https://www.artstation.com/pascalcomics
https://www.renderosity.com/users/Pascal_Comics/gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcomics/gallery

I found the "Project" and "Preference" windows when I switched from the "Standard" workspace to "All Panels". Very sneaky, RL. BUT, even putting a background image into the scene in CC3, the iRay render completely ignores it. And that bucket (fill) tool disappears when you come across a Substance material. . Looks like they don't want you to copy it to other items in the scene. I'm still looking for a way to bring in Substance material into CC3 directly. So far, no go. I also found that the "Red Shift"  can be used as a HUE slider that can give you a night scene with the Tone Mapper exposure set to "low"  Here are 3 images of the same scene to show some effects. The first 2 show the Sun&Sky using an Ektochrome film effect in the second. The 3rd image shows what you see in the regular CC3 preview window. 








https://www.artstation.com/pascalcomics
https://www.renderosity.com/users/Pascal_Comics/gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcomics/gallery

This image is total iRay materials with Sun&Sky settings.  It took about 40 minutes to get to 1000 iterations. There's still a lot to figure out. One thing for sure. iRay looks its best with Sun&Sky. Yes, you can do great interior lighting images with studio lights etc. but iRay's realism excels with Sun&Sky lighting in my opinion. Almost all of the iRay materials are "shiny" to bring out the realism but you'll need the Substance materials to get rough realistic rocks. I hope RL bundles more MDL material or makes it easier to use Substance inside CC3.

 

https://www.artstation.com/pascalcomics
https://www.renderosity.com/users/Pascal_Comics/gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcomics/gallery

I just figured out how to work with Substance in CC3. Have to use the Appearance Editor. I thought the Editor was dead according to the forum but it's not for .sbsar files. They even have a note that says "Click to activate the appearance editor". How nice. It works well when you can find out where your Substance files are hiding. Like I mentioned before, shiny stuff is nice but when you need the grainy, not so shiny ground materials, Substance is a treat to use. I'll post something soon with both Substance and iRay materials together soon. 

https://www.artstation.com/pascalcomics
https://www.renderosity.com/users/Pascal_Comics/gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcomics/gallery

There has been a lot of misinformation about the Appearance Editor in CC3, unfortunately. It works for everything except CC3 skin for which it needs to be updated due to the higher texture resolution.

I'm a novice at Substance, so it would be interesting to learn about your experiences.

BTW, I just tried Iray with a background image and it does render in Iray for me. However, if using Sun and Sky background images will be ignored, I believe.

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I'm a novice at Substance, so it would be interesting to learn about your experiences.

Thanks for jumping in, animagic.  I just found out that RL has severly restricted the use of Substance in CC3 unless it's "cloth".  Any prop you bring into the scene won't even show up in the material list so forget about Substance unless you apply it in iClone and even then, you won't be able to switch to a new Substance  material in CC3. And some important parameters are missing like being able to tile the texture or flip the UV's like "Planer" or "Box" etc.  Very limiting. It seems like you're going to have to do all the work in iClone and then bring it into CC3. Anyway, it's what I've discovered so far.  I like what you posted. Very cool.  Anyway, I'm doing more research on this. I hope RL didn't just "throw iRay into the mix" like they did with the other renderer that went basically nowhere. 

https://www.artstation.com/pascalcomics
https://www.renderosity.com/users/Pascal_Comics/gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcomics/gallery

Very confusing. I posted that you couldn't tile or flip UV's in CC3 but with certain Substances, you get all the manipulation tools. I'm trying to find rhyme or reason here but I'm having trouble coming up with a logical reason for all this. Anyway, iRay turns out delicious visuals and when it comes to shiny stuff, this program rocks!




https://www.artstation.com/pascalcomics
https://www.renderosity.com/users/Pascal_Comics/gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcomics/gallery

How does Iray deal with animations? Still exporting the frames one by one and create a huge cache on hdd?

I don't know. I never tried it. One of the pictures below took close to 40 minutes for one frame. Not anxious to try even a 10 second animation. That's 300 frames at 40 minutes each. That would probably take longer than the time I got left to live. 



https://www.artstation.com/pascalcomics
https://www.renderosity.com/users/Pascal_Comics/gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/pascalcomics/gallery

DroneMaster (12/14/2018)

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hattori kun (12/14/2018)

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How does Iray deal with animations?

I don't know. I never tried it. One of the pictures below took close to 40 minutes for one frame. Not anxious to try even a 10 second animation. That's 300 frames at 40 minutes each. That would probably take longer than the time I got left to live. 

@Hattori Kun - We will have to wait until "1Q19" when the Iray plug-in for iClone is released.  (1Q19 starts January 1st and ends March 31st, so anywhere in that range.)

@DroneMaster - Are you rendering at the default of 1,000 Iterations?  Try changing your Max Iterations to 250, with Denoise turned on at 249 and see how that looks.  It should finish in 1/4 the time.  Ten minutes is still a long time for an animation frame, but 10 is a lot better than 40.  If that looks okay, try 100 iterations, with Denoise on at 99 and you'll be down to 4-minutes. 

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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.
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