Trying out Daz

[alexander3rd]

Hello everyone, newbie here. So after playing a list of games on here, I figured, why not try to create something - a visual novel could be an interesting project, and a challenge, as I learn everything on the spot with almost no past experience.
Anyway, here's my first try to render out a random, simple scene in a simple environment:

This image is a plain render from Daz, 200 samples, 2000px width, ~3min render time


This is 200 samples, 4000px width, 10min render time - downscaled to 1920x1080 and with a few adjustments in Photoshop


Now, what concerns me is the quality. These renders were fast, especially on my system - Ryzen 5, GTX 1050Ti 4gb - Daz reverts to CPU rendering even with a simple naked model, when using iRay. More samples than 200, and the render time skyrockets.
My question is, do you guys like this kind of quality, or is it way too low for anyone's liking?
Any suggestions about Daz, lighting and rendering would be much appreciated too. Thanks!

 

[MaxCarna]

Well, this is not what you want to hear, but the true is, if the story is interesing nobody will complain about the quality difference between that and a super high quality picture. Lighting will make more difference than the number of samples.

You have 4gb on your GPU, but if is the only resource, Windows will give his bite on that amount, resulting in less memory. You can add a cheap GPU for the system, letting the 1050 only for render.

This scenario is huge, I believe that is taking much more memory than the models. You can use a small room to begin with. Remember to apply the shader preset "Daz Uber" on every surface that is not Iray by default.

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[alexander3rd]

This scenario is huge, I believe that is taking much more memory than the models. You can use a small room to begin with. Remember to apply the shader preset "Daz Uber" on every surface that is not Iray by default.

Yes it was a large environment, but it has only a few parts, probably that's why it rendered so quickly. I tried another environment, a diner - with many parts, and my viewport dropped down to 2-5 fps, texture shaded. Rendering was completely impossible. Thanks, I'll try your suggestions.

 

[thecardinal]

A good way to test the size of a scene is to save it. The larger the save file, the harder it will be to render. Most characters for me are 1,500-2,000 (MB or KB I forget, but it is 2,000 haha) and if you add a complicated hair asset it can jump to 25,000.

 

[SteelRazer]

The problem is that you have small VRAM so its insufficient for iray textures even if you have many stuff on scene the geometry is like 500 MB to 1 GB and lighting is like 20 MB mostly so textures are the biggest deal. Lighting is almost most important in the scene rendering and best way to make it (as the scene is almost always limited to 4 light sources like spotlights, linear etc.) to use dome light or make use of primitives and emissive surfaces. You want to place lights to show characters details on skin like displacement maps, so posing it from the side . When rendering a big scene it's loaded in both RAM and VRAM when using Iray , not just one or another. And last tip or notice as I intended to keep this short , If you are using Win 10 then Win is Cashing VRAM "just in case" and it scales , more VRAM more the cashed memory that means GPU with 8GB is something more like 7 GB of usable VRAM or less and this comes from personal experience as I had to revert to Win 7 a while ago. Don't forget that the scene doesn't need to be perfect as almost all of the renders should have some postwork in Photoshop. Fuuu that's it, if you are reading this congrats btw and if you have any questions just ask.

 

[alexander3rd]

A good way to test the size of a scene is to save it

I just keep an eye on the render output log, if the scene is too big, it's instantly visible when rendering. Tried that Scene optimizer script MaxCarna suggested - now my only problem is to get a decent quality render without having to wait hours for a single frame. Decreasing all the maps from 4k to 1080p res improves workflow and reduces render time significantly, but it reduces the final quality significantly too. But slowly getting there.

Lighting is almost most important in the scene rendering and best way to make it (as the scene is almost always limited to 4 light sources like spotlights, linear etc.)

I'm guessing you're talking about indoor lighting? If so, that's something I'm learning now. Outdoor scenes however, an HDRI map is enough, plus it acts as a large scene itself, doesn't it? I'll attach two recent renders with only 2 models in an HDRI environment:

P.s these models are just for learning Daz, they won't be in a game. I would have a hard time convincing patreon's mods that the girl is 18+ lol.

 

[SteelRazer]

I'm guessing you're talking about indoor lighting? If so, that's something I'm learning now. Outdoor scenes however, an HDRI map is enough, plus it acts as a large scene itself, doesn't it? I'll attach two recent renders with only 2 models in an HDRI environment:
View attachment 120629 View attachment 120630
P.s these models are just for learning Daz, they won't be in a game. I would have a hard time convincing patreon's mods that the girl is 18+ lol.

I was talking about lights in general but there is more to it than that. HDRI is very good as it also saves memory but it's used even for indoor light when you have big windows in room or apartment and it's faster for cpu/gpu to calculate the render (because it calculate how the rays are bouncing from different surfaces and geometry props) than from linear , spotlight etc. And yeah those renders are grainy as there weren't enough samples, try using in render settings pixel filtering and see if it helps you.

 

[SteelRazer]

P.s these models are just for learning Daz, they won't be in a game. I would have a hard time convincing patreon's mods that the girl is 18+ lol.

You can click the banner under my post and the latest render I did you can see different lights in scene just from emissive surfaces as decorative lights and main. I haven't used dome or other lights.