Why Iray was not a good choice
This discussion has been closed.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Agreed about Apple computers; they have shiifted from expandable boxes in the older Power Macs to thin, cute boxes with no airflow to handle the needs required for heavy 3D use. Using the 3D card on my Macbook immediately kicked the fans on high and got the machine hot and the personal line uses basically laptop parts as well. When it was time to get a new machine, I couldn't justify them as a workhorse machine and built a PC tower and got an ipad and a mac mini for the house, since the graphic options have always been useless on macs, hence the situation with games.
+1
This has been my experience as well.
While I'm sorry that Mac users are having difficulty using Iray, keep in mind the decision to drop Nvidia from their products comes from Apple, and DAZ 3D has no control over Apple, or any other computer manufacturer. Apple has not only hindered DS users with this decision, but there are many other software applications that use Cuda, and not OpenCL, I use Octane render, and several other non-rendering applications that use Cuda and not OpenCL (GIS and photogrammetry) for the same reasons Male-M3ida mentioned. Unfortunately, IMHO Apple has turned a blind eye to many of their users in the 3D and scientific communities with their decision to drop Nvidia. While OpenCL does provide an open GPU processing alternative to Cuda, as I understand it there are many features available in Cuda that are not available in OpenCL.
As for the computer cost issue, you can get a system with 32Gb of RAM, a GTX 1070, and and AMD FX 8350 for under $1,000 that will render using Iray quite well (not the fastes CPU available, but it would be a good Iray performer). So if your willing to compromise a bit, you can get a sub $1,000 computer and get acceptable Iray performance.
IIRC, the timing on Iray integration in DS is pretty close to when Apple stopped putting Nvidia cards in their products (within 6 months??). It's quite possible that when DAZ started integrating Iray into DS they had no idea that Apple was going to drop Nvidia support. Full integration like what they did with Iray no doubt to a lot of person hours, and could have easily been in development for 6 months or more before the public beta release.
LuxRender works great with OpenCL on AMD cards. My Titan X is hit or miss if the drivers will crash or not. Also, the CPU rendering of LuxRender is simply amazing. I find that some scenes render faster or nearly as fast in LuxRender in CPU mode than in iRay using GPU.
@Male-M3dia OpenCL IS mature. And when you say that CUDA is faster, I think a little background is needed because that gives a false impression. Anyone that's programmed in either one knows that AMD has always been faster for the same money. When someone says that OpenCL is not mature, they're not talking about the API or technology. They're talking about support and that's no longer true today. The issues that were annoying with OpenCL in the past is that you needed to used different pieces of software and you needed different libraries. CUDA all comes from one place and does not need to deal with anything other than GPGPU computing. It does not try to solve the problems that OpenCL is trying to solve so there's a whole level of support/functionality that's just not there with CUDA. Also, OpenCL and CUDA are languages/API's. They do not run the code. The hardware does. So there is not one solution that is faster than another. That comes down to the compiler and the hardware. Some things CUDA is best suited for. Some other things, OpenCL is better at. But it mostly comes down to the programmer and what hardware they are targetting.
And if you look at the level of support for OpenCL from nVidia, they are still at version 1.2 in 2015. AMD has released 2.0 drivers in 2014 and 1.2 support in 2011 when they replaced their ATI Stream technology.
To have the same render power, you'll pay twice as much for an apple computer, than a windows pc (at least here in germany). So here in G. apple is basicley a lifestyle product. Even investing in a prizey nvidea card is a better deal.
http://www.saturn.de/de/category/_pcs-241163.html?searchParams=&sort=desc_price&view=&page= german electronic discounter. The prices are €uros, which are allmost equal to $ dollars.
I missed that, ty.
Yeh I understand the issues over open CL, but your assurances about Nvidia's IRAY longevity are, without inside information, just 'hope'.
This is a discussion of Iray in DS, let's not turn it into a Mac vs Windows platform war.
Nothing say that 3DL is still here tomorrow either, but both Autodesk and Maxxon has IRAY support and as long as nVIDIA makes a license profit on it there is no reason to assume it will go anywhere in the near future.
With that said I would agree to some extent that it's not very good to jump in bed with a hardware manufacturer like that, a renderer that would have good CPU support also would be much nicer, IRAY CPU rendering is rubbish, no question about that.
But I don't render anything in DS anyway,it's exported long before that so it does not matter much for me.
Sorry, it isn't mature and you're saying something way different that all the makers of GPU renderers. There more than enough articles on the internet to speak to this. This isn't a emotional argument; this is something those software makers, such as Octane, found when trying to implement it and couldn't make OpenCL work to put it into the version 3 of their renderer as promised. This was found in their faq about it:
You find the blender Cycles page you'll also find the feature set of what is implemented in OpenCL is what has been implemented in CUDA. A lot of things in OpenCL hasn't been implemented or is still in experimental beta. Also when the opencl was released in luxrender, performance was behind in that as well, but shouldn't have been a surprise considering what was already known about opencl issues.
Although AMD is making their cards faster, they are still behind pascal performance. But it is OpenCL that is the issue, not the cards themselves.
Again, if you read the release for 4.8 the info was right there for you. How is that hope? I would suggest when each version of software releases you familiarize yourself with the notes and the discussion thread so that you stay informed on DAZ Studio.
I keep hearing people complain about Iray and 3dLight, but I want OpenGL to be upgraded too. When I'm on my cheap laptop it can do all three render engines but the first two are too slow for me so I usually go OpenGL and do postwork to make things work. OpenGL is the fastest engine for lowend computers for Daz Studio and I hope Daz give this great option some more upgrades.
if openCL could just see shadows and transmaps better it would be the ideal Nonphotorealistic render option for toon stuff IMO
I think a lot of people are working under the misapprehension that DAZ went to nVidia and asked to include Iray. Considering that Iray was still VERY new at that point (when the subject would have been broached at DAZ) it doesn't strike me as the more likely scenario. nVidia probably approached DAZ, and OFFERED Iray to them, cheap or free. DAZ saw it as a great way to add a PBR engine for cheap, and nVidia saw it as another marketing win for Iray. Yes, it locks DS to nVidia hardware if you WANT to use Iray.
And as far as Macs not supporting nVidia cards being DAZ's problem and not Apple's? No. Apple used to support nVidia cards in some Mac models. THEY dropped support. Apple has ALWAYS had a habit of moving toward a more and more closed architecture system. It simplifies their support channel and design issues, at the cost of not supporting hardware that some users want. That is WHOLLY on Apple, not the users, not DAZ.
Seconded. Although I have upgraded to a PC with a 1070 now, I'd still like to see a better OpenGL - especially for quick rendering of animations. Even with a decent NVidia card, rendering animations involves a long wait.
... it still is rather buggy.
I once (over 1 year ago) did a detailed investigation on the bug related to the transition of shadows through refractive surfaces and it still is not solved althogh reported to nVidia by the DAZ Dev team.
The next is the missing balancing of HDRI light/environment against the dome map brightness although there are seperate parameters, etc. etc. ...
iRay up to now don't have the necessary quality to be part of a really working release of DAZ !!
Again, CUDA and OpenCL are not what decides what to run. Blaming OpenCL simply doesn't hold water. And about Octane, have you looked at their past release dates? CUDA and OpenCL aren't the issue by a long shot.
As for AMD, they have always been faster per dollar than nVidia for GPGPU. It's always been like this and is still true. BTW, I'm a programmer. So I know this first hand. I wanted the fastest of each at the time of release. At one time R9 290 was nearly at the top of the chart (with the 290X above it). I own one of those. I also bought a GTX Titan X when it came out. They each have their uses. And with Pro Render and the continued support of OpenCL, it's a good thing for everyone when more options are available and aren't locked to a single company, would you not agree?
I also agree with others that better support in DAZ Studio for OpenGL would be nice.
If you can't accept that OpenCL not being mature enough to implement is the issue, it still doesn't change the fact that it isn't mature or reason why software renderers haven't used it. It is what is is. Also it's great that you are a programmer, I used to be one then a system analyst in charge of evaluating software for use in the companies I worked at; still doesn't change the fact that OpenCL isn't ready for use in renderers. And about being locked into a a single company: when people were given a choice between an Ipod and a zune, I guess people ran to the zune because there were more options avaiable and choice is good, correct?
No, that didn't happen because the zune's options and performance weren't up to snuff and no one bought into it or their music store, including developers. This is no different, and your argument runs contrary to that fact.
Since this has turned into a rehash of the arguments over OpenCL and AMD vs. nVidia that has already been covered at length the thread is being locked.