So what are the best quality Render settings in 4.8 for both 3Delight & IRay?

Haven't rendered anything since my last DS(4.0) installed hdd crashed year before last, but I kept notes of what the best 3Delight settings were with that version. Do they still work best in 4.8, do I use the Default 4.8 Render settings, or is it something else? Bucket Order this, Pixel shading that,... etc.

Also, what are the best overall settings for IRay for just 2-3 lights and V4 skin and hair? Render settings that is.

Well, you're welcome to give recommendations for best lights to use too(for IRay), but that's another subject. Probably best saved for another time. For now, just the Render settings.

adamr001 has some 3Delight render quality presets that range from Draft quality to Insanely high quality. You can read about them here:

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16085/render-profiles-for-daz-studio-4-5/p1

The download is still available.

Thanks a bunch Mark. This will get me started. :-)

But for later on, when I want to try IRay, where's a good place to find settings for that? Is there a good consolidated general rule list for low to medium, high & insanely high render quality for that?

Quality is slightly different on an unbiased renderer. Because it will render for ever if you let it, the first factor is time. 'Letting it cook' for three minutes will be lower quality than ten minutes.

Hi Prixat,

Yes, I've heard the actual rendering with IRay doesn't actually end, just keeps rendering forever like the Reality system.

But the settings were what I was asking about. Before you hit the Render button.

Iray, unlike Luxrender last time I used it (year ago or so), has some convergence criteria to terminate the render. Iray renders will not run forever by default. The main quality control is done through the 'Rendering Converged Ratio'. This is some measure of what percentage of pixels have converged, ie value of pixel is not changing within some tolerance with each iteration. The default is 95%. If you get to 95% convergence that produces a pretty high quality image. Some people have gone for 99% convergence, but I don't see any rational for that in anything i've rendered. Low convergence, like 20-50% might be a draft render.

There are several other controls that will also stop the render, even though it has not reached the convergence target.

Max Time (sec) - the default value on this is 7200, 2 hours. If you leave it at that render will end at 2 hours even it is has not reached the convergence you want. The Maximum value is 259,200 which is 72 hours, but I think you can set it to zero and it will run forever. This is the maximum time. It will quit if it reaches the convergence target before this.

Max Samples - I think this is the max samples for a pixel. If you reach this the render strops even if the convergence target is not reached. Default is 5000. Maximum value is 15,000. I think you can turn off the limit and set higher values or use 0 which makes it unlimited. Again if it reaches convergence target or any other max limit is will quit first.

Render Quality - This apparently effects how Iray considers a pixel to be converged. The default is 1. I have always just use the default and I have seen posts indicating you should not fiddle with this. I know some people use values like 1.5 or 2, but i would just leave this alone.

So what max time or max samples do you need to set for a given quality? That is totally dependent on what is in the scene and how the lighting is done. Iray render times are very sensitive to lighting. The best thing is to just set huge times and sample or maybe zero (i have not tried setting zero), so neither the time or samples stop the render and you can judge based on quality you see if you want to stop before reaching the convergence target you set.

Iray likes outdoor scenes using the sun/sky or a good HDRI on the sky dome. In my experience, indoor scenes are a lot slower to render.

markht has explained better than I did. These are the same stop conditions that every renderer has, max. samples, max. time or percentage convergence, whichever is reached first.

The 'Render Quality' is probably some complex mathematical thing which I don't worry about. In practice seeing the difference between a setting of 1 and 10 is going to be difficult most of the time. If you zoom in you might notice clearer reflections or sharper caustics but the extra processing will impact render times.

The setting I regularly change is the Gaussian Blur which I find a bit high at the default 1.5.

Thanks for that info everyone. Much appreciated.

the answer's were excellent ,My question is were in the world do find the place to alter the above setting's ? Thank you

Note the settings under Progressive Rendering can be adjusted during a render, on the left side of the render window. (Even after the render is "done" after which you can resume the render.)

So you can resume a render after it is done? Trying hard to wrap my head around that.

thank you

MarkR151 posted at 6:17AM Thu, 11 February 2016 - #4254335

So you can resume a render after it is done? Trying hard to wrap my head around that.

Yes. As long as the render window is open.