Iray for Carrara?
LordGhoul
Posts: 43
I am a 3d hobbyist only. I say this because as a hobbyist I have 2 limited resources, time and money. The money limitation is not that big, its more self-imposed but time to learn software, use it and render images is clearly tight.
I started using Carrara years ago (version 6) because I was amazed at the render quality (and speed) that I saw from others. As a result I pretty much abandoned Poser. To this day I am happy with that move.
Along the way I saw the introduction of DAZ Studio and from time to time would fire it up (its free after all!) but time being what it is I devoted any learning to Carrara despite the much lamented lack of development. Still until today I was OK with that. Carrara is superior in so many ways that have been identified all over this forum that I don't need to repeat them here.
There has however been one development that I have been watching from the sidelines that I really want to finally start using and that is unbiased rendering. Thanks to PhilW and others I think the Carrara engine has been given a longer life than I would have predicted, but for me I've reached the limit of what I can do with it.
Recently I purchased a GeForce GTX 970 in the hopes that I would find a way to start unbiased rendering. I think I was assuming to use Blender Cycles even though this means exporting scenes, modifying shaders and learning Blender. Ouch!
I was encouraged to see the development of the luxuscore plugin for Carrara and I hope that it is successful when it comes out. I have to say though that I have not had much success getting it to use my video card and so I haven't spent much time understanding the shaders for luxrender.
Now along comes the announcement that DAZ Studio 4.8 includes Nvidia's Iray renderer. Naturally I decided to try it and out of the box with minimal knowledge of Studio I am getting ultra fast (minutes) unbiased renders!
I think this may be a game-changer for me and while I hate to say it, I think it may be time to move over to DAZ. After all, the render is the ultimate goal. The render is what drew me to Carrara. I will miss all of Carrara's pluses but what good are they if I can't get that render I want?
OK so I titled this long post "Iray for Carrara?" because that is exactly what I would wish for, pretty please, with a cherry on top!
Wouldn't it be great if I could stick with my favorite 3D app (Carrara) and get the use of my new expensive (for me) video card to produce the elusive realism I see from unbiased rendering!?
So who is with me to start my quixotic journey of asking DAZ to include Iray in Carrara?
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Comments
Sure I'll my hand up put :) But I'd have to buy a new video card from my reading of the forums!
Yeah... IRay doesn't recognize my ATI card and reverts to using the cpu. It's great to see DAZ 3D make the evening news, being the first company in the world to offer nVidia's IRay to the public!
I'd love to see it included as an optional render engine in Carrara, like it is in DS. IRay is the defauly engine in the beta DS, but the newly sweetened 3Delight engine is still available, which is nice to see. Some folks, myself included, are still more comfortable with what we have been using. Like me... I LOVE the Carrara PR engine... Love it!
Anyways, have you seen the new GPU-using Luxus Core?
I know that it takes a dropping of coin to get into Octane, but I'm pretty sure that LuxCore is going to be much more affordable. Not sure... I haven't looked fully into it. Like I say... I'm really happy with Carrara already. I bought PhilW's Realism Rendering course and, to be honest, I was actually buying entertainment value. I like watching Carrara TV and really like what Phil has to say. He and I had already had lengthy discussions on the subjects. Man... it was a fantastic purchase. I was already buying fully into his Gamma Correction = 2.2 linear workflow, but he covers so much more than that. It's like delving into Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering text book, reworded specifically for Carrara, and then some. Anyways (I know... I keep saying that, right?) it was the GC = 2.2 linear workflow methodology that really got a whole new look to the Carrara render engine output. At first, it was unsettling - so many things just seemed washed out. But once I started creating new scenes from the ground up using it, that's when it finally started to feel and look right.
Ooops. Babbling again Dartan?
Yeah... I'd love to see Carrara fitted with IRay!
I forgot the link to the news!
DAZ 3D - First company to make nVidia Iray 2015 available to the Public
if you have the nVidia video card already Octane is still cheaper than buying a better computer, I did the maths,
my 2 GB onboard graphics GTX 760 card and i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz 16GB RAM rig pretty slow with Iray in DS but OR4C rocks, to get similar results in Iray the hardware would cost considerably more.
a bigger GPU would be nice but prob blow up my power supply.
The reason I bought Octane was as expensive as it was, it was still a cheaper option than a new computer.
A gaming computer often not suited to normal CPU rendering shines with Octane and many have those already.
yes I always end up with a gaming computer accidently, don't know why as my joystick broke ages ago ;)
@ in front of anything in this forum gives just@somebullshit
uhm ok not doing it now
It would be great to get Iray in Carrara!!
But..... don't hold your breath. I tried to find the post, but I think it was PhilW that asked that about the possibility or Iray in Carrara. The reply from DAZ_Spooky (IIRC) was in general, though it could happen, it would be a much different situation since DS is a free application, and Carrara isn't (so I'm guessing it would require negotiating a new license with Nvidia). The impression I got was that right now this isn't in any future plans, but that could possibly change.
For those who are really interested in unbiased rendering in Carrara, LuxusCore will probably be your most economical option. Of course Octane for Carrara is an outstanding option, but it does cost a bit more. After having worked with Iray in DS quite a bit (see renders below) I can echo Wendy's comments that the workflow and interactive speed (IPR) of Octane is much better than DS and Iray - especially for systems that aren't top of the line. With my new laptop with a 970M, and a i7 4710 (2.5 GHz) the Iray IPR in DS is some what usable for me now, but on the old machine it simply wasn't. Where with Octane the IPR was great on my old machine. The IPR of LuxusCore in Carrara is faster than Iray in DS as well.
This doesn't mean that Iray is in any way a bad product. I think it's fantastic, and am working on a render right now. But at it's current stage of development it just isn't quite in the same "league" (for lack of a better analogy) as the Octane plugin for Carrara. Rendering in Iray also seems slower, but it's hard to say for sure, because you would need to have identical materials and lighting which isn't an easy task. It would be a great option to have for Carrara, but LuxusCore will be a great alternative for low cost GPU accelerated unbiased rendering.
DS/Iray renders below
Don't you just love this quote from the article " With Irays photo-realistic, GPU-accelerated performance, artists can simply click a button to get professional results even without advanced knowledge of computer graphics and lighting techniques".
Instant art at last :)
I've been using Cycles and with my puny 1GB NVidia GTX, rendering is faster, with no difference in quality, using the CPU.
lol!
Yep, bad lighting and materials/shaders = bad render, regardless of the render engine. I'm just trying to get a handle on how Iray handles shaders, lights, and HDRI's .... fun but time consuming.
The plus to Iray is that you can use your CPU(s) to render, but a $250 graphics card will be probably be faster (unless of course you have some mega dual 12 core Xeon monster).
Aah the beauty of living in a "Third world" country -250 of yours translates to around 3 000 of mine - around two months' pension income :)
OUUUCH!!!
hope I didn't offend you Wendy
Actually 599 more than I estimated - but would this be good enough? Best local price I could find!
I'm really curious what it is that any renderer "can't" do that you want it to do...
Is it the "realism" or something? I can't recall ever seeing anyone here try to match a real life photograph with a render produced in any of the unbiased renderers, with the sole purpose of determining the limits of the renderer. (EDIT: Oh, wait, let me retract that statement....it sounds too much like a statement I made a while ago which was totally different, but caused a bunch of folks here to come down on me for suggesting people don't use real life reference photos...which isn't this subject, but sounds like it. So erase what I said.)
What I have seen is a TON of unbiased renders, from a bunch of the latest unbiased renderers, which honestly look like crap, but are being touted as the greatest thing in renderers since computers were invented. :) :)
Honestly, I think there's a reasonable case to be made that for the most part, what you're getting in the latest renderers is maybe a few percent better than what you can get in any other renderer, but only *IF* you know what you're doing. And I think that's the core of the issue. One might be far better served to learn more about rendering and lighting and texturing and all of that stuff to improve their images rather than expecting the software to do it for you. Too many people put together some very poorly modelled and poorly lit and poorly textured and poorly composed scenes and expect the renderer to somehow make it look awesome. It doesn't work that way.
Now, if some truly expert rendering guy who was totally familiar with all of the rendering engines could do a side-by-side comparison versus an actual photo, and show that one renderer was clearing more "realistic" than another, maybe I'd become a believer.
But from what I've seen, we've got a ton of people comparing apples with oranges and pimentos and somehow deciding one is better.
Just my opinion. This wasn't directed at anyone in particular. No reason for anyone to take it personally and get offended. Just my thoughts.
On the original post, I can confirm that Spooky has said that there are no current plans to add iRay to Carrara, and that if they did then they would need to agree new licencing with Nvidia as the current terms only cover DAZ Studio. So it MAY happen one day, but not soon, maybe not even DAZ Soon...
Joe - after "discovering" the gamma correction in Carrara (which came from comparing the same render in Luxus/Luxrender and Carrara), I did a load of comparative renders between Lux render and Carrara's native engine, and then between Octane and Carrara. I know this isn't a comparison with real life photos, but I have done that too, and use reference photos a lot. What I realised is that "under the hood", a lot of what is happening in an unbiased renderer is very similar to what happens in a biased renderer such as Carrara, and that by careful use of lighting and materials (and of course gamma correction), Carrara's native engine can very often get very close results to an unbiased renderer (which in turn is based on real life physics). Unbiased renderers are generally easier as they almost force you into having good (or at least more realistic) lighting - Carrara CAN do it, but there are more things to set correctly and the defaults do not help at all!
Unbiased renderers do not guarantee good lighting, but they move a step closer to handling the technicalities automatically, so that the user can focus more on the artistic and aesthetic elements of a render, without having to worry too much about the render settings etc. With renderers like Octane (and iRay) which give an interactive preview of your image, setting up materials and lighting becomes less hit and miss, leading to better final renders.
Edit
Edit
hope I didn't offend you Wendy
no was a comment on my own post using an @ sign and getting javascript must be enabled to view this email address when it was just describing my computer specs.
I have been beta testing LuxusCore hard for the last couple of days, trying to find the problem with the NVIDIA cards.
Will be reporting more details to SphericLabs and to the LuxCore team, since the NVIDIA drivers have more problems than the AMD drivers that are fast and stable. Right now LuxusCore is failing on many nvidia cards.
As mentioned by others, the cryptic answer by DAZ is that IRAY for Carrara is not coming soon.
Also checking NVIDIA site, shows that other commercial IRAY renderers are about 500$ for Maya, C4D, Sketchup...
I have been beta testing LuxusCore hard for the last couple of days, trying to find the problem with the NVIDIA cards.
Will be reporting more details to SphericLabs and to the LuxCore team, since the NVIDIA drivers have more problems than the AMD drivers that are fast and stable. Right now LuxusCore is failing on many nvidia cards.
As mentioned by others, the cryptic answer by DAZ is that IRAY for Carrara is not coming soon.
Also checking NVIDIA site, shows that other commercial IRAY renderers are about 500$ for Maya, C4D, Sketchup...
Thanks 3drendero for the encouraging news!
Here's my dilemma in a nutshell:
1.I Know and love Carrara. The native render can be very good once you understand how to fake reality. However, because it is CPU based it is still relatively slow. I have 16Gb RAM and a marginal quality 1280x720 render is roughly 30 min. I do comics so I need something between single still and animation quality/render times.
2.Luxcore does not (currently) take advantage of my GPU so no luck there. I converted the scene above to luxuscore lights and textures but after an hour a half of CPU rendering, still grainy.
3.Octane is pricey for a hobbyist. I tried the demo for Carrara but it kept crashing, so I gave up.
4.Blender/Cycles does use the Nvidia card but requires scenes to be exported from Carrara, imported to Blender, materials converted... sheesh. I guess I'm lazy.
5. DAZ 4.8 Iray finally renders how I would have imagined but that means I need to learn Studio and give up all of Carrara's other strengths.
I guess I should have bought an AMD card!
Wow - that hurts!
It has 1024 cuda cores, so it should render quite well/fast. Not nearly as fast as a 970 or 980, but it would still give very respectable speeds. If possible though, the 4Gb model would be much better. Since it's based on the new Maxwell architecture, it will be less power (watts) hungry than the previous two generations, which is a big plus (both for power consumption and cooling).
One thing to keep in mind, the older Fermi based cards are actually faster per core than either of the newer Kepler or Maxwell based cards (a little over 2x faster). On the newer cards it takes 2 clock cycles to perform some of the calculations done in one clock cycle on the older Fermi cards. I just thought it might be good to mention this to explain some of the performance discrepancies you might see. (This also means that an older Fermi based card with ~400-500 cuda cores will perform at about the same level as the 960 - but it will need a lot more from your power supply)
A 2Gb card can be quite usable, but it will limit your scene size/complexity quite a bit. With 3Gb on the video card I was able to do some fairly complex scenes, but I had to be careful, 4Gb seems to be the sweet spot right now, though just like with system RAM, invariably you will always "need" more. If you manage your texture map sizes carefully, you could probably do OK with 2Gb, but more would be better.
Well they could have tried adding Carrara into the mix from the start, maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but we all know about Daz and their "support" for Carrara, Still at least we have Lux and Octane
I am personally so happy with Octane, particularly now that Carrara hair can be rendered in it, but I know that it is not for everyone given the hardware needs and overall cost. It would be nice if it felt that DAZ acknowledged Carrara more than they appear to at the moment.
At the moment??? - you in that Tardis again? :p
All I will say is that its funny how they can update DS and give it away for free with all these new functions, yet cant do the same for those of us who PAID for Carrara
Join the LuxusCore beta for Carrara, it is free and renders really fast on ATI cards.
Iray is for NVIDIA cards only anyways, really slow at CPU rendering.
Iray doesn't even recognise the NVidia card in my iMac (although it's still faster than 3Delight). But reading between the lines, Apple seems to be favouring ATI for the future, so my next machine is unlikely to run IRay either.
just about the only way that DAZ would notice a request for Carrara new features is to put them in a bug report as a feature request.
Sure would love to have IRAY in Carrara.
Well, you do have Iray in Carrara.
It is called Luxus and there is a GPU accelerated beta version called LuxusCore.
Just like Iray, new shaders are needed to make full use of the new engine.
Even the NVIDIA Iray promo video mentions LuxRender at 6:30:
http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/video/S5536.html