Poser user trying out Daz Studio. Got pulled in by the converter, but figured I might as well try to render something.

I'm accustomed to fairly quick render times on a small resolution software render with basic settings (1 -5 minutes), so when my DS render still shows a completely black render screen after 10 minutes, and I'm just using the default render settings, I can't help but wonder if I'm doing something wrong.

Is DS just basically fairly slow? Should I adjust my expectations appropriately? Or is there something especially quirky about dreamlight lights (Pro Studio)?  Because with default lights, the renders take seconds, but look pretty nasty (as you'd expect).

I think it depends on what you're trying to render. If you're using any lighting using Uberlighting and transmapped hair, the render times will go up. However, there's a trick using the included ubersurface (I forget where it is since I'm still jetlagged after spending 3 weeks in europe and I use a related product Uberhair... someone can point where it is)... but you apply that to the hair and turn off the raytracing and shadows and that will reduce the rendering time. 

But you apply it by going to the surface tab and selecting the hair, then hold down the ctrl and double click the ubersurface icon. That will give you a dialog box and you change the bottom drop down to "ignore". This will copy the ubersurface settings to the hair without wiping out the current textures. Then back on the surface tab, find the new settings in the hair for raytracing and shadows and turn them off.

Then render.

Rendering with the preview light or with the OpenGL renderer looks nasty, the standard lights or even ones made in the shadermixer look good and even render reasonably quickly, it's when you use the 3rd party shader based lights (ie UE2 which comes with DS) that the render times drastically increase.

Ray-traced shadows and occlusion plus transparency maps tend to be slow. I've also noticed that 3Delight can get hung up on edges, sometimes, though I've never been able to work out exactly what the trigger is. But check, if it's stuck at 0%, that it isn't a problem with tdlmake optimising images - if you go back to the main window, instead of the render window, you can drag the status bar to one side and expand it to see where DS is at.

Someone has to come up with a render farm everyone here can use... at a low cost..

you upload you file and download your image...  Maybe the image will be done in 24hr... before you can download it but your system will be free for your use mean time...

question is would people use the service and how much is worth the while...

Just thinking out loud...

I was actually trying the scene with a bald figure because I thought the hair might be an issue.  Not very complex.  Bald M5 with some clothes in the alchemy chasm.  I guess I'll have to see how it goes with no props.

Richard, okay, I'll give that a shot.

Thanks

Quote - Someone has to come up with a render farm everyone here can use... at a low cost..

you upload you file and download your image...  Maybe the image will be done in 24hr... before you can download it but your system will be free for your use mean time...

question is would people use the service and how much is worth the while...

Just thinking out loud...

Not useful unless I can speed up test renders, which is the issue I'm having now.  If it takes me 10+ minutes to test a change in lighting on a low resolution draft render, I'll never get a scene looking the way I want it.

But, just in case I sound too whiney, I am having a blast playing the shaping sliders, and autofit works a whole lot better than I had been led to believe.

On the rendering dialog you can change to preview mode via a drop down. Then you can quickly see the lighting in the scene and once you're satisfied you can change it back.

Quote - On the rendering dialog you can change to preview mode via a drop down. Then you can quickly see the lighting in the scene and once you're satisfied you can change it back.

I use this as well in my workflow to Reality/Luxrender. Just the preview lights will give you a 30 second render to get the gist of your scene, then if you're going the Uber route, bump up the settings to 128 samples and ambient occulsion, etc. A UE2 with a modern processor and a huge scene took my rig around 45 minutes in the worst of cases, which is still quite good compared to Lux. Different beast there, and I've come to expect the long renders (talking 6 hours plus on average) but my oh my, the images are worth it!