Is my computer ready for Iray?

[Lyne]

I know NOTHING about DS or Iray... but Fabi is having a sale on her lights, etc. NOW and I need to know if my computer is right for using DS, Iray and the free LAMH-

This is a list of what I have:

win7 Pro 64 bit oem

CPU: Intel i7 4820 quad 3.7Ghz on a LGA 2011 socket

CPU: heatsink and cooling

Motherboard: MSI Intel i7 4820k lg 2011 3.7 gh 10 mb cache last of quad "military grade"

SSD (solid state drive) 500 GB is the flash ram drive: Samsung

Harddrive: Western Digital Performance 1TB drive SATA 6 gb/sec

Video: MSI GTX 760 nvidia chipset with 4 gigs on board

RAM Patriot DDR3 2133 x 2 kits of 4 Matched SIMMs of 8GB each for a total of 64 GB of system RAM.

Power Supply Certified: Corsair 750 watt Gold Certified

Case: Corsair 760T is an oversized case for venting with swingout access side panels and 3 oversized fans.

 

[phdubrov]

Ready, but not for complex scenes. Should be ok for something like "lady with a cat" type scenes. Could be very slow on forests and likes.
Some details and hints:
1. DS and computer as a whole could be unresponsive while rendering. Use small resolution and small maximum samples for first tries. Only way around it is to get second video card. Or if your motherboard have integrated video, switch monitor to it.
2. If a scene or textures on scene are too big to fit in GPU memory, DS will fall back on CPU. There is NO distinctive warning about it. If you click "more" in render progress window, you can see it in the logs.
3. I have full LAMH in last beta version, so not 100% shure about LAMH player options. But if you need export hairs as OBJ for Iray, switch DS viewport to bounding box mode before export-import! Or you could have terrible unresponsive viewport.
4. As Fabiana wrote in other thread, use VERY smooth HDRI lights if you want short render times.

 

[AllenArt]

I think you have a good computer for Iray. Your video card is the minimum I would use for Iray, but I had even less ram on mine when I first started using DS. It did fall to CPU rendering most of the time, but if you've ever used Luxrender or Superfly, it's comparable to those render engines in length of time it takes to "cook" a complete render. There are free scripts on the Daz forums to shrink the size of the textures in your scene so that you can try to fit everything on the GPU (huge textures are the main reason why Iray may default to CPU only). Even if you have to use your CPU to render a lot of the time, normally it takes just a few hours for most scenes. YMMV.

Edit: I'll try and find those scripts in a little bit and put the links here if I find 'em.

Laurie

 

[tparo]

Yes except for the video card yours could ran round the block before mine had its shoes on, my card is only 4gb as well but I can do more than a lady and a cat, it's learning how to make things less resource intensive, lighting a scene well cuts render times down.

 

[phdubrov]

Lady and a cat with fur
Don't know number of hair in the cat's presets, but for real cat it's about 15M hairs...

And to be clear: by complex scenes I mean scenes like forests with hundreds of instances of tens of props and so on.

 

[AllenArt]

FWIW, using hair in Iray (which has to be converted to .obj format because Iray doesn't do strand based hair) is going to bring just about any computer to it's knees. I have a very good dual Xeon quad core desktop with 64 gigs of ram and a 6gb 980 Ti card and it really struggles with mesh based hair. If you want to use the hair without making your computer cry, stick to 3Delight. LOL. If you like the look of Firefly, you should be ok with the look of 3DL.

Laurie

 

[tparo]

One thing I will do is render the scene without the hair then render the animal with the hair in a spot render with other resource high items deleted where possible.

 

[Lyne]

well with all this, I may just give up on even trying... ALL I wanted to do, is render a DS Fabi lighted LAMH cat (it was wanting a LAMH cat -to save my joints post work "brushing out" a cat that started me on wanting to try DS at all) in the scene area to EXPORT as a png, to then composite with a Poser rendered scene... I thought to start myself a collection of png furred HW cats to use in my art... had no idea that my super machine that LOVES my complex poser firefly scenes done at 2,500 or 3,000 pixels wide X whatever VERY FAST - like 5-10 minutes at most (with high custom render settings, lots of sub-division on everything, etc.) would be that bad for DS.. I don't want my machine to be tied up for even 30 minutes to "cook" (?) a render... sheesh... I'm spoiled by what I have... plus this "super machine" is the last one I'll have at my age...obviously DS is a VERY different animal....I don't need any "external render engine" or anything! (those things would be another learning curve too, I guess...it's all a bit too much for me)

THANKS, though...you have all saved me a lot of $$ - I better stick to what I know...

 

[CWRW]

Hey Lyne

If all you are wanting to do is render JUST the cat with LAMH hair/nothing else in the scene, to use as transparent pngs for compositing in Photoshop, I don't see why you couldn't. Unless Macs and PCs are THAT different these days, my old Mac tower (2012) doesn't have the amount of juice or RAM your PC does (heck my video card is only an ATI Radeon HD 1024 MB) and while yes it will def take longer than 10 minutes to render (most of what I have done with LAMH takes about an hour to an hour and half for a similar size render you describe. with the cat filling all that space) And FWIW to do a 2000-3000 pixel size high res Firefly render of say Harry with his transmapped mane in a close up with SubD on to 3 can take me similar render times to an iray Cat with LAMH. And heck it IS free to try it. Just the time spent. I would suggest making sure to install the uninstallers for both DS and the free LAMH player though if you do decide to try and then decide you don't want them.. It does pay to keep your lighting simple. I often just use the Sun-Sky/Dome turned off setting in Iray for my cat/LAMH renders and you've seen them. Using 3DL instead of iray is faster too FWIW and can have very good results as well.

But I will say I have never used PCs/Windows so I am no expert at evaluating your machine.

 

[NapalmArsenal]

I don't see any reason why you can't run just the cat with the LAMH set up on your machine and then compost as Laurie suggested but It will switch to CUP though if it finds it taxing rather depends on the size of your image, or you could use DOF which is not a sharp image for a BG that might cut down your render time as it's not per pixel. Simple lights are the best, but you probably could hit it with maybe one spot light. Although, I tend to use some Poser lights in Daz and they tend to work fairly well.

Ah and speaking of that the catalyst LAMH is faster than the free player so that could possibly be an option W/O getting the 2nd vid card.

Just thought I would share this.
Kind of insanely Awesome!! Using Ultrascatter advanced instances and LAMH
Crazy Cat Lady Starter Kit !

 

[Lyne]

Hey Lyne

If all you are wanting to do is render JUST the cat with LAMH hair/nothing else in the scene, to use as transparent pngs for compositing in Photoshop, I don't see why you couldn't. Unless Macs and PCs are THAT different these days, my old Mac tower (2012) doesn't have the amount of juice or RAM your PC does (heck my video card is only an ATI Radeon HD 1024 MB) and while yes it will def take longer than 10 minutes to render (most of what I have done with LAMH takes about an hour to an hour and half for a similar size render you describe. with the cat filling all that space) And FWIW to do a 2000-3000 pixel size high res Firefly render of say Harry with his transmapped mane in a close up with SubD on to 3 can take me similar render times to an iray Cat with LAMH. And heck it IS free to try it. Just the time spent. I would suggest making sure to install the uninstallers for both DS and the free LAMH player though if you do decide to try and then decide you don't want them.. It does pay to keep your lighting simple. I often just use the Sun-Sky/Dome turned off setting in Iray for my cat/LAMH renders and you've seen them. Using 3DL instead of iray is faster too FWIW and can have very good results as well.

But I will say I have never used PCs/Windows so I am no expert at evaluating your machine.

OK... THANK YOU, Laurie.... I'll buy Fabi's lights and go ahead... you've encouraged me... so scary to tackle such a different kind of thing... I'll prolly be back to ask ?'s as I go....

 

[Lyne]

Well this is DUMB! I CAN'T FIND DAZ STUDIO on the DAZ site?!?!? I downloaded it a LONG LONG time ago, but it's not even on this computer, and when I enter it in search (signed into my DAZ account) it takes me to a page that lists the formats... I click on the win7 64 bit one... and it takes me to my Product library and says select product! I have NO idea where to download the software itself!? I got the free LAMH player, got my kitty cat in DS format here... but no studio??!?!? It figures... I will not not not INSTALL THE AUTO INSTALL THINGY!! EVER! I want to do the manual download blue button... there is just nothing there???


Sheesh!!! I had to ask google where to download to find the product page, add to cart, "checkout" DS free... to finally get it to show up...downloading now... * walks away mumbling* interesting how FAST the download is for a DS item, when poser versions download SSOOOO slow

 

[Lyne]

uhhh now I have TWO serial #'s listed for 4x Pro... and I don't see any uninstaller... and it says it's a "bundle"...and I don't want to install anything but the bare bones to do what I need... any suggestions? SORRY I'm so lost with this!

 

[CWRW]

Hey Lyne

Here is what I did ( I install EVERYTHING manually) and i DO recommend DS 4.9- it is way faster than 4.8. Also many things that work in 4.9 do not work in 4.8.

At Daz go to your Product Library. Type in Daz Studio in the search (Filter) box. Several things will come up possibly. Click on just plain old Daz Studio 4.9. Then scroll down to where it says Manual Download- use those link buttons that say download not "download and install" - click on the download button for the Win 64 bit version of Daz Studio- you don't need any of the other stuff.

When you install Daz Studio it will ask you if you want to install the uninstaller. Check yes

And yes! Please free to ask me any questions. I will help all I can.

Hugs!
Laurie

Edited to add- yes you did need to add that to your cart first before it will show up in your Product Library and yes it should be free. And yes I have older DS serial numbers (for earlier versions). Even if you have more than one serial number for DS 4.9 don't worry about it - one or the other will work I am sure.

 

[Lyne]

Thanks, Laurie...as you can see - Google to the rescue (I couldn't even find it in the DAZ STORE! ) I've got all things ready to install now, but not sure when I will be actually installing, due to off and on health issues...but I'm SURE I'll be back "here" pleading for more help, soon as I do!

 

[CWRW]

No worries! Fire away with questions when you are ready!

 

[Lyne]

so Flint showed me this:
Theory of Light - Zen Moods - Free HDRIs

does DS come with some sort of Dome?

 

[CWRW]

so Flint showed me this:
Theory of Light - Zen Moods - Free HDRIs

does DS come with some sort of Dome?

Yes it is built in. I just grabbed these Theory of Light - Zen Moods Iray Lights and HDRIs 3D Software : Poser : Daz Studio : iClone fabiana but haven't played with them yet but it sounds like they will do the correct settings for you. But for making transparent pngs one has to turn off the dome. That can be done under top menu->Render Settings-> (Iray selected instead of 3Delight) Environment-> Draw Dome - Off

 

[Lyne]

OK!

 

[CWRW]

Oh Lyne!!

You're gonna love those Fabi lights! They are beautiful (and FAST!!!) Just started playing with them here