Nvidia Drawing style - which settings for real time viewport?
linvanchene
Posts: 1,382
In order to prevent going further offtopic in other threads I ask this here (again):
Which exact settings are you using for the Nvidia Iray drawing style to get a real time viewport without any kind of fade to grey texture shaded or fade to black delay?
Some people say:
viewport feedback is instantaneous. And with the latest Iray updates, it is actually realtime (in other words, you don't see the grey shaded image while orbiting/panning in the viewport. You actually see realtime render when you move the camera, even in large scenes).
Other people say:
You can pan and zoom the viewport in iray and it's pretty responsive, but change the scene / lighting and there's a delay reloading
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I am using a GTX 1080 for display and two GTX 1080 Ti for rendering.
Some observations after testing this again:
The default drawing mode seems to be
@ Photoreal
Response Treshold:
The Response Threshold property sets the amount of time (in milliseconds) between when a change is made to the scene and when the scene starts to render again. The range extends from 8 milliseconds to 5000 milliseconds.
The goal is to immediately see the changes when you change the sun direction by using the slider SS Longitude in the Render Settings / Environment without triggering a fade to grey or black.
After reading the description I thought that using a small setting like 8ms would be the proper choice.
In practice the opposite seems true:
In order to be able to see the different light positions the default setting of 100 or a higher value like 5000ms seems better suited.
At 8ms the screen fades to black when using the SS Longitude slider.
I cannot see a difference between using 100 and 5000ms.
There must be some kind of "trade off" when using high values.
-> For which situations are you using a low value 8ms and for which a high value like 5000ms ?
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Because I now had set the Response Treshold wrong for quite a while (again) I start to wonder if I also set some other parameters wrong that prevent me from seeing a better picture when moving the slider. Any ideas? Which settings are you using?
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My settings:
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Example:
To test this you may want to use a somewhat challenging light situation like an indoor scene lit with the sun environment.
Just using one character with simple HDR lighting is not going to give much further insight...
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Result when moving the SS Longitude Slider with Response Threshold at 100:
-> This is how the image looks like during the manipulation. The environment and the change in light direction is observeable but the scene is much darker.
How the Nvidia Iray live preview of the scene looks like a few seconds after the manipulation:
What I get when I move a similar Longitude slider at a similar environment light situation in OctaneRender is this:
Is there any way to adjust the manipulation quality in a way that the scene looks a bit more similar to the live viewport with it not being manipulated?
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Comments
There are four different drawing modes.
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/draw_settings/editor_page/nvidia_iray/drawing/start
But the links leading to further descriptions currently all seem broken.
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Can anyone get better results with the Nvidia Iray live preview viewport with different drawing modes?
@ Interactive mode
The documentation leads to an empty page:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/draw_settings/editor_page/nvidia_iray/drawing/interactive/start
I noticed that this mode can help to get a rough idea of the scene with a better picture if you just want to move things around quickly.
- It looks better than using the OpenGL mode
- It is much quicker than using Photoreal
- But it is not a good choice to set lights because you may want to actually see how it looks in the photoreal mode when doing that.
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@ Photoreal to Render Settings
The documentation on this mode still leads to an empty page:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/draw_settings/editor_page/nvidia_iray/drawing/photoreal/start#blend_photoreal_to_render_settings
Does anyone have any descriptions what all those values do?
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@ What is going on with the documentation?
Clicking on any links in the overview leads to empty pages. The only way to find those pages is to use google and find a working page in editor mode. But then you end up getting the information that you are not allowed access when clicking on links...
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As per your question in the thread about quad GPU setups, my render settings are all on their default values (except for changing to "Scene Only" and render samples to 100).
Regarding the quoted text above, that user is correct. There is a difference in performance from simply moving your camera in the scene vs. manipulting the scene geometry, like moving an object. Generally speaking, the former will be more respnsive and and faster than the latter.
Thank you for providing that information. It is a good reference point to know that the results showed in the video can be achieved with the default settings with 4 GPU.
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Update - 08. May 2017:
Without any other information my current impression is that setting Response Threshold to 5000 instead of 100 leads to a more responsive experience letting you perform camera, object and to some degree light manipulations without triggering a reload of the scene.
I still wonder what the downside of using 5000ms is...
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If anyone could provide additional feedback, explain and share other settings that work for you I would very much appreciate that.
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@linvanchene and any others that may be interested in my ramblings........
To my knowledge, there is no difference between Response Threshold settings and your rendered image as this relates only to previews. The only info I have that can back this up is the fact that I have Response Threshold set to 5000 by default and I don't change it. Empirically, it improves the Iray preview speed. I use both the main viewport [Texture shaded] and the auxillary viewport [Iray].
Looking at your settings;
1. I would turn on Inactive Viewport Delay as this provides more resources to the currently active viewport (ie. you'll get an image faster so it's good for tweaking whilst using the Aux Viewport and initially, the Main Viewport won't 'interfere' as it is the currently inactive viewport and being delayed).
2. I would change the Manipulation Resolution to ¼ as this speeds up the preview of moving of objects & cameras alike and is only active whilst your mouse button is held down (normal resolution returns the instant you release your LMB).
3. I am totally clueless regarding the Default Alpha LPE as it also has no information about it released by DAZ 3D.....
4. I have my Firefly Filter enabled and Nominal Luminance (a slider that appears when you enable Firefly Filter) set to 100. I have noticed no change in render-time but many images have less/zero "Fireflies" (bright pixels in areas of low light).
5. Spectral Rendering: another "new beast" when we have yet to learn about the "old beasts".......
1. Yeah, I think that pisses off many people; me being one of them. Why is it that so many art program companies insist on continually bringing in more and more new features but are content with leaving potential new users and experienced users uninformed as to how to use these new features? It just seems that all they're interested in is baffling with bullsh_t rather than dazzling with brilliance (or rather than soar like an eagle, they appear content to gobble around with turkeys.... or... you get the idea).
2. Or never created in the first place.............
3. I was unaware of this and just had a bit of a play around. I find I may as well use the Texture shaded preview as the Iray Interactive mode only really shows the set up os figures,etc; as you mentioned, it's not at all usefull for determining the lighting - which, let's face it, is the best part of Iray............
4. The usual..... Nothing. AKA SFA (Aussie acronym, the translation of which, is NSFW or DAZ Forums ;))..........
So for me; I'm content to use the small, Aux Viewport for Iray (and I change it to Texture shaded when I'm not using it; or change the camera view to the floor or wherever there's nothing to render in the preview) and the Main Viewport for Texture shaded to set up my scene (ocassionally, I'll change it to Iray to get a real idea as to how my project is looking; but most of the time, it stays on Texture shaded).
NOTE: Just in case it wasn't clear (especially for the nubies); keep the Aux Viewport small. Most of us have multiple monitors for our graphics rigs and it would be easy to move the Aux Viewport onto another monitor and enlarge it to the available space. Sorry, it doesn't work that way; the Aux Viewport renders quicker BECAUSE it is smaller (less pixels to calculate = less time to render); so you have to keep it smaller to keep the speed for preview. Moving it onto another monitor has nothing to do with how it will work - it just may be more convenient
Finally; DAZ 3D; please - update your User Guide/Documentation Center. Perhaps you need to employ a few experienced DS users who's sole function is to write & update the documentation. For many, a good user guide is a reason for preferring certain software over others. Personally, with many of the Iray products available (many which overlap or simply do the same thing as other products), I tend to get those with a user guide rather than a similar product without one. Your "Daz Studio 4x User Guide" is no longer up for the task of helping users develop their skills in the software. I was a high school teacher for 25 years; writing guides/tutorials/etc is second nature to me but I'm relatively new to DS (otherwise I'd put up my hand to help with the development of an up to date guide); you need experienced users who can write clear instructions in lay terms. Surly this should be a priority?..................................
OK, I'll step off my soapbox now and apologise if I went off topic just a tiny, little bit.......................
I'm pretty much in the same boat as you are, Octane user trying to get iray to behave the same way.
What works for me is changing the max path length from -1 to somewhere between 3 and 6. What I found about iray, is that it's not very good when it comes to doing indoor scenes, it chokes compared to octane. So making the max path length lower, makes it easier for iray to calculate the light when it comes to indoor scenes. But be warned, too low and the transperencies will not work anymore. It would be great if we could change the number of bounces, to say 2 or 3 instead of the default 16. Suppose to be able to do that with interactive mode, but i've never been able to get it to work.
Nick