OTOY Forums

Been playing around with Iray a bit more, and it's been a frustrating experience. VRAM management is next to impossible, as the log file is really sparse, and the system seems to allocate extra VRAM "just in case" if you have it.

This means you can't really use external apps like GPU-Z for management, because you have no idea what the numbers actually reflect. I just upgraded from a 2 to a 6 gig card, and scenes that rendered fine in GPU before now takes up more than 2 gigs of VRAM.
It also seems that it loads every texture as RGB, so a bump map uses as much memory as a normal map.

But it's easy to use, free and most people on the DAZ boards have NO idea what's going on anyways (see the threads about optimizing for AMD performance). I think most are rendering in CPU and just like the pretty results

Gaazsi - check out
viewtopic.php?f=44&t=47686&start=290

Has some of the ups and downs of user experience with plugin, but a lot of workarounds and tips as well, definitely gives ideas on how to get effects and whatnot.

Post by DrHemulen » Sun Aug 30, 2015 11:36 am
I think most are rendering in CPU and just like the pretty results

That's exactly what I think too, Iray gives a more immediate 'pretty' look. And, I'm starting to find that OcDS gives me quicker path to more gritty realness.

PS - I LOVE comparison images like the ones posted! Here is mine:

Hey, just thought I'd share....reduced opacity on hair, gave it a softer more natural look (OcDS)

Hi,
Most of my renders are faster on OcDs, but I should admit that Iray is strait forward for a good render if you choose a good shader and lighting.
Speaking about VRAM, I have some pb with octane when using OOC feature.
Could you please add some tests on USB riser and post on this topic ? viewtopic.php?f=25&t=45279&start=100#p248274
I think that just activate OOC and increase headroom enough to use system RAM.
thanks

I think it's possible to get some really great results using IRAY from some of the renders I've seen but it depends on the experience of the user and what they're aiming for. If it's mainly portrait shots of figures then they aren't really stretching the lighting versatility of an unbiased renderer but a more complexly lit scene might show the real potential of IRAY. Octane DS users have also had a lot longer to gain experience with it while IRAY DS is still fairly new. I've seen some pretty atrocious OcDS renders and made some myself too so experience with lighting using unbiased renderers makes a lot of difference to what is possible with any of them. IRAY DS has some excellent lighting features which will probably only show their versatility with scenes using more complex lighting.