Hello everyone, here are some information to help you evaluate the Iray Plugin before the official launch date. 
If you have any questions, please leave a comment in this thread.

Compatibility

The Iray plugin supports both Character Creator 3 and iClone 7.
*Iray ready iClone 7 will be made available in the final quarter of 2018.

Hardware Support

1. Iray supports any number or combination of NVIDIA CUDA GPUs and CPUs running within the same machine and gives you control over which are being used for rendering.
2. AMD graphics card is not supported in this architecture. 
3. NVIDIA CUDA GPUs System requirements
• GPUs of CUDA compute capability 3.0 and higher are supported
• The drivers needs to support CUDA 9.0
4. Reference: NVIDIA Render Performance Benchmark

Example: a system with two NVIDIA GTX-1080 graphic cards can almost double the render speed.



Performance

Rendering speed for the Iray Plugin is on par with NVidia Iray.  We will perform more tests and provide users a reference report by the time of the official launch.

Animation Sequence Rendering

Multiple frame rendering is available for iClone's Iray plugin, while Character Creator will only offer single frame rendering.

Lighting and Shadow



Example: iClone can cast shadows without a light source while Iray can not. This explains why there is a difference in the shadows for the WIP 1 video.




Supported iClone Post Effects

In the the first Iray PlugIn release, we will focus on Iray’s photorealistic rendering, iClone camera and light mapping, as well as the full MDL material support. We do hope we can deal with other post effects like LUT, HDR, or NPR in the near future. 


Compatibility to the Existing iClone Functions

Only the incompatible ones are listed: 

• Heightmap Terrain -- will be supported in the next official release 
• SpeedTree -- will be supported in the next official release
• Water
• Particle (e.g. PopcornFX)

Indigo Comparison

The implementation of Iray has superceded the feature sets of the legacy Indigo render system.

	Iray	Indigo
Company	Nvidia	Glare Technologies
Available Render Modes	Interactive & Photoreal	Photoreal
Supports CPU Rendering	Yes	Yes
Support GPU Rendering	Yes	Yes
Render Speed	Fast	Slow
Supports Disney PBR Workflow	Yes	No
Supports Multi-passes	Yes	No
Material Format	MDL (Exchangeable)	IGM

Iray Batch Render

iClone and CC will export and pass the scene to Iray Batch Render, which implies that users are allowed to render without iClone and CC running in the background. 

*The Development Team is looking into cloud-based rendering service, but we can't promise anything at this moment.

"iClone and CC will export and pass the scene to Iray Batch Render, which implies that users are allowed to render without iClone and CC running on the background. "

Can you please elaborate on the iRay Batch Renderer?  Thanks!

I don't mean to offend anyone but RL really needs to proofread their announcements, bad sintaxis, incomplete sentences, etc. In some cases it is a bit confusing

Thanks for the information.
I know we still have questions, and will continue to think of more, but every update is appreciated.  At least it sounds like Reallusion has been listening.



P.S.
I was not surprised at all to hear the Iray plug-in will not support PopcornFX.  At least not yet.
I believe I put that in my one of my very first don't-get-too-excited-yet posts when the plug-in was first released.

Oh, I am still excited, but I expected limitations, and assumed there would be some that will stop a lot of people from rendering their movies in Iray.  Some may have great success, but if PopcornFX is important to you, you'll continue to render in iClone.  SpeedTree?  How to control refraction, caustics, and subsurface scattering from inside iClone?  And we still need to learn a lot more about real-world performance.  But as I said above, all updates and bits of information are appreciated.

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

My bad! We will update a new version later.

PopcornFX Compatibility?

It's under evaluation. PopcornFX will not be compatible in the first release.

Sound's no good ...

PopcornFX was one point I continue using IClone7, and Iray Plugin purpose enhance DAZ Integrate result.
Hope Iray Plugin don't step back what's Indigo Plugin go-on.

"AMD graphics card is not supported in this architecture. "

Yeah, for me, bought a plugin I can't use..... (laptop has AMD graphics card, so can't change it).



Home built PC:- i9 9900K 32GB RAM, Zotac 1080TI mini.
Band Music:-  https://thehairthieves.bandcamp.com/
Solo Instrumentals:- https://sineglidermusic.bandcamp.com/

Yeah，replace new nvidia computer

Iray will run on your CPU, just more slowly than on an Nvidia card.

So it now comes down to your patience...  for individual stills, you might be okay.

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Quoting myself from 4 months ago:



We now know PopcornFX is not supported (for now, at least).

What about SpeedTree?  Fog?  PopVideo?
What about animated textures (video on the diffuse/base material channel)?
What about keyframed Substances?  Or Substances that are "animated" via the $TIME variable (great for water caustics, among other things)?

What else can we render in iClone that won't render via the Iray plug-in?

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD