Question about external or standalone renderers
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,643
in The Commons
For general use (excluding things like archvis, CAD, NPR etc), are any of the major rendering engines all that different from any of the others? I know some are node-based, some are CPU or GPU-based, and some are biased, but as far as final rendering quality, am I wrong in thinking that they will all basically give you similar results?
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Yeh, but the problem is if you want to render outside DS, even with bridges, you'll have issues with shader conversion, particularly with the skin shaders which can be quite complex with some of the newer characters. IMHO the benefit of Blender (Cycles) or any of the others, doesn't pay off in the long run.... while I wait for all the agruements to the contrary LOL. If your talking about animation, well that's a very different ball game.
...yeah both Octane and Cycles have out of core rendering which, if you have an older or not very powerful rig/GPU can be a lifesaver (particularly given the ridiculous prices for high VRAM GPU cards right now). Agreed, reworking shaders is a pain, did that with Reality/Lux (though it was a bit more intuitive than the node bases shader systems), but if you don't have the horsepower to run an Iray process without it dumping to the CPU (and possibly even swap mode) The extra time can be worth it.
For node-based and GPU vs. CPU, those shouldn't have any effect on final rendering quality since those are architectural things.
However, biased vs. unbiased will.
An unbiased rendering engine is like shooting billiards and watching the balls bounce off the sides of the table until they reach a hole.
A biased renderer is like getting out a car jack and jacking up the table so they all go into the hole you want.
The billiard balls, in this analogy, are light rays. An unbiased renderer like Iray or Cycles shoots a bunch of rays out and lets them bounce around the scene guided purely by algorithms that mimic real-world light. It doesn't influence where they should go--hence "unbiased". That's why, in theory, unbiased renderers are more photorealistic, at the cost of increased render time.
Fred: No disagreements from me there, it's been a huge pain to convert materials to anything outside of Studio even with bridges. I can barely get textures to look the same between Substance Painter and DAZ Studio. It hasn't been worth it in my opinion so far either.
Kyoto: I have a good card so I prefer GPU rendering, but yes, it's very handy when the renderer doesn't require a powerful or even specific brand of GPU.
Margrave: Thank you, I should have clarified when I said 'similar results', since I know biased renderers fake some elements of photorealism. I just wasn't sure if some of the more advanced ones like Arnold, had advantages over others.
The main reason I asked is because I'm considering working with Zbrush in the future and was curious to know if higher detail sculpts would benefit from a different renderer than Iray. I figured it wouldn't, but I also never see amazing Zbrush creations rendered in Iray either. ;) It seems like having more control and options when it comes to materials and surfaces (and Studio is a bit lacking in that department compared to other software) would have much more of an impact on the final result.
Daz Studio actually isn't lacking in that department.
What is lacking is any sort of documentation on how the Shader Mixer works, so nobody can actually get the results they're looking for.
Haha, true. There's so little documentation on Shader Mixer that it's largely a forgotten feature.
...yeah to me the shader mixer looks like a fusion of the London Underground, Paris Metro, Moscow Metro, New York City, and Tokyo subways all combined on one map. Guessing where each line is supposed to go without some form of guide is almost futile, particularly for one with old eyes and dyslexia.
Wish they would have used a system more like Carrara's or Reality/Lux's.
Check out Octane. Its free for a single in app GPU render (for daz anyways).
Its great all around, fast, and no memory limits on your GPU (and seriously.. Iray is glutonous memory pig). Its shader builder is extremely intuitive and easy to learn. The down side (in Daz) is that you can spend hours converting textures for complex scenes.
...however, you need to be online while working which is what stops me. Only the enterprise version lets you work offline (but you still need a special USB dongle from them which needs to be renewed every 6 months at 55 USD a pop)
I also understand it's shader builder still uses a thread and node based system.
So, just for shiggles, I gave the Shader Mixer another crack, and I, uh... figured out how it works.
The Shader Mixer Deciphered (Blender to Daz Conversion) - Daz 3D Forums
Octane is good, but as it's agreed upon that the renderer doesn't make all that much of a difference in terms of final output quality, the effort required to recreate the shaders for Octane is likely not worth the time. It might be for those having video memory issues or such.
Margrave: Thanks for posting that, very interesting!
Thanks for starting the thread that inspired me to have a go at it. I feel accomplished now.