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Proper normal maps...as in baked from hi-res mesh or ones constructed in something like Substance Designer (for 'mesh-less' things) will produce much better results than converted from diffuse ones. The same goes for bump and displacement maps, although with displacement it is possible to use a converted maps with acceptable results.
Something else that is often done in Studio renders..over doing/not respecting scale for bump/displacement. With properly baked maps, there should be no need to adjust the map 'strength'.
Now, as far as using this to reduce memory...smaller (512 x 512) tileable maps for bricks, etc that are scaled and put onto simple geometry with the proper control maps can be very realistic and effective...and much, much smaller memory foot print than just about anything else for 'background' usage.
...but if there is no normal map, (and that is somewhat common with a lot of older content) what then? Also why then is there still a displacement parameter slider after converting a texture to the Iray base? Really not looking forward to having to do a lot of "pre-work" in a 2D programme.
The Sub_D you mention is that for rendering, or the actual mesh?
I've been using AwesomeBump to make normal maps from diffuse. https://github.com/kmkolasinski/AwesomeBump I'm sure others can chime in with additional options.
Either/or...a little of each.
Displacement is doable in Iray...but it's NOT the same as we are used to in 3Delight AND it doesn't really work all that well with the type/style of rendering done in Studio.
AwesomeBump does create Normal maps that are a little bit better than a straight conversion, but they aren't quite as good as baked ones and are definitely better than nothing at all. It does allow for all sorts of details enhancement, 'stepping'/depth adjustments and even can do some measure of 'scaling'.
Yes. Basically it takes all the materials you have given it and crams them together into one image (per channel, one for diffuse, one for opacity, etc.) and you specify the size of that final image (which you presumably will set such that images will be reduced in size), among other things. You could theoretically get all the materials for a figure and clothing resized smaller in one shot. In reality it will probably take a few iterations because you may not know what the resulting resolution looks like until you try it, then you will probably want to adjust the relative sizes of many of the individual images and deselect some so as to do it somewhat efficiently.
"If there is no normal map" this is where some work is involved. Sometimes you just can't use a generic transfer from 3DL to Iray. You may need to scrap the original textures and apply appropriate Iray native textures.
Others have covered the subd so I'm going to leave it there. There are significant differences in how displacement works between the two engines and to go further than others we'll need to delve into the "nitty-gritty" of how both engines do it and why they are not very compatible.
Kendall
Okay, I realize I'm late to this thread by about 6 years - wonder if anything has changed in the meantime in regards to what's been posted? (By the way, I really have no idea what everybody means by what they say, really - I understand the terms, but not how to set displacement, etc.)
My problem is that while everything was working fine in my renders, all of a sudden they are using up my full 16 GB of RAMM. That hasn't happened in literally hundreds of renders.
Should I get more RAMM (expensive)? Is there a way to defer some of the memory requirements to virtual memory?
Any help would be appreciated. When my RAMM is maxxed out, it tends to drastically slow down my computer (even crash it sometimes).
For information purposes, this is what I'm working with:
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64-bit
CPU
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11400F @ 2.60GHz 2.60 GHz
Skylake Technology (11th generation) (I don't think it's called Skylake Technology anymore, however - not sure)
RAM
16.0GB (DDR4)
Motherboard
Alienware 0P0JWX (U3E1)
Graphics
LF22T35 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER (Dell) 33 °C
Storage
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-75WN4A1 (SATA ) 39 °C
1863GB Western Digital WDC WD20SPZX-00UA7T0 (SATA (SSD)) 31 °C
476GB NVMe Micron 2300 NVMe 512GB (RAID (SSD))
57GB SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 USB Device (USB )
114GB SanDisk Ultra USB Device (USB )
7GB SanDisk Cruzer USB Device (USB )
114GB SanDisk Ultra USB Device (USB )
Again, any help would be appreciated.
This reply ended up way longer than I'd wanted. I had wanted to just say, pull the side of your case off. Check if you have two spare ram slots. Buy 2 new sticks of ram. Job done.
--
First things first. Are you rendering on GPU or CPU when the problems occur. Your GPU has 6GB of memory. I would have thought that this is your issue? [or like me when I had an 8gb card, just give up on GPU rendering a couple of years back]
The word "crash". Some people on the forums sometimes use this word when the render process 'gives up' on rendering on GPU, usually due to running out of the 6gb gpu memory and starts running slowly on CPU rendering. Just wanting to check you are not describing this. By crash do you mean the program - daz - ends, leaving you back looking at the desktop. Or that the whole computer reboots and starts loading Windows from scratch - or you have to even press the power button to get the computer back on?
Going back to your post's specific question - is 16gb system memory enough. You can check this when you start a render. Open task manager. Go to the performance tab, select memory on the left. And check the 'committed' figure under the graph. From memory, Daz will crash to desktop somewhere around 90GB committed on a 16gb system. [its exactly 128GB for a 32gb system].
"That hasn't happened in literally hundreds of renders." So something different in these new renders? I found that in scenes with huge numbers of Dforce objects (specifically hair) that I 'ran out' of system memory and that 32gb wasn't enough. I've only started using DForce this year.
Is this your motherboard?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284564289835?nma=true&si=Z7ZnL6V1bwshOzKgBQOQdmGUPZ0%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
Its got 4 slots. I would pull the side of your case off and check you are only using 2 out of the 4. If you have 2 slots spare I would just buy another 16gb. However I need to check you are referring to system memory problems and not Nvidia 6gb problems first before giving this recommendation.
Displacement works well, but is memory intensive, and also adds to render time. It isn't perfect by any means.
To get the best out of it there has to be good maps. Jpegs are often not good enough, as they have been saved with compression - the whole point of using jpgs. png and tiff will be better. It does of course depend on the quality/size of the image when saved.
My primary reason to use displacement is that it breaks the edge of a model - stopping that super-smooth flow of lines.
... Of course, the further from a model the displacement is the less chance it will have some visible effect.
Iray also has its own compression settings, and these can drastically alter your VRAM. The compression settings are in the Iray Advanced tab. They are confusing, like so many things with Daz Studio. The numbers basically mean that textures over that size are compressed. So a setting of 1024 means that textures that either 1024 wide or tall and up are compressed. There is one for medium and one for high. The high means those textures are more compressed, so this setting tends to be higher by default. It is possible that scene save altered the default settings. If the numbers high then you are using a lot more VRAM. This setting is universal and impacts every texture in the scene.
However this setting does not impact RAM so much. There are two ways a scene eats up data, one is through texture data and the other is geometry. Odds are that you have Genesis models set to high subdivision levels. Each level is significantly higher than the last, because these numbers are squared. One setting selects what the subD is in your viewport, which can eat some RAM as well. Set that to 1. The Render SubD is separate, and effects the actual render. You will want to set this as low as you can get away with. If somebody is far from the camera, they certainly do not need to be at a high subD, they could maybe even be Base Resolution. You only need the higher settings for closer shots, and pics rendered at high resolutions.
A lot of newer Daz products are heavy on memory in one way or another. Some are very dense meshes, or have very large textures, or both.
That is another thing, the render resolution also impacts VRAM. The larger the pic you render the more VRAM.
So some combination of these things is cranking up your memory use. Look over your characters and back drops and see what you can drop down.
... so say there is a an older item which has only a few Material zones to save on creating geometry so those details are baked into the 3DL materials map and use displacement to give them a 3D appearance.. if you scrap the 3DL materials you lose those details.
Right! If you have 2 sticks of 8 GB each, and you have 2 open RAM slots, then you could go to 32 GB for under $60 not including tax and shipping. If you want fancy modules, then it'll get you close to $100. Why not do that?
And if you wanted to get matched RAM, then you could consider getting four 16GB sticks and take it up to 64 GB. That would run you $170-$200 and would allow you to leave all this behind, even less if you use your old modules to make and sell art or something.
I get being stingy. But trying to survive with just 16 GB is taking stingy a bit too seriously. I say maybe it's time to be almost as stingy with your time as you are with your money.