For the moment, I love Iray. It's okay for me for time rendering, I render 30 s of animation during just one night so no time wasted.
The big problem is : I can't use particles, the DOF doesn't work well as the native render, and fog is missing. For the water, I use soft cloth with video texture, it's really ok but we also need REAL FLOW as in other 3D softwares using it. That's a big limitations for Iray but one more time, I LOVE Iray.


     

Charly! YES - I too *LOVE* the 'look' of Iray... But the *limitations* - yes, there are limitations - the most basic being *time*. But - if you've got the time, AND you can live with the other 'constraints' - it's a terrific end result and a *great look* for sure ....

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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, Steeve, I've pushed so far and I renderd with 20 iterations, denoising 19, It was fast  I'll show here the result, not too bad.
It's really nice. I'm looking for a way to "cheat" as with the water for the fog and particles using transparent videos, we will see...


     

When will this possible ? It's Iray, and it's water





     

The DOF works for me, but I change certain settings in iClone, which are not realistic. I set Perfect Focus Range to 0 and then only use Focus Distance and Transition Region. Occasionally, I also adjust the Blur Strength.

If you want to get fancy, you can render a Depth map out of Iray and do the DOF in post.

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Thank you Animagic, I'll give a try of that.

When I have to use particles, I 'm forced to use nativ render . 




     

I've been wondering if it would be possible to somehow combine the Iray render with the native render, which would provide the particles.

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@Job " ..... If you want to get fancy, you can render a Depth map out of Iray and do the DOF on post ..... " 
Yes, I've heard that said before, but now you've got me thinking ... This method of rendering out an Iray 'depth map' I'd assumed was for creating DOF looks on 'Iray' renders (in post). But I wonder how it would work (the same approach), combining an Iray depth map - but with standard iClone renders? - could be interesting - I might do some testing ...


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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

if you use After effects or hitfilms a depth map is a easy way to composite in them pesky particles
you also have the same geometry and cameras so you can turn obstructions into mattes
and everything composites with little fuss


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It's actually really easy to create a iClone render depth-map as welI. You basically just kill the lights in your scene and turn on the fog set to white. Adjust  the fog range so the far away is as white as you like, and the immediate foreground is black (not effected by white fog).