Daz Studio Nvidia Iray Interactive & Photoreal Animation Tests
Joepingleton
Posts: 746
This is an attempt at animating with DAZ Studio and NVIDIA Iray GPU Rendering. I wanted to try a full frame image using only sunlight in "interactive" mode. This uses Stonemason's "The Streets of Asia".
It took 4.5 hours to render 900 frames (1920x1080@ 30fps) with a NVIDIA GeForce 970 card.
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This was my previous attempt at animating with DAZ Studio and NVIDIA Iray GPU Rendering. The first section uses "Genesis Alive" aniblocks on a Genesis 2 Male figure to animate his facial expresions. The second section uses a custom M4 Aniblock on the same Genesis 2 Male figure to animate his whole body. The animations need a lot of work to correct these problems, since they were not designed for a Genesis 2 Male figure. ;)
It took 60 min to render 600 frames (1920x1080@ 30fps) with a NVIDIA GeForce 970 card. I learned a lot on this test. The key seems to be to use the "interactive" render setting instead of "photorealistic" to speed up the render time. I discovered that if I changed the display in DAZ Studio to "Iray" before rendering, things went much quicker. Maybe it's loading it to the video cards memory?
This particular one demonstrates how much we need DAZ to implement proper Iray motion blur. Fast motion just looks choppy at standard framerates without it.
That may have more to do with the my bad animation and using "interactive" mode rendering for these test. ;)
Meca3d gave me this bit of info: "Interactive mode don't render all shaders optimal like no sss and no volume , there is only Direct light but for testing and draw is good. When you keep the iray viewport open before you click the render for animation it will only send updates to the card for each frame and not full scene each time what will result in much faster rendering of all frames"
No, it's not the shaders. Framerate in an animation is independent of the shaders used. But, without motion blur, each frame is crisp, and if something moves a significant distance from one frame to the next, it simply looks like it 'teleports' from one position to the next, rather than having what looks like smooth motion.
When the motion is slow, those distances are very short, and the object still looks like it is 'moving' rather than 'teleporting'. The other option is increasing the framerate significantly (which means more frames to render per second of final video) or having your video encoder 'average' and create in-between frames (which may not look much better, depending on the actual motions involved.)
Motion blur already supposedly exists in Iray, but DAZ hasn't implemented it in DAZ Studio yet. It's really critical for animation, though.
Sorry I wasn't more clear in what I meant by my reply. I understand that motion blur is only effected by the inbetween frames of the motion. The point was that the animation is very jumpy to begin with (since they were created many years ago for other figures) and "interactive" mode doesn't render motion blur even if DAZ Studio implemented it for "Photographic" mode. I added motion blur in after effects and it looked much smoother, but I wanted to show how it appears as a raw render. These were just tests to determine what speeds I could get rendering with Iray. They are FAR from final animations.
It would be nice if DAZ Studio added motion blur to Iray, but since it's a free program I am experimenting with what it can do now ;)
Today's attempt at animating with DAZ Studio and NVIDIA Iray GPU Rendering in "interactive" mode. I wasn't happy with my first attempt at an interior scene, so this another experiment to address some of the problems. This uses Faveral's "Opus Magnum" with some custom Iray shaders. The idea was to change the shader so that I could get the fastest render and still get some materials that looked OK. It was rendered with a max samples of 5.
It took 5 hours to render 1,800 frames (1920x1080@ 30fps) with a NVIDIA GeForce 970 card.
I have been experimenting with interactive mode to see how fast I can get a usable render. In the latest test I basically turned the roughness down to get rid of the "fireflys". I liked the water in the outside test because The noise made the water seem like it was shining. But the noise in the shadows in that one were distracting. So this time I tried to get the shadows to be solid. It may have washed things out to much. ;)
These are my other tests. Sometime seeing what not to do, helps other people avoid my mistakes.
I would love to see other peoples experiments, results and or workarounds :)
Test #1:
Test #3:
If you render to image series compile it in virtualdub, you can add lots of filters and increase framerate.
By converting to 30 fps it adds frames you also add a motion blur filter so those extra frames blend in.
Fireflies can be eliminated with a blur filter, render it a bit bigger and you will not notice any loss of detail.
Then also add a resize filter back to 1080 HD size too.
Thanks for the tips. I'll have to give them a try :)
A little off topic, but I thought I would get your opinions.
This is a very quick experiment with Element 3d v2 and After Effects. This time I wanted to see the difference between how Element 3D Renders a scene versus Iray in DAZ Studio (See the original IRAY DAZ Studio Test). This test uses Faveral's "Opus Magnum" exported from DAZ Studio and imported into After Effects via Element 3D. Then I applied some Element 3D shaders to the models (not all of them because I am lazy). This experiment rendered 6 minutes versus the 5 hours it took from DAZ Studio. I think this method is the way to go for many reasons, the render time is blazing fast, the result is better, and the flexibility of everything being done in After Effects. What do you think?
I requested motion blur a few months ago and the response from one of the guys at DAZ was that they were going to look into it. Nvidia did put it in the version 3DSMax has a year or two ago, and I sent them a link to its documentation. It's one of the two things Octane has that I wish Iray would have, the other being the ability to put textures in system RAM (and coming soon in Octane v3 the ability to put geometry into system RAM, too).
Meantime, I may get ReelSmart Motion Blur since it works in Vegas (which I have) besides AE and others.
Otoy has a press release saying Octane 3 will be available on May 15 (but doesn't say which year). As far as I can see, they missed that deadline too.
I do sometimes wonder whether a second GPU (GTX 1070?) or Octane would be the better buy - especially if textures and geometry can be sent to system RAM.
Short-term Octane.
Personally there is no guarantee there will be the same speed gains with rendering as elsewhere; IRAY may throttle (adjust with drivers) their consumer cards as they have previously. Otherwise, there would be no need to purchase their commercial variants.
So I'm waiting for more information.
This is a quick experiment to see how quickly DAZ Studio and IRAY 2016.3 renders animation in "Photoreal" mode. It took 45 min to render 8 seconds of animation (240 frames) @ 1920x1080 30 fps.
This is another quick experiment to see how quickly DAZ Studio and IRAY 2016.3 renders animation in "Photoreal" mode. This time with a better aniblock. It took 55 min to render 11 seconds of animation (340 frames) @ 1920x1080 30 fps.
This is my first experiment with Mimic Live and a Genesis 3 Figure in DAZ Studio. It uses a public domain audio file and Mimic Live's default settings.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray in "Photoreal" mode.. It averaged 20 sec per frame to render.
Joepingleton, nicely done. Pretty good results for only 50-iterations!
Thank you for the kind words FirePro9. I am trying inly 50 iterations for these tests to keep the render time reasonable until I get something that warrants a longer render ;)
This is another experiment with Mimic Live and a Genesis 3 Figure (Darius 7) in DAZ Studio. It uses a public domain audio file and Mimic Live's default settings.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray in "Photoreal" mode. It averaged 20 sec per frame to render.
A very quick experiment with animating the Iray Section Plane in DAZ Studio.
Another quick experiment with animating the Iray Section Plane in DAZ Studio. This time it bisects the depth, width and height of a Micheal 4 figure with a muscle, skeleton and organ layer inside.
A very quick animation "Time Stretch" experiment with the "Aging Morphs 3 for Genesis 3 Bundle" and the "Growing Up for Genesis 3 Bundle" to see how they handle morphing from a child to an adult to an elderly woman and back again. I used a Genesis 3 "Stretching" aniblock for the motion.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 20 sec per frame to render.
Another very quick animation experiment with the "Aging Morphs 3 for Genesis 3 Bundle" and the "Growing Up for Genesis 3 Bundle". this time I wanted to explore how the morphs effect the face with the default settings. I also added a rough age estimate in After Effects.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 20 sec per frame to render.
A very quick animation experiment with a Genesis 2 male character and RawArt's "Cobra King HD"and "Ogora the Orc HD" character morphs to see how they handle morphing from one character to another.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 20 sec per frame to render.
Another very quick animation experiment with the "Aging Morphs 3 for Genesis 3 Bundle" and the "Growing Up for Genesis 3 Bundle". This time I wanted to explore how the morphs effect the face of a male character with the default settings. I also wanted to explore growing a beard and changing the hair color as he aged.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 20 sec per frame to render.
Experimenting with isolating a tattoo on a moving Genesis 3 figure rendered via Iray from Daz Studio using the "Color Range" effect in After Effects.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 150 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 30 sec per frame to render.
Animation removed, see below for the updated animation
Another quick experiment with DAZ Studio, a Genesis 3 male figure and Brekel Kinect Pro Face. All motion was captured with Brekel Kinect Pro Face's default settings. This time I layered the motion capture data in aniblock with an aniblock created from the key frames from Mimic Live using the same audio file. I also pointed the eyes at a target to give them some simple movement. I also added an eye light.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 20 sec per frame to render.
This is an experiment using aniblocks to animate expressions with a Genesis 3 male figure. I created custom aniblocks for 35 expressions (Angry, Benignant, Charisma, Concentrated, Curious, Dejected, Distaste, Edgy, Excited, Fatigued, Flirting, Flirty, Friendly, Frown, Funny Balloon, Furious, Gaze, Grief, Hopeful, Irony, Joyous, Laugh, Magnetism, Mockery, Naughty, Nervous, Scared, Shocked, Side Smiling, Smile, Smiling, Stare, Surprised, Superiority, Uptight). Then I just placed the aniblocks in order to see how they transitioned from one to another. I also added a couple of blink aniblocks, an simple body movement aniblock and an eye light to add a little more life to the figure.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 30 sec per frame to render.
This is a quick experiment using aniblocks to animate expressions with a Genesis 3 female figure. I created custom aniblocks for 35 expressions (Amazed, Angry, Bereft, Bored, Confident, Confused, Contempt, Desire, Disgust, Drunk, Excitement, Fear, Fierce, Glare, Happy, Ignore, Ill, Incredulous, Irritated, Kiss, Pain, Pleased, Pouty, Rage, Sad, Sarcastic, Scream, Serious, Silly, Snarl, Suspicious, Tired, Triumph). Then I just placed the aniblocks in order to see how they transitioned from one to another. I also added a couple of blink aniblocks, a simple body movement aniblock and an eye light to add a little more life to the figure.
It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray "photoreal" mode. It averaged 30 sec per frame to render.
here is my animation test Joe
An island girl catches a crab ( iRAY Animation ) #Gallery Post
This is just a test. I created 8 scenes testing Iray Iteration settings for animation in daz studio. this was done using a EVGA 980ti SC .The first scene I started with 35 iterations took 2 hours for a 150 key-frames . Last scene was 3500 Iterations . took 2 1/2 hours for the same amount of keyframes . . instead of making a stupid girl walking across a blank screen I threw all the test scenes together an came up with this silly animation.
Created with DAZ STUDIO iRAY