Advice on a few things please - mostly with rendering issues and smart content.
hadeletlakhalom
Posts: 29
1) Is there a plugin or some other tool that will help me scan my massive daz3d library and 1) point out any products that don't have metadata so I can try to get them to work in smart content, and b) will go through and flag anything where the files the product needs it can't find any more and let me relocate them so it updates the path to where it is.
2) I render still images only - and I am wondering if Daz is the best software for that. So far, I really like it - the controls are intuitive(ish) to me and I have lots of content so I am a bit reluctant to say ok scrap all the time and effort and money I put into this and switch to something else. But at the same time, I really need to find a way to render images that are shadow heavy, and Daz really seems to suck at that (or I just am doing something wrong). And I would like to get into really hyper-realistic images and I am not sure if Daz can handle that, and or if that is a more render engine thing.. I have been using iray, and I like the results for most things. But I also notice that realism kind of sucks there at times. Again, I may just be doing something wrong or perhaps I am just needing a different render engine?
I tend to need to render things at 10800 by 7200. because I need to be able to print in 300dpi at 36x24 print sizes. And for the most part, Daz doesn't fight me on it. I have had some full, complex, scenes render in about 6 hours at that size and come out really well. But again, less photorealistic than I would like. I am thinking if I increase my texture threasholds that would help a lot? But if I do.. then it goes way past what my graphics card can handle and I don't have a bad graphics card. I have been thinking of setting up a virtual server, installing daz on it and rendering on that.. but is there a way to have my daz program on my computer and the daz program in the cloud connect or would I literally need to transfer and store my entire daz library in the virtual server.. because thats... a lot of freaking files! My daz library is like 750gb.
If it helps/matters. I have a NVIDIA® GeForceT GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 with G-Sync. I have space in my tower to get another video card if that would help, but I think to be able to use both cards at once you need to have the same card, and I can't shell out another $600 for that video card right now. I am also a little confused, I have atched my resource window when Daz renders something. I have 6GB of dedicated memory and 8 of shared.. so 14GB total, yet the second Daz has a scene that would use more than 4GB or so, it switches to CPU.. so for some reason it isn't fully utilizing my graphics cards capabilities and I don't know why or how to fix that.
Advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Comments
1) I'm not aware of a tool that will do that, but a script cold (slowly) do it by scanning through the content directories and checking each file against the CMS. However, that would be a raw list of files - it wouldn't tell you which ones belnged together as part of a product.
2) The usual advice would be to add more light, then use the Tone Mapping properties in Render Settings or an external editor to darken the image (for the latter you can use a Beauty Pass canvas in the Advanced tab of Render Settings to get an EXR version of the render, so you won't have to worry about posterisation with radical djustments to the light levels). That is how film traditionally does the job, to avoid noise from low-light shooting.
6GB, while respectable, isn't a lot. Still, I'm not sure even an 11GB 1080Ti or a 12GB Titan would let you use the textures at a full 4,000 pixels per side.
@hadeletlakhalom
You don't need that resolution to print 36x24, you just need a decent print application. Yes, it will interpolate, no it won't matter. You won't be able to see a difference.
How do you think gallery size prints are made? The highest current DSLR/Mirror Less camera resolutions are ~7950 x 5300.
Unfortunately when I built this rig I built it for gaming, I hadn't gotten into 3d rendering yet - at least not enough to realize that what was a great gaming video card would not serve me quite as well as a rendering system. Though to be fair, I can render 1000x1000 full scenes in about 10 hours which given some of the times for much smaller scenes I have seen people talk about on there, is apparently pretty good.
I hadn't though to play with the tone mapping. I guess I assumed that if I added a ton of light and then tone mapped it down, it would still have an issue because the tone mapping makes it dark... but I am not entirely used to wrapping my hear around physics based rendering yet so.. I will play with that thanks!
I will have to look into the canvasses, I don't have a clue what they do. I am sure I can find some tutorials around but if you happen to know any good ones please let me know.
@fastbike1 Thanks I will look into some specific interpolating software. From what I have read, while photoshop can do it - it doesnt do the best.
Canvasses allow a lot - you can use "Light path expressions" to have an image that shows the effect of only certain lights, for example, and then layer those in an image editor and adjust the opacity to vary light strengths after the fact (though I think, with only one light per canvas, that convergence of all the indirectly lit ares would make the process slow). Rendering a Beauty Pass to a canvas is just a way to get an EXR format version of the render, which has far more data than the regular PNG/JPG/Tiff save.