Save/Render Options for rough draft

gepetersiii

I'll preface this post by admitting that I am new to Daz. SO, I may not even know how to ask what I need to ask. That being said...

For example, after setting up the characters and scene I would like to be able to save a low-res image that I can paste into a storyboard. I would prefer not to set up a full image with all the textures and fully render a complete scene. This is just a rough draft or proof of concept type of work.

Is there a smart way to do this? Thank you in advance!

jjmainor

If you're creating disposable images and they don't have to look like the final product, you could render them with in open GL instead of 3DL or IRAY.  Even faster, you could hit print screen on your keyboard and just trim it to fit what you need.

gepetersiii

Thank you! I did consider Print Screen and it is probably the easiest. With the advantage of speed and portability, the disadvantage is nothing is saved for future use. At least with the renders, I can use the saved scene to speed up setting up the actual render in the future.

I guess your answer also informs me that I have to render an image to have an exportable product from Daz Studio. I will give the open GL a shot. That sounds like a viable option, as well.

ecks201

Try Flie > Save Last Draw
You get viewport overlay on it, but it might work as a rough draft

cridgit

Redacted

gepetersiii

Thank you for those settings and the recommendation! That does speed things up.

I don't want to start a new thread but can if I need to...Just thinking forward here...

Can I throw in a Genesis Dummy (i.e. G8.1F) in a scene during the building of a scene, then replace that dummy with an actual character once decisions have been made. The idea is that I have the finished shot on the storyboard. Now I need to create the actual rendered version. Can I create a template scene and then substitute the dummy character for the actual character? As I type that out, I start to see many of the problems I would face. Like the poses and expressions needing to be completely reworked for the character, etc.

cridgit

Redacted

WendyLuvsCatz

Filament

Sci Fi Funk

Filament is a great option for testing your characters motion. It's the 2nd fastest set up I use. I've been testing for speed the last few days here are my findings.

All are with either a G8 or a G2 female in a dress with hair, all with a light HDRI background. I've been using in a field type HDRIs - so plenty of sunlight. I test render at 12 fps, and my full renders are 24 fps. 12 is fine for our purposes.I tested with a dancing girl. The motion wasn't as fluid but she dances and looks ok.I used an RTX 2070 super card - so a medium card up against the best. Given that film makers switch camera shots regularly I went with 2 seconds of footage, which is the most common shot time I use anyway.

1. Engine Viewport (texture shaded selected) - 2 secs per frame. So each 2 secs of footage means you wait only 48 seconds for your output.

2. Engine Viewport (filament selected) - 3 secs per frame. So each 2 secs of footage means you wait only 1 mins 12 seconds for your output.

3. Iray Engine - 6 seconds per frame (100 samples per image / denoiser ON). So each 2 secs of footage means you wait just 2 mins 24 seconds for your output.  <-- In a previous 3d life that was often how long it took to render ONE frame - lol - an that was with Octane which is about 30% faster than Iray.

 

On that last note - I can sometimes go down to just 25 samples per image. It depends on the HDRI / foreground lighting combination. I'm a cyberpunk fan and I found some of the cyberpunk night scenes need 100 samples per frame to truely denoise the image. However heres the thing to note with ultra quick rendering ...

.... THE LOAD TIME BETWEEN FRAMES IS THE KILLER. So small scenes are beautiful. The actual render time is negligable - IRAY matches the 3 secs for filament, the load time is the lions share at this speed. It's not a consideration for longer renders, taking 4 secs to load on a 2 min render is nothing for example. This is one way in which Octane (at least for Carrara) scores over Daz's Iray in that the load time between frames is faster. I've not tested that recently, but I've set up huge scenes in Carara and the wait between frames is still near instant. I'm not sure if that's the case with Octane in DAZ. Something tells me it's the way DAZ handles the changeover not the render engine. I haven't used Octane in Daz for years so someone might want to clarify that.

 

Hope that helps. This testing has certainly clarified my mind as how to proceeed with animation. I can't be cavalier and stick lots of things in a scene anymore. I'm going to experiement with PNG image series (no background, but the same lighting rig as the background image), which get layered over a seperately rendered background (in a compositing program such as Sony Vegas).

Lastly on an 8GB card, I can get 2 characters to render in about 14-15 secs with the denoiser on, and no shader reduction (usually), but Daz holds on to resources, so sometimes coming out and back in the scene is required (to keep the denoiser happy).