What is this new I-Ray/Iradium all about?
Turk_WLF
Posts: 177
To be honest I rarely use my Daz Studio nothing more than a setup room for my characters, because I use them just as props for my Carrara 8.5 Pro scenes.
Therefore I’m behind of what’s going on in with Daz Studio, could someone be so kind to explain what I-Ray & this Iradium is about.
What I can gather my Nvidia Video Card (GeForce GTX 670) is somewhat underpowered.
Thanks,
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
It would be nice to have a better explanation of this significant change, something like:
"Daz Studio latest versions, 4.8, is equipped with Nvidia's Iray render engine. Unlike the 3Delight render engine, Iray simulates real-world lighting by using state-of-the-art algorithms to scatter and reflect light throughout your scene. The result are more photo-realistic renders and the ability to much as you would a real-world set. The Nvidia software utilizes the Cuda cores of Nvidia video cards (GPU). The more cores on your Nvidia card, the faster your renders. 4 GB of GPU memory is recommended."
I think that is fairly accurate but welcome revisions. Maybe we can crowd-source a quick-start guide.
Basically IRay is a new renderer for Daz Studio, so if you don't render in Daz Studio you might not be interested in it. So far we still have the 3Delight renderer and all the other Studio features so it won't make any difference for setting up scenes to render in Carrara.
IRay is one of these "un-biased" or "physics based" renderers that try to do realistic simulations of how light bounces round in scenes and doesn't need special ambient lights to simulate this.
I've got a GTX 590 which isn't state of the art but it does work. You can do IRay renders with just the CPU and I find enabling my GTX 590 does speed things up. I like the results you can get with it but my computer does struggle with IRay if the scene is too complicated. I can render some scenes fairly well but big scenes with large sets do tend to lock up IRay on my computer. I don't know much about NVidia cards but since yours has a higher number than mine I expect it would work better.
I know they announced 4.8 is officially ready for download….but i can't seem to download it. Aside from Iray are there other improvements over 4.7? I have the 4.8 Beta set up pretty well and wonder if I should go through the process again for this official version of 4.8.
What are the advantages of rendering in Carrara (a program I have little knowledge of.)
Here's an idea "I-ray for Carrara" wouldn't that be nice. But all us Carrara users know better than to expect such things...
4.8 has an updated version of 3Delight engine, which renders faster than the one in 4.7.
To me carrara is superior to daz studio in every way. Carrara has so many features that studio either needs a plugin for or just doesn't have at all. Physics, Particles, modeling, dynamic hair shaders, 1 fully functional keyframe editor, to name a few big ones. Animating in Carrara is so much easier than studio it's not even funny. Motion paths, really good IK that you can customize yourself, as opposed to whatever that is in studio that they call IK. The list goes on and on... I also prefer Carrara's render engine to 3delight it's faster and looks better in my opinion.
I would say that the software 'can take advantage of the Cuda cores' since you can also run Iray (slower) on CPU only. Perhaps state the CPU only option explicitly. Otherwise, you invite endless 'oh woe is me, I cannot use this Iray thing?' questions.
Really? I must have missed the note about 3Delight being faster. Thanks for the post.
To me carrara is superior to daz studio in every way. Carrara has so many features that studio either needs a plugin for or just doesn't have at all. Physics, Particles, modeling, dynamic hair shaders, 1 fully functional keyframe editor, to name a few big ones. Animating in Carrara is so much easier than studio it's not even funny. Motion paths, really good IK that you can customize yourself, as opposed to whatever that is in studio that they call IK. The list goes on and on... I also prefer Carrara's render engine to 3delight it's faster and looks better in my opinion.
They are different things. DS was never meant to be a modeler. As far as I can tell, it was DAZ's hedge for the future when Poser's life expectancy was anything but certain. It took on a life of it's own, and it is now very capable, for what it is meant to do.
Okay my point is that Carrara does everything that DS does and more, and better, so even if you forget about modeling, Carrara still does 1000 other things that Daz studio doesn't do at all or needs an extra plugin that you have to pay for. I've been using Carrara for about 5 months now, before that I spent a year and a half twiddling around with Daz studio. It was a good place to start, but it ain't the real deal. I was happy with Daz studio except for when it comes to animating. It was always like that dream we've all had where you're walking and running as fast as you can but you just don't get anywhere. I know a guy who works at ILM, he worked on ninja turtles, transformers, and the next jurassic park. When I told him I was using Daz, he said "Daz, oh yeah, they have really cool free people, right? But it's really hard to animate them in that software isn't it?" Speaking from his experience...
In the interest of keeping information where people can find it, we're pointing people to this thread which takes you to threads where you can get more information and ask questions.
Okay my point is that Carrara does everything that DS does and more, and better, so even if you forget about modeling, Carrara still does 1000 other things that Daz studio doesn't do at all or needs an extra plugin that you have to pay for. I've been using Carrara for about 5 months now, before that I spent a year and a half twiddling around with Daz studio. It was a good place to start, but it ain't the real deal. I was happy with Daz studio except for when it comes to animating. It was always like that dream we've all had where you're walking and running as fast as you can but you just don't get anywhere. I know a guy who works at ILM, he worked on ninja turtles, transformers, and the next jurassic park. When I told him I was using Daz, he said "Daz, oh yeah, they have really cool free people, right? But it's really hard to animate them in that software isn't it?" Speaking from his experience...
This is interesting information to know about, as I am interested in getting in to animation. But my question is; with the Animate, Keymate, Graphmate plugins, what added functionality do you get in Carrara that you can't get in Daz (in terms of animation)?
Davide
There is a thread started on with questions on Iray and animation here.
I prefer Daz to Carrara, but I don't do animation.
I _do_ wish Daz had procedural shaders and particle effects, though.
Octane render for Carrara is my choice and now has dynamic hair support too
there's a demo for all the Carraraphile posters in this thread do not shoot me when you rob the bank to buy it though
it was STILL cheaper buying Octane AND the plugins for DS and Carrara than upgrading to a new computer, my i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz with 16GB RAM GeForce GTX 760 is sufficient whereas iray is very slow for me the new 3Delight is mostly quicker.
I have the same graphic card (GeForce GTX 670) with 2GB VRAM and it is working just fine with iray
in my computer.
Both procedural shaders and particle effects are in Unity personal edition:
http://unity3d.com/get-unity
And its quite easy to import from Daz Studio to it as FBX.
I think I am beginning to see what you're saying. I finally got around to installing Daz today, and have been wrestling with simply trying to manually pose a character. Body parts seem to distort and contort too easily; it is difficult to be very precise in posing, if you don't want to rely on the presets as a crutch.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But I tried using the universal tool as well as limiting myself to translation and rotation. However, there doesn't seem to be a way to move just a single body part without the whole body getting involved, and in ways that you wouldn't expect. Perhaps I am missing something. I know iClone has this feature, but I can't seem to find it in Daz. I can't seem to find a mirroring function either, for when you want to move both hands symmetrically, for example.
Don't use the tool to move a body part in most situations.
Click the actual body part. Make sure you select that part that you want to pose (the initial click may only select the character, not the specific part on the character.)
Make sure you're highlighting the part... Collar, Shoulder, Forearm, Abdomen, etc.
Then you get the good dials: Bend, Side to Side, Twist.
By clicking on the specific body part, it isolates the movement to that part.