Instead of complaining, trolling, or acting like a Youtube commenter, let's actually see how Iray and Superfly (Cycles) work and compare to each other. Shown below is the exact same scene rendered in Iray and Superfly. Well, it's close as I can get it. I had to eyeball the location of the camera and lights. It's close enough for decent comparison.

The original Iray image is here
The original Superfly image is here

Scene
Figure: Genesis 2 Female with Genesis 3 Female UV
Character: Jenara by Silver
Hair: Soleil Hair by AprilYSH
Shirt CropTee by ModelPro
Shorts: Boardwalk by Bobbie25
Shoes: Patchwork Shoes 2 by Esha
Props: Sandy Bay by 3D Universe
HDR: SunnyL from Skies Of Iradiance by DimensionTheory

I chose a set that was really not designed for either rendering engine. Most of us have a large amount of older props and figures and I wanted to see how well they handle the older items.

Machine
Processor: Intel I7 3.06 Ghz
Memory: 24 GB
Video Card: 2 NVidia GEForce 960 GTX 4GB

While most people do not have two video cards, 4GB is a common memory size for mid-range video cards. Iray was able to handle the entire Sandy Bay scene. I had to hide several buildings (not in the camera's view) to render the scene in Superfly. If there is a way to list out a scene's memory usage in both tools, please let us know.

Render Settings
Iray: 6500 samples for the whole image
Superfly: 55 samples with no branch path tracing

Iray and Superfly really don't have comparable render settings. So, I used settings that gave acceptable results. That probably affected the render time.

Render Times
Iray: 20 min
Superfly: 40 min

Since the settings were not equivalent, it's hard to compare the results. But, Iray does seem to render faster and it should. NVidia made Iray and the video card processor.

Lighting
The three spotlights were added for highlights. It was difficult to work with the spotlights in DAZ Studio due to a lack of visual feedback on the intensity for Iray. For some reason, the HDR light was way too powerful in both applications. I had to reduce the intensity to 60%. Which is weird considering the HDR was created for Iray.

Materials
Most of the material settings were unchanged. In Daz Studio, I converted the dock and umbrella to use the Iray Uber Shader. Jenara uses the vendor provided material setup in Daz Studio. For Poser, I used a Cycles skin material setup and set the eyes my preferred settings. The skin settings can be found here. There is a weird texture pattern on the dock in the Iray image. I have noticed that pattern in other Iray images. I wonder if it's caused by a low resolution image map.

Character
Despite claims to the contrary, Genesis 3 Female UV maps for Genesis 2 Female work in Poser just fine. I prepared a character in DAZ Studio and then created a Poser companion file. Zev0's fit control morphs helped to fit the crop top. Daz Studio's mesh smoothing did not quite get rid of the cleavage line. Poser's Morph Brush is good for the fine tuning.

Overall
This is not a comprehensive example of either tool. The example is based on my limited experiences. Your results will vary. So go try it yourself. You'll be surprised at what you'll find.

I don't have either so my opinion is, like some render engines, unbiased. Ha ha.

IMO, the IRAY looks better. The details seem to be better defined; the Superfly looks to have smeared out some areas.

yes, both renderers are capable of good output. The problem is educating Poser users on how to get good results from Superfly. I see stuff in the galleries that look good and I see stuff that looks like it was rendered in Poser 4.

On the Iray the water looks very flat, her shorts look more like leather than denim, her shirt looks more like a skin texture than a shirt. The metal lamp post seems shiny/plastic kind of... It's really more personal preference than anything though cycles can do a ton and somewhere I read it can be used with D/S. I've seen a lot of Blender users export a lot of D/S to render in cycles that looked really nice.

You have no valid comparison. We have no way of knowing whether the materials are comparable, nor whether the render settings are comparable. I'm pretty sure that iRay isn't twice as fast as Cycles, though. You may have applied redundant samples/bounces in some category(s), and/or used a tile size which is not a common denominator of the image height/width.

I use Substance Painter to make materials. It's internal render engine is iRay. I use the maps created in Substance on Poser's Physical Root. There is no visual difference between the results of the iRay render in Substance and the Superfly render in Poser as they use the same maps and can use the same HRDI environment. The same maps, on the same objs, with the same lighting, gives the same visual result. The only difference is in the time it takes to render and there is no way I can compare them as they are two separate pieces of software. Is that not the purpose of a PBR? Consistent results across platforms regardless of engine used; because the physics of light does not change just because some software company says it does in their render engine? That is why I use Substance. PBR materials that look the same regardless of the render engine used to display them. Until either Poser or Studio start rendering with both engines you have no valid comparison of render times.

Like I said in the original post, the render settings were probably not equivalent and that affected the render time.

Many people reported that Superfly gives a grainy image when not rendering without Branch Path Tracing and that seems to be the case here.

Besides render time, I wanted to see how well the applications can handle materials of props and sets that were not designed for the rendering engines.

Look at the light poles in the background, look at the phone she is holding, look at the dock she is standing on. There are differences on how the applications read the same material settings.

Any thoughts on what is happen with the dock textures? It looks like both render engines had a problem.

willdial posted at 11:24PM Sun, 27 November 2016 - #4291098

Like I said in the original post, the render settings were probably not equivalent and that affected the render time.

Many people reported that Superfly gives a grainy image when not rendering without Branch Path Tracing and that seems to be the case here.

Besides render time, I wanted to see how well the applications can handle materials of props and sets that were not designed for the rendering engines.

Look at the light poles in the background, look at the phone she is holding, look at the dock she is standing on. There are differences on how the applications read the same material settings.

Hi there

You shouldn't render with Branch path tracing,if yes this will result in longer renders or unresponsive Poser etc,if you render try both,render in separate process or with ticked separate process,in some cases rendering in separate process will result in longer renders and in some will cause hard lock and only hard reset will resolve that,its limitation of current NVIDIA drivers,I've reported that to NVIDIA

Branch Path tracing is best to use with CPU,not GPU,that's my opinion and my view

Comparing both renders,you can't there,both renderers handle materials differently and translate materials

Plus I would add,settings plays big part in render times,I usually not using Progressive rendering and pump bucket size to 512 where my render speed is better than with 128 or 256,but this all depends on render size etc

I've done comparing renders like with new DS Beta which supports finally PASCAL" when Poser supported Pascal from last update and Poser with latest update on my rig with GTX1080 and Titan X

But here is my comparison,in both cases I've used same HDR(Apartment),same V4,same materials and same clothing plus hair,only difference on skin in Poser I've used EZSkin 3

DS 4.9 Pro latest beta

Render time: 1 minute and 35 seconds

Poser Pro 11 with SuperFly

Render time: 135 seconds(which is 2 minutes and 25 seconds)

Now if I would use in DS Architectural or Caustic sampler then renders will be lot longer,with Architectural sampler rendering at 3 minutes and 45 seconds has been in 63% and image has been noisy and grainy,with caustic enabled at 3 minutes and 45 seconds,rendering sits in 1% after that time

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

I don't put much stock in these types of comparisons as one program might be slightly better at texture/shader conversion than the other. Unless the person doing the artwork is incredibly proficient in each one and can bring out the best in both programs, I tend to not see much use for these comparisons. Comparing the two isn't exactly like apples and oranges but it is kinda like limes and lemons ;). Same fruit type but different fruit ;).

Laurie

I don't think either renderer is better or worse. But I do give the comparison test to Superfly because it appeals to me better. There's something about DS lights that just don't do anything for me and it shows here. I could have easily have picked out the DS and Poser renders. Plus, the Studio render figure has a blurrier face to me. I don't know if that was the renderer or the camera being slightly out of focus.

Quick question on the D/S render Jura... is the lighting color the cause of a very, very, minor, slight greenish hue on the skin? Also could we get a post of the settings used in both programs? The second goes to both Wildial and Jura. Thank you both for posting details on these renders. On the first comparison when I spoke about the water, I didn't really detail that there's no reflection of the stone in the water. I do agree with Ironsoul that the wooden dock's texture caused problems for both programs.

Kazam561 posted at 4:07PM Tue, 29 November 2016 - #4291287

Quick question on the D/S render Jura... is the lighting color the cause of a very, very, minor, slight greenish hue on the skin? Also could we get a post of the settings used in both programs? The second goes to both Wildial and Jura. Thank you both for posting details on these renders. On the first comparison when I spoke about the water, I didn't really detail that there's no reflection of the stone in the water. I do agree with Ironsoul that the wooden dock's texture caused problems for both programs.

Hi there

This greenish hue on skin is down how DS translated HDRi map which I used in both renderers and renders Here are Poser 11 render settings

DS Render settings are normal and would say default

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

Thank you very much Jura! :D

I agree with laurie. Additionally both of these Dock scene renders are quite sub-par and do not feature good examples of the things most poser/Daz user seem to care about.. human skin!!

The skin on the figure used here looks like Department store mannequin plastic..where is the sss?? Of course there is the usual 1990's era transmapped hair and not very good hair at that.

I was quite shocked to read that an outdoor HDR was used because this lighting look completely artificial. Yes there are notable differences between certain elements of the renders but honestly ALL of the materials look Like something from the poser 6 era. The cropped t-shirt may as well have been painted on with GIMP.

Forgive my bluntness but I have seen Poser Firefly renders from 5 years ago that are far superior to BOTH these Dock scene images.

I can actually find elements in each render that come out better looking to me. Like the Hair looks better and more detailed to me in the Superfly render, but the belt has more detail in the Iray render.

The water surface sucks in both renders.

Substance Painter Iray vs Superfly

Below is not a very scientific comparsion, I work in Chimp mode (assuming chimps have access to computers and beer) ie iterative rather than scientific approach. Loaded the Coalition's Katana into Poser then exported it to Substance painter via FBX. Created the textures and rendered in iray. Then exported the materials back into Poser and using BBs EnvSphere loaded the same environment lighting from SP as the HDR map. Then adjusted the lighting (gamma/intensity) to get similar looking levels. Its not exact, not being able to see the HDR background in Poser made it difficult to align. Overall impression - Iray was more reflective (may be different F0?) The UV map fail on the Poser render was interesting but may have been an issue with the FBX export.

Comparisons are like asking who's better Ginger or Mary Ann? I mean, every knows it was Mary Ann but some people keep insisting that Ginger had a shot.