Iray for non realism!

Jay Jay_1264499

Hi everyone. I appreciate this may seem a little odd but I'm looking to use Iray (Been a 3DL user for years now) as I find rendering HD figs takes forever (even on a pretty decent PC) I'm primarily a comic artist using Daz so use a lot of Age of Armour lights and Uberlighting and then take my render into Hitfilm for postmark. The image attached is lit with Uberlighting and further embellished in Hitfilm and took about 20 mins to render. I've hardly dabbled in Iray as the photo real look wasn't my thing but can Iray get me these sort of non realistic results? If so can anyone recommend a tutorial (YouTube or paid) that could point me in the right direction? Thank you for anyone who can advise me!

juvesatriani

It depend how Non Realistic you want to achieve . Using right lighting and materials for sure can help you . And yes you`re also need postwork ( color shifting - exposure etc ) if you want to push further. 

What makes NPR mostly about simple shape - limited color palette or tones and line art , but everyone have different ideas about Non photo Realistic especially when you like to blend with bit of realism. So as long your render at least have those three elements that will easier for you to push into Non Photo Realistic

Jay Jay_1264499

Thank you for the reply. Ideally I'm looking for similar realism like in the attached image I've done in 3DL as hyper realism isn't my main goal. Overall I'm actually still very happy with 3DL, it works for me and the projects I work on but its purely due to HD figures taking forever to render in 3Dl but I find they render quicker in Iray is whats making me look down the iray route. Gonna sit and play with some render settings but thanks for taking time to reply! Appreciate it

vrba79

You might want to look into the "My Shaders" collections. If you're wanting something specifically cartoony, that too can be done in IRAY via the Sketchy Toon shader, which I made this with.

Hylas

I feel you can quite easily achieve the kind of results you're after with IRAY, or at least something similar.

IRAY was built for photorealism, but that doesn't mean it automatically makes everything hyper-photorealistic at the press of a button. You have to actually work quite hard to achieve a result that might actually be mistaken for a real photograph. Most renders will fall somewhere in between photorealism and stylised... which is also where your example falls, I'd say.

But I also wonder why you feel the need to render HD figures if you're not after hyper-realistic results. Can't you just reduce the SubD and the texture sizes, and keep rendering in 3DL, if you like that engine?

 

vrba79

Yeah, lots of extra fine detail is the enemy when you're trying to achieve NPR.

Sven Dullah

Also, if you want to use 3DL, the SubD levels are for the viewport only so keep it at 1 to make it work smoothly. 3DL always renders at "max" SubD, HD morphs or not. Your rendertimes issues may be due to some light- or rendersettings, especially samples or shading rate? You could post screenshots if you like.

Generally HD morphs will have an impact on rendering with 3DL, however it shouldn't be very significant. And I agree with the others, if you're not going for realism, consider leaving them out;)

Edit to add: If by Uberlight you mean UberEnvironment2 (UE2), depending on its settings rendering could take forever:)) I want to believe there's the culprit?

Jay Jay_1264499

Morning all Thank you all very much for the replies, really appreciate your time. Funnily enough I was reading another post about SubD settings so thats going to be my next round of testing. When it comes to render settings and shading rates I've found a bit of a sweet spot where I can get a decent render without it taking half a day per image. I mainly use Age of Armour advanced lights for nearly all my scenes with a shading rate of 1 and then I play with the other sample settings depending on the outcome of the test render. If I need anything to emit light like for example in the image I attached you can see light emitting from the ring and the light panels I then add an Uberlighting Base and change that to ambient and play with the settings. Appreciate thst all of this adds to an increase in render times. Never knew that the SubD settings were for the viewport and how they got handled via the 3DL engine so that's a handy bit of new knowledge! Thank you all for your input! Have a great day

Sven Dullah

Aah right, the UberArea ligth, sorry for being thick:) Yeah it's a render hog for sure. Do note that each polygon is treated as a separate emitter. Making complex geometry emit light may require some workarounds. Like using a highpoly model with ambient, visible to the camera and a low poly copy that actually emits light but is hidden to the camera (Fantom).

Jay Jay_1264499

Ah no worries, no definitely not you being thick. I just didn't explain it well..! Thats interesting about every polygon is a light emitter, wasn't aware of that. To answer another earlier question was that my reason for using HD figures is that some of the Gen 8 character figures are HD only. Some have a slider to remove the HD element which definitely helps, but some are HD or nothing.