TerraDome 3 & IRay Preview Options
Hi everyone,
First post here, so sorry if it's FAQ or I'm posting at wrong place. Just tell me. No worries.
Anyway, I picked up TerraDome-3 on sale, and really like it so far. Problem of course is that seeing anything requires Viewport to use IRay. On 4k monitor, that sends CPU fan into overdrive. Viewport basically useless until I want to preview a render. (sys specs below)
Able to use I-Ray in 'Aux Viewport' but still very high CPU bottleneck.
1.) Are there some settings in Daz I can tweak to get a bit better performance, or is this probably a hardware issue?
2.) If hardware issue (suspect it's my vid-card) what do most 3D artists use?
I draw comics & cartoons in Photoshop, so really excited about 3D app & potential for nice renders. Will save me a lot of work in PS, but not if I have to sit watching that yellow progress bar at lower right when trying to use such a great resource like TerraDome.
Thanks for reading. : )
--Bruce
---
Sys info:
i7 @ 4GHz (overclock disabled - unstable at higher renders) - Windows 10 | 1703 (build 15063.674)
RAM 16GB (14GB available)
Card: nVidia 1070 class @ 1632 Mhz - Driver 384.94
CUDA cores 12 - GRAM 8GB (6.5GB available)
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Just to check, do you have the GPU selected in Render Settings? I have a similar setup 1070 GTX with an i7 (3770k) at 4.2 GHz and 16 GB of RAM and I don't have performance issues using the Iray preview in the aux viewport. Before I got my 1070, the aux viewport dragged my system down as it was using the CPU.
Thanks for reply. Will attach some screenshots. (Preferred file size here?)
Both CPU & GPU are enabled. I've only had DS since late September & not sure what "OptiX Prime" is, but slowed down both renders & also previews in 'Aux' window.
Tried unchecking CPU & that really gummed things up. Had to close via taskman.
Render Speed:
I use an interior set called "Modern Bungalow" - one of those sale items I think. Most indoor renders with minimum lights take about 90 minutes. I don't have many props yet.
Does clutter increase render times?
In Terra3, wanted to see how shadows looked at preferred dimensions of 2922 x 2191 (35mm or 4:3.)
Render took over five hours! : 0 !
So am really hoping settings might be culprit.
Otherwise might be a deal breaker for Terra3 as much as I like the idea of 'zones' & being able to morph them.
(On related note, how can you actually edit the mesh itself? Can you even do that in DS, or need another app?)
Anyway, if just a simple scene like this one takes that long, I'd hate to think how long building a small village with lots of clutter might take.
Still hoping for advice on settings...
If Terra3 is just beyond what a 1070 will do, 1080 ti good choice come x-mass?
Or, card has nothing to do with it, and for a fraction of the money spent on one-- get a decent library of DS props, sets, and goodies when on sale? ; )
So still hoping can get some advice on render settings. As it stands, five hours seems a long time for just one frame in a graphic novel.
I have no problem with the Terradome & using Iray viewport - I have 1 GTX 1080 (same Vram as your card) & 32G ram
That said I do not have a 4K Monitor nor would I often render as large as you are doing
For moving around the viewport in general, you could try changing the settings found under
Edit - Preferences - Interface - Display Optimization
I believe it defaults to none but I found using "Best" works for me
You can also try changing your Iray viewport draw settings under Draw Settings Tab - I use Respose Threshold 5000 and manipulation resolution 1/2 but you can try various combinations to find the best for you.
In Iray advanced setting I only check off GPU & leave CPU unchecked both in Photoreal devices & Optix as I found adding CPU to the mix does not make the render end faster but it may do on some systems so you have to use trial & error although I know you said you tried this before,
In the case of the 5 Hour Render do you know if it used the GPU? - I monitor GPU usage with GPU-Z which you can download free from
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
You can also check the log for information when you end your render under - Help - Troubleshooting
It will look something like this: 2017-10-14 15:34:43.354 Iray INFO - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.0 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 1080): 433 iterations, 1.569s init, 58.165s render
Anything you have loaded will affect the render time to some extent but items/characters with high levels of SubD or using Displacement will noticeably add more time as they use more resources - There is a product to help optimizing your scenes which may be useful to you
https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer
Terradome 3 for sure isn't the problem. The question is how much geometry has got the environment plus the characters.
This all together is exceeding the iRay card's capacity.
What is the RAM usage difference when starting to render documented by the task manager? If it is over 12GB, so even the 1080 doesn't have any chance.
According to GPU-Z, scene is taking up 6565 MB on the card, and Taskman shows about 9,000MB RAM usage-- might very well be over 12. Don't know how Daz 'shares' system RAM & card's VRAM. Puzzling though, because Daz was able complete the render (5.5 hours) before I used "Scene Optimizer" utility. I say puzzling, because 9 + 6 > 12 and.. (in doing a little homework) found that default for time is 7,200 seconds (2 hours) & 5,000 iterations. Obviously went well over that-- something like 6,800 interations and app took five hours, but it *did* finish. So it works, just a question of me hopefully reducing the time.
Anyway, great to know Terradome isn't the problem because I love playing around with zone 'B' -- makes terrific backdrop to add some perspective.
Had forgotten about GPU-Z -- thanks for the tip! Very good to know it's not stressing out my card, or leading to heat issues. (screenshot attached)
Scene Optimizer is terrific & well worth the money. Got me initial canvass in half the time! Unfortunately, it's adding white pixels now. Learned these are called "Fireflies?" Was 2 hours & 85% into the render when happened by & noticed white pixels. A bit worrisome, so I babysat it. Adding white specs - not filling them in. : (
Will have to get more familiar with Scene Optimizer, and as mentioned, learn how to tweak settings for time & number of render passes. I found time & rendering quality under the 'Render Settings' tab, but nothing for iterations or number of passes. (Did some homework on forums here & found couple of topics about noise and Iray 'fireflies.' Assume that's problem now facing.)
I'm not a tech person, but if I had to guess, I'd say "Modern Bungalow" has lower textures, so renders fine. Move into Terradome and higher rez textures... It's going to take a while! Scene Optimizer doing its job in replacing ground with lower rez textures, but something in settings isn't giving the app time to 'converge' or paint them in. Result (if I understood posts at other topics) is the app fills in white when it should be color of surrounding pipxels?
I hope that makes sense. Been at this almost all day, so a bit tired. Maybe "Dazzed out" might be better term. ; )
Thanks, everyone, for time in replying
--Bruce