The Highest Possible Quality? Assume Unlimited Render Time.
vijayasimhabr
Posts: 204
Folks, As of this month, I have now been a Daz user for over 6 months. I am sure, I still have beginner only skills, and I need to keep learning. Improving myself.
Here is what I am currently doing.
1. I usually render at 4K or 8K. I understand that more pixels means more render time.
1. I understand that, using HDRI helps me get relatively faster renders when compared to using the Sun or Scene Lights. For instance, a HDRI render at 8K might take about 20 minutes to 60 minutes on my RTX 3060 12 GB with Dome Only. If I decide to switch to Sun, with all those shadows, the render might take, 90 minutes to 180 minutes for the same scene setup.
1. I understand that if I turn on camera DOF, backgrounds gets blurred, making the renders more real (as in real world photography, where background is in fact blurred), and also faster while focusing on the object.
1. I also understand that, closeups take more time. Like when I am very close to the face, which is undestandable.
1. I also understand the more scene lights, more reflections, more objects, more lights bouncing off, more time to render.
1. I also understand that the % of render quality is ultimately up to me. If I am happy with what I see at 50 %, I can just stop, or I can let it go till 99% or even 100 %.
So, so far, so good.
Now, let us assume that I have unlimited render time. Instead of waiting 1 to 4 hours, like I do now, say, I am willing to wait 8 to 24 hours or more.
Now, what else could I possibly do to get higher quality.
1. I could bump the render resolution up to 16 K. I guess.
1. SubDivision Level? I am currently sticking with the default, which is Level 1. Does, increasing this, make renders better?
1. And, what is this second thing, Render SubD Level. I am currently keeping it at default Level 2. Should I be increasing this?
1. Render Quality, I set it at 4. Should I increase it?
is there anything else I can or should be doing, that can make things just a little bit more realistic. I am happy with my current renders, and they are comparable to the product page images. So, I think, I am doing okay and satisfied with the current renders. But, I just thought, let me just ask. In case, I am missing something obvious.
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Comments
The HDRI shines light in from all around (as determined by the map's colour), while SunSky is a more limited range of light (though it does send light from the sky as well as the sun). The more areas are not lit directly, so that light has to bounce to reach them, the longer the render will take to converge.
I wouldn't expect that, blurring smoothly can require more render time than producing a sharp image.
If the render is against a non-modelled or transparent backdrop then yes, zooming in will increase the number of pixels being worked on. Even if not, zooming in on a computationally more demandign area (a shader with more complex calculations, or mutliple layers of geometry to be taken into account, will increase the tiem taken - and the eyes are often both.
To an extent, but as I said above more directly lit areas can actually speed rendering.
This is used by the non-rendered Viewport Drawstyles, it has no bearing on renders with Iray (it is used for geometry export, so may affect soem other render engines which export the geometry for rendering)
This is the one that does affect Iray - it controls how much the model is smoothed. Every level divides the polygons of the previous level into four and adjusts their points to smooth the shape. If you can see the angles of the model (usually in profile) then increasing the value may help, if not it will just quadruple the amount of geometry data sent to the renderer for each level added.
This determines the point at which a pixel is declared to be converged - broadly the higher the value the less variantion is acceptable between iterations. Four is pretty high, I am not sure you are seeing any great effect anyway let alone that you would for a higher value..
You need to be able to see shortcomings, or have others that you trust point out shortcomings, and then learn how to resolve those - otherwise you risk simply wasting time (and electricity).
This may seem obvious, but you forgot to mention source textures. Render quality won't mean much without source texture quality, so I hope your source textures are 8k or larger. I have no idea what they use in movies nowadays, maybe like 12k or 16k textures.
This really, really depends on what it's being used for. An 8K HDRI background used in a high-resolution, narrow-angle shot might not be big enough, while an 8K eye texture on a background figure is serious overkill.
Sure, but Daz Studio doesn't give us the luxury of pre-selecting our texture resolution sets. That's something left up to the content maker. If only 8k is available, then I'm gonna use it for everything.
It looks like I am already doing everything I can do get a good quality output.
I will play around with the Render SubD Level, RH.
As always, thank you RH, Seven and Murga :)
Until next t ime folks.
Subdivision level also effects the detail in bump, normal, and displacemant maps. Seems odd, but it does. No one mentioned the Iray Compression settings, or the Pixel Filter. Both of these will effect the quality of your render significantly.
It's also worth mentioning that many subsurface settings, think skin and eyes, take a lot of itterations to really come together and look as good as they can. Also the settings I mentioned above really effect how "light" bends and bounces in the subsurface, since they really effect the virtual shape of the surface itself.
Normal and bump are surface effects and don't depend on SubD, displacement in Iray does.
Richard Haseltine I stand corrected on the normal and bump. I assumed, because many other render engines take subD into account for those, that Iray also does. I guess it's just a placebo effect for me that it always seems to help with those in Iray. Maybe it's just the smoother curvature of the geometry that makes it seem so.
Any thoughts on caustic sampler and spectral rendering? I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that both can help achieve more realistic results. Whether "realistic" and "highest possible quality" are the same thing I guess depends on what you're looking for.
Without caustics
With Caustics
No comparison in my view. The caustics look way better. It's most obvious with the chromatics on the glass, but somehow, everything just "pops".
Using the caustic sampler only changes the way "light" refracts through surfaces with refraction, and therefore also how that "light" falls onto the other surfaces. It's likely that any other differences between those two renders are mostly because there is clearly less noise in that render since it's so much closer to being mathamatically complete. Also since it's got an additional character with clothing and likely hair, besides the camera being at a slightly different angle, it's kind of hard to really even compare them. Like apples and oranges. No doubt the glass looks way better with caustic turned on, but it's really hard to judge any other aspects of the render because it's just so different.
@vijayasimhabr
you can disable "Render Quality Enable" in render settings. In that case only "Max Samples" and "Max Time" are used as a stop threshold. The more high you set them the better the "quality" you get - Iray will not stop anymore by its own internal "quality decision" because the algorythm, that decides that the pixel conversion is good enough, is disabled.
I see. I will give this a go in one of my renders. I do understand that, more rendering = more quality. Thank you @cgidesign
You can also take time out of the equation by setting max time to 0. Then it will only be taking min/max sample settings into account when deciding when to stop rendering. You can also click on the gear icon on the right of the min and max sample settings box, go to parameter settings, and add ton of zeros to max number. Slide it all the way up, then it will just keep rendering until you tell it to stop or it melts your PC :P
It's also absorbed by diffuse maps which also affects the lighting of a scene. Caustic is any lighting contribution that goes from the light source to specular (reflective or refractive), to diffuse surface, to the eye (or camera). The longer the pathway the better the caustic. The first image had the caustics turned off.