Background Render?

Deke

Is there a way to background render in Daz and keep working on the next set-up?

Jaderail

Not that I know of. But I never tried that either. I think it's not doable unless you have two different installs which would be a VERY big PITA to do.

ShelLuser

To my knowledge this isn't possible "out of the box" so to speak, but the easiest (and in my opinion also better) way to achieve this is by using another render engine; the open source LuxRender project. Now, although LuxRender itself is free you'll also need a Daz Studio plugin which will provide support to export your project in a way which LuxRender can handle. The easiest approach to that would be Luxus which can be bought from the Daz website.

The fun part here is that it's a completely separate program which gets started. By default it'll start in the background with DS "listening" to it (you'll see a window where it shows the log which LuxRender keeps) but you can easily change that behaviour. For example by telling it to start the LuxRender GUI. Now you'll end up with Daz Studio exporting your material, starting & pointing LuxRender to that material after which Daz Studio continues with business as usual, leaving the rendering up to LuxRender.

So now you can continue working on your project while Lux takes care of the rendering. Which can have its advantages because now you'll also be able to control the priority (for example) or even pause and later restart the render process. Or if you really want to do something drastic you could even setup "render nodes" (other computers in your network which also run LuxRender). That way you can even distribute the load to other computers or even a cluster.

Personally I'd say that if you want more advanced scenario's such as these then LuxRender & Luxus provide the means to do it.

Tjeb

If you download the stand-alone version of 3Delight, you can export your scene to a RIB file.
Open a DOS box and let 3Delight handle the RIB file while you work on your next scene.

ShelLuser

Now that is an interesting tip tjeb!

I did some extra research and indeed; 3delight is an engine which is normally licensed. However you can download 3delight pro-studio for free which also grants you a free license (even for commercial use) but on a per single-user basis. So one license per user.

Although you can do anything you want the software is slightly limited. If you have a PC which has more than 4 CPU cores then only 4 will be used (see the website for further information).

Now the only problem would be to export your Daz scene as RIB file. As with all good things someone has already paved the way so to speak. Check out this forum thread; here adict explains all the steps you need to render your work outside DAZ studio.

Tjeb

So in short:

- exporting to RIB is called 'Render To RIB' in the advanced tab of the Render Settings;
- click the Windows Start button, type CMD and there is your DOS box. most likely opened in: C:\users\yourname>_
- remember DOS? just type the letter of the drive you want to navigate to, followed by a colon.
- 'cd' (for 'change directory'), and then the TAB key is a great help here.
- when finished in DOS type 'exit'.

TIP:
while you are on the 3Delight site, have a look at the top of the pages to the examples, (changes every 6 seconds or so)
and realise you don't have to spend money on Reality. Octane, whatever.....
= 3Delight is the #2 Render Engine in Hollywood =

Deke

Great tips. I'm on a mac, but downloading 3Delight now and will give it a try. Thanks.