3delight render problems.. is there a solution
justin.s.leary_ce9e349747
Posts: 11
Hi all,
I was hoping to get some help here. My issue is a well documented one here - when I render using 3delight in daz studio (4.6) I get the pixelation problem - small purple, green and blue splotches on the render. It has been covered elsewhere that this is caused by using deep shadow maps (DSM) on a light source, and is a known issue with the 3delight render engine used by daz studio currently.
What are workable solutions to this? Bear in mind that I am trying to render animations. Using the 3delight engine gives good render times for me - for example, an 8 second animation at 25 frames per second only takes me around 8 hours to render, which is fine. However, the pixelation problem means that my animation renders look terrible, with the animation having regular pixel spots in it.
Most people here have suggested setting the shadow type for the light source to raytraced, instead of the problematic deep shadow map. However, for animations, that results in render times that are ridiculous (weeks and weeks instead of hours!).
I tried rendering to RIB, and then using the standalone 3delight engine (which is free for limited cores use), but for whatever reason, when using the 3delight standalone I was unable to render anything but the first frame. I rendered out the image sequence to a RIB directory in daz studio, but then I tried everything I could find to find a way to get the 3delight engine to render the full frame sequence with no luck. If anyone here has been able to use the 3delight standalone engine to render a RIB file from daz studio that is an animation / image sequence, I could use some help on how you did it.
I looked at octane render, but I just built a new render machine and I only got a Nvidia GTX 650Ti with 1GB of Vram thinking that would be enough, so the octane render is out for me for now.
I looked into luxrender and reality for luxrender, but from what I have read here, the render times would be very long with these as well.
In short, how can I render animations in daz studio that won't take weeks and weeks? I have looked into all the external renderers that will work with daz studio, and none of them are feasible or practical. Is anyone else rendering animations in daz studio? Or do most people here just do stills?
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
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Comments
Well, that's more or less the 'official' fix.
If you go over to the 3Delight forums and look, this has been an issue for nigh on to forever and the usual answer is...use raytraced shadows. OR change the lighting...either slightly move one or lights, remove one or more completely...or live with it.
As to raytraced shadows and render times...what are your render settings, because things like number of lights with shadows, shading rate, ray depth and size of image all have major impacts on time. If you are rendering an animation sequence, shading rate can be set higher than if you are rendering a still, for example.
And there is also this
http://www.daz3d.com/batch-render-for-daz-studio-4-and-rib
Thanks for the fast reply mjc1016 :)
I guess I was afraid of your answer - in fact, I was pretty much at a point where I was just going to set the shadow type for the light to none and hope that the animation looked ok. I guess it might be preferrable to the fireworks sparkle show that happens with the deep shadow map..?
I haven't really tweaked the render settings at all. I had a look at them - the advanced settings - earlier today, but then when I tried rendering using raytraced shadows, I had them all set to the defaults, but the render I think took about 5 minutes to advance 1% of the first frame, so I figured it was going to take approximately 7 to 8 weeks to render my 8 seconds of animation so I cancelled it.
Any suggestions on what I can tweak in the render settings pane is much appreciated. I am happy to compromise quality a fair bit given that it is for an animation. I guess any help or tweaks is great, as the alternatives for me at the moment are to use no shadow type at all, or put up with a pixel "dance" in my animations.
Thanks. :)
PS - I have one light that uses any type of shadow type at all - it is part of content I bought called Ultimo Paradiso that is available at the daz shop, and it has 3 backlights, a sun and sun shadows, and all of the backlights and the sun use no shadow type (Shadow type = None) out of the box, and only the sun shadow light type uses the Deep shadow Map as its default. Oh yes, and I am rendering to 1920 by 1080 full HD, as the animation is part of a music video we are doing, at 25 fps, and the rest of the video is full HD (16:9).
Disable all SSS effect or use DS default Shader. I'm not sure if Reflection and refraction also can be a source of problem too
The problem seems to arise when 3delight tries to calculate an effect which needs Raytracing and you only provide Deep Shadow Map.
If you want to keep Raytracing you cant try to render with the scripted renderer in point cloud mode. It should lower rendertime
Ok thanks Takeo.Kensei. I will try and investigate your suggestions :)
I'm dabbling in Animation in DS, and I use these render settings. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16085/ The two lowest have very good quality to speed even with Raytraced shadows. These are just base settings, you can tweek them to get better results at the same speed with a little experimenting.
I'm wondering Justin, if you've taken a look at any of the other light shaders that are available for DS as well. It could be that with a different lighting setup using some of the more advanced shaders, you could get the results you need without the artifacts or the hit on the rendering times.
Age of Armour's Store
- Advanced Ambient Light
- Advanced Spotlight
Omnifreaker's Store
- OM Area Light
- Ubersoft Lighting Kit
-- Ubersoft Lighting Pack 1
Thanks Jaderail! I will definitely have a look at those render settings, they hopefully will help solve my issue.
As far as the other light shaders go, JonnyRay, I could have a look - from what I read, the artifacts I was getting I was told was from the shadow type setting for the light source - there is only the three options: None, Deep Shadow Map and Raytraced, but perhaps looking at other settings might help. Thanks :)
The artifacts are caused by how 3Delight handles deep shadow maps on distant lights. In 3D terms, a "light" is a shader. There is code that tells the rendering engine how it works. Trying different light shaders isn't a matter of new settings for the existing lights in DAZ Studio, it is replacing those bits of code with something completely different.
Age of Armour's lights in particular may hold some promise as they allow for something called tagging. Basically it means you could tell the light to not cast shadows for certain objects, but to cast shadows for others.
Naturally with more power / flexibility comes more of a learning curve, but it may be worth it for your purposes.
Thanks JonnyRay. I might have a look at Age of Armour's lights as you suggest. I have to admit, I am a total newbie to Daz studio, have only just started using it the past few months, and there is so much about it I don't really know yet, so I am grateful for these forums and for help so I can figure my way around the software.
Thanks!
Just an update on this 3delight problem. I did post a bug report to daz3d in case they hadn't received one on this issue before now. I guess there is some good news, or at least a workaround. I got a very helpful reply from daz3d tech support:
So at least 3delight and daz3d are aware of the problem, and hopefully they will be able to fix it soon. Also, I have just set up my lights so that the sum total of the intensities are less than 100%, and am rendering overnight, so hopefully this will fix the artifacts. At least this is a workable solution. I tried turning off the deep shadow map altogether (rather than wait a week with raytracing on, lol) and it looked so artifical and just didn't look right. At least with this option, it may work fine, admittedly the images are quite dark now, but I just boosted the gamma in the render settings to something around 2 to 2.5, and I think it might work.
AH, a grand total of 100% on all lights used. Yes that would be a drawback for most of my work as I often exceed 100% on just a basic lighting set up.
Yes Jaderail, it is a drawback, I have to admit. My scene was quite dark after applying this workaround, but after I boosted the gamma setting in the render dialog, the result was satisfactory. I did a render last night with the intensities less than 100% on all lights, and the render came out without any glitches whatsoever. At least thanks to the help of daz3d tech support, there is another workable solution to this problem for now. Until now I was thinking about getting another graphics card and spending the small fortune on getting the octane renderer, but fortunately now I won't have to.
I was wondering if anyone knows if there is a fix for this as yet? I ended up taking the suggestion of setting my sum light sources to less than or equal to 100% but I still got pixelation in my renders most of the time.
So I have been unable to find a solution to this and was hoping that a fix might be imminent.
My only other option (and it is either expensive or will slow render times down considerably) was to upgrade my GPU and try the Octane Render route or (with slow renders) Luxus Renderer.
Any info or updates anyone?
Thanks.
I've found that one can turn off shadows for hair, and that affects things significantly. The render REALLY slows down on hair. YMMV and this is an ancient thread, but speed of render is always a thing.