why tho ?

Quite weird. Definitely not a firefly (nor compression/px bleeding or whatever)...
Feel like unsolvable pixel trashing adjacent ones until it dies for some reasons.