I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with Iray.

zander_366fce3d18

Um, hi. I've been away from Daz for about four years doing other things, and one of the reasons I backed off from it was that I couldn't work out how to use Iray. I tried just about everything I could think of. I loaded Iray lights and Iray materials and Iray environments and everything Iray, but whatever I did, my renders always came out solid black. I tried watching video tutorials, but they didn't seem to cover whatever it is I was doing wrong. Now I've come back, the same thing seems to apply. I can load all my old stuff and render in 3Delight just as well as I used to, but Iray is still a closed book to me, not to mention a black book.

Can anyone recommend a step by step guide for the terminally bewildered?

Zander Nyrond

Richard Haseltine

If you start a new scene, create a sphere (Create>New Primitive), click the Defaults button in the Edit tab of Render Settings, and render does it work?

mark128

If I load up an old 3Delight scene I have and try to render it in Iray, it usually comes out completely black.

You need to have Iray lighting. Iray materials are less important.  The materials will be transformed to work in Iray, but may not be optimal, but you definitely need Iray lighting. 

You said you loaded Iray Lights. I assume you mean like spot lights.  If you go to the Render tab, what Environment Mode are you using?

If you are using "Dome Only" or "Sun-Sky only" then the regular lights like spot or point lights will not work. Emissive lights will work in these modes though.

In my experience the default spot/point light intensities are way too low at the default Tone Mapping settings. You need to turn the intensity up by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude to see the light.  You need to change the intensity in the Photometrics section under Luminous Flux.

If you just load one character into the scene, trying setting Environment Mode to Dome and Scene and try a render.  You should get a render that is not all dark. Try adding a spot light and point it at the character.  Change the Environment Mode to Scene Only and try a render.  It will probably be black.  Turn the spot light Photometrics -> Luminous Flux up by 2 orders of magnitude and see if you can get a render that is not black.

 

zander_366fce3d18

Thank you, everyone. I will have another go. Right now I seem to be having problems even in 3Delight, but when I've found a way round those there will be experimentation. :)

Zander