I Want to Understand Rendering Process Better

eroguysensei

I would like to better understand what things to consider when rendering. I usually have big scenes with lots of objects in them, all of which clearly eat up rendering time for Daz to calculate, but what I do not know is if Daz considers everything outside the camera view worth rendering. Sometimes I use entire city blocks filled with decorative objects but only need one part of the city, yet I cannot help but feel like since the city is sitting there outside the camera view, Daz still spends extra time just because of those objects existing in the scene, is this true or false?

I often think of removing every bit of the scene that is outside of camera view, but the process of doing so is very slow and tedious since there is no way to hide huge junks of the scene with few clicks, or at least, I don't know of such method. I always need to go one object at a time on the layer panel down a huge list of objects when using things like entire houses or rooms full of objects or, like mentioned before, city scenes. If this was not slow enough, some assets tend to not hide all of their parent parts when pressing the eye icon to hide them. Sometimes things like eyelashes and pieces of clothing remain to float in the air despite hiding the main object to which they are attached, thus forcing me to hide these parts separately.

Any tip you could provide on how you usually hide multiple objects quickly in a scene?

PerttiA

Everything that is visible (=not set hidden) in the scene will be taken into account with the textures and geometry eating valuable VRAM if doing Iray renders.

Grouping objects can make hiding them much faster as you can hide everything in a group with just one click

Gordig

Your suspicion is correct: things that are outside of the camera do still impact your rendering time. Camera View Optimizer hides objects out of camera view, while the Camera Cutaway component of Riversoft Arts' Camera Doctor bundle uses pre-arranged section planes to exclude them from rendering without hiding them. I can't speak to how they compare in terms of impact on render times, but they are two different approaches to the problem. You can create section planes yourself, you can manually hide objects, you can add only the objects you want to a beauty canvas...there are definitely options, and it's just a matter of how you choose to tackle it yourself.

charles

Video games use culling methods to hide off screen objects from the video render for speed. Since this is a graphics tool it doesn't use that technology as it's unsure of what the user might actually want. Example, an off screen object casting a shadow on screen. A reflection in a mirror to a place off screen. Light sources comming from object emissions off screen.

So what Gordig said is the best way to help optimize your scene....Or get a graphics card with enough VRAM that it can handle anything you throw at it.

 

eroguysensei

I thank you all for the great answers. I will definitely take a look at the products mentioned by Gordig. PerttiA mentioned that I can group objects which is great advice, thank you for that! I would still like to ask if there is a square/lasso selection tool to pick multiple objects in a scene as another method of hiding objects. 

PerttiA

You can select the items to be grouped in Scene tab, no need to poke around in the viewport.

eroguysensei

Thanks again for the great advice! I kinda still feel like I would much rather just use a selection tool on the viewport to rule in items that I want to select rather than pick them from the layer tab since my scenes can sometimes be pretty clustered with objects on the layer tab and it would be much quicker just to be able to select multiple objects in the viewport instead.

But this works really well the way you demonstrated, thanks!

PerttiA said:

You can select the items to be grouped in Scene tab, no need to poke around in the viewport.

 

juvesatriani

eroguysensei said:

Thanks again for the great advice! I kinda still feel like I would much rather just use a selection tool on the viewport to rule in items that I want to select rather than pick them from the layer tab since my scenes can sometimes be pretty clustered with objects on the layer tab and it would be much quicker just to be able to select multiple objects in the viewport instead.

But this works really well the way you demonstrated, thanks!

PerttiA said:

You can select the items to be grouped in Scene tab, no need to poke around in the viewport.

 

Those are common problem when we`ve use preload scenes  .Its better to organize your scene yourself using group and instances . Utilize backdrop images features . Its your art so there is no right or wrong method how you building the scene . But make life easier and efficient should be in your top list.  

Lately I`m working in several projects which need complex city or environment . I`m Using Blender to render city or environment then use it as backdrop images . With it  I can load as few as possible object in my scene . In another project I even use "tweaked" real street photos

nicstt

I would say the rendering process itself is fairly simple - just consider how much quality you want.

But as you say, you want to know what to consider before you hit that Render Button.

Once I've got all the props and figures in the scene I want:

1. It takes me ages to get the pose right - it tells a story, and in a fixed scene, the pose in relation to all the elements in the scene will convey that story. We hope.
2. Camera angle, position and depth of field - also takes me ages; focussing on a particular aspect and I fine the rule (google it - there is a lot) of thirds, tremendously helpful for this.
3. Lighting - and probably takes longer than anything - is something I find very complicated to put together. Perhaps that is why there are so many damn lighting sets - and also why I created my own that does what I want and am familiar enough with to know what to tweak. I do, however, often look at other light sets as it sucks to learn!
4. revisit 1 , 2 and 3 in turns and all the time if it helps the end product - including removing anything not needed. If a prop doesn't server a purpose - get rid of it.

I think that is what I do for most scenes.