What's Iray vs 3DDelight?

nokoteb99

i'm kinda new to 4.9 and i 'm finding out there's 2 ways of rendering 3DDelight and Iray. what's the diffferentce?

DDCreate

My best, uneducated answer (been working in Daz for less than a year) is that 3Delight renders are more catroonish looking. Not in a bad way but they obviously don't look very realistic. But they do render faster. Iray renders ARE more realistic and depending on your skill level and what marterials you're working with, can almost look alive enough to be breathing. The downside on that level of detail however is a longer render time. So when you have a scene in mind, just ask yourself which end result you want and how much time you have to lend to rendering. Different projects my look more fun in 3DL. Like if I was doing a fantasy Knight vs. Dragon for my nephew, I'd 3DL it. But if I was doing a noir detective story, I'd probably rather use Iray. That's what's so awesome about Daz, it's all up to you! Have fun!

nokoteb99

NIce!!!! Very nice. thanks for the info.

Oso3D

3Delight is a 'biased renderer,' while Iray is an 'unbiased renderer.' Basically, 3DL uses a bunch of simplified lighting techniques to render, while Iray is strictly 'realistic.'

There are advantages to each approach -- 3DL is typically a lot faster (with exceptions), Iray is a lot easier to make realistic scenes quickly.

However, with experience, you can make VERY realistic-looking scenes in 3DL. And some of the fancy lights and shaders and whatnot can slow things down a lot, if you aren't really careful; I've had scenes in 3DL take hours to render, and Iray scenes take 10 mins. But this isn't the norm.

3DL can do some amazing completely unrealistic things. You can have a figure that doesn't cast shadows. Or a cartoon-guy in a realistic environment (or vice versa). There are all sorts of fancy shaders that do weird, neat things (like generate grass everywhere).

Iray is limited; if light can't do it, tough. You can't have one light only illuminate certain items in the scene.

3DL is strictly CPU-based (IE: uses your regular computer RAM and processing capability). Iray can do that or be run off of NVIDIA GPU (IE: uses the processing power of your graphics cards), assuming the scene fits in the card's RAM. This can REALLY speed up Iray.

 

If your goal is photorealism, Iray has a lot of appeal. However, there is a snag -- it is very realistic. Why is that a snag?

Because in the real world, photographers use all sorts of tricks to get good pictures. They play with lighting, diffusers, etc. As anyone who takes pics with their phone or whatever has noticed, in the real world, very natural scenes often make lousy pictures. You need TRICKS.

People with CGI often have this strong compulsion to simulate things 'naturally,' believing that if you just arrange all the stuff that would be in a natural scene, it'll look great. But... no, not really.

To make good realistic images, you need to apply the techniques in the real world to help figures 'pop' from their environment, and so on. That's not easy, and takes a lot of understanding and practice.

 

So, to sum up:

With realism, Iray gets you 90% of the way there with fairly little effort. But if you want that last 5, 10%... you have to put a LOT of effort into it. 3DL is hard to set up, but you can get just about as far with lots of effort, and it's a little kinder on you if you don't quite get there.

3DL lets you do some wacky and interesting stuff that Iray can't.

 

I enjoy both for various reasons. For example, I do a lot of lineart-style stuff with 3DL. And I love the way light works in Iray.

 

fastbike1

3DL doesn't render faster than Iray if you have a decent Nvidia GTX graphics card (need CUDA support for Iray). With a GTX780 or 900 series and up card, Iray will be much, much faster than 3DL. With Iray, the more (photometric) lights you have, the faster it will be. With 3DL, the opposite is true.

frank0314

I use a GTX 960 with 4gb VRAM and it runs a lot faster than 3DL.

Oso3D

It REALLY depends. One thing that will slow down 3dl loads is UberEnvironment. It's incredibly sluggish. I use AoA lights (which, admittedly, cost money) and while there is a slight loss of realism, it's just way faster.

PA_ThePhilosopher

nokoteb99 said:

i'm kinda new to 4.9 and i 'm finding out there's 2 ways of rendering 3DDelight and Iray. what's the diffferentce?

 

The difference, for me at least, is 4 hours of rendering time vs. 4 minutes. 

-P