DAZ Studio Pro BETA - version 4.8.0.4! IRAY

[linvanchene]

obsolete post edited and removed by user

[larsmidnatt]

1. Iray has been around for quite a while and is also available for Maya and 3DS MAX.
As far as I know there are quite a lot of people who choose OctaneRender over Iray for some reason.

Yep, yep. I thought this too. This could still be the case for a lot of use cases depending on how things pan out.

I really want the OCDS plugin to finally get things together because it has a reputation of being a hot mess around the community. I cringe a bit when people knock on it because as much as I love it, I totally acknowledge it's flaws.

[Elele]

We were given a heads up by NVIDIA about this and similar GTC announcements last week. Iray has been around for a while, and this is an obvious path for NVIDIA to pursue. OTOY's position is that it is a win for the industry in general to have unbiased GPU rendering replace legacy solutions. It is on each of us in this space to differentiate our offerings from one another. We will continue to do that with what we're showing at GTC.

How bout a heads up about our plugin?
The lil' fellar seems to have gone awol... again.

[Spectralis]

OTOY are responsible for the development of the plugin so I think that they should prioritise current customers not potential ones in the future.

OTOY is not responsible for 3rd party plugings. The Daz plugin is 3rd party. Its like faulting Sony for a game EA made. I didn't know this when I bought the plugin, and for a bit it really didn't matter but it all became very clear when I had to do the upgrade to 2.0 and the spelled out 1st party plugins vs 3rd party plugins.

They do take responsibility for plugin development. After many, many months of waiting, last year I and others contacted OTOY explaining our concerns about the extremely long period of no contact from t_3. OTOY replied that they would chase this up and we got an update from them and t_3 about what was happening with the plugin development. The first v2 beta was released shortly after and a road map for v2 development was outlined which subsequently seems to have gone off track.

[Squirtle]

A big advantage I (currently) see with OctaneRender is that I can change stuff on the fly while it is still rendering.
From what I was able to draw from my quick test-session was that this is not (yet?) possible with iRay in DS.

You can change stuff while rendering on the fly, if you are rendering in the Viewport rather than the main Render menu. Next to the camera selector in the upper right corner of the Viewport is the DrawStyles menu, where you choose what your preview image looks like (wirframe, texture shaded, cartoon shaded, etc.) There is a new choice there for NVIDIA Iray which makes the view port preview render live. This is what I'm talking about when I say that Iray feels incredibly well integrated. I can reach right into this live render and gizmos pop up as they always do to let me move stuff around - and the render automatically updates. Then I suppose when you're ready for a final exportable render, you go to the render menu and hit "render" which is the non-live render mode. The preview mode appears to look just about as good as final though, but everything is locked when doing a final render. The choice between "Photoreal" and "Interactive" in Render Mode seems similar to choosing between "PMC" and "Direct" kernels in Octane. Both choices will live update in the Viewport as you work on your scene, "Interactive" updates simply faster but with less realism.

[Hydra]

linvanchene: Iray is still under development. At least nVidia is still messing around with it. Check out Autodesk, they got hit by a wave of changes in Decemeber. My bet is that it will be stable in 6 months.

[larsmidnatt]

can reach right into this live render and gizmos pop up as they always do to let me move stuff around - and the render automatically updates.

From what I saw, it changes the render mode to the regular daz flat shading mode when you are moving stuff around, then it pops back to rendering in the viewport, was that not happening to you?

They do take responsibility for plugin development.

In very informal, casual, hands-off "its 3rd party" kind of way.

I've heard the whole "step in at any time" bit many times but it is clear to see what's really going on. They take about as much responsibility as any third party would when you ask them about their partner. Sure Otoy is the one who processed our payments and they issue licenses but they aren't responsible for much beyond that(and ya know talking to devs and stuff).

If they really where taking responsiblity (and not just feigning it all for good laughs), they would have a developer working on the plugin. Ya know, first party. I've visited the official plugin forums in the past and its a totally different world there...

You can convince me otoy is responsible for the plugin development when they step in and give us first party treatment

But ya know, if Otoy was really responsible for the OcDS plugin, it would probably have half the features based on their offical plugins. Responsibility is a big word. Can't take credit where it isn't due.

[Squirtle]

My bet is that it will be stable in 6 months.

It feels quite stable to me right now. I've playing with it since yesterday, and had only one crash (actually it wasn't a crash, but a long hangup, so I just quit and rebooted it). That is much better than the stability of the Octane DS plugin, where I have to save my project before copy/pasting a material because copying or pasting a material seems to crash it about 25% of the time. And Iray has many of the missing features I've been wishing would come for the Octane plugin.

From what I saw, it changes the render mode to the regular daz flat shading mode when you are moving stuff around, then it pops back to rendering in the viewport, was that not happening to you?

Yes, that is what is happening for me. While I have the mouse button clicked on something in the scene, it flips to the simpler shading mode. As soon as I let go of the button, the scene refreshes and starts rendering again. This feels like a sensible way for a live photorealistic GPU to be integrated into DAZ. While I'm moving something around, I get the clear picture onscreen of the simpler flat shading. Compare this to the way the Octane DS plugin works, where you need to have a second window open of your scene with the regular DAZ flat shading to move things around. Here, it feels like you're just grabbing into the render itself since it's all one Viewport.

Playing with the Iray Genesis 2 Female skin shader some more, and making progress figuring it out. If you're having trouble getting specular highlights, check if you have a spec map texture in the Top Coat Color. This will make the Top Coat Color far too dark. Remove the spec map so that Top Coat Color is white, and adjust Top Coat Weight and Top Coat Roughness to taste. Here I was going for shiny skin and have TC Weight at .15 and TC Roughness at .20.

[larsmidnatt]

And Iray has many of the missing features I've been wishing would come for the Octane plugin.

Like what in particular? Actual features? Or just works with more Daz Studio functions?

[Squirtle]

The materials alone have a lot of options we don't currently have with Octane: metal flakes, anistropy, SSS seems to have far more parameters I haven't even looked at yet, the ability to tell the renderer whether the geometry is thin walled or volumetric, more advanced material mixing options... those are just ones that I've noticed so far. Have you ever tried to make a realistic shader for silk fabric with Octane? I've never been able to, and never found one on the Live DB. DAZ Iray comes with a great silk shader preset, which I doubt can currently be replicated in Octane. At least, I've never seen anyone be able to do it.

The biggest feature of all though is that it actually works smoothly with DAZ studio. That integration is supposed to be the main feature of the DS Octane plugin, isn't it? Otherwise, you could just use Octane Standalone.