Best software settings for fast Iray 4k renders?

RobertDy

I have two GPUs, RTX3090 and RTX 2080 Ti and they give me 2-5 minutes of render time on average for 1080p pics. My goal is to produce 4k renders at the same render times; I found that with my current hardware each render takes 4-5 times longer. Buying an extra GPU is going to be very expensive so I'd like to explore software options first, are there any tips and tricks to speed things up from DAZ's Iray settings without affecting quality and visual accuracy too much? I used to do section planes but they caused lots of light to flow in.

TimberWolf

Sadly, I think you already know the answer to this one! There are no magical iRay settings that will cut render times by 75%, preserving the quality you want. iRay is an unbiased renderer so if you want those kind of speed improvements whilst retaining the quality you will have to throw hardware at it.

There are optimisations you can make in your scene as I'm sure you're aware: Cut the subdivision level of distant objects, reduce the size of your texture maps, hide off-camera geometry and so on but the time taken to do this might outweight the time savings you make during rendering. Section planes are very viable for clipping unwanted geometry but this does come with some extra work in terms of creating light blockers to preserve your scene's ambience.

There are a couple of utilities in the Daz store that can help with these optimisations but, even then, you will not be able to render the equivalent of four 1k images in the same time as a single 1k image without having more GPU processing power.

https://www.daz3d.com/camera-view-optimizer

https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer

What you could try is an image upscaler. These are very, very good these days and we use one for particularly complex scenes (2k upscaled to 4k). Give Topaz Labs' Gigapixel AI a try. It has an unlimited free trial but will watermark your saved upscaled images until you pay for a license which is a one-off $99. If you produce a really good noise free 1k render, this does an excellent job. It's obviously not quite as good as an actual 4k render but it's a lot cheaper than a 4090 or another 3090.

jkj

I use gigapixel AI to upscale renders;

It works quite well on some kinds of images, and not so well on others. it's also handy for upscaling animation (when you've saved the individual frames).

I'll try to post an upscaled image. last time this forum didn't post images. Lets see...




 

jkj

Sorry "attach a file" upload button doesnt work, just freezes. no idea.

PerttiA

jkj said:

Sorry "attach a file" upload button doesnt work, just freezes. no idea.

It does work, but only between 6PM and midnight Daztime 

RobertDy

TimberWolf said:

Sadly, I think you already know the answer to this one! There are no magical iRay settings that will cut render times by 75%, preserving the quality you want. iRay is an unbiased renderer so if you want those kind of speed improvements whilst retaining the quality you will have to throw hardware at it.

There are optimisations you can make in your scene as I'm sure you're aware: Cut the subdivision level of distant objects, reduce the size of your texture maps, hide off-camera geometry and so on but the time taken to do this might outweight the time savings you make during rendering. Section planes are very viable for clipping unwanted geometry but this does come with some extra work in terms of creating light blockers to preserve your scene's ambience.

There are a couple of utilities in the Daz store that can help with these optimisations but, even then, you will not be able to render the equivalent of four 1k images in the same time as a single 1k image without having more GPU processing power.

https://www.daz3d.com/camera-view-optimizer

https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer

What you could try is an image upscaler. These are very, very good these days and we use one for particularly complex scenes (2k upscaled to 4k). Give Topaz Labs' Gigapixel AI a try. It has an unlimited free trial but will watermark your saved upscaled images until you pay for a license which is a one-off $99. If you produce a really good noise free 1k render, this does an excellent job. It's obviously not quite as good as an actual 4k render but it's a lot cheaper than a 4090 or another 3090.

Thanks, I still think the camera optimizer is worth a shot. I have Scene Optimizer but I personally find it a little too tedious to use, but the Camera one looks promising!

RobertDy

jkj said:

I use gigapixel AI to upscale renders;

It works quite well on some kinds of images, and not so well on others. it's also handy for upscaling animation (when you've saved the individual frames).

I'll try to post an upscaled image. last time this forum didn't post images. Lets see..

I could check this out too, though the (idiotic) purist in me wants true 4k just for the authencity, haha!