DAZ HDR Light Presets - Edit: and Iray HDR Package Functionality?

Richard John S

New Question:
I didn't want to create a new threat, so I just figured I'd ask the question here too since it's somewhat related.

For those using the new Iray HDR products, does the package create a dome inside the scene where you can move the camera around or spin it to see different areas of the HDR like with the ube environmental dome?

Old Question: (SOLVED)
Hey guys, I was just wondering how much faster you think it will make renders when using the new DAZ HDR Presets for Iray?

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-iray-hdr-outdoor-environments

Will there be a difference as compared to using the default day/night lights?

BeeMKay

What would be the setup for this experiment, exactly? I'm not sure I understand what you are intending to do. Just replacing the default HDRI with another one? :-)

Richard John S

Well, TBH, I don't know what the heck I'm doing LOL! I just scimmed on the forum and briefly read that HDR lights will work faster. So, I saw HDR on the product and thought maybe it would help. LOL! I understand that it has the default day and night lights and then there is the environmental ones. I guess what I'm trying to find out is if the HDR lights in that pack just replace the environment ones in the render settings or does it work like 3Delight and it creates a dome in the scene and speeds up renders by a bit. I barely no nothing of Iray... I've just been experimenting, but seeking ways to get better render speeds without having to upgrade my video card. 3Delight is much faster at rendering, but I do like the results of the Iray!

EDIT: The setup is just generally portraits, not too many big scenes.

Cris Palomino

You can also find information on IRAY here. We've listed various threads and pages of interest in the interest of keeping information in a few places rather than having dozens of threads to have to search through.

BeeMKay

richardjohns9 said:

Well, TBH, I don't know what the heck I'm doing LOL! I just scimmed on the forum and briefly read that HDR lights will work faster. So, I saw HDR on the product and thought maybe it would help. LOL! I understand that it has the default day and night lights and then there is the environmental ones. I guess what I'm trying to find out is if the HDR lights in that pack just replace the environment ones in the render settings or does it work like 3Delight and it creates a dome in the scene and speeds up renders by a bit. I barely no nothing of Iray... I've just been experimenting, but seeking ways to get better render speeds without having to upgrade my video card. 3Delight is much faster at rendering, but I do like the results of the Iray!

EDIT: The setup is just generally portraits, not too many big scenes.

Ah, I see.
Well, beasically, more light means faster render speeds. Night settings will render longer than daytime sttings.
I haven't bought any of the HDRI sets yet, but for them to work, they would have to replace the default one in the Environment tab.
You will see the HDRI in the render if you put "Draw Dome" to "On", otherwise it will just use the lights, and you will not need an extra dome structure when you use "Dome&Scene;" or "Dome only".
If the HDRI set changes other settings, I don't know.

About the speed, in the "Advanced" render tab, have you checked "OptiX" optimization? That usually helps speeding up render times even for CPU only renders.

Richard John S

Thanks Cris and lee_lhs,

I'll take look at those threads and educate myself more on Iray. Thanks for clarifying the dome part. I have turned on the OptiX setting. A 631 by 699 photo took about 15 minutes to fully render using the day and night lights with the OptiX turned on. I turned off the GPU acceleration because I only have a 8800GT 512MB and it can't load a single scene. My computer is a i5 3300 with 8GB of ram. I guess I'm gonna have to upgrade my video card. I was looking at the Nvidia GTX750ti 2GB, it seems affordable enough. Do you think that will make a difference in the actual render speed?

UPDATE:
Okay, I did another test. Through the renders that I have done, I have only been using the day and night lights. I just did a render with an HDR file from Skies of Economy. Here are the results for a 631 by 699 image.

Using HDR Image: 65% at 3 minutes.
Using Day and Night lights: 16% at 3 minutes.

Using HDR for the lighting massively increases the render time.

BeeMKay

The DAZ folks recommend a minimum of 4GB RAM (better 8GB) for the graphic card... I have a 2GB card myself, and the best I can do with it is rendering a single G2 character with clothes on. Adding a larger scene or a second character will send me back to CPU mode...

BTW, I found this blog immensely helpful: http://blog.irayrender.com/
This is written by the Iray developers and holds tons of explanations and examples, like this one:
http://blog.irayrender.com/post/14310848190/physically-plausible-scene-setup

EDIT:

UPDATE:
Okay, I did another test. Through the renders that I have done, I have only been using the day and night lights. I just did a render with an HDR file from Skies of Economy. Here are the results for a 631 by 699 image.

Using HDR Image: 65% at 3 minutes.
Using Day and Night lights: 16% at 3 minutes.

Using HDR for the lighting massively increases the render time.

If your image is 65% completed using the HDR lights, and just 16% using regular lights in the 3 minutes, then how can the HDR increase the render time? *baffled*

Alex@DBG

HI. aBOUT THE GTX 750 TI

My computer is a i5 3300 with 8GB of ram. I guess I’m gonna have to upgrade my video card. I was looking at the Nvidia GTX750ti 2GB, it seems affordable enough

I have one of them. I could render a small scene : 1 character, plus some props ( a wall, a couch , make it look like part of a house ) in about 15 minutes, using both the gtx and a fx8350 ( octacore ) PCU.... Just today I've decided to send it back ( still had the option, and I bought a GTX 780 ) 4gb , 1664 cuda cores ---- the 750 has 660 cuda cores . From what I read around, Iray is based on those Cuda cores, the more the better .... The 780 , I got from amazon for £260, while the 750 is £110. From what I read, the performance of 780 is almost triple compared to 750, but you will probably need a power suply unit upgrade too ... If you only have a 500w one it won't run. Imho I think the 780 is worth the additional money if you can aford it. Iray is deffinetly worth it !!!
Hope this helps.

Richard John S

@strezoiualexandru:
Thanks a lot for the details. Unfortunately, my wallet isn't too happy these days, lol. I don't think I'll be able to afford the 780. :( I was hoping the GTX750ti would make a big difference as compared to my 8800GT 512MB. However, I got an EVGA PSU at 600watts. Iray is definitely worth it!