Why is the 3Delight render better than the IRAY render?
rnollman
Posts: 310
in The Commons
I have attached am image with parts of two renders of the same scene, one with 3Delight and the other with Iray. I just opened up a new scene and brought Aiko 6 into the scene and rendered with the two different renders. I expected the IRAY to be better. What I did not expect was to see aliasing pixels in the IRAY render. The IRAY image was totally flat. The 3Delight image had smooth edges and looked photorealistic. What am I missing?
Aiko_002_comparison.png
372 x 739 - 144K
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Aiko 6 doesn't, I would think, have Iray materials so it's going to be the basic conversion. Lighting may also be a factor.
I'm still new with IRay, but I have found that the currently released version of DAZ Studio does a half decent job of converting old 3Delight materials to tolerable IRay renders, although a bit too bright. Yeah, yeah, I know I could tweak the rendering parameters down manually, but the learning curve is daunting. However, when I use actual IRay materials in a lighted scene the images do look more alive, and less blah, cartoonish or dull. However, in my scenes there is always someone who is looking directly at the camera and sometimes the rendering of the eye pupil seems a tiny bit off center compared to a 3Delight rendering of the same exact scene.
I've learned to live with it. Maybe it will get better or I'll learn that it is a phenomenon of lighting.
In a scene with no lights (just the straight-on "headlamp") any image looks dull, I do most of my brightness adjustments by adding appropriate lights (thus turning off the headlamp) to create realistic lighting with shadows, where I can control the brightness and contrast of the image by moving and dimming down the lights which, being a long time photographer, I'm pretty good at. I have not yet tackled the learning curve of using HDRI environments & lighting, or sub-surface scattering and all that. I'm an old dog. New tricks come slowly. It took me years before I stopped kvetching about this new-fangled technology* called IRay. Calling it the work of the devil and a plot to sell hardware. When I finally gave in to the devil and built me a machine with a half decent IRay capable graphics card (6GB Nvidea 1660) I timidly stuck my toe in the waters for nearly 6 months before I had the courage to dive in. I'm still learning to swim, but I have to admit I do like the resulting images, albeit sometimes harder to achieve than with my long 3Delight rendering experience.
Also, another thing to consider, is that an overbright isolated image often looks better if placed in an interesting environment. (*sigh*)So many variables, so little time.
*"new-fangled": Yeah, yeah, I know ray-tracing was present in the rendering world from the beginning, but it's new to DAZ Studio.
No I disagree. Your Iray pic has for sure a aliasing pixels problem, as you say, but I just don't understand why. Your 3dlight pic does infact not look photo real to me at all.
Aside from its aliasing problem the Iray one looks way, way better than the other one. Actually you might go through your graphic card settings to see if antialiasing is checked.
Of course "better" is in the eye of the beholder, and I am completley biased, for I really don't like 3delight anyway. Sorry ;-)
I agree with this completely. The 3DL picture looks cartoonish to me, the skin does not look photo realistic at all. To be fair, 3DL can do a much better job than the example you posted with the correct lights and shaders. Like others have said, there is issues with the Iray picture, but those are likely caused by shader, lighting and/or render settings, not any deficencies with the Iray renderer itself.
For a fair comparison take a character, like G8F, that has both iRay and 3DL materials not one that just has 3DL materials. The automatic conversion and the under shader are not all that good.
Render the same scene in iRay and 3DL with the same everything but with the correct materials. Then compare.
Aiko 6 is built on Genesis 2 Female. It would have been released long before Iray was added as a render option for Daz Studio, so it does not have optimized iray materials, only 3DL materials. Iray was introduced somewhere in the midst of the Genesis 3 era.
Lots of good suggestions. I would add, head over to Inane Glory's DeviantArt and download their Iray Essentials for Aiko 6 freebie. It was part of the DAZ Holiday Giveaway a few years back and IG very kindly uploaded them at DA afterward. I use the one for Gianni 6 all the time, they're good places to start with Genesis 2 in Iray and have my favorite price tag.
Iray was introduced at the end of Genesis 2. Callie 6 and Ninive 6 both were released with Iray materials.
EDIT: Okay, here's the link...
https://www.deviantart.com/inaneglory/art/IG-Iray-Essentials-Aiko-6-579869747
...Wowie and Parris have opened up more "doors with 3DL which makes it more capable and comes closer to realism than the default engine. There is a thread devoted to this and some of the images there are pretty impressive.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/130611/show-us-your-3delight-renders/p89
Three of the features of 3DL I always liked is #1: the lights go from 0% - 100% sort of like a theatrical light board does (none of the technical stuff like with ISO, "exposure speed", lumens, and f stop values), and #2: it is more well suited for creating different styles in the render process, and you didn't need an expensive high VRAM GPU card for rendering.
The first image below took about 12 minutes tops with no postwork. The second one used only a filter I created in Xposure to mimic a 1960s magazine photo style.