what is the best most powerful way to make daz the most speedy and efficient for a PC?
Drekkan
Posts: 459
I don't have a bad PC I mean its not the latest tech by any means but it does the job nicely in most things I use on it and Daz works nicely on it generally as long as I don't go too hell for leather (I use Windows 10 64bit version)
I want to do more animating and allow myself to add more things in scenes on daz so where it does not slow down so quickly (even when having items on invisible) I want to do Iray animation (eventually) and just normal render scenes with 3ddelight/iray where multiple characters are in them but it slows down considerbly depending on the more I put in an image and of course is slower with Iray. What is most important to check on your system that helps ensure your machine can give it its best without memory being used up in some area's where it doesn't need to be for example which could help speed Daz up.
What is THE most important thing to have when it comes to making Daz run as fast as you can get it to? within the ability of your machine of course, what is the main thing most of the bigtime powerhouse Daz users/content creators get the most of for their machine or make sure to do to enable them to render and construct scenes as quick and efficiently as possible with no or as minimal lag/slowdown/crashing as possible? what are the best secret ingredients so to speak to just do taxing scenes and animations a LOT better/quicker in these ways? I ask because it gets so frustrating trying to animate 3delight images with a few people in and it takes FOREVER to set up and do because its so sluggy and the rendering so long.
Try to keep replies simple also I'm really no expert when it comes to the terms and meanings in all this computer tech jargin. Thankyouuuuu.
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as many 2080ti's as you can fit in a rack ...
maybe this
https://www.au.aquatuning.com/water-cooling/workstation/komplettsysteme/25268/alphacool-rendermaster-500-19-rack-incl.-9x-2080ti-rtx-dual-xeon-e5-2623v.3-128gb-ddr4-ecc-2tb-ssd-3200watt-fully-watercooled
https://www.cray.com/products/computing/cs-series
A cluster of Cray Supercomputers?
...I set up a dual 12 core/24 thread liquid cooled Xeon workstation with 256 GB of 4 channel DDR4 memory, multiple SSDs and storage HDDs with dual Quadtro RTX 8000s (48 GB VRAM ea) using NVLInk and a single 1,600w PSU (including a 1,600w UPS) for about the same price (converted to USD). .
May not be quite as fast, but pretty able to hold whatever size of scene I throw it in VRAM.
Unfortunately the Megabucks Lotto numbers didn't come through for me Saturday evening.
That's my next upgrade sorted..!
K so its about the best graphics card primarily or most Ram or?!? still in the dark here.
Drekkan, I hate to break it to you but it is not always the hardware. Sometimes it is the software. I don't think daz studio was designed for heavy commerical use, conseqently it does not really lend itself to high end hardware. I have a 10 core Xeon processor and 64gb of ram in my main window 7pro system with ssd, and I have a dual core Xeon workstation with 128gb of ram with Windows 10Pro on a SSD. I find my older system with the10 core Xeon runs daz studio just the same! If you are trying to speed up renders just buy the best Nvida video card you can afford and have atleast 32gb of ram in your system. If you want the OS and programs to load faster get a SSD. I should add that an SSD will not make Daz studio render faster!!!! I would recommend using alot of light and HDRI in your Iray renders and as soon as things look halfway decent stop your render and use Intel denoiser to remove fireflies. If you are into animation get Iclone, if you want to save money use Unreal or Unity. Game engine animation is the future of hobby animation unless you have deep pockets or are creating commerical products.
Good Luck
Noticed that you mentioned 3Delight. The RTX 2080 Ti or RTX Titans are about he best cards for Iray rendering, but of course are about useless for 3Delight.
For 3Delight, more cores good. More faster cores better. This is why the Threadripper 3970X looks so attractive.
Not sure how many cores Daz can use with 3Delight. Is there a limit?
As for ram, I'd suggest 32GB as a comfortable level, 64GB is a bit of overkill but can't hurt. Pay attention to your ram speed and ram timings. Faster ram with tighter timings (say DDR3600 CL14 or 16 for Ryzen) helps with performance a bit.
As for other 3Delight tips, I'll leave that to the 3Delight folks to make suggestions.
If a $1300+ CPU plus a $500+ motherboard is too rich for your blood, there's the 3950X and 3900X Ryzens, or the Intel 10980XE, which should all be below $1000. The 8 core Ryzens are good too, but for 3Delight rendering, the more cores the better, to a point anyways.
If money is no object, there's always 2 64 core EPYCs...
I'm curious now, what IS the highest core/thread count people have managed to render with using Daz Studio and 3Delight?
If you were considering switching to Iray, yeah the RTX 2080 Ti or RTX Titan. And a motherboard that can accomodate multiple GPUs. 2 GPUs cut render times by almost half, 3 GPUs by almost 2/3rds, etc. etc.
Over 4 cards is probably overkill though... really 3 cards is approaching overkill.
That's so true, my original system was an quad core i5 with 8GB RAM and Daz Studio appeared to run great, IRAY rendering was like treacle because I only had a GTX 900 something. Now I have an 8 core, 16 thread i7-7820X with 32GB RAM on a workstation board & 2x PCIe M.2 500GB SSDs with 2x watercooled GTX 1080Ti and Daz Studio runs like a dog but rendering takes minutes instead of hours...
Steve.
I right behind you Lol :)
I recommend storing your content on an SSD vs traditional hard drive.
The OP's original question seems to ask about how to increase efficiency within his existing computer. Of course, getting a new super computer would be nice but perhaps not practical.
The suggestions for more RAM memory are good, provided that the existing system isn't already maxed out with RAM. 8GB is OK for a starter but modern models and textures quickly exceed RAM, and the operating system is forced to start using secondary storage as swap space. That slows things down about 100 times.
Having 16GB of RAM is better.
And of course even more RAM makes for producing more complex images built within RAM without having to swap in & out from secondary storage.
But, if you can't increase RAM anymore then you can put in faster Hard Disk Drive (HDD) storage. If the current HDD spins at 5200 RPM then replacing it with a 7400 RPM drive would help a little. But the best improvement for speeding up your hard drive is to replace it with a Solid-State Drive (SSD) no moving parts! And it cuts your secondary storage delay by at least 10x.
(It's like giving your system a shot of adrenaline.
) (but don't be cheap when buying an SSD, get a good major brand, do your homework! expect about $200/TB)
There is also the possibility of increasing your CPU's clock speed or replacing the CPU chip itself with a faster model that still fits the existing socket on the motherboard, but that gets into hardware guru level of knowlege and its only a few percent increase in speed with lots of other problems, mostly related to excessive heat.
Finally, there is the possibility of reducing RAM usage by not letting the system run so many background applications during start up.
But I'm not sure how much you can gain from not letting some of those apps run. Although, not running your anti-virus could be a big winner. Since AV apps run all the time (monitoring network traffic and checking each time you read a file), then not running your AV would increase RAM availability and reduce system load too.
If reducing the number of background apps is the route you want to take, I'll let others suggest how and which ones to eliminate. But don't jump for joy yet. Eliminating apps (*might*) get back as much as 1GB but I think that's being optimistic. In a 4GB system it would be a Godsend. In an 8GB system it would help a little. In a 16GB system not so much. And remember all those background applications may occupy a lot of RAM while loaded, but when they're not being used, their RAM space gets swapped out to secondary storage (be it HDD or SSD) until they need to run again. So, if they don't run often then you're not gaining anything.
Most focus on the hardware, but software tricks can also make HUGE difference. In order of usefulness:
- Edit > Preferences > Interface > Display Optimization -- set to Best. This one is so important assuming you're using a decent gpu. It just makes Daz SO much more responsive when navigating in Texture Shaded mode.
- Avoid transferring morphs between generations unless absolutely necessary. It cannot be understated how NICE it is to have a figure load quickly. What good is a powerful machine when the software itself is unresponsive. Avoiding this 'pitfall' is helpful in keeping things fast. Granted there are workarounds (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/372136/how-to-load-a-character-faster-solved-with-a-workaround#latest), but they're clunky and it's simply easiest to avoid altogether if you can.
- Avoid 'too much' content. This goes hand-in-hand with previous suggestion. Even if you don't transfer morphs, if you buy too many for a figure, you can end up in a similar situation. Other content also impacts speed. If you buy too many poses (or any category), you run into limits on smart content being able to even 'show' you everything you've purchased. You'll see something like 1-814+ with no good way to access the remainder. This impacts speed/efficiency of workflow.
- Scene optimizer is useful if something just won't fit on your GPU. Great product.
Though of course it is true that the more powerful is the hardware the better performance you get, as noted by most people above, unfortunately it is also true that most daz assets are not optimized to run on an average card and you need extra addons to fit them for iray. So, given that you get the required hardware to run daz studio, the following addons are highly recommended to get the most from it.
https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer
https://www.daz3d.com/resource-saver-shaders-collection-for-iray
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-light-kit-2
That's an interesting point, in the last month or two I have been playing with GenX2 again.
Steve.
Lots of cash.
Spend it copiously, and wisely.
Agree . I use these in practically every scene. Well, I mainly use Ghost Lights Kit 1 rather than 2 (which I also have). VRAM is used up at an alarming rate, even more so with 4.12.
HDRI lighting is great for outdoor scenes but can slow indoor renders down significantly (for indoor scenes with light coming through windows, for example). The X-Ray camera that comes with some of the Paper Tiger lights (Rendo) can help with HDRI light through a walled room. I have that now but need to experiment more with it. Sometimes I also use IRay section planes to let light in from behind the camera.
using more then 4 CPU core's to push the view port around and any process which requires a progress bar to perform
use GPU CUDA/CU2CL for the view port and allow real time animation preview, and d-force simulation math
hardware mean's nothing inside of Daz outside of actual rendering in Iray
A lot of good suggestions in this thread, but Silver Dolphin's answer is pretty close to what I was going to say.
Probably the quickest addition to a system to get faster iray renders is to add an RTX 2080Ti card (or two) to your system.
However, I would have to say that for animation, Daz Studio is not the best solution available. I would recommend downloading the 30 day demos of Reallusion's Character Creator 3 Pipeline and iClone 7. They each cost $199, or are available in a bundle for $299. The workflow then is that you export a character from Daz Studio, load it into Characrer Creator 3, then send it to iClone and animate. You may find the interface for iClone difficult to use (I did and it took some getting used to), but the demo will let you see if it is for you. The software is obviously more expensive that Daz Studio, but a lot cheaper than a 2080Ti graphics card. There is also an iray plugin that works with both programs, though just like Daz Studio, you will need a fairly chunky graphics card to minimise render times.
Can't seem to find an answer using Google so I will ask here - can CC3 import Genesis 8 figures complete with geografts? Also, how good is the native CC3 render engine (I'm not talking about the IRay add-on). Lastly, when it comes to animation, are you restricted to pre-made animmations or can you pose and animate manually?
Oh, and what's the difference between the CC3 pipline and the 3D Xchange pipeline (apart from $$$)?
Are you using this method? Would you care to share more info. Learning a new software isn't an issue, I'll make that happen. I am curious about the details/specifics of getting a character from DS to the software you recommended. I find that information of the DS end tends to be alot of trial and error, and sometimes I have no clue why something doesn't work. Documentation...well we all know how the documentation is.
I think Best Buy is planning a Christmaqs sale on those. Don't blink, your super computer is out of date.
Keep your lighting as simple as possible and avoid emissive lights. Ghost Light/s for interior scenes. Use the script to reduce texture sizes for characters if they're not close up. Dark renders slow everything down so you might possibly render bright and darken in postwork.
Well, as the OP asks about optimising Daz, I would say, use their assets in other render engines than what Studio offers out-of-the-box.
... But as the OP likely means Studio and Iray in particular, like I said previously: cash, and lots of it, however, not spent wisely yet - wait until we see what the 3000 series actually is.