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
I see,
But if you use the mixed render CPU and GPU, it will use the CPU if the GPU cannot handle it?
Luxrender is said to be up to 20 times faster than it used to be (got that at the reality website). Does that still hold true when doing a CPU render?
If so, is it significantly faster than Iray?
Thanks a lot,
Me.
Every time I start trying to chase down a faster engine than Iray, I end up wasting my time and coming back to it.
Other apps can do certain things better than Iray, but at least as far as speed goes, Iray is just about as fast as you're going to get a photorealistic renderer on conventional hardware.
(3DL done very realistically converges on Iray in CPU mode, Vue runs about as fast, Bryce is CPU only and runs roughly as fast as Iray CPU for similar things, Carrara same...)
The ONLY advantage I've seen from other renderers is a greater ability to reduce the realism (and thus speed it up), some networking capabilities (which doesn't help me), some renderers let you stop a render and pick it up at a later time (which is nice and definitely an advantage), and some other renderers have better shader and MUCH better volumetric effects (though much better volumetric effects then make everything much slower)
But speed? Iray is about as fast as you're going to get, in my experience.
Specially with the new beast Iray is lightning fast
Forgive me will but this simply is not true
if we are only comparing render times on non-Nvida
graphic cards
Not ease of use of the host application..... just render times
I can absolutely confirm that blender cycles is an order a magnitude FASTER than IRay on the same machine with IMHO equal quality.
the Images below were rendered in under one hour on my travel gateway laptop with a 1.3GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core SU4100 CPU along with Intel’s GMA4500MHD graphics, 4GB DDR2 RAM.
Blender 2.78 Cycles
They would have taken 8- 10 hours with Iray on this same machine
That's why I listed what I've tried so far. ;)
Maybe Blender is faster... and if you can hack it, there you go!
Wish I could. :/
And I would Add that My ten year old Old version of Vray for my ten year Old Cinema4D running on one of my 11 year old Apple macs
Can render in mere minutes what it would take IRay hours to render
on a superior recent model PC with no Nvidia card.
Now yes I understand that C4D is a $3600 application
and back then(2006) Vray was $1100
But to say "IRay is faster" should have the qualifier:
"For a free PBR that is NOT cycles and supports Daz studio directly"
Vray render below
Well, if we're going to have a pedant off (I keed, I keed)...
I didn't say Iray was the fastest, but that I hadn't encountered stuff that was appreciably faster than Iray.
If you know of a free or nearly free renderer that can blow past Iray significantly on desktop hardware, I'm all ears. (Other than Blender; glad to know Blender is faster, but, alas, I find it about as easy as trying to program a MMO in javascript)
Other than Blender...? There is no faster/better quality free ,low cost PBR on NON NVIDIA hardware that out performs IRay...period.
Man, I wish I could hack Blender
Tried it earlier this year, even joined CGCookie for pro tuts. Annoyingly steep learning curve if the teacher is using anything but the default layout, or an older version. Gave up and canceled CGCookie. :P
LOL
To be completey Frank My level of "expertise"
in Blender Consists of the following:
Set up scene completely in DS 4.8
Go to scripts menu and run MCJteleblender script
Wait for Blender to automatically open with Daz scene imported
with Daz mats already converted to cycles Shader nodes
and Daz Camera converted to Blenders active cam
Open node editor and add a mix shader and a SSS shader to skin surfaces if desired.
open free SmartIBL GUI application from HDR labs
Choose HDR environment and send to blender where it is automaticly applied
Set Viewport to "rendered" for near instant preview of scene
looks good??
Set number of samples to 100 or so
set mode to progressive refine and render.
Ask me To model something in blender??..nope
Ask me To create a smoke simulation in blender??... not happening
Ask me To create Fluid simulation?... you are kidding right?
Ask me To Create some blender Dynamic hair??....uhhh ..well..no.
Ask me To edit My animated film footage in blenders "video editor"
..ok now you are just being silly.
Like everything else, I learned just enough about Blender to
use its free PBR render engine with Daz content.
dont much care about the other stuff right now.
Hmm, should try that, if nothing else. :)
One of the things I know Luxus can do and I am not sure Reality can: Take advantage of LuxRender Slaves.
A while ago I wrote a post on how to Speed up your Luxus rendering with LuxSlaves.
Basically you can get a bunch of system, on a Gb Network in your garage and farm out the resdering to them. |
It worked very nicely for me and the Luxus dev was more than happy to make the change to allow it.
Once thing I will day is all fo the systems must be running the same version of LuxRender. If you system has ver 2.34 and the slaves have 3.4, it isn't going to work.
Hi
Yes the teleblender script is free
My experience is that nearly all image based 3DLshaders are properly converted to cycle nodes and most Iray shaders
although IRay reflective and Emissive surfaces may
need to be replaced with Blender equivalents
Here is the IRay Version of stonemason's "streets of tuscany"Set.
I only let it preview for about 19 samples just to showhow the IRay mats auto converted to cycles nodes.
I also like to use Cycles to test render my custom made clothing content for the G2/G3 figures
All posed in DS 4.8 and sent to cycles for rendering
....looks pretty good. So Cycles has it's own emissive shaders.
yes and they are very powerful and based on real world lighting values
I used them to add lights to this futuristic assualt vehicle
I modeled recently.
My mentor who helped me alot with DS back im 09 when I started at some point had moved onto V and Mental Ray and had said the same thing to expand and play with other applications. Most of them sound quite costly tough and am getting what I need with the new rig. But definately intersting to see what is out there..
It might be of interest to note that, since this thread was originally about Luxrender, then Blender does (or did?) have an interface to Luxrender (LuxBlend) as well as Cycles. It must be something of a testimony to Cycles that most of the Blender community seem to prefer it over Luxrender.
I tried the teleblender script on my iMac before I got a PC with an NVidia GPU. I found that it wasn't as straightforward as just send and render. The lighting needs to be set up in Blender and the materials often don't translate very well (at least a couple of years ago when I tried it). So I had to spend hours tweaking materials in that awful node spaghetti system which just bamboozles me. Now, those hours might have been worthwhile considering an IRay render would take even more hours by CPU only but now that I have a decent GPU, I'm afraid the appeal of Cycles isn't strong enough to tempt me yet again.
By the way, I find the Blender VSE (Video editor) surprisingly simple and very powerful. Easier to use than the built-in iMovie I have on on my iMac.
...so the materials setup for Cycles is like Poser's Materials Room? Being dyslexic, a node system is more than a challenge for me to work with as inded it looks like a spilled bowl of spaghetti going every which way (which is why I don't use the Shader Mixer here either). Reality's materials tab is much more straightforward to me.
Yes I remember those times
Not quite sure what the issues with luxblend were, but a former head fellow at Octane jumped ship to the Blender organization and bought alot of his knowedge to developing cycles.
There was a bit of a row about the whole thing IIRCC.
Honestly the Mac version was always a bit rubbish compared to the PC version and I dont believe there is an up to date Mac version available anymore.
that stonemason tuscany render I posted, require no material tweaking although I personally love blenders elegant node system
Of course the lighting needs to be set up but there is the free Dynamic sky addon that creates instant Bryce like skies with GI lighting for
outdoor stuff and for indoor& outdoor scenes I use the free SIBLGUI App from HDR labs to send my personal collection of HDR lighting presets to Blender.
and any object that was used as mesh light in Daz studio can be made an emissive mesh with one click from preset in the FREE PBR node pack 2 addon which lets you click and load materials from a library of presets just like choosing materials in Bryce
have alook
One thing's for certain. Following this thread has made me want to play with Reality again, and I hate you all for it. :P
actually it is far superior to that bloody awful Shader room in poser but alas your dyslexia will make any node system more challenging
I am going to revisit it too with my new killer rig. Worse comes to worse I still think its not worth it carry on with iray which now just flies!
I can still remember using carraras "ancestor" RayDream 3D
I was a carrara user up to about version 4 then I became a C4D user.
When I built my sytem 4 years ago. 1st serious rendering tower after melting several HP laptops. I built it with AMD being told that Reality lux was coming with faster rendering. Never quite happened. This time with an iray built system it lives up to the hype..
I looked up that new CPU you bought, and I hate you most of all. 20 threads?!?! I'm flipping you off in 48 different languages! >:(