Iray taking hours?

Blackjacko

Specs:

16Gb DDR4 Ram 

1050 GTX Ti Vram 4gb

Intel Core I7-7700K 4.20 GHZ

1 TB HDD

2 TB HDD

 

I'm trying to render a seen in Urban Sprawl 3 with 4 Genesis 8 models and fog. Iray's been taking literal centuries to render this scene. I'm running Optimax and have set to have Canvas.1 Beauty. The enviornment is Sun-sky only with an Infinite Sphere. and drawn dome on. My max path lengths is set to 3 with optimization for speed. 

 

I'm just a begginner, but I wanted to know if Iray taking this long with my specs was normal.  

L'Adair

Short answer, Yes.

Long answer, You are rendering with the CPU because with so many the things in your scene, it will not fit on the 4GB of RAM on your video card. (Okay, that's an educated guess…)

If you don't already have it, I recommend you download and install GPU-Z. It can tell you many things about your GPU. With it running, I can tell at a glance if my scene is using the GPU to render. It does much more than that, but I use it mainly to see how much RAM is being used, and what percentage of the GPU is in use. (If I'm rendering, and it shows 0%, I know I'm rendering CPU Only.)

Lyoness

or.... you haven't updated your nvidia drivers.
I was having that problem today and found that I wasn't completely updated.
 

Blackjacko

Thanks for replying! I'll go ahead and grab GPU-Z. Are there any tips you could give me on possibly downscaling an Iray scene for the sake of faster rendering time?

JonnyRay

I think the main issue you're seeing is what you have in your scene.

Blackjacko said:

I'm trying to render a seen in Urban Sprawl 3 with 4 Genesis 8 models and fog.

Stonemason's set pieces are awesome, but rarely considered "light" on system resources. Add 4 G8 characters and L'Adair is probably on track with you got pushed off the 4GB video card and over to CPU rendering, which is always slower.

There are a couple of tools which can help with reducing the load of a scene on your GPU.

• Scene Optimizer is a script based tool which will do some changes to your scene like compressing textures and/or removing bump maps for background objects that you don't really see very well. This can be VERY helpful when you realize your scene has a lot of heavy resource items that aren't really the focus of your render.
• Resource Saver Shaders is a set of shaders designed to reduce load for certain surfaces. The Genesis 2, 3, and 8 shaders are particularly good for "background characters", but also has some basic paint, hair and other shaders when you just need something simple for a background piece that doesn't need all the deep details.

L'Adair

Blackjacko said:

Thanks for replying! I'll go ahead and grab GPU-Z. Are there any tips you could give me on possibly downscaling an Iray scene for the sake of faster rendering time?

@Blackjacko,

Both tools @JonnyRay recommends are useful in reducing the load of textures in a scene. But with large sets, I also like to remove what isn't in the frame, as long as it isn't needed for shadows or reflections.

I have the original Urban Sprawl and Urban Sprawl 2, (haven't purchased US3 yet,) and both come with props/objects divided into sections, or blocks. I assume US3 is similar. If you can, and haven't already, hide "blocks" that aren't in the scene. You can go even further, and just remove buildings or props that aren't visible. In US2, there are a lot of shorter buildings that can be hidden behind taller buildings, depending on the camera angle.

For example, I used Urban Sprawl 2 in this image:

But here's what the set looked like from another, higher angle:

The red box on the right, with the orange outlines, is the "exercise room" in the render. Any building, prop or ground from US2 that wasn't in the frame was removed or hidden, to cut down on resources.

Knowing Stonemason sets, I'm pretty sure you can do the same in Urban Sprawl 3.

Blackjacko

I will put all of this advice into motion. Thanks everyone.

odastein

JonnyRay said:

I think the main issue you're seeing is what you have in your scene.

Blackjacko said:

I'm trying to render a seen in Urban Sprawl 3 with 4 Genesis 8 models and fog.

Stonemason's set pieces are awesome, but rarely considered "light" on system resources. Add 4 G8 characters and L'Adair is probably on track with you got pushed off the 4GB video card and over to CPU rendering, which is always slower.

 I have the same card he has, and you don't need 4 G8 characters to go over its capacity with a Stonemason's background. 

Cris Palomino

This could help.