How to render?

pjlightning

I'm having several problems trying to render.
Apart from not having the slightest idea which options do what, a first basic problem is how do I set the area that I want to render?
I find that, even if I get a rendered output, it's usually only the top half of my avatar. The render window seems to be wide, how do I change its size and orientation and position my figure so that it all shows in the output?

My laptop has built in AMD graphics (2gb, I think) and 16gb ram. Which settings would be best (and not take hours)?

Thank you

BeeMKay

Have you already checked out the quick start tutorials? https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-daz-3d-video-tutorials

If not, please have a look at them.

You AMD card doesn't render Iray, you need an nVidea card for that, so you have to render in CPU mode. This will push your CPU to 100% usage, so make sure you have your laptop properly ventilated, otherwise  you'll risk a meltdown.

For CPU, 3Delight rendering is also an option.

But I suggest you try the tutorial first to get an intial understanding?

pjlightning

BeeMKay said:

Have you already checked out the quick start tutorials? https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-daz-3d-video-tutorials

If not, please have a look at them.

You AMD card doesn't render Iray, you need an nVidea card for that, so you have to render in CPU mode. This will push your CPU to 100% usage, so make sure you have your laptop properly ventilated, otherwise  you'll risk a meltdown.

For CPU, 3Delight rendering is also an option.

But I suggest you try the tutorial first to get an intial understanding?

I'm partially deaf and the tutorials don't have subtitles, plus are in a very strong US accent. I'm having difficulty making out what he's saying.

pjlightning

He also is clicking on panels that I don't have open and don't know how to find. (I would edit my last reply, but it's not showing.)

BeeMKay

Ah, okay. I hope I can help...

I take it you already figured out how to load, clothe and pose the figure? If not, let me know. I will start with the rendering, as that was your question.

First of all, you will find any missing panes (also called "tabs" in DAZ lingo), when you click on Window --> Panes(Tabs).

This is the Loading/Create tab:

1 - control panels. the top symbol rotates the "camera", the cross moves it left/right/up/down, the magnifying glass zooms in or out. Move your mouse over the desired movement and press the right mouse button, then move the mouse until everything is in the right position. That takes a bit of excercising. :-)

2 - View selection. By default, this is set to "perspective view", but when you click on the little triangle, you can also select any camera or real light (distant or spotlight) for posing. You can't render through a light, btw.

3 - Camera creation.

4 - Preview type (I'm not sure how it's propely called). Here, you can select what type of preview you see. Default is "Texture shaded", but when you click on the small triangle, you can also select Iray render preview, or wireframe and a few more.

5 - The small listing has a few options for the view. When you click on it, make sure that "Show aspect frame" is selected. It will then give you a frame like in my screenshot, that has the ratio and everything inside the frame will be rendered; everything not in the frame will not be rendered.

Doing a preview render:

1 - Select Iray Preview from the list

2 - At the botttom of the program window, you can see the stage of preperation of the render. This can take a few seconds to several minutes, in some cases even longer.

3 - The figure goes white when the render prepares. That is normal.

After a while, the rendered figure shows up. Notice that you still see the bounding box (the "box" edges) and the movement arrows, because I have the character selected in the scene tab. This will not show up in the actual render, of course.

You can use the preview window for selecting the best angle, and then create a camera at that position. This then frees up your perspective view for any finetuning work. And this is how you can create a camera (if your DAZ Studio setting doesn't already load one automatically):

1 - click on the camera symbol.

2 - a window will pop up. It usually has the Options closed.

3 - click on the "show options" if that is the case.

The Options:

1 - you can name the camera. This comes in handy when you have larger scenes with many different camera angles. For your average render, usually it's fine to use the default naming)

2 - selecting "Copy active view" makes the camera take up a position that will give you the same setting as the perspective view.

2 - click accept to create the camera.

The perspective view now shows a crossbar, which means that the camera was created properly. To switch to the camera, select it from the drop-down menu that will show when you click on the small triangle next to "Perspective view".

This is now the camera selected for view:

The camera comes with a headlamp that pours a ton of light into the scene. That's why it's usually a good idea to switch it off in the beginning. You could later use it for some extra light, but for a start render, the headlamp should be set to "off". Here's how you do it: In the scene tab, select the camera.

Go to the parameter tab, and select "Headlamp" from the list. Change Headlamp Mode to "off".

Rendering:

1 - select the Surfacing/Rendering tab.

2/3 - in the Render Settings tab, select the Editor tab, and make sure that the render engine is set to Iray. That is the default.

4 - From the list, select "General".

5 - From the listing of parameters that opens now, in "Dimension Preset", you can change the aspect ratio. You can also change the output size. Make sure that "Constrain Proportions" is set to "On" if you want to keep certain aspect ratios; unchecking it will maniulate each size parameter independently and you no longer habe a specific aspect like 16:9 or 4:3.

 

I hope this made sense. If not, let me know. Oh, and Studio also has interactive lessons, you can find that at the bottom of the program window.