Pyromantix - Fire Swords and Elemental Swords (both products)

CAV_18687

[Pyromantix - Fire Swords and Elemental Swords] These products, as fantastic as they look, are doing unruly things to my render times, so much so that they are potentially unusable in my workflow and something I would have to render seperately and add in. I'd prefer to get the glow and sometimes reflections in the scene, rather than emulating this in post, so is there something I'm doing wrong here?  My render times jump up ridiculously with these incorporated...

CAV_18687

Incidentally Ive just read that VDB's don't currently support emissions, so what on earth is jacking up my render times more than any other single product I've seen?

On the plus side, if this is the case, it does mean you can render them out at a few angles and add in later, but isn't that just the same as getting a stock photo that shows some effect better (albeit differently)???

Plus, on that subject, I'm angling towards making sure my work showcases what Daz can do as much as possible before post...    so I'd like to use them if there's some set up feature I'm overlooking?

NorthOf45

These are not actually VDB (unless there is a recent update I haven't seen), but actual emissive mesh, at 1,000,000 triangles each for the fire and for the smoke.

CAV_18687

Right okay, so I'm only just getting into the real meat of what all this means, but evidently thats no small number of calculations.  Nonetheless, its just begging the question then, if its going to massively increase render times they're not particularly usable in a worflow that requires repeat renders, either for stills or certainly then not for animation are they? I suppose thats what I really want to know, like what context are they suitable for, just occasional one off renders?...

Also, can anybody give a comparative analysis of what these pyromantix (and other none VDB, volumetric advertised products) on the whole are like compared to say 'true' VDB, and is calling them volumetric not misleading given that its the whole advertisement campaign about VDB (which referred to them as volumetric also) for the last few months that made me try a lot of these products out in the first place?

So basically now I know i've spent a fair wad of cash on VDB's that aren't actually VDB's!!!????  I mean its fine if i like the product nonetheless, just making the point, can't only be me whose bought a load of VDB's that arent actually VDB's, they do all pop up together and there is no distinction between the two.  In fact I may have not bought any actual VDB's might I????  How do I know this please?

I'm really not one to be too bothered or dwell on the whole misleading purchase thing, just in this case I'm pretty sure I've bvought them ahead of other products that I still don't own, so I see that as a little unfair to the creators whose work I missed in their place I guess...

So if anybody is reading this, the main area for discussion for me, now encompasses;  What is the best way of putting Daz SFX products into your scenes, so by that I mean anything that emulates fire, magic, debris, smoke, fog etc, im super inerested to know what people like, and what is most cost and performance effective for the system, especially where repeat renders/frames are concerned (hence render times that can be incorporated into a workflow that doesn't have your system crippled by render times?)

I'm not making this spec related by the way, any system requires time management when it comes to rendering repeat frames/stills... So what products are great because they tick the most boxes for you I suppose? (in this whole field of SFX and VDB etc...)

Any education about the tech side of this will be lapped up most greatfully too...

Thank you...

NorthOf45

The real VDB's use an implementation of OpenVDB and corresponding shader, but the "volumetric" moniker used for solid mesh objects was used to distinguish them from the various billboard-style products that mimicked a solid volume with dozens or hundreds of offset, overlapping flat planes. There will always be the compromise between performance and quality.

As to the mesh, the numbers can be reduced quite a bit in DAZ Studio with Decimator ($ plugin), or an external tool of choice (don't ask me which is best). How much reduction depends, again, on quality vs. performance. Perhaps create several Levels of Detail (LODs) for different requirements (close-up vs. distant, or just plain lower-resolution all the time). Even at 5% or 10% of the original count, the effect is still quite good.

The material resolutions are also relatively high (4K), so they could be downsampled to use less memory, again, for different requirements. There are several ways to do that, permanently or temporarily.

CAV_18687

Thank You so much NorthOf45 thats loads to go with, plenty to look into and already gets me thinking, especially when things like depth of field blur the SFX so much and to great effect in many cases.

In any case, many of these are often worth the render times, I suppose I was originally surprised by how sparing it is provident to be in their use, also I guess I fancied animating them in a Daz scene itself as compared to After Effects, but 'it is what it is' and I'll put up with the render times where possible and look into the avenues you explained wherever and whenever applicable. Also, as was already the case for one-off images or short series, they are perfectly useable its more in the multi-frame work as I stated...

Thank You once more...

CAV_18687

By the way NorthOf45, I'm not sure if you now get a notification because I typed this, but I really appreciate you giving me that technical insight into the market conditions that influenced the sales dynamic that surfaced around these products, in life there is always some explanation, big or small, from occums razor through and beyond The Theory of Everything in complexity, for me its always about how these things happen and that was a perfect insight into what happend in the nuance I touched upon regarding the whole volumetrics label...

Cheers... 

NorthOf45

Just my two cents' worth. Glad it cleared things up for you.

CAV_18687

And just for anybody reading this post, the products themselves have loads of shape variations and the SFX, particularly the fire and lightning (at this moment in time as my mind changes on these things, I suppose trends change in the artistic vision we all have and tap into collectively), look absolutely amazing.  I noticed the post I originally made was corrected to state it as one product, but it is in fact two, a fire product, and an elemental product encompassing Earth, Ice, Lightning and Water.  Anyway some of the work is breathtaking, exceptionally detailed when they render in focus, and very nice blurred to any degree with depth of field, so I certainly wasn't having a jibe at the procucts, I just found they can be quite computationally expensive, especially when zoomed in to take a lot of the total area in a render.  But such is life in that department, we all know how some renders can take minutes, then a render that you think isn't too dissimilar can take hours, the mysteries of the unknown I suppose!!!!

Incidentally if you read this right now they are $2.00 and $3.00 in  the store respectively!!! Hugely worth that in anybody's money! 

I'll post up a render if I can at sometime too, just the current run are all for a project that I would prefer to keep completely unpublished until I'm ready.