Sell Me On Reality / A Rendering Engine

ebonartgallery

I'm trying to make sure I have this straight.

Reality is an exporter to the free LuxRender engine, yes?

There are some things I want to know, or have confirmed.

1, I should be able to make a scene in DAZ, save it, then send it over somehow to Reality so it renders the thing and I can continue to use DAZ, And I can use Reality to make some changes that are impossible in DAZ - different materials, changing lighting on the fly or something like that, etc.

It really does need to be as simple as 'click on file x to render'.

2. Does Reality take as much resources as Daz does? Right now, an iRay render in Daz takes me about two hours, during which the PC is pretty much useless for most things, with the CPU at 99.x%

Will Reality suck up as much resources for as long?

scorpio

Reality is no faster than Iray, in my experience its a lot slower.

You need to set all of your mats for reality which I found to be a rather complicated business, I have little problems setting things up for Iray.

I also found reality just generally odd, its been I while since I tried it but it was full of bugs then, I don't know if they have all been sorted.

Its advantages are that you can alter the lighting mid render, but for me that just didn't make up for the time it took to try and get surfaces to look good, let alone the other stuff.

Other people though get on very well with it though although I don't see so many about now.

BeeMKay

You can change materials & light in DS when you are rendering in Iray as well. Of course, not during the render, though you can change certain render settings in Iray even during the render, if you click on the tab slider at the right side of the rendering image.

But you will have to convert/adapt almost every surface material of DS 3DL/Iray optimized content to use in LUXRender.

The good thing about LuxRender is that it also works with videocards other than nVidea, so that's something to consider.

gederix

1 is definitely doable, reality sends the render to lux and then lux runs on its own, you can work in daz while luxrender is running. You can also launch multiple renders and just keep adding them to the lux queue.

You cannot tweak materials while the render is running (in the sense that they will immediately be recognized by the render without restarting the render), however you can adjust the lights individually or in groups on the fly (depending on how you grouped them in reality). You can also change film settings during the render. All this is done in the luxrender interface, not daz.

As far as materials, there is a learning curve to reality, you will have to spend the time to learn the interface and then learn how to set up the materials, but it is not that hard, read the user guide, work through a few tutorials to get a feel for things, standard stuff. I have not used iray since it did not exist at the time I switched from 3delight to reality/lux but it is a lot more 'click and render' than reality since it is designed as part of daz and content now comes with iray mats. This might be the better option for you if you are not interested in learning a new materials interface, which is basically all reality is, it replaces the surface pane in daz as far as where you adjust your materials. Once an item is loaded in daz there is rarely any reason to mess with the surfaces tab in daz (things like swapping in a completely different set of materials, sure, use daz, but adjusting the bump, gloss, displacement etc, no), you will do all your materials tweaks in reality.

Reality does not take resources per se, it is simply a materials interface (plus a few other things, like naming the render, defining render settings, adjusting lights, defining camera settings) that sends the render over to luxrender. When you click the reality render button in daz the reality window opens, and you set up your materials there. Then you will click the render button in the reality interface and that will send the render to lux, which will then launch separately and load/render the scene. Then you can go back to dazz and keep working, start a new scene, whatever. It definitely is nice.

The resources consumed by luxrender depend on the 'intensity' of your scene, simple scenes will run with little noticable impact on your rig, but packed scenes with lots of, well everything, will be more of a strain on the system. Even so, no comparison to the showstopper that is 3delight (no idea on iray).

As to bugs and difficutly setting up materials, I do not run into any showstoppers, and usually theres a workaround or easy fix, they do exist but not so much that I worry about them. Materials is actually imho pretty simple once you understand it, and improvements to multiediting definitely helps (being able to edit multiple surface at once of the same type, like say all the skin surface of a figure, or of several figures), being able to make any surface or object emit light or alternatively convert into a light, one click material conversion for things like glass, metal, marble, car paint. Its relatively simple and quite versatile.

But other things like special iray shaders will not work in reality at all.

I like reality but I spent the time to learn it, I am not an expert by any throw of the stick but I use teh reality forums, ask questions, watch tutorial videos, read the tips and tricks threads, I enjoy reality and have fun playing with it. But you have to want to do it. For me reality was a more affordable alternative to something like octane, so I was determined to learn it. Plus being able to keep working in daz while a render is running was a feature I really really wanted.

Reality/lux also has multiple redering options, from GPU only to CPU only to accelerated versions of both, with or without extra boost, or open gl rendering with GPU or CPU or both... so depending on your system you can fiddle with those options too. I mainly use CPU accelerated, leave my GPU for daz.

On rendering speed, again, completely depends on your scene but even with the most complex scenes, with cpu or gpu accel modes a basic render is visible within seconds to minutes depending, then clears up over time, rather than the scene rendering from top left ot bottom right in blocks, so you can relatively quickly and easily see and fix things before too much render time is wasted. Sure you can work around this in 3delight or iray by using spot renders but I never found this to be a satisfactory solution, it really only helps you spot problems you are currently actively looking for. I often render scenes than can take six or ten hours or more, because I like to cram scenes and see how far I can push my rig before it crawls off into the corner to sob quietly, but I do not care as much about this as I used to because I can keep on working in daz and as I complete scenes I export the new render and add it to the queue, so longer render times actually have far less impact on my work flow than they used to.

The creator of reality, Paolo, is a very nice guy who answers questions and helps solve issues posed over at the reality forums here:  http://preta3d.com/forums/index.php

I recommend reading over at the reality forums, see if it sounds like something you want to get into, and/or this thread: http://direct.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/72294/reality-4-2-learn-it-chat-with-paolo-wips-renders-showcase/p1

There is also a reality users gallery over at deviant art, maybe have a look and see if the results are what you are looking for. http://reality-plug-in.deviantart.com/

my own gallery is in my sig, older renders are 3delight, newer stuff reality, warning nudity and otherwise potentially offensive content.

And one more link, Conlaodh's work uses reality, and is imho an excellent example of what can be achieved, very clever cool striking stuff: http://conlaodh.deviantart.com/

I hope I did not confuse things:)

 

ebonartgallery

gederix said:

And one more link, Conlaodh's work uses reality, and is imho an excellent example of what can be achieved, very clever cool striking stuff: http://conlaodh.deviantart.com/

I hope I did not confuse things:)

Not at all; thank you very much

AJ2112

As a beginner I loved using Reality, mainly due to simplistic interface and support.  Majority of my knowledge was obtained using Reality, lighting, materials, etc......