IRAY VERSES OCTANE FOR DAZ3D

Some serious food for your guys thoughts on Daz3D. One of the issues I always struggled with Daz is that renders took so long, even with my powerful system. This made animating in Daz near impossible when I look at the fact that a single image on my system could take 10 mins to render fully, and then times than by 200+ frames I was pretty discouraged.

Well......than I joined the Octane club. with the FREE Octane plug-in for Daz3d.

I just did a fast little review and tutorial which you can see here: https://mooncraftrp.com/index.php/2020/04/26/octane-versus-iray-for-daz3d-review/

Disclaimer: I am not paid by anyone, or being encouraged by anyone to make this review and tutorial. I'm just a Daz user always on the hunt to find great new tools that are free.

THanks Mooncraft1. I was going to give Octane a shot last year, but I discovered that it would have to run from and account with administrator privileges. Have they fixed this, yet? I let the Octane people know about this problem, then told them that I would not use their product until it was fixed. I have not heard anything more.

IRay is a Brute force path tracer orginally marketed to the Architectural & product visualization industries. It is a loss leader product to foment NVDIA graphic hardware sales.

It was never intended to be an animation production engine.

which is fine, as Daz Studio is not a software that any professional would use for Character animation production as it has no usable foot floor contact IK system ? and its new timeline/graph editor is so poorly designed and glitchy that you are better off using the Old Graph Mate/keymate plugins .?

Also Most Daz store content is bloated with 4K even 8K textures that are wasted on anyone not using a 4-8k display that can actually view a 4K image at full resolution, and utterly ridiculous for a GPU dependant engine Iike NVIDIA IRay .?

Glad to see you getting a better result with Octane. although beating IRay in a speed test is fairly easy thing to do these days to be honest.

"Also Most Daz store content is bloated with 4K even 8K textures that are wasted on anyone not using a 4-8k display that can actually view a 4K image at full resolution,"

No offence, but that's not how this works.

The size of a texture map has nothing to do with the size or resolution of your monitor.

Try thinking of it this way. A simple 1 metre by 1 metre cube with an 8k texture map. Unwrapping the UV's of the cube will reduce each side to around 1200x1200 pixels per side accounting for wasted space within the UV mapping. A customer takes the cube and places it in the centre of the scene then places a small statue on the top of the cube, lets say a 10 cm statue then zooms the camera to focus onto that statue. Basically viewing about 20 cms of the cubes top surface within their shot, which now only provides 240 pixels on the cube surface across the whole shot from an 8k texture. Now lets reduce that original texture to a 2k texture with the same shot, now we have just 60 pixels across the cube surface within shot. Of course this is just a basic example but it does demonstrate the concept pretty well. Some people especially in gaming aim for a certain amount of texture resolution per unit of feet or metres within a scene, for example 2048x2048 per metre. In animation and still image rendering, scale and proximity to the camera are also very important factors to consider as the scene is a lot more controllable then that of a gaming environment and it's possible to optimise textures according to their priority within your shot.

So is 8k too large? Well it depends, 100 peas on a plate with individual 8k textures per pea? Of course that's just crazy. 8k for the side of a cliff face being climbed by an adventurer? Hopefully 8k will be enough not to lose res in closeups...

A lot of the reason products ship with 8k textures is that is a fairly simple process to optimise a texture to a lower resolution, but impossible to upscale with any real accuracy. So for some a small rock with 8k textures may seem bloated when it's wanted to be just a small part of the background of a scene, but may lack required detail for someone wanting to render the same prop in detail such as with a line of ants marching across it. It would be considered a poor standard to simply make everything the quality of a background prop with no real details, as many customers do really want that level of detail in their props.

Do either of you, Wolf359 and Razor42, have to run DAZ/Octane under and account with administrator privileges?

@nakamuram Sorry I don't currently use Octane in my workflow so it's hard to offer you any advice with that issue.

The size of a texture map has nothing to do with the size or resolution of your >monitor.

It has everything to do with exceeding the capacity of your GPU. ..

@Nakamuran sorry I use blender cycles for occasional stills and EEVEE for animations https://youtu.be/MJBTyBtJdBs

Octane is good , however the Daz studio version has zero appeal as Daz studio is not suited to delivery of professional level animation at this time. ?

Wolf: Fortunately you can downsize textures if that's an issue. I did get some utilities that also optimizes the scene before you render.

To the OP, was your review based solely on animation? If that the case then I guess you wouldn't need complex scenes.. however, the samples you provided were very simplistiic with just an HDRI. Where are your lights? What's the setup? Anyone can run a simple scene through and say "Hey this is faster", but that's not how people put scenes together and the majority of people that would use the tool. I've heard that rendering may be faster but that time is eaten up setting up materials and lights. It's not a one-click process unless you're just putting together plain scenes like you presented so far. So I really consider your review flawed, especially being a former user of Octane.

I was an early adopter of the DAZ studio plug in for Octane and it was so unstable and buggy, I never got my money out of it. It's also not as integrated as other tools. Then Iray came out and I switched that full time as I consider the octane purchase money flushed down the toilet. There's something to be said about integration, ease of use and support (both software and content). The octane plugin may be more improved since the version I paid for, but won't pay for another version as I already have a tool that works for me and I know the tricks to put out complicated scenes from 8-30 minutes, depending on the light setup I use. And those scenes use FULL scenes with light setups, not props set against the default DAZ HDRI.

The Octane plugin seems to add some interesting capabilities, such as volumetric render. For free, it could be worth a look, but I'm sure it also complicates the workflow.

Texture optimization is a different problem. Too many times, I've seen a 4096x4096 texture image that actually only uses a strip along the bottom or side for the object. There are better ways to handle situations like that!

I am now animating with Daz thanks to Octane and I -love- it. It made animations possible that before would have not been simply due to the time required.

Here is my WIP animation with Daz, rendered in Octane. The 500+ frames in high-quality detail took roughly 5 hours to fully render.

Octane Animation With Daz

Male_M3dia posted at 12:39PM Mon, 27 April 2020 - #4387518

Wolf: Fortunately you can downsize textures if that's an issue. I did get some utilities that also optimizes the scene before you render.

To the OP, was your review based solely on animation? If that the case then I guess you wouldn't need complex scenes.. however, the samples you provided were very simplistiic with just an HDRI. Where are your lights? What's the setup? Anyone can run a simple scene through and say "Hey this is faster", but that's not how people put scenes together and the majority of people that would use the tool. I've heard that rendering may be faster but that time is eaten up setting up materials and lights. It's not a one-click process unless you're just putting together plain scenes like you presented so far. So I really consider your review flawed, especially being a former user of Octane.

I was an early adopter of the DAZ studio plug in for Octane and it was so unstable and buggy, I never got my money out of it. It's also not as integrated as other tools. Then Iray came out and I switched that full time as I consider the octane purchase money flushed down the toilet. There's something to be said about integration, ease of use and support (both software and content). The octane plugin may be more improved since the version I paid for, but won't pay for another version as I already have a tool that works for me and I know the tricks to put out complicated scenes from 8-30 minutes, depending on the light setup I use. And those scenes use FULL scenes with light setups, not props set against the default DAZ HDRI.

In short I kept the review simple to test the waters for beginners. More advanced users will be able to test and decide for themselves what they like.

That said, the animations and still images I am producing in octane are delightful. I have a background in photography and really enjoy the power of outdoor lighting. Ive tried adding images here to show some of the Octane renders that are more complex, however Renderosity doesn't seem to want to let me.

mooncraft1 posted at 1:35PM Mon, 27 April 2020 - #4387547

I am now animating with Daz thanks to Octane and I -love- it. It made animations possible that before would have not been simply due to the time required.

Here is my WIP animation with Daz, rendered in Octane. The 500+ frames in high-quality detail took roughly 5 hours to fully render.

Octane Animation With Daz

Bravo, Mooncraft! Looks gorgeous and I love the little face movement in the statue there. Good work!

Bottom line: The OTOY plugin requires that you run it from an account with Administrator privileges. This is very DANGEROUS from a security standpoint if you browse the Internet while you render, as it makes you much more vulnerable to malware. Anyone who knows anything about Windows Security will tell you that you should always use a regular user account when browsing. I will not use OTOY until this security hole is fixed.

The fix is simple - The fact that OTOY has not addressed this issue tells me that they don't give a shit about their customer's information security.

mooncraft1 posted at 5:59AM Tue, 28 April 2020 - #4387548

Male_M3dia posted at 12:39PM Mon, 27 April 2020 - #4387518

Wolf: Fortunately you can downsize textures if that's an issue. I did get some utilities that also optimizes the scene before you render.

To the OP, was your review based solely on animation? If that the case then I guess you wouldn't need complex scenes.. however, the samples you provided were very simplistiic with just an HDRI. Where are your lights? What's the setup? Anyone can run a simple scene through and say "Hey this is faster", but that's not how people put scenes together and the majority of people that would use the tool. I've heard that rendering may be faster but that time is eaten up setting up materials and lights. It's not a one-click process unless you're just putting together plain scenes like you presented so far. So I really consider your review flawed, especially being a former user of Octane.

I was an early adopter of the DAZ studio plug in for Octane and it was so unstable and buggy, I never got my money out of it. It's also not as integrated as other tools. Then Iray came out and I switched that full time as I consider the octane purchase money flushed down the toilet. There's something to be said about integration, ease of use and support (both software and content). The octane plugin may be more improved since the version I paid for, but won't pay for another version as I already have a tool that works for me and I know the tricks to put out complicated scenes from 8-30 minutes, depending on the light setup I use. And those scenes use FULL scenes with light setups, not props set against the default DAZ HDRI.

In short I kept the review simple to test the waters for beginners. More advanced users will be able to test and decide for themselves what they like.

That said, the animations and still images I am producing in octane are delightful. I have a background in photography and really enjoy the power of outdoor lighting. Ive tried adding images here to show some of the Octane renders that are more complex, however Renderosity doesn't seem to want to let me.

And that's kind of the point I made; this can't be a reliable review when you've done the least amount of work and expect people to pay for the plug-in to do the real work. Even the video you provided was ok, but looked like it had a low frame rate and it was pixelated around the lights but still took five hours to run. A render is not fast if it wasn't completed.

Five hours is a long render time for quality & length of the video posted to be honest. ?

Faster than Iray???.. Probably , but still not great for such a short animation with fairly simple materials .

We don't know anything about the OP's system. Really, all we know is the OP tried the free Octane plugin and liked it. Problems in the video and sample renders may or may not have anything to do with the renderer. It makes sense to seek other reviews and maybe give the plugin a try. That last part is a hassle, but it's the only way to truly know.

Torquinox posted at 4:34PM Tue, 28 April 2020 - #4387627

We don't know anything about the OP's system. Really, all we know is the OP tried the free Octane plugin and liked it. Problems in the video and sample renders may or may not have anything to do with the renderer. It makes sense to seek other reviews and maybe give the plugin a try. That last part is a hassle, but it's the only way to truly know.

The OP said he/she had a powerful system. And if they liked the free plugin and suggested that others try it, well that's probably should have been said instead of making a flawed review. For the narrow application that was stated, this shouldn't have been a review. But certainly others can try it as their mileage may vary. But for my experience, I wasn't happy with it and I paid several hundred in the initial cost and upgrades and didn't get my money's worth. (Considering I had to pay for Octane and the DAZ plugin) I know the work in the plugin was taken over by a different developer than the one that initially developed it, but Otoy offered no type of incentive to continue using it as they wanted full upgrade price for the less buggy plugin despite the bugs the current user base encountered. By that time, iray was doing much better than the DAZ Studio plugin of Octane so I switched to that and I have no real issues moving forward.

Male_M3dia posted at 5:03PM Tue, 28 April 2020 - #4387653

The OP said he/she had a powerful system. And if they liked the free plugin and suggested that others try it, well that's probably should have been said instead of making a flawed review. For the narrow application that was stated, this shouldn't have been a review. But certainly others can try it as their mileage may vary. But for my experience, I wasn't happy with it and I paid several hundred in the initial cost and upgrades and didn't get my money's worth. (Considering I had to pay for Octane and the DAZ plugin) I know the work in the plugin was taken over by a different developer than the one that initially developed it, but Otoy offered no type of incentive to continue using it as they wanted full upgrade price for the less buggy plugin despite the bugs the current user base encountered. By that time, iray was doing much better than the DAZ Studio plugin of Octane so I switched to that and I have no real issues moving forward.

Yes. I agree OTOY should do something for previous customers. If it matters, you could ask them. For your Daz work, Iray is the logical choice. I doubt many people will spend the time to reconfigure everything they bought in the store for a 3rd party plugin that works in its own special way. That would be annoying!

I updated the review to include my system specs at the start.