Tutorial How to optimise render times in iray (a small guide)

[recreation]

I seen to remember recreation saying the intel one was better?

Well that's a personal opinion on my side, both are good (better than the daz denoizer), I just like that the Intel one keeps a bit more detail, the downside is that there might also be a bit grain left in a few spots (both are barely visibile).

 

[galora]

Well that's a personal opinion on my side, both are good (better than the daz denoizer), I just like that the Intel one keeps a bit more detail, the downside is that there might also be a bit grain left in a few spots (both are barely visibile).

That's true but I've been doing some tests on low light scenes and the differences were minor, still going to try whether it's worth doing them before or after rescaling...

Artefacts on the door and others are reflections from the hdri on the window

Interestingly the differences even between 800 and 4000 iterations are almost null when rescaling to 1920:1200 after having used the denoiser.

Spoiler: No denoiser, 4000 iterations

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Spoiler: intel denoiser 4000 iter

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Spoiler: No denoiser, 1180 iterations

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Spoiler: Inter denoiser 1180 iterations

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[recreation]

That's true but I've been doing some tests on low light scenes and the differences were minor, still going to try whether it's worth doing them before or after rescaling...

Artefacts on the door and others are reflections from the hdri on the window

Interestingly the differences even between 800 and 4000 iterations are almost null when rescaling to 1920:1200 after having used the denoiser.

Spoiler: No denoiser, 4000 iterations

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Spoiler: intel denoiser 4000 iter

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Spoiler: No denoiser, 1180 iterations

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Spoiler: Inter denoiser 1180 iterations

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You can see the difference in the shadows, especially on the walls on the right side and directly behind the char.
Most people won't see it tho, and even more ppl won't notice it when seeing the render in a game. People like me who worked with images for a long time will probably see it releatively quickly, for me it's quite obvious that a denoizer was used, but you did it the correct way and gave the render enough time/iterations so the denoizer has enough details to work with, I've seen enough examples where it's not enough and the images became blurry and lost every bit of detail. Macadams render is a good example for that, there's absolutely zero detail on the girls skin, there are empty spots on the sofa's surface, the hair looks like one single mass, almost no strands left... and yet, still a lot of people won't even notice and call it "awesome grafics/render" (no offence macadam I know it's just a test) and that's what makes me wanna cry and yell at people sometimes...
But again, I can completely understand why people use denoizer, especially with bad hardware, they do have a purpose and that purpose they fulfill.

 

[macadam]

You can see the difference in the shadows, especially on the walls on the right side and directly behind the char.
Most people won't see it tho, and even more ppl won't notice it when seeing the render in a game. People like me who worked with images for a long time will probably see it releatively quickly, for me it's quite obvious that a denoizer was used, but you did it the correct way and gave the render enough time/iterations so the denoizer has enough details to work with, I've seen enough examples where it's not enough and the images became blurry and lost every bit of detail. Macadams render is a good example for that, there's absolutely zero detail on the girls skin, there are empty spots on the sofa's surface, the hair looks like one single mass, almost no strands left... and yet, still a lot of people won't even notice and call it "awesome grafics/render" (no offence macadam I know it's just a test) and that's what makes me wanna cry and yell at people sometimes...
But again, I can completely understand why people use denoizer, especially with bad hardware, they do have a purpose and that purpose they fulfill.

i dont take any offense... i just shared a little suggestion for people who are not used with DAZ and even less with outside software.
it definitly not the best solution for sure, but i think it may help a bit for people who can only render with very bad grains result.

we allagree that everything would be better than putting out a super grainy render that look like it have been stopped at 0% and 10 iterations without any care LOL.

in addition, i mustsay that it can also be a "style"... not realist and not cartoonish... kind of original style and its not ugly as a result compared to super rgainy thing XD (after all, we also got some sims games and else... soo i guess this isnt too bad as a style anyway)

 

[galora]

You can see the difference in the shadows, especially on the walls on the right side and directly behind the char.
Most people won't see it tho, and even more ppl won't notice it when seeing the render in a game. People like me who worked with images for a long time will probably see it releatively quickly, for me it's quite obvious that a denoizer was used, but you did it the correct way and gave the render enough time/iterations so the denoizer has enough details to work with, I've seen enough examples where it's not enough and the images became blurry and lost every bit of detail. Macadams render is a good example for that, there's absolutely zero detail on the girls skin, there are empty spots on the sofa's surface, the hair looks like one single mass, almost no strands left... and yet, still a lot of people won't even notice and call it "awesome grafics/render" (no offence macadam I know it's just a test) and that's what makes me wanna cry and yell at people sometimes...
But again, I can completely understand why people use denoizer, especially with bad hardware, they do have a purpose and that purpose they fulfill.

Damn thanks for pointing that out! I was so distracted by the blue reflection of the sky I didn't notice it... Edit: The more I look at it the more it bothers. Thanks for that. xD
But that looks like compression how come? I mean I saw the lower size * 0.33-0.5 but I thought it was just because the noise kills compression (not sure just based on my understanding of basic compression algorithms)

I get people using the daz denoiser though my results even with higher iteration numbers were shady at best .

Spoiler

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The standalone one just kinda blows by mind in comparison. In well lit scenes it kinda blew my mind, and on drapes on another render with this lighting.
But frankly that 4000 iterations one took like 6 hours to complete (maybe more) on my gtx 970 (gonna try borrowing another one from a friend to try out, but the 4GB limit is killing me...)

I remember seeing you talk about increasing the iso, I can't find the post anymore. Can you point out how you do it?

Would you argue for leaving the noise in? With bad hardware I mean, like the downscaled version of the 4000 iter I made? (to 1920:1080)

I'll try rescaling it first, the going for the denoiser... should make it work less (hopefully)

 

[galora]

i dont take any offense... i just shared a little suggestion for people who are not used with DAZ and even less with outside software.
it definitly not the best solution for sure, but i think it may help a bit for people who can only render with very bad grains result.

we allagree that everything would be better than putting out a super grainy render that look like it have been stopped at 0% and 10 iterations without any care LOL.

in addition, i mustsay that it can also be a "style"... not realist and not cartoonish... kind of original style and its not ugly as a result compared to super rgainy thing XD (after all, we also got some sims games and else... soo i guess this isnt too bad as a style anyway)

Got to agree there, it works but often times it switches from grainy to clean depending on the lighting and I need to really make an effort to get over it.

It should be a conscious choice to choose a style like that (as long as the time benefit isn't a question)

 

[recreation]

i dont take any offense... i just shared a little suggestion for people who are not used with DAZ and even less with outside software.
it definitly not the best solution for sure, but i think it may help a bit for people who can only render with very bad grains result.

we allagree that everything would be better than putting out a super grainy render that look like it have been stopped at 0% and 10 iterations without any care LOL.

in addition, i mustsay that it can also be a "style"... not realist and not cartoonish... kind of original style and its not ugly as a result compared to super rgainy thing XD (after all, we also got some sims games and else... soo i guess this isnt too bad as a style anyway)

there are some games that actually use it as a style element and that's absolutely fine and even really good in some cases, but there are also a lot of games that overuse the denoizer, where you really can see that the dev used a denoizer and it's even worse if it's 2/3 of the render and then he didn't use it on the other 1/3.

 

[galora]

there are some games that actually use it as a style element and that's absolutely fine and even really good in some cases, but there are also a lot of games that overuse the denoizer, where you really can see that the dev used a denoizer and it's even worse if it's 2/3 of the render and then he didn't use it on the other 1/3.

how do you mean on part of the render

 

[macadam]

how do you mean on part of the render

something like denoiser active at 400 iteration, when your renders usually goes to 700 or something , for exemple.

you see denoiser doing his job at 80% of the rendering and then the rendering continu.

that kind of thing XD

 

[recreation]

Damn thanks for pointing that out! I was so distracted by the blue reflection of the sky I didn't notice it... Edit: The more I look at it the more it bothers. Thanks for that. xD
But that looks like compression how come? I mean I saw the lower size * 0.33-0.5 but I thought it was just because the noise kills compression (not sure just based on my understanding of basic compression algorithms)

I get people using the daz denoiser though my results even with higher iteration numbers were shady at best .

Spoiler

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The standalone one just kinda blows by mind in comparison. In well lit scenes it kinda blew my mind, and on drapes on another render with this lighting.
But frankly that 4000 iterations one took like 6 hours to complete (maybe more) on my gtx 970 (gonna try borrowing another one from a friend to try out, but the 4GB limit is killing me...)

I remember seeing you talk about increasing the iso, I can't find the post anymore. Can you point out how you do it?

Would you argue for leaving the noise in? With bad hardware I mean, like the downscaled version of the 4000 iter I made? (to 1920:1080)

I'll try rescaling it first, the going for the denoiser... should make it work less (hopefully)

Film Iso, you'll find it in the render settings under tone mapping, but I use it only when I up the environment intensity (which make render faster).
in your case if you want to be productive, use a denoizer, but if you only render for fun i'd say let the render finish over night and don't use denoizer.

how do you mean on part of the render

not part of a render, but used denoizer on some render and on some other renders not.

 

[galora]

something like denoiser active at 400 iteration, when your renders usually goes to 700 or something , for exemple.

you see denoiser doing his job at 80% of the rendering and then the rendering continu.

that kind of thing XD

I don't get how it works, but I read somewhere (prolly recreation basically my rendering god by now) that it doesn't change depending on when you start applying it... Don't know for sure haven't tested it

 

[recreation]

I don't get how it works, but I read somewhere (prolly recreation basically my rendering god by now) that it doesn't change depending on when you start applying it... Don't know for sure haven't tested it

it USED to denoize the image permanent at the iterations you set up for the denoizer, that means if you decided that it needs more iterations and resumed (not restarted) the render it went on with the denoized image which of course would end up totally fucked up because it got denoized already.
Now it doesn't matter anymore because it's not permanent, basically the denoizer only will become permanent if you save the image, otherwise it's only on top of the actual current iteration count.
the old way:
-Denoizer at 8 iterations, render at 1000 iterations -> denoizer permanently denoizes the image at 8 iterations, the rest of the iterations run on top of the denoized image -> image looks blurry with no details
the current way:
-Denoizer at 8 iterations, render at 1000 iterations -> denoizer shows a first preview of how it would look at the current iteration count starting at 8 iterations, but the render will only be permanently denoized when the render is finished (or you stop it).

 

[coffeeaddicted]

I am just wondering.
Is there a reason i should have 5000 iterations of samples?
I set it to 150 and its seems to increase speed a lot and the results don't look too bad either. There is, however, a slight difference.
So i am just curious if its bad to use less samples vs. the default 5000.

Thanks

 

[jamdan]

I am just wondering.
Is there a reason i should have 5000 iterations of samples?
I set it to 150 and its seems to increase speed a lot and the results don't look too bad either. There is, however, a slight difference.
So i am just curious if its bad to use less samples vs. the default 5000.

Thanks

Samples/literation's is how just many passes Iray does over the render before it considers it's done. If it gets to the number of samples, it'll consider the render to be complete.

Max time (seconds) and convergence ratio also factor into in. If Iray gets to the max time or convergence ratio, it'll also stop the render and consider it done. Iray stops the render based on whichever one of (literations/time/convergence) happens first.

So, basically, no. It's not bad to set it lower than the default. In fact, you should. Because each render is different. Mostly based on the lighting. If you leave it on the default, you'll just drag out the render time for no noticeable difference or in a more complex scene you'll end up with a lot grain because Iray didn't have time to sort things out.

This

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has some good info to learn about things.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

Samples/literation's is how just many passes Iray does over the render before it considers it's done. If it gets to the number of samples, it'll consider the render to be complete.

Max time (seconds) and convergence ratio also factor into in. If Iray gets to the max time or convergence ratio, it'll also stop the render and consider it done. Iray stops the render based on whichever one of (literations/time/convergence) happens first.

So, basically, no. It's not bad to set it lower than the default. In fact, you should. Because each render is different. Mostly based on the lighting. If you leave it on the default, you'll just drag out the render time for no noticeable difference or in a more complex scene you'll end up with a lot grain because Iray didn't have time to sort things out.

This

You must be registered to see the links

has some good info to learn about things.

Have to tell you. I know this guide.
Btw. even though this guide is really great. I just never understood the Caustic Sampler. When i turn it on, everything is overexposed.
But thank you. The reduced time with the samples helps a lot. I just always thought you should have 5000 samples to get a good image.l Turns out you don't need that.

 

[143 others]

does using the same saved scene increase the render time exponentially coz the image that would take few seconds to render earlier is now taking whole 5-6 minutes and giving poor grainy results I have also added few models in the same scene but I am rendering only one at a time whats the problem and how o get rid of this plese help
I have a rtx 3070 laptop (legion)

 

[SteelyDan14]

does using the same saved scene increase the render time exponentially coz the image that would take few seconds to render earlier is now taking whole 5-6 minutes and giving poor grainy results I have also added few models in the same scene but I am rendering only one at a time whats the problem and how o get rid of this plese help
I have a rtx 3070 laptop (legion)

That's not an easy answer. I know you are only rendering one image at a time, but each image could be causing the delay. If you are using dforce clothing, if the models have complex skin textures or even the hair asset. I would turn off everything but the character you want to render and then try rendering it. See if you can figure out which character is causing the problem. You can also delete everything not visible. Even if you cannot see it in the viewscreen, daz still renders it. Only have in the screen what you want to be seen.

It could also be the render settings... if you changed to scene and dome or something like that. Turn the dome off, regardless, and that should help.