Daz Would like to get some feedback for my first images!

[Lumbersexualist]

Hello everyone! I recently found this forum and all it's incredible content. So I played a few games, got inspired and decided to download DAZ. I haven't really watched any tutorials, mainly cause I can't seem to have the attention span for those videos, and figure it out by myself as I go. I have developed games in Unreal before so I have some experience with 3D software in general. But why am I making this thread? Well, I haven't really encountered any major problems (except for these darn rendering times), but would like some feedback on some images I've done and perhaps get some feedback on them. I have a feeling that I've done a few rookie mistakes that might be obvious to the experienced eye.

1.



This is the first image I rendered. First of all I had no idea that it would look so great with the IRay renderer, it kind of blew my mind. As you can see I kind of fucked up with the eyebrows and cheeks, since I had no idea what I was doing at this point. I think that I used some distant light on this one, but can't really remember.

2.



So know I went with a little bolder approach as you can see. The skin tone was kind of grey but I didn't mind. I started to figure out that you can "hide your mistakes" behind various body parts. Her left hand is supposed to be holding some kind of dick but I hadn't installed any male genitalia at this point.

3.



I'm sure that you all are familiar with this room. Here's when I started to realize that lights are a HUGE part of what makes an image great. When I started rendering this image i had no idea where my lights were, and it created a rather strange setting.

4.



So now I had some lights fixed (ignore the one to the top right pls) and started to realize how long rendering took. This image is 1024x676 and I think I stopped at maybe 300 iterations.

5.



So then I started to use the light presets from the scenes I loaded and got pretty good results. This is 2560x1440 and stopped at maybe 1000 iterations, not sure. I think it went on for at least 2 hours. I went a little crazy with the pixel size, but I was curious to try.

6.

Here's a series of different iterations.


100 iterations




300 iterations



600 iterations

I removed the background scene just to get lower rendering times. The first two were basically just test runs for the lighting. By now I had turned off rendering quality and started to smaller images.

7.



So I left a rendering do it's work over night and woke up the next morning to this. This is 1920x1080 with a max sample of 10 000, render quality off. I thought that I would end up with a pretty flawless image but still had a lot of grain.

8.



I call this one "The Office Ladies". So I tried a portait format, 742x1200 and this is after only 400 iterations (!!). I have no idea how this image turned out so great. I used some light preset and had no background.

So far I've yet to produce a 1920x1080 image that looks nearly flawless. I really don't know what adds time to the rendering process. I've read something about translucency, but I don't really know where I can change the settings for that. I'm sitting here with 8 gigs of ram so I don't expect short rendering times, but hopefully I can get it around 1 hour for an HD image. My questions are: Am I going towards the right direction? Do you have any tips or shortcuts for rendering? What were some mistakes you encountered in the beginning? Do you have any valuable links that I should check out?

Cheers!

 

[WhitePhantom]

Try using the denoiser at a high iteration point.

I render to 5500 iterations with the denoiser kicking in at 5000 and it removes nearly all the grain from the background without any real blurring.

Could help as they all are grainy to various degrees and it will remove that without adding much onto the rendering time.

 

[DreamBig Games]

Iray uses your GPU or CPU for rendering. Ram has nothing to do with the render speeds, only with the time your scenes will load, how fast, easy you can manipulate stuff in the viewport and stuff like that.
So, in order to get really nice, non-grainy images, you need a good GPU, with as much VRAM memory you can afford. The VRAM ( the memory of the GPU ) is crucial as if a scene is larger then your VRAM, then Daz will render it using the CPU, and that is very slow.
Using specific lights helps, in my opinion, scenes using HDRI render faster compared with scenes that have 3-6 lights. But, sometimes, scenes with 3-5 lights look a lot better. So it might be a tradeoff between looks and speed.
Search the forum for Daz3d tutorials, there are plenty around here.

 

[DreamBig Games]

Try using the denoiser at a high iteration point.

I render to 5500 iterations with the denoiser kicking in at 5000 and it removes nearly all the grain from the background without any real blurring.

Could help as they all are grainy to various degrees and it will remove that without adding much onto the rendering time.

I think you should set your Denoiser 1-2 iterations before the render ends. For example, in your case, I would set Max Iterations at 5500 and Denoiser at 5499. Any iteration after the denoiser, will not improve on the quality of the image, so it's kind of a waste.

 

[CarbonBlue]

Iray uses your GPU or CPU for rendering. Ram has nothing to do with the render speeds, only with the time your scenes will load, how fast, easy you can manipulate stuff in the viewport and stuff like that.

I thought that if you use up your GPU RAM that it uses your system RAM. If it uses that up, then it swaps with the hard drive memory, taking for-ever.

 

[DreamBig Games]

I thought that if you use up your GPU RAM that it uses your system RAM. If it uses that up, then it swaps with the hard drive memory, taking for-ever.

Nope. If the scene exceeds your GPU RAM, Daz will render with the CPU and use the RAM then.
This is easy to test. Just load a massive scene, with shitloads of assets, and then monitor your GPU and CPU, see which one is active .

 

[Lumbersexualist]

Try using the denoiser at a high iteration point.

I render to 5500 iterations with the denoiser kicking in at 5000 and it removes nearly all the grain from the background without any real blurring.

Could help as they all are grainy to various degrees and it will remove that without adding much onto the rendering time.

Thank you! I had no idea this setting existed. Will try it out immediatly!

Iray uses your GPU or CPU for rendering. Ram has nothing to do with the render speeds, only with the time your scenes will load, how fast, easy you can manipulate stuff in the viewport and stuff like that.
So, in order to get really nice, non-grainy images, you need a good GPU, with as much VRAM memory you can afford. The VRAM ( the memory of the GPU ) is crucial as if a scene is larger then your VRAM, then Daz will render it using the CPU, and that is very slow.
Using specific lights helps, in my opinion, scenes using HDRI render faster compared with scenes that have 3-6 lights. But, sometimes, scenes with 3-5 lights look a lot better. So it might be a tradeoff between looks and speed.
Search the forum for Daz3d tutorials, there are plenty around here.

In advanced settings for rendering I have selected CPU as hardware for interactive and photoreal devices, but no option to choose GPU. Is there another place where I choose this, or is it because the scene is greater than 8 gb? I currently have a AMD Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 8 gb.

I will definitely check out HDRI rendering. Thank you!

 

[recreation]

Thank you! I had no idea this setting existed. Will try it out immediatly!




In advanced settings for rendering I have selected CPU as hardware for interactive and photoreal devices, but no option to choose GPU. Is there another place where I choose this, or is it because the scene is greater than 8 gb? I currently have a AMD Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 8 gb.

I will definitely check out HDRI rendering. Thank you!

Iray = Nvidia, you need a Nvidia card, GTX/RTX.

Nope. If the scene exceeds your GPU RAM, Daz will render with the CPU and use the RAM then.
This is easy to test. Just load a massive scene, with shitloads of assets, and then monitor your GPU and CPU, see which one is active .

The RAM is used to process the scene, no matter if it's rendered on GPU or CPU, if it's used up, it will use system V(irtual)RAM.

 

[Lumbersexualist]

Iray = Nvidia, you need a Nvidia card, GTX/RTX.

Welp, guess I'm fucked then. But if I understand it correctly, it only changes the time for rendering but not the quality of the image? Thanks for the help!

 

[DreamBig Games]

Iray = Nvidia, you need a Nvidia card, GTX/RTX.


The RAM is used to process the scene, no matter if it's rendered on GPU or CPU, if it's used up, it will use system RAM.

By process the scene, are you referring to loading the textures and polys in the VRAM, for Iray processing? Or Viewport navigation?
"The RAM is used to process the scene, " you are referring to system RAM, not VRAM, right?

 

[DreamBig Games]

Welp, guess I'm fucked then. But if I understand it correctly, it only changes the time for rendering but not the quality of the image? Thanks for the help!

Yes, time only, it won't matter for quality. But, if you really want to render with IRAY, ditch the Radeon, and get a 1070 ( 8GB VRAM ). This is what I started with, and it's a decent tool for a hobby.

 

[recreation]

By process the scene, are you referring to loading the textures and polys in the VRAM, for Iray processing? Or Viewport navigation?
"The RAM is used to process the scene, " you are referring to system RAM, not VRAM, right?

Yes, system, or virtual RAM, sorry, edited my post.
The scene get's processed and compressed via RAM before it hits the GPU. The GPU only manages the rendering. You could say (extremely simplified) that it decides which pixels renders to which spot^^

 

[DreamBig Games]

Yes, system, or virtual RAM, sorry, edited my post.
The scene get's processed and compressed via RAM before it hits the GPU. The GPU only manages the rendering. You could say (extremely simplified) that it decides which pixels renders to which spot^^

I'm not sure that is correct, RAM doesn't process anything, it's memory ( storage ). Data get's loaded in RAM and then it's processed by CPU. IN our case, Daz loads data in VRAM and process it in the GPU. If VRAM is too low, it loads the data in system RAM and process it in the CPU, and this is a lot slower.

At least, this is how I think it works.

 

[recreation]

I'm not sure that is correct, RAM doesn't process anything, it's memory ( storage ). Data get's loaded in RAM and then it's processed by CPU. IN our case, Daz loads data in VRAM and process it in the GPU. If VRAM is too low, it loads the data in system RAM and process it in the CPU, and this is a lot slower.

At least, this is how I think it works.

Well, I should have made it a bit more clear, sorry for that.
Of course ram doesn't process anything, the data that goes to the ram and is processed by the CPU before it hit's the GPU. The data in the ram is uncompressed and gets compressed by the CPU as well. For example, I've rendered scenes with more than 50gb texture memory used on a 1070, that's only possible because it get's compressed before it hits the gpu.
I hope that's a bit more understandable^^