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My point is that people are comparing render speeds without setting up comparable scenes.
‘Iray is slower’ is just flat out untrue.
3dl can be set up to cut a lot of corners... but people don’t seem to know all the ways you can cut corners with Iray.
There are definite things to prefer with 3dl: specialized shaders, MUCH better displacement (god I so dearly miss 3dl displacement whenever I work in Iray), unrealistic lights, and so on.
But ‘faster’ is just not true.
Yeah, even Maya's cpu renderer, Arnold, is faster than iRay in most cases. In the past, I wanted to use iRay for one reason only: because Daz figures looked best rendered in Daz iRay. Now that I have found that this isn't necessarily true and I can get similar or better results elsewhere, there is zero reason to use it. I'd sooner use 3Delight. (But about that $900 cost for unlimited cores.....) I agree with you that biased rendering opens more doors to creativity. Iray was designed for architectural work, thus is unbiased engine is an advantage for it. But you don't see many creative studios using iRay. A lot of them use Renderman and 3DL.
...excellent point. Compared to when I built my system, technology has expanded at an incredible rate. Older generation server components have been coming down in price. I'm looking at a dual 10 or 12 core Xeon configuration (40 or 48 threads) with 128 GB of four channel DDR3 ECC memory (I also work with Carrara which will use up to 100 cores/threads for rendering). In a sense it's like having a networked render farm from the Nehalem i7 days in a single box that will run in W7 or 8.1.
In my first few environment sets, I included 3DL materials and lighting. However, it took me a long long time to set them up, especially the lighting, so that the scenes looked close to the same as the Iray. It's not so much converting materials as it is the lighting, for me. And also, glass and metal never look as good in 3DL when I try. Maybe some other PAs have a knack for glass and metal in 3DL, but it was never something I found to meet my standards.
When I make clothing, however, I like to do both shaders. My last couple of outfits being the exception, but that was a matter of meeting deadlines more than lack of support.
I really using 3DL for some things such as caroony based artwork. I just wish 3DL had gpu support. I find Iray is much faster when you have a proper GPU.
Just because Iray can do fairly photo-realistic renders, does not mean that is all it can do.
You could set up lighting to get similar effects as you would get with 3dl if you wanted to...and there are numerous shader sets that could give you any kind of toon or less detailed looks as well. There are also render settings in iray that can give different looks as well.
Your workflow for the look you want may be different with iray, but it is in no way limited by iray. It is simply about taking the time to learn how to use it to get the look you want. That may take a bit of work, I know it took me a while to learn to get the look I want from Iray. But that is the work for the individual artist to get through, no one can do that kind of work for you. We are all in the same boat to learn to get the look we want from the tools we have at our disposal.
I'm not in anyway attempting to diminish what Iray is certainly capable of. The problems that I have with Iray are hardware requirements, long render times and a somewhat steep learning curve (which you even allude to). I presently do not have any similar problems with 3Delight and that it why I'm discouraged by the growing lack of support for it.
3dl also has a steep learning curve. The big difference is that 3dl and Iray have different starting ‘default’ points.
Yes, for a total beginner 3dl is faster at a stripped down level.
But once you put in the time and effort of learning both, there is a lot more flexibility.
As long as they don't throw away 3DL support from DS it's ok, I am more worried about that (saving the license cost for 3delight).
IRAY is all nice but most of my scenes will not even fit in GPU memory and running IRAY on CPU.... well it will take some time...
Wowie will.
His approach is significantly different to mine, but he's truly geared towards speed. Aggressive optimisations and all. I hope people will love it.
I'm the sort who prefers to play safe when it comes to shader authoring, but then again, I'm not rendering for a living.
It's 2017, though, and RSL is a compromise regardless. I did mention it a few times on these forums, but the next elusive goal is harnessing the new OSL-based pathtracer that is now the "true 3Delight".
Are you by any chance a coder proficient in C? Because when it comes to the RSL side of the equation, the integration framework is all there, what you need is dig down into scripting for "scripted rendering" and actual shader writing. Like, I did it, and I'm not a software professional. So it's not difficult, just tedious.
But OSL in 3Delight was implemented from scratch, DNA developed a new API specifically for scene description in their OSLtracer, and it's not exactly a "recoloured RiSpec". To utilise this new API properly, DS would need either a rewrite of the main 3Delight plugin or an external plugin like the ones for LuxRender etc.
OSLtracer is where all the groundbreaking things go now in the 3Delight world.
I confess I do mean to file a DAZ support ticket asking if OSL integration (just the very barebones framework so that we could use the scripted rendering pane to chain our RIB generation commands) is in the works or not, have meant for a while now, but I'm honestly afraid to hear a "no".
It's not about you. It's because the shaders that come with DS are limited.
At the very least, when using them, you need to add a "physical" environment dome into your scene, or parts of your reflective and refractive surfaces will come out black.
Did anyone ever tell you about this?
I think what some of the folks here aren't relating to is that I (and I assume others) want to purchase products with straight out-of-the-box functionality. Create a scene, add a light preset and I'm good to go. You may consider me a total beginner working at a stripped down level, but it it gets me the results I need for the work I'm doing. I just want to drive the car so I can reach my destination. I'm not interested in constantly tinkering with the engine. You also keep referencing long 3Delight renders but that has not been my experience and I've created some pretty hefty scenes.
As I noted in the post that started this thread, I acknowledge that I'm probably going to adapt to Iray at some point. And my intention here was never to put down Iray. it was just to better understand the current marketplace dynamics of both render engines and to communicate to PAs that I am a consumer hoping to see continued support for 3Delight.
3dl support means PAs are reducing their income. It can’t help but decrease.
Good news is, the free conversion script means you can use most Iray stuff with a single click. Maybe a little extra testing.
I recommend AoA lights and Reflective Radiance to get increasingly good lighting; AoA ambient light can get a good broad lighting with AO, Reflective Radiance has some great emissive shaders and even more realistic lighting.
AoA is pretty fast, RR is a bit slower with the greater realism but not NEARLY as bad regular UE2 and other options.
...to an extent yes, however more effects need to be done in post compared to 3DL which has many utilities to create those effects "in render".
If you don't have a beefy GPU card, you are stuck with CPU rendering and if you don't have an older system, rendering in swap mode which es even slower. Having to keep the scene in Daz open during rendering takes memory resources (one aspect of Lux I did like as once the scene was submitted to the render engine, you could close the Daz programme and open scene down). If the process dumps to the CPU then it takes even more from your physical memory (a total of about double the uncompressed scene size), Subtract memory needed for the OS and basic system utilities (about another 1.5GB on average) along with any other processes that may be running like a Net browser, and suddenly you are hammering your drive to use the virtual memory partition.
...I have experience in both but have many, many more years of with 3DL than with Iray, which included coming up with ways to improve performance and final output. Yeah they take a little more time on the scene building side but still come no where near to diminishing returns as the render times I experience are still faster than Iray in CPU/Swap mode.This is not to say I'm abandoning Iray, just that 3DL along with all my experience I have put in it over the years works better suits the illustration work I do.
...just a small sample of the the typw of work 3DL does very well" All were done without UE.
I did these a while back in 3Delight using wowie's Photo Studio Kit
A test of the skin shader and lights from wowie's Photo Studio Kit on a tweaked version of Olympia 6, and using Mec4D's Vampire Huntress outfit, and an expression from 3DCelebrity's What A Cutie. Rendered in about a minute on an AMD 8350 8 core CPU with 16 GB Ram, Windows 7.
A slimmed down Olympia 6 in a scene testing lighting and wowie's skin shader, and Mec4D's clothing materials. The scene is a sunny day by default. Rendered in DAZ Studio using 3Delight in 1 minute and 2.41 seconds. AMD 8350 8 core CPU with 16 GB Ram, Windows 7
...I don't mind "pushing" limits for my needs. However, when it boils down to to having to code in the shader language, or going so deep into the nit picky details (like the Iray Skin thread does) that I am spending more time messing with them instead of creating finished works, that is where I draw the line. I actually dipped my toe to in the water of CG back in the early 80s, when everything had to be coded, ended up bailing out, hoping that someday we'd have programmes which took the process from an artist's perspective like we now have today.
Not true at all. Hypothetically, say the 3DL market is half the size of the Iray market and making a product for both 3DL and Iray takes twice as long as making one for Iray. Making two Iray products would pay more than making one product compatible with both.
I think you're both saying the same thing, but in different ways. :)
Yeah. Um. That's what I was saying. ;)
Except I think even that is optimistic.
Eherr.. Forgive me my ignorance but aren't you both basically saying the same thing?
And correct me if I'm wrong but I find it very hard to believe adding 3DL mats/presets doubles the workload.
They do. Because it's not just plugging in maps, it's understanding how the maps work and setting correct glossy/specular values. Do I use DZ standard shader? If I have a character with skin (yee gods!) then there's a HUGE amount of work getting SSS settings right.
Frankly, at this point, 3DL settings take MORE work for me than Iray ones do, and I never get results that really shine. Because I can't use the bells and whistles that I can't depend on a potential customer having.
But here is where I'm confused. It still seems that 3Delight is very widely supported in the DAZ store. That is what was behind my original query. I was questioning why a very small amount of PAs were abandoning 3Delight. The answer throughout this thread is that it is simply not cost effective.
But take for example the new Charlotte Pro Bundle. Of the ten items in the bundle with material settings, only one does not include 3Delight presets (dForce Misty Pastel Goth Outfit for Genesis 8 Female(s)). If it does not provide the return on investment that many here are claiming, then why is it still so widely supported on such high profile new releases? Would not DAZ itself have given up 3Delight if the financial results did not support the labor costs?
Charlotte 8 is a DAZ Original figure, and the content included in the bundles is made by some PAs under contract, meaning they get paid a specific amount, which is usually high enough to cover the time investment to produce both sets of materials.
Oh, shoot. I read that as "No 3DL support."
3DL really does take longer. Iray shaders are easier to work with, consistent, match to reality better, preview faster.
But that still begs the question, why does DAZ still feel it is in their interests to maintain 3Delight support? Based on what you are saying, they must be requiring the contracted PAs to include 3Delight presets, otherwise, why would the PAs go to the extra trouble?
No idea. Maybe they regard it as worth the extra cost to be nice to their customer base.
You would have to ask the PAs to get a definitive answer. However it could simply be that different people have different opinions on the best route to go, or could have different target markets, or due to the products they sell and the customers that buy them what works for one vender may differ from what works for another, even if the average across all venders tends to one side or the other. PA's experience with one shader or the other would affect how quickly and easily products are created (thus affecting cost) and that could differ from one person to the next. And of course if products are used outside of DAZ Studio, iray may not be available to the target customer which could affect the choice.