Reduced Render Quality After Upgrade to DAZ Studio 4.12

acrionx_68d402a6e1

I got myself an RTX 2060 graphics card running as an eGPU off my laptop.   I tried rendering a interior scene with multiple emissive materials in DAZ Studio 4.11.  Before I got the card, this would take quite a while to get a good image.  But now it took much less time to remove all the noise.  However, after upgrading to DAZ Studio 4.12 Pro, my render quality has decreased for the same amount of render time compared to version 4.11.   When I downgraded back to 4.11, my render quality went back up again for the same amount of render time.  Has anyone else here experienced this issue?  It seems like DS 4.12 isn't using my graphics card even though the card shows up as one of the devices in the rendering settings.

DireWorks

did you checked if the render switched on cpu for some reason?

scorpio

acrionx_68d402a6e1 said:

I got myself an RTX 2060 graphics card running as an eGPU off my laptop.   I tried rendering a interior scene with multiple emissive materials in DAZ Studio 4.11.  Before I got the card, this would take quite a while to get a good image.  But now it took much less time to remove all the noise.  However, after upgrading to DAZ Studio 4.12 Pro, my render quality has decreased for the same amount of render time compared to version 4.11.   When I downgraded back to 4.11, my render quality went back up again for the same amount of render time.  Has anyone else here experienced this issue?  It seems like DS 4.12 isn't using my graphics card even though the card shows up as one of the devices in the rendering settings.

Are your drivers up to date

acrionx_68d402a6e1

DireWorks said:

did you checked if the render switched on cpu for some reason?

When I did a render in 4.12, a log window printed out both RTX 2060 and CPU.

acrionx_68d402a6e1

Yes, my drivers are up to date.  Nothing changed except for the version of DAZ Studio.

L'Adair

acrionx_68d402a6e1 said:

I got myself an RTX 2060 graphics card running as an eGPU off my laptop.   I tried rendering a interior scene with multiple emissive materials in DAZ Studio 4.11.  Before I got the card, this would take quite a while to get a good image.  But now it took much less time to remove all the noise.  However, after upgrading to DAZ Studio 4.12 Pro, my render quality has decreased for the same amount of render time compared to version 4.11.   When I downgraded back to 4.11, my render quality went back up again for the same amount of render time.  Has anyone else here experienced this issue?  It seems like DS 4.12 isn't using my graphics card even though the card shows up as one of the devices in the rendering settings.

Do you have GPU-Z installed? If so, you can check to see if DS 4.12 is using the GPU to render.

It's my understanding the version of Iray in 4.12 is far more complex than the older version in 4.11, and that it takes longer per iteration (sample) but processes more information per iteration. You mention the render time, but not the samples completed. You also have not mentioned if you're using the Quality setting along with Convergence Ratio.

I recommend changing these settings and test rendering in both 4.11 and 4.12, then comparing the resulting images.

• Quality Enable: Off
• Max Time: 0
• Max Samples: 100

I'd start in 4.12 and if the image is still grainy/noisy, increase the number of samples and resume rendering. Once that image looks good to you, save the image, and then save the scene file. Now open the scene in 4.11, and render only for the same number of samples. Save the second image. Now compare the two.

If you need to know how long the renders went, you can get that information from the log files. If you stop and then resume a render, the log will show the total seconds of the resumed render, at least in 4.12. (I haven't checked 4.11 or earlier.)

Testing this way will give you an accurate representation of how the version renders compare, both for time per sample, and quality of render for the number of samples.

I hope this helps.