probably stupid iray question
Slowmichael
Posts: 65
I recently started using daz studio. I use G3F for female characters and poser male characters. When rendering indoor scenes G3F turns out much darker or browner in comparison to outdoor scenes the poser males are not affected. I mainly use the headlight of the camera but i also created a mesh iray light, same result.
What can i do to avoid this?
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That's actually not a simple question.
Are you sure you're using the Iray renderer? Go to the Render Settings tab and check the drop-down menu at the top.
For some reason, the base G3F figure doesn't use Iray materials, and the Poser figures almost definitely won't either. Are you converting the materials into proper Iray format?
And do the Poser figures have actual D|S materials, or just the out-of-the-box Poser materials (which will not work very well in D|S without being properly converted).
About the lighting, are you sure you are just using the camera Headlight? The Iray versions of D|S also have an Environment light, which is switched on by default in every scene you create — if you don't know it's on, it can have weird effects on the lighting of your scene, and there will be a big difference between the effects on indoor and outdoor scenes.
I am using iray and also the iray materials for G3F. I did not know there was a default environment light, i will experiment whit the light.
This iray thing is great but it is also complex i just have a lot to lurn i guess.
We all have a lot to learn! I read every thread asking for help that I can find because I always learn something. And there is SO much to learn!
Don't create a mesh light for Iray unless you want a specific effect (like a monitor screen). The Photometric spot lights are specifically for Iray and render much faster. You can also change geometry so they function liek a photo studio softbox.
Might try reading this:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/render_settings/engine/nvidia_iray/environment/start
Hi there folks,
I'm new to Iray but reading posts here and being experimental, I've learnt some basic stuff that might help the beginner. Also, it's easy to be put off a bit because of how long renders seem to take. My first bit of advice is to get rid of all light sources and read on...
Interior lighting can be difficult to start with but my tip here would be to use primitive emitters with the camera headlamp OFF. The attached file was shot using a single torus emitter. You can just see it reflected in her eyes. To make a primitive emitter you start with a primitive shape. I use a torus for portraits and a cylinder, flattened to a disc (I don't know why but it's similar to a reflector used in the film industry) for other stuff. I even use this method now for exterior shots as it is infinately easier to manage than the dome/sun thing.
Select it in the scene menu, go to the surfaces menu and select it there. You will notice the typical Daz parameters there for ambient light etc. Now you find the Iray Uber defaults in your content library if you have them there it's usually under shader presets or under 'I' in the products menu. Double click on '!Iray Uber Base and in the surfaces menu you'll see that the available parameters have changed to show the Iray parameters (mostly blue in motif).
Spool down to 'Emission Color' and change it to white.Look just below it for Luminace units, set that to lm (lumins) and set the luminance value to at least 2000000 (yes that's two million).
And you're done with that.
Because Iray works like a conventional film camera, the next place to go is to the Render Tab and then to 'Environment'.
Select scene only environment mode.
Go to Tone mapping and set shutter speed to 100, f/stop to 16 and film ISO to 200 (film speed).
Go to optimisation and select memory over speed (I've done this on advice and I'm not sure what the difference is yet but I digress).
Leave Alpha for another day... I have.
Progressive: These parameters have a big effect on the render in particular, how long the render takes. I shall explain as best I can; Iray goes back over the render time and time again improving it each time. These passes are called 'iterations'. In theory, it could 'iterate' forever but it is limited by default to 5000 passes. There is also a time limit on the render engine defaulted at 7200 seconds.
At this point, I don't know enough about the other fields to offer advice right now but here's the big news; you can limit how long the render takes using these two parameters! The example picture was set to a limit of 2500 iterations but I could have stopped it at 1000 as in my opinion, it would not have looked noticeably better at 2500 than it did at 1500 iterations.
Try those tips and mess around with them, see what you think, If nothing else it will help you get bold with Iray. Remember, you can have more than one emitter.
Finally. All surfaces including figures must have the Iray character or Uber Base applied.
The example photo was used in a comparison test on my machine to see what difference GPU vs CPU vs GPU/CPU made (set under the advanced tab).
My PC runs on an Asus Z79P MB. i7 4790k CPU. Asus GTX970 GPU. Here are the results for 1280x720 image at 2500 iterations limit:
GPU + CPU..........5mins 18 secs
GPU only..............5mins 47 secs
CPU only.............. Stopped test when it exceeded other arrays.
Sorry for so much content but I am so excited to finally be able contribute that I got carried away.
My thanks to all those contributors here who have stopped me going into therapy while I got to grips with Iray.
Good rendering
G
Primitive emitters (i.e. mesh lights) are slower than the built in Photometric Spotlights. The spotlights can have geometry and will function the same as a softbox in a photo studio. You won't have to worry about shaders etc.
If you are determined to use mesh lights, set the luminance units to cd/m2 and you won't need such ridiculous values to light the scene.
With a decent Nvidia card. mort renders take just a few minutes (5 - 20 depending on content). You can see the effects of your lighting and composition well before the render has converged.
Your renders are slow becasue you selected memory over speed. Select speed unless you can't fit the scene into your card. FWIW, memory setting probably won't help that either.
Another tip: In the Optimization tab, you might try setting Max PAths to a value of 10 or 11. This is basically the number of light "bounces" taht are calculated. The default setting of -1 is infinite bounces. Iray won't necessarily calculate infiniate bounces, but a finite setting may speed up the render. 10 or 11 should be more than enough for realistic scenes.
Just thinking, is changing Maximum Path Length from infinite, likely to increase the amount of light at all?
@OP
Rule of thumb as far as I'm concerned is, that the only stupid question is the one you don't ask. :) Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and largely useless in the case of a question asked.
Just a note. You are using essentially 'outdoor, bright light' exposure values to the tone mapping settings, which is why you need 2 million lumens. More typical indoor exposure values for a camera using standard indoor (non-Flash) lighting would be something more like iso 800, f/2.8, shutter speed of 128-ish. Switching to ISO 800 is a +2 stop difference, and switching to f/2.8 from 16 is +5 stops, for a 7-stop exposure difference. I would bet if you did that you could cut it down to something like 20,000 lumens and get proper lighting exposure. This makes sense, since a 4-bank of indoor fluorescent lights puts out between 10-20,000 lumens.
@geoff6 Well great info i managed to make som mesh emitters that really worked well. I experimented whit adding spotlights and other lights.
I find it a bit bizar that the default spotlights an other lights nead to be tweaked so much to make them usable.
mvs1959_8b78b29e28 "I find it a bit bizar that the default spotlights an other lights nead to be tweaked so much to make them usable."
No offense but I feel like you're missing something. The default Iray spotlights don't need drastic tweaking for great results. You have to think of Iray and Iray lights as real world photographic equipment.
A real spotlight is going to create very harsh shadows and in real practice is used with a softbox, or is bounced in some fashion. The Iray equivalent is to add geometry which effectively creates a softbox of the size and shape that you want. You have to set the output of any light you use. Finally, changing the color of the Iray spotlight is effectively like adding a Gel to a real world photo light.
The real issue is that getting good lighting for a scene isn't trivial regardless of the render engine or lighting type. It's what separates ho-hum from great.
Also, you don't have an 'auto-everything' camera...you need to make the adjustments because the 'camera' isn't going to do it for you and by default it is perfect for an outdoor, bright but not too bright day...the default scene Iray HDR scene lighting.