Complaint - 3Delight maxing out processors: when will it be fixed?
Eric van Straaten
Posts: 0
So this is not a message about a bug (so you don't have to point me in that direction) but a flat out complaint.
Apparently not all of you know how many cores 3Delight uses when rendering inside DAZ Studio. Some say all available, some say four. Actually, it is the same as with the free standalone version of 3Delight: two cores (addittional you have to buy and they cost a lot of money). So if you use the standalone version, you see only two cores maxed out, and the rest are left for other purposes, which is nice.
However, my scenes can't be exported to rib for some reason or another (the colors get bleached out, if someone knows a fix to this, I would be more than thankful). So I must use 3Delight while staying inside Daz Studio. And this is when the disaster begins: my whole system is 'freezed' during the render (doing one now that is 20 hours blocking my system) and can do nothing but render. I can see (by crashing like behaviour) that also the rendering itself experiences a lot of problems from the lack of processor power.
And why? Because 3Delight inside Daz Studio also only uses two cores, but prevents you from 'using' other cores for the system, by maxing all other available out to 100%, without using them!
When is this strange and very troubling way of 'protecting' the license of 3Delight going to be changed?
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Comments
What makes you think this is happening? 3delight uses all cores on my system.
Yes, you think 3Delight uses all your cores, when you look at what your processors are doing, they all seem very busy, to much almost. But they are not working, they are maxed out on purpose! Why would the free standalone version (which really only uses two cores) otherwise be faster than the one inside Daz Studio?
BTW: assigning cores to not use specific processes (so to free them from being maxed out), doesn't work: 3Delight ignores these settings.
I am pretty sure that using the 'affinity' setting from Task Manager works in allowing Daz Studio, and thus 3Delight within DS, to use more, or less, cores. And so far as I can tell it DOES have an impact on overall render speed. If I tell DS to use only half my cores the computer tends to run at base of around 50% CPU utilisation and it becomes responsive. If I let it run using all cores it can get very laggy on some things.
Yes, I remember now that assigning affinity was producing a result, but indeed with a lower render speed. I am pretty sure 3Delight inside Daz only uses two cores (if I am really wrong, I will apologize and close this thread;). If you (as in my case) free 6 of the 8 cores, there should be no difference in renderspeed, or it should be the case that 3Delight is using indeed all the cores inside Daz Studio. When I compare the rendertimes between the standalone and the one inside Daz Studio, the standalone version is quicker. If the one inside Daz were indeed using all the cores, it should be way quicker, but it isn't.
It would make no sense that the license in Daz Studio should be for an unlimited number of cores. When you look at the prices for additional cores, this can't be true (starts at $650), even for an 'old' version of he software.
1°/ Latest 3delight Standalone v11 uses max 4 Cores. If you use 3delight Standalone below and up to v10 max was at 2 cores. v10 was slower than DS on my Quadcore
2°/ Simple solution to be able to do something else while rendering : open task manager and search for DAZ studio process. Right click->Define Priority->Below Normal
Just be careful not to eat too much memory when using other applications or you may crash your render if there is not enough memory left
3°/ I know I spotted some case where the RIB export render with 3delight standalone didn't yield the same results as inside DS but that was some specific case of shader or settings and I don't remember what it was but it works in most case.
I got lost with CPUs, cores etc., almost as soon as Intel started doing 'multi-core' chips. As far as I am concerned I have one CPU chip. It, however, boasts of having twelve threads which is, I believe six cores each with hyper-threading? It will depend on what 3Delight deems to be a core or CPU and what it bases it's licensing upon. From memory, DS, uses a licensed version of 3Dleight that is not not core-limited. The standalone version of 3Delight (unless you license it) is core-limited. It used to be two, but I seem to recall seeing that has been increased to four in latest release.
My wrong: the latest version of 3Delight standalone is quad core: http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php?page=3DSP_pricing
As for the 'bleached out' colors when exporting to rib: I use only AOA lights (ambient, distant and spots) and the new Easy Volumetric camera, all of which are said to be compatible with 3Delight standalone.
When using RIB, in many cases the paths will be off. You will need to edit the RIB file and verify that ALL of the paths are correct for the location of the render. In some cases the path will be written absolute. In many cases, the shaders will become unusable due to the RIB pointing at the "brickyard" which may not be correctly specified for the standalone environment.
Kendall
3Delight in the DAZ Studio program is a Limited Version of which ever the 3Delight version installed in the DAZ Studio you know have installed. The only Limits are built in the DAZ Studio software that I know of. That leaves third party developers open to create plugins and Shader type tools that call the functions DAZ Studio does not. It is in no way limited in the Number of Cores it will use in any version that is installed with DAZ Studio, just the features DS itself can call. The default of 3Delight it to call all Cores specificity for speed.
3Delight and other Renderman compliant engines are designed to run on Render Farms, not the home PC. The Limit of NOT being able to Farm is one of the Limits in the Version of 3Delight in DAZ Studio that allows DAZ Studio to use all Cores in a PC instead of the 2 cores in the Free version.