I looked at IRAY with DAZ4.8... not free. The renderer is, but you buy all the texture stuff separately... ever added up all the 'add ons' that DAZ have available? Comes to 100's of dollars. Not free.

Oh, BTW, I use an AMD video card. IRAY is no advantage to me over Luxrender. Which IS free.

I think you are referring to vendor products as add ons, as there are no iray add ons. Of course they aren't free. Iray provides you with everything to do your own shaders and lights. Only thing DAZ sells with iray right now are lights. You can plug in your own HDR lights or create emission surfaces (and go to lighting manufacturers' websites to download EIS profiles) if you do not wish to pay. You can also pay around with the settings to convert old sets to look better without paying for anything. What you are paying for is the convenience of not doing it yourself. Also luxrender is free, though they are asking for donations to help keep their site running. Unless you are using the free script to export it from poser, you are paying for Reality, which makes it a bit easier to convert materials because you are paying for the convenience to do so.

Hi there I wouldn't compare IRAY with Reality or Luxrender at first place,IRAY I've used on numerous occasion not just in DAZ,but with 3DS MAX when I've owned Nvidia card,but still I've been unable to reproduce same details or same skins like with Luxrender 

Reality with all in will never go in 100's USD,you will pay once and have all there and you don't need to pay extra for shaders if you are Poser user,not sure if in DAZ you need to use different shaders as I've never used there Reality,yes agree Reality is lot more slower than IRAY,but with new Luxrender we should have much faster rendering system 

I've rendered with IRAY too with DS,I like the idea of this,but still this SW or renderer will never will be working on AMD GPU which you can't say about the Luxrender,due this most of people will rather go route of Lux/Reality if they want to harness GPU,older Lux has have issue with GPU,but newer beta which I've tried is much faster than with GPU or CPU,time will tell us

As I said about the DAZ,they're like drug dealers,everything which will give as first,later will cost you,this I don't like on the DAZ

I don't have anything against anyone,but sometimes I just think they(DAZ3D) using their dominant position in wrong way(monopoly?)

Thanks,Jura

I think you're still not getting it. What add ons are available with iray? Links please? That's right. There are none. If you are linking vendor products, those are NOT add ons. So your cost to use iray is $0. If you do not wish to use vendor products and make shaders yourself, you can very well do that or find a freebie. Your argument is no different than a offering a figure for free, then you have either purchase content of find freebies, or make it yourself. I'm sorry but your argument is very flawed.

I have licenses for Octane and Reality as well, and used luxrender for my renders and promos for years. For reality, with the upgrades I am at the $100 mark, as I'm was an early adopter. Was an early adopter for Octane too and spent hundreds on those licenses too. AMD cards aren't an issue with me, as those cards historically have lower performance than their counterparts in Nvidia and and chipsets with Intel processors. Both Octane and Iray use gpu with CUDA because it has way higher performance than OpenCL.

Also your argument with Reality incorrect. When Reality was released, it was pretty much like what Iray was now. There were actually products that worked with Reality made by vendors at DAZ. So you could buy products specially that worked with Reality, which then converted it to a format Luxrender could read. I did a few promos for a few of those products. When Paolo's store was removed, all those products were removed as well.

Also I won't get into quality of renders made by these products, because it really comes down to the skill of the user. They all produce physically based renders, so if you know how each product works, you can come up with the same results.

And as far as being a monopoly or drug dealers, no one is forcing you to buy anything. You pay for convenience. If you want to make it yourself, you are able to do it... you just need to roll up your sleeves and learn how to make shaders, lights or clothing. If you don't want to learn, then you pay for the service. That's how businesses are run. Anyone can start a business too, but your product needs to be good, not just because it's not made a company, because that's not how the general public spends their money. Maybe that's where the perception comes from.

Hi there With Reality you are paid $100,yes if you are got every version then yes,this should be correct,but those are upgrades as you pointed out,nobody will stop you not using older version and about the Reality when has been released and about their addons,not sure,this I don't know and really I don't care as I don't use Reality in DS or DS,I've used DS only handful times for export to FBX,but this has giving me strange problems and issues and due this I do rather use OBJ

Yes sadly Octane cost the money,I wanted to get Octane too for Poser and 3DS MAX I've almost bought it,but after I've tried on my GPU this time,I simply would need to upgrade to GTX780Ti(this card still selling pretty much for £300) or something better and with bigger VRAM and biggest card has been this time Titan and this card cost £1000 and simply I can't justify this price on single GPU,but V3 I will be getting if OpenCL version will be available and then I will be getting for 3DS MAX and Poser 

Octane will support from V3 OpenCL too and then we will see where and how both will compare and about the OpenCL vs CUDA debate,depends on specific apps,I would say and really say something have lower performance than their counterparts,this is bit misleading I can say this mildly at least,you simply cannot compare 2 year old R9 290 to GTX980 which cost 2-3 times more and performance depends too on specific apps and games,if game is based on Nvidia Gameworks then who have AMD is screwed at least and if you are cmparing this with games,then compare games where is not used Nvidia sh1t Gameworks and PhysX

And about the lower performance,this again depends,you still can soft mod yours AMD card to FirePRO,can you do that with yours nVidia card I don't think so there,I do use my R9 290 in 3DS MAX and with high poly scene I never have any issue with low FPS in preview window/viewport and I previously used like GTX780 or GTX560Ti with which I've only troubles

OpenCL is same if not better than CUDA,which I've tried,again this depends on apps and if developer doesn't spend bit more time with this,then you can have slower or no performance at all,have look on Adobe why they moved from CUDA to OpenCL and many other companies moving towards to OpenCL,OpenCL matured enough to be supported,earlier apps or earlier OpenCL has been pain,but right now is way to go,just have look on Otoy why they going with OpenCL? If you are selling SW,I would go with this where I can make money,in CUDA you need to use Nvidia GPU with OpenCL you can use anything,which means they should make bit more money

CUDA doesn't have way higher performance than OpenCL without the testing both or comparing both on similar HW(2 year old R9 290 have similar performance as GTX980 in OpenCL LuxMark,old GTX780 is lot slower than similarly old AMD cards) or you can try to test in app which does support OpenCL and CUDA 

Agree on nVidia cards OpenCL is hampered as this will compete with their CUDA,this has been proven on numerous cards 

Just have look,I will make better renders with V-RAY than with IRAY where I will need to spend lot more time(3DS MAX),I'm now not saying about the DS,as I said,I don't use it all,if yes then is I need to convert only DS clothing to Poser or I rather use D3D script etc and yes is down to skill of user and about the Reality or Luxrender,I do use both and there I rarely need any help or something like this and still I can easily reproduce what I want to and there is very helpful bunch of people over on RDNA or Luxrender forums 

Drug dealer too not forcing to buy his stuff or do you ? You are still free to make own stuff(drugs)if you know how to same as with everything and yes that's the way how is business run,sadly that's the truth and my perception or other people,who cares,we are here for them to spend with them,if you do have issue,simply they don't care 

And lastly not sure,but why you are still defending DS over here on Poser forums or Poser threads,not just here on RDNA too,I know you are vendor over on DAZ3D,but why you over here there? Do you need to defend DS/DAZ? Or are you paid by DAZ? 

About my flawed argument about the addons,but still they're addons,IRAY addons,if they're vendor addons,who cares,everyone will see as ADDON,nothing more

Thanks,Jura