Reality 4 and DAZ3D: Slow Speed and Poor Images
Richard John S
Posts: 391
I just purchased Reality 4 yesterday because I heard a lot of good things about it and seen some really great art in the galleries. However, I am having a very hard time making anything out of it. It also seems to be very slow. I can render a decent quality image at high resolutions with 3Delight in less then 3 minutes.
Post edited by Richard John S on
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Welcome to the forum, savetara!
LuxRender will, under normal circumstances, be much slower than 3Delight. It is capable of very high-quality results, but like anything else, takes some practice. Lighting in particular I have found challenging (I have used the Luxus plugin rather than Reality; both of these use LuxRender), as you'll probably need a very different setup from what you're used to with 3Delight. If you can provide more information about where you're having trouble, or some samples of your renders, it'll be easier for others to provide assistance.
Thanks Scott,
I am using the exact same setup as I would render with 3Delight. I open up the Reality 4 editor assign the camera to the one I'm viewing through in DAZ and I enable the same lighting in the lightings tab of the Reality editor.
Here is a render that took 30 minutes (with very small resolution) with the Reality 4 plugin. The other image is the exact same setup but rendered with 3Delight.
1st up some general info...
A typical render done using the Reality 4 plugin can take 4 or more hours before it can start to look as if its done, This of cause depends on your machines specs and what is in the scene.
for example... with just Vicky 6, 1 item of clothing, hair and a single meshlight on a quad core i5 with 4MB memory and no GPU Acceleration would take as least 2 hrs be for it would even start to look good, now if you where to add some reflective surfaces light a mirror and some glass into the equation then the rendering time could easily triple.
On a general note you should always allow an image to render until the S/p gets to be at least 1000.
and now for a few questions,
Question 1... What type of lighting did you use?
Question 2... What was the S/p (See screen shot) when you stopped the rendering process?
Question 3... What Character did you use (V4, V5, V6 etc.).
Thanks for the feedback. I used 1 distant light and the Advanced Ambient Light. I think the SP was around 350-390ish, and I am using Genesis Female 2. All materials were set to Matte except the skin which was set to skin.
Why not use a mesh light? There are meshlights free with Reality, and they work really well in Luxrender.
3Delight and Luxrender are two completely different types of render engine, particularly when using lighting. Much better to use the lights supplied than using a DAZ Studio light (although it can be done)
3Delight is a 'biased' render engine, while Luxrender is 'unbiased'. You could Google these two terms for a better understanding.
Ok, 1st things 1st, the Advanced Ambient Light is a 3Delight only light, also try to stay clear of using distance & point lights.
as JimmyC_2009 said you need to use MeshLights, (i've included a screen shot as to where these can be found within Daz Studio)
I've also included some other screen shots - 1 of a simple scene with just the Base Genesis 2 Female & 1 MeshLight, 1 of my Reality 4 Material Settings for Genesis 2 and 1 of the Final Render so that you can see the result (stopped rendering at 500 S/p (there is still some render noise around the neck that would disappear over time))
Thanks for the tips. I did do some research on the two different engine types to get a better understanding. Here is my latest attempt in using this. I think I am gaining progress. I got rid of all the DAZ lights and I placed the mesh lights as suggested and I finally got a figure with a face! :D I can see why people use this, it does seem to bring out the realism in the photo. This took about 10 minutes to render.
A lot better than your first attempt. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you produce.
As regards the speed. THere is this post in another thread
That's looking much, much better...very nice work.
a day or two for the release was suggested by him on a post over at RDNA yesterday, I think a one or two other of the bigger issues would be addressed along with it.
Thank all of you for these very helpful lighting tips. Just started learning Daz Studio 4.7 a week ago and was learning lighting when I came across this post. Hope to get Reality 4 soon.
Hello.
The new build of Reality 4, version 4.0.4.18 is available. This update addresses these issues:
- Slow response of Studio or Poser when adding a figure/prop or when applying a material preset. This issue affected a small percentage of users and it was caused by specific configuration of hard-disks.
- When re-loading a scene Reality would not receive notifications from Studio. This issue did not affect Poser users. When this happened several operations, like renaming or deleting an object would not be reflected in Reality. Also, Alt-clicking materials in Reality would not select them in Studio.
- When adding a Studio light, a camera with the same name would be created.
- Entering the serial number would only work by copy/pasting. Now you can type all 37 characters, if you feel so inclined. We still suggest to use copy and paste.
Also, this update disables the creation of light emission materials from the ambient settings of the original shader.
How can you get the new update? At this moment the update is only available at our website, preta3d.com. You need to click on the Support menu and select the option to download Reality.
I'm sending the update to all our distributors so it will be available from the download page of your account. When that will happen I can't tell you because it depends on each companies workload. If you have registered your license then you have the ability to download it from us.
Cheers.
--
Paolo
Thanks Scott and PlatnumK! I am definitely getting the hang of Luxrender and Reality. I actually like the outcome of about 10-15 mins worth of rendering. The noise actually helps make the art feel realistic, kind of like taking a photo with a cheap digital camera. :) I am definitely a happy customer. It was definitely the DAZ lighting that messed up my original image. The below image was about 13 mins worth if rendering.
Ya welcome.
FYI. there is an update to Reality 4 that has just been release V4.0.4.18, Not sure if you can download it from the Daz3D yet but it is available on prated.com
Thanks PlatnumK, I just got the update earlier today. Now, I am not sure if this happened before or after the update, but all my sliders for morphing and applying material are so slow. Before I got Reality I didn't have this problem. I took the plugin out of the plugins folder and all my sliders work again. I guess that is what the above posts were referring to and not Luxrender speed. With the Reality plugin in the plugins folder it takes like 15 seconds or so for the slider to change. :/
just tried on mine and all the sliders work as they should, have you tried completely removing the Reality Plugin and Reinstalling it.
If after reinstalling you still have a problem then it might be worth asking on the official Reality for Daz Studio forum over as runtimedna.com and see if anybody there can help -
http://forum.runtimedna.com/forumdisplay.php?322-The-Official-Reality-for-Daz-Studio-Forum
or you can submit a bug report at http://preta3d.com/mantisbts
Sorry but thats the best I can come up with at the moment.
Thanks for the information. I did try taking out the plugin and reinstalling it again, but I still have the same issue. I guess I will submit a bug report and just move the plugin out of the directory while I create figures for the time being.
RichardJ, if you're having problems reinstalling, check your document folders and delete Pret-a-3D, Reality_DS, and in the Programs folder, (if your using Win 64) the Reality_DS64.dll
Location example for Win 7 64: C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\plugins\Reality
Installing in the standard/default locations is advisable.
Also in the About tab in Studio, check your plugin's and make sure R4 is checked and the most recent version.
As has been mentioned, Luxrender is all about physically accurate materials and lights. 3delight is not ;-)
When I'm just running test character or vehicle/object renders in Lux, a fill mesh light from the reality folder (the square one for example) and simply clicking the IBL light in the light tab (with the Linear and correct camera settings) will net you a very fast and still decent render. 5-10 minutes will get you there. Read up on that RUG (the user's guide) and you'll be all the better for it!
Thanks SuperBoomTurbo,
The installation isn't the problem. Basically, when Reality 4 is installed all my sliders and button in the surface tab are slow. If I change any setting it will take like 15-20 seconds to change. Once I take Reality 4 out then it works as normal.
I am enjoying the luxrender engine, I did some more testing and there is a difference! :) I did my first image up to 1000 SP which took 90 minutes for a decent resolution, but it's worth the wait.
Yes I have the same issue, only on the surface tab, the normal sliders in the morph sections work fine. You may try to disable the plug in (under help I believe) and reload daz3d, and only re enable reality when you're ready for the render.
Thanks I'll try that, I didn't know you could disable the plugins inside of DAZ. I have been just moving the Reality plugin folder out of the plugins folder when I need to edit surfaces.
Yes I have the same issue, only on the surface tab, the normal sliders in the morph sections work fine. You may try to disable the plug in (under help I believe) and reload daz3d, and only re enable reality when you're ready for the render.
Maybe a stupid question but, Where I can get more mesh lights for luxus?
That's a good question, I haven't figured that out myself, but there's plenty of IBL lighting packs which work really great, I actually like the IBL lighting better, I just picked up some yesterday and today.
I am using this one, and I am loving the results:
http://www.daz3d.com/skies-of-terra-volume-one
Below are some samples one was done in 3Delight (OGRE), and one in Reality (My portrait attempt, LOL). Both scenes use the same lighting set (Sunset 1).
To create basic Mesh Lights for use within Reality do the following
1. Create a new Plane
2. Rename the Plane in the Scene Tab to RealityLight.XXX (replace the XXX with whatever you what your light to be called)
3. Position the Plane so that the Surface with the Green Arrow is pointing to where you want the light
Now if you open Reality, your newly created light will appear in the light tab.
this can be done with all Primitives.
You can also convert materials to lights within Reality's Material Tab by right clicking on the material and selecting Convert To Light.
FYI. Callad is in the process of updating her Reality Light System to work the Reality 4.
Thanks again PlatimumK. That is some really useful information, I didn't explore all of the options yet in reality. I am still fiddling around with it. For some reason GPU acceleration only works with Mono single based scenes, I think that's why my initial image got all messed up so badly, that and the lighting issues (using DAZ lights). I am really liking the IBL lights, but I still gotta figure out how to use those a little more accurately. I notice that the 3Delight produces a much better image with the Dimension Theory HDRI Urban Domes than reality does.
I try to stay clear of sky domes, but instead I use sIBL files, there is a nice collection of free sILB's at HDRLabs http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
There is a handy video on the Pret-a-3D youtube channel on how to use then as well http://youtu.be/Opz4YIEtUiU
As for GPU Acceleration I use the following settings -
Under the Render Tab of Reality select Scene Configuration and set Type to Mono-Directional & FFs Removal to 1
Under Acceleration set it to Hybrid GPU, Num GUPs to 1 (unless you have more), make sure box 1 is checked and set OpenCL Group Size to 64
Note: using GPU Acceleration is very heavy on you machines Memory
Lights is just one part of the ecuation, don´t forget the material settings!
And Where is material settings of Luxus? I can´t find it. I m beninger at all about.
Are you asking about the Luxus plugin or the Reality plugin?