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IRay

vindazivindazi Posts: 670
in Daz Studio Discussion

What's the benefits of iRay?

 

Why do they come with this caveat?  "These items are not made by, or supported by Daz 3D. They're free, but you're on your own when working with them. Enjoy your freebies, and happy holidays!"

 

Anyone using iRay?

Comments

  • JimmyC_2009JimmyC_2009 Posts: 8,891

    The caveat you have quoted is for the PA Christmas Giveaway items, nothing to do with Iray.

    Iray is extremely popular, have a look here : http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/56788/iray-start-here#latest and there are several other current threadson the forum.

  • Nyghtfall3DNyghtfall3D Posts: 786
    edited December 2015
    vindazi said:

    What's the benefits of iRay?

    The principle benefit of Iray is that it offers a path for artists interested creating photo-realistic 3D art using materials and light based on real-world properties - otherwise known as physically-based rendering (PBR).

    Developed by nVidia, it also provides GPU-accelerated rendering for artists who own a CUDA-compatible nVidia graphics card.

    DAZ 3D licensed Iray for use with DAZ Studio 4.8 to give us a built-in alternative to plugins like Reality and Octane.

    vindazi said:

    Anyone using iRay?

    Many, myself included.

    Post edited by Nyghtfall3D on
  • V3DigitimesV3Digitimes Posts: 3,216
    vindazi said:

    What's the benefits of iRay?

     

    Why do they come with this caveat?  "These items are not made by, or supported by Daz 3D. They're free, but you're on your own when working with them. Enjoy your freebies, and happy holidays!"

     

    Anyone using iRay?

    Excellent answer of Nyghtfall. Iray will allow you to get realism easier than 3delight. 3delight is on its side much more flexible in term of shader customisation regarding what's not physical  (special effects or effects reality could not support). Iray relies on mdl for which Nvidia is trying to set a universal library common to all softwares using Iray. If this is set up, we will be able to benefit  the shades coming from other softwares. Iray is integrated in the excellent texturing software substance designer, allowing a better what you see (in Iray of the texture designer) is what you get (in Iray for DS).

    Using CUDA can strongly decrease you render times. 

    I'm using Iray every day after several years using 3delight everyday. I still love 3delight for its flexibility. But I also love Iray for its global quality and efficiency. For me it's just like having a right foot and a left foot. I'm simply happy to have the luck to have both but I won't spend my time comparing them. 

  • vindazivindazi Posts: 670

    Thanks everyone for excellent answers.

  • sparky_1_1bcc1a2f60sparky_1_1bcc1a2f60 Posts: 56
    edited January 2016

    I gotta say this is fantastic! Slow, I'm CPU render only, but really brings them to life!!!! 

     

    Meg3.jpg
    773 x 1000 - 429K
    Post edited by sparky_1_1bcc1a2f60 on
  • AndySAndyS Posts: 1,438

    Yea, indeed.

    But the question is, which graphic card to use?
    When I let my renders run on my "only CPU" computer, I can see DAZ busy caching a lot of memory far above 8GB for iRay renders.
    As it was told that iRay automatically switches back to only CPU render, if the GPU memory is exceeded, the question is, how to calculate how much memory the GPU cards must have?
    16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or even more?

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,620

    Yeah this is something that is desperatly missing from Daz Studio 4. A scene calculator that lets you know how much vram you will need to be able to render in iray with your graphic cards. I would pay for the script. Hint Hint.

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,590

    This is the formula suggested for Iray from the 3DSMax client:

    about 1 GB per 8 million triangles, to which you must also add 3 bytes/pixel for any referenced bitmaps

     

  • AndySAndyS Posts: 1,438

    Nice.

    And how do I calculate the triangles?

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,590
    edited January 2016

    In Main-menu/Windows/Panes there is a 'Scene Info' tab that you can add to the interface.

    That displays the various poly counts in your scene.

    Post edited by prixat on
  • AndySAndyS Posts: 1,438
    edited January 2016

    OK, found.

    But how the calculation for DAZ goes?

    Only for the scene view in the workspace, DAZ occupied round 3GB.
    Some time after starting the render, the system reached the 97% limit and heavily started caching on the harddisk. Please don't ask how many GBs.
    The first picture appeared when the CPU went to constant 100% and the HD-caching stoped.

    Render-MemoryUsage.jpg
    791 x 462 - 97K
    Post edited by AndyS on
  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,590
    edited January 2016

    That's about .5GB of geometry, then add the number of texture maps and the resolution.

    Post edited by prixat on
  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,590
    edited January 2016

    duplicate

    Post edited by prixat on
  • linvanchenelinvanchene Posts: 1,382
    edited January 2016

     

    Silver Dolphin said:

    Yeah this is something that is desperatly missing from Daz Studio 4. A scene calculator that lets you know how much vram you will need to be able to render in iray with your graphic cards. I would pay for the script. Hint Hint.

    As an alternative you could buy the OctaneRender plugin for DAZ studio and use all the VRAM diagnostic tools availabe to judge if on your current project

    - you want to use all materials as they are and just render in Iray

    or

    - you may want to make some changes to materials and use some OctaneRender exclusive functionality to manage the needed VRAM space

    image

     

    Especially if you are running out of VRAM space the OctaneRender plugin for DAZ Studio offers options to render with the textures and all image data out of core in system RAM. There are also options to temporarily adjust the size of each texture needed in the VRAM with just the click of a few buttons.

    - - -

    I leave it at this. It is an Iray thread after all. But maybe understanding how this works in OctaneRender also gives some ideas how similar features could be added to later versions of DAZ Studio or Iray.

    DAZ Studio Octane Render window.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 672K
    Post edited by linvanchene on
  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,620

    Octane is too expensive. It is a more polished iray renderer but it is too expensive. I bought a refurbished Nvida Geforce 780 GTX with 2304 cuda cores and 6gb for about $350 from newegg. Octane for daz studio with standalone licence is $468. I rather get anoter 780 and render in daz iray for free. I do not use this for business use so these prices are just too high for personal use.  Most of the tools and models are too expensive for the casual user. If you could make money off this then I could excuse the prices but most of this stuff is a hobby for most of us and the tools are just too prohibiblaly expensive.

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,590
    edited January 2016

    I asked about 'out of core' features in Iray over at the nvidia forums this was the reply from Phillip Miller:

    Thanks for the request. Various means of managing out of core memory are being examined, but there's nothing to announce at this time.
    Please note that this situation is more critical for Octane in that it's purely GPU, whereas Iray will simply fallback go using the CPU(s) when GPU memory is exceeded.
    - Phil
    Post edited by prixat on
  • AndySAndyS Posts: 1,438

    Yea,

    fall back!
    That is quitting the GPU usage and rendering only on the CPU (slow). What other posters already stated.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500

    I have an iMac with 2GB VRAM Nvidia card but I stil can't use iRay. It seems to need twice that amount of VRAM to work in GPU more and CPU mode is painfully slow. Reality 4.2/Luxrender is quicker and the results are similar. Reality isn't free but it doesn't need a $500 NVidia card. That's not to say that Reality is without problems, many of which are reported on their forum at RDNA. For example, some products (Jack Tomalin's, for example) will render quickly and beautifully while some from other vendors never seem to progress from grainy obscurity.

    I wish that iRay had a "turbo" CPU mode but then, NVidia want you to buy their cards, don't they?

  • hphoenixhphoenix Posts: 1,335

    Actually, Iray does have a 'turbo' mode....it's called interactive mode.  But most people want to render in photoreal mode, since interactive mode doesn't do a lot of the fancy calculations that make things look so much better.

     

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    hphoenix said:

    Actually, Iray does have a 'turbo' mode....it's called interactive mode.  But most people want to render in photoreal mode, since interactive mode doesn't do a lot of the fancy calculations that make things look so much better.

     

    Luxrender 1.5 was a big improvement so Paolo was able to develop Reality 4 with accellerated CPU (plus boost). The results, for me, are very close to the old/slow renders - in fact in some cases they are better. As I say, there are issues and I have ended up in arguments with Paolo over them but credit where it is due - I have more success with Reality than with IRay (CPU mode).

  • vindazivindazi Posts: 670

    If I understand the drift from this thread, if one is not trying to get photrealistic results, iRay may be irrelevant? I plan to "step on" the results through batch processing after the render is finished. In that case if a person is on an iMac with 32 Gb of ram and a 4Gig AV card running on an SSD, which system would give the fastest render?

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