My current system specs:
Alienware 17 laptop i7 2.4Ghz quad-core CPU, 16 Gb RAM, NVidia GeForce 765M 2Gb VRAM(the system was purchased back in 2013).
How long does it take you folks to render just a simple character in CC3? I rendered a Genesis 8 character in Daz 3D and it took 25 minutes!!! No props, additional lighting, or anything like that. Just shoulder-length hair and a simple tank top & shorts, /w an "infinite dome". The irises and surrounding portions within the eyes came out kind of grainy/speckled, so I'm guessing I really need to add sufficient lighting of some kind prior to rendering. I'm thinking of trying 9 lights total, arranged in sets of 3 differing in height by 70 units: 3 in front, 3 on the left, and 3 on the right. I figure the more lighting, the less complex the shadowing. I'll have to do some more experimenting, but I'm guessing its the graphics card and CPU slowing things down. Daz was running the CPU like crazy during the rendering process.

Which would be better for this kind of work:
Intel Z370 system /w Intel Core i7-8700K (6-Core) 3.70GHz, 16 Gb RAM, GeForce GTX 1080 8GB VRAM
or
Intel X299 system /w Intel Core i7-7820X (8-Core) 3.60GHz(with possibility to upgrade to higher# cores CPU), 16 Gb RAM, GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb VRAM.

With iClone, your *GPU* (rather than CPU) specs will have the biggest impact on your render times.
Since both your cited options mention the GTX 1080, there'll not likely be any huge difference between the two with render times, however the CPU (core count) can impact on iRay render times.
The GTX 1080 is a respectable card - though with iClone - you can sort of never have enough ...
The more Vram you can go with - the better ....
iClone's render time for a CC3 character would be no where near as much as 25 minutes (using iClone's native renderer).
Different story for iRay of-course.
When it comes to lighting, throwing in more light sources isn't necessarily the answer - especially if using ray tracing (iRay), since extra lights will add to the render time considerably.
The native iClone renderer isn't bothered as much, but there's probably better ways to solve that problem - if it even shows up in iClone at all ....

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Yes, as Sonic says.  Be aware there is a HUGE difference between Iray rendering on ANY platform (iClone or Daz) versus the iClone native renderer.  In iClone, if our renders are less than 10fps we start to get concerned (it's not *impossible* for an iClone render, with a VERY complicated scene, to take up to a minute, but this is so exceptional it isn't anything I'd ever worry about).  iClone is all about render as close to "real time" as possible, so most things will render very quickly indeed.  iClone is designed for animation, and for getting it done in anyone's lifetime.

The tradeoff is quality, of course, but personally, with some exceptions (mirrors being the primary one) I much prefer the iClone native render over IRay.  Everyone's tastes will vary, of course.

The IRay plugin for iClone will take longer -- I doubt whether ANY scene would take more than 5-10 minutes to render but, again, you might have something exceptional.  But we won't know until much later this year.  It will work inside of Character Creator, of course, due out any day now, and if all you want is stills it will be all you need.

But...  If all you want is stills, I would not bother with iClone at all (or, honestly, CC3 either).  I'd stick with Daz.   And in either case, as has been said, the key is a good GPU (I wouldn't at this point get ANYTHING lower than a 1080 Ti -- there just isn't any need given the prices).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

yes, my recently acquired GTX 1070 is already nearing the 'edge' of the downhill - oh well - and as Mike would say "- Sigh"

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Its a hell of a spot to be in trying to figure out suitable hardware while not being fully familiar with the programs. I would gladly take a course for this at my college, but it turns out that its one of those "hybrid" courses for specific majors that they only offer in the fall semester every other year(fall 2019 would be the next). I had the same issue with Pathophysiology & Abnormal Psych.
My first render was done specifically with a Genesis 8 Essentials female character with basic skin, short hair, basic tank top/bottoms, and a basic pose. I didn't use any kind of IRay textures(or at least I'm pretty sure I didn't), no props or any kind of additional lighting. However, I do know that when I rendered the scene, it was done using NVidia IRay since that was the default setting.

Yes, at this point doing stills is my aim. The thing is sometimes you have two different versions of the same content. If I recall correctly, things such as eyes, lashes, skin textures, etc., can come as either an MDL, RSL, or both, with MDL being the IRay version. I think the RSL is for 3DelightDraw? The thing I don't like with the IRay skin textures is that when they are applied, they have a greater reflective shine to them comparable to king Tut's gold death-mask, albeit, not as pronounced. I forget the specific name designation for one of the surface settings in Daz 3D, but I end up having to knock it down from 1.00 to 0.50 to reduce this reflective shine. 
I'll have to give the 3DelightDraw option a try for rendering and see if its any faster. Hopefully I can still use the MDL textures since some of them do not have an RSL counterpart.

I'm comfortable with dropping $3k-3.5k on a decent desktop system for working on this stuff, but an X299 system with a 10-core or greater CPU would be well beyond my budget.

Yes, the 3Delight render worked many times faster, and it actually turned out a little better in some respects compared to IRay!!! I'll upload the 2 bmp images on here for comparison later when I get home. The open Wi-Fi we have at work is terrible(<100kbps). The 3Delight image is 1123 x 869 @ 1.12Mb and the IRay image is 985 x 869 @ 771Kb, so hopefully the file sizes aren't too big to insert in my post.

Well I guess I'm screwed. My second render attempt using 3Delight caused the laptop to shut down twice. Tried rendering again and did 3 more without a problem. 4th render the system shut down. I'm either stuck with IRay rendering or none. I'm guessing that if IRay was a problem like 3Delight, my system would've shut down at some point before completing the 25-minute IRay render. Shut downs like this tell me its hardware related and might have something to do with the demand placed on the CPU when rendering in 3Delight. Anyway, here are the renderings:

This first image(above) was rendered in 25 minutes using IRay with default settings. No props or lighting was added to the scene, just the character with clothes, of course. The second image(below) was rendered within 3-4 minutes using 3Delight with props and added lighting.

This is an interesting thread. I've been away since June, and I'm just beginning to plan the resumption of my iClone journey.


"Less clicks good, more clicks bad."

This is a very late reply, but how many Iray "iterations" were done in that 25 minutes?
Did you leave in on the default setting of 1,000 iterations?

For that image, I suspect you'd get nearly identical results with 200 iterations (and Denoise ON at iteration 199).  That would be a linear render time reduction, bringing the Iray render down to 5 minutes.  If that works, you could try lowing the iterations even more until you find the lowest acceptable threshold you find acceptable.

Good luck.

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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