I recently purchased the iRay and Light Studio combo. Impressed with the rendering capability for stills but for animation you would need to go off to a render farm. Is there a tutorial for how to set this up to a render farm. I can imagine the MI files and the source iClone file is needed but has anyone tested it yet to a render farm.  Does anyone have recommendations for render farms they have had success with for iClone?

The render times for the built-in renderer with iClone are a lot faster for a Pre-Vis sequence. Even for a lower quality sequence, rendering a 4K .png sequence, scaled down to 1080 final output is quite sharp. The issue is you see the amazing iRay renders and want to output your work to that quality. So render farms are the only option unless you invest in a USB connected bank of external graphics cards. Which would be very, hot and expensive and become outdated quickly. Electricity bills would increase too.  You would have a rig that is bit like Bitcoin mining.

4K animation is quite prohibitive too. I made a number of tests with 4K and found that adding a pre-rendered background panel in your iClone scene is the fastest way to go. Also rendering a scene or character on grey/background off as a series of .PNG files is advisable so you can re-render skipped or missing files.
There is no overall motion blur or interlaced frame rendering with either the internal renderer of iRay. This is why output looks so crisp and 3D looking. Clips can be re-rendered in After Effects with motion blur added to the overall frame for interlaced video but that would be an extra step.  If you sent the iClone files to a render farm, then recomposed the scene in After Effects, it may work but have not tried it yet. The other major consideration with video file and 4K in general is the file size and amount of storage required.

Imagine where we will be when 8K comes out? For now 4K looks like it is here to stay for a while and there is so much more animation projects being made. 
For now I use iRay for stills and I like the results very much and with the standalone render option it proves to be a useful tool.

If you render a .png still frame at 1080, enlarge it to 4K and then render a frame at 4K, then compare the two, there is not so much difference. 

:cool: Anyone have a more in depth tutorial or tips for the full rendering and compositing process at 4K and 1080 would be welcome.  Also a recommended PC setup with graphics card options. 

Also iRay only renders in 30 and 60 frames per second. Why no 24 or 25/50 option?  Could there be a render option for stills, to render all layers RGB, AO, Normal, Materials etc to one .PSD file in layers?




Europafilms - Creative Studio

Hi ZenMuse,
I'll expand on my previous message since you took some time to explain.
I'd also like to refer you to this link - particularly the pictures:
https://forum.reallusion.com/446774/I-probably-should-not-have-bought-iRay
I posted this when  testing the iRay render plug in and to be frank I was shocked how "Beta" this plug in was.

If you look at the picture in the link you'll notice that the lighting, color, and contrast completely changed between the iClone preview and the iRay render.
The issue here is that the iRay preview doesn't update fast enough on my Titan X Pascal (similar speed to a 2080).  Now that's not a new card but still a pretty decent GPU yet it's unable to live update lighting changes in iRay.  The render speed I suspect is more CPU dependent and takes 30 minutes for a 4K frame which is too long.  I've done renders in other software taking a week for 10 seconds of video but those were worth it.  The look of iRay isn't worth it IMO.
But the main thing is that I can't wait for two minutes for the preview to update when I position a light and since the iclone preview looks nothing like the iRay render this is my biggest issue.

I doubt there is a render farm out there anywhere for IClone - iRay.  Who renders in this?

Additionally in the iRay render everything but the face looks worse.  I asked Reallusion if it's possible to render just the face with an Alpha channel.  That would down render time and isolate the only thing the iRay render seems to be good for.  Apparently that’s not an option.  iClone overall needs better render settings.  If I pay extra money for a renderer I'd like the option to render DPX/Cineon with Alpha channel and I want control over color bit depth.  I'd hope iClone/iRay renders in 10 or 12 bit but since there is no setting I'm afraid it's probably 8 bit.   I also have the impression Reallusion doesn't quite grasp the benefits of HDR rendering.  If I want to up the contrast in post I easily can do that but I can't "down" the contrast once it's been baked into the render.  Again that's a fail when it comes to the iRay plug in as the results are way to contrasty.

You write that you "up" your image from 1080p to 4K (more on that bellow) and that the resolution isn't that different.  Well, the resolution of UHD is 4x greater than 1080p and 4K is 4x the resolution of 2K.  In order to see the difference you first need to be working on an UHD monitor, because an HD monitor won't show you any difference at all and then for final viewing it really depends on size and distance.

You wrote: If you render a .png still frame at 1080, enlarge it to 4K and then render a frame at 4K, then compare the two, there is not so much difference.

This procedure will not only not make much difference it makes no difference at all because you are only increasing the file size but not the resolution!   AE or Photoshop will only render each pixel 4 times it's not going to render more image content.  There is some up scaling software out there but I have never tried it and I'd guess it's probably expensive (if it's any good), but I don't know.

Anyway, long story short.  I've rendered a total of 3 shots in iClone and then moved on to greener pastures.  I'm rendering in Unreal which also has it's issues but it's an improvement plus Unreal is pushing their output for film production so hard that we'll see continuous improvements of their render engine with professional settings.

If it's good enough for the Mandalorian, it's sure good enough for me:)

As to your question about frame rate: I render 24 fps.

Finally when it comes to computer suggestions I'd recommend you wait for the imminent release of the 3080 GPU series and for a CPU I'd recommend a third generation AMD Threadripper which come in 24 core, 32 core and 64 core - unfortunately they also come with a pretty hefty price tag.

thanks for the reply cinemyscope. I have taken a look at your render samples on the previous thread you linked. In short I use the iClone render for pre-vis of shots and animation, then iRay is just for final lighting look reference frames. Unreal is new for me, so I will dive into some research on lighting in Unreal from iClone Live Link files. With all the cool software marketing, Unreal and Reallusion show super-pro stills and animation clips but I want to see the project files that they were created from to fully understand the model, material and lighting set-up. Consistency of pipeline. Show and Tell from in-house experts from Reallusion and Unreal going over the set-up of the demo files would be a start.  

Yes, in iClone even with iRay, the renders the results are higher in contrast than I would like. (I notice that you had a refund which, if you are getting better results in Unreal, so I understand why you were frustrated with it).

However, I just discovered a recent tutorial which goes into detail about SSS settings and Micro-Normal textures.  

iClone 7.8 & CC 3.3 Tutorial Intro to SSS Shader   https://youtube.com/watch?v0Ywg5BmwvGO8

Here are two demo files of characters in CC3 with SSS and dome lighting which render out well in iRay. Curious to see a user demo these DH.Male character demo files in Unreal and compare rendering results side by side. Transferring lighting as well. 



This image is from the DH.Male demo file rendered with only 330 iterations. Demo lighting set-up.



This image is rendered with 244 iterations. (Low-res mesh for the T-shirt), so just focusing on the face/head. Lighting is Venice Sunrise set-up in Light Studio (basically a cool blue sunrise IBL image).

It all depends on the final look users are going for but I agree, it would be good to see more HDR capability to get the detail back from the shadows (see the nostril and chin line in the first image).

For stills, CC3 and iClone is getting better.  I will have to experiment more with some render settings to see if I can get more super realistic results, now the CC3.3 and SkinGen with Eye Occlusion and Tear Line have been released. I like the Material Render and AO feature for stills but it is going to be post-work in Photoshop and post colour grading until iRay is improved.

Lighting is Key to all realistic 3D work.

Lighting can take a while to master. I also purchased the Light Studio bundle, so with some softbox lighting, GI and 4K HDR combinations, I am achieving better results. 
There are some challenges for sure but as always with VFX and 3D animation, it takes time..... and mastering of lighting techniques to perfect..... and even more post-processing with LUTs or colour grading options to make the pro-renders you can expect from Maya or similar you see on Artstation. For now I will stick with iRay and CC3 for creating characters and focus on perfecting lighting.

I would like to see a S-LOG type render setting for iRay so the final grading has more HDR to play with, especially in the shadow areas. So will have to see what the Dev Team can come up with as far as pro-render settings. 
Cineon with Alpha, 10bit and 12bit options would be a plus for sure. If RL are offering the iRay to compete with the output of Maya there will have to be improvements.

Thanks for the computer tip as well.  Mandalorian is a great looking, cinematic experience. ILM have access to all the toys.
The render quality of Unreal 5 looks promising too.

With all this advancement, it will be interesting to see the levels of quality improve but I am holding off on investing in even more quick-to-be-outdated hardware until quantum computing is affordable.    




Europafilms - Creative Studio

So, I just read today that the RTX will render IRAY faster than a GTX 1080. So I went out and got one. LOL I got the RTX 2080 and couldn't wait to see how much faster it would be!
Its fast. Very fast.

I did a quick test, I wish I would have done a before and after but I didn't.  Here is a quick video that I did, 512x512 - 30 frames per second at 200 iterations all textures are 4K- 
Normally this would take at least an hour before.
This took about 10 mins. 



The video is nothing fancy, I was in a hurry to test it. 

Haha love that commitment Dorothy Jean, That's so cool.

Yes, I was so excited to see the RTX speed take hold last night.  Trying to get through my workload for the day to do further tests.

Your video looks great, and the fact that it rendered in ten minutes versus an hour - legendary.

There is a thread somewhere with benchmark tests using various GPUs. I'll have to find it, but it would be interesting to see what your card does with that. I'm a bit surprised because the Iray plugin has not been updated as far as I know.

---

It was Job. Now there is a full RTX support for Iray. We discussed that with user amckenzie yesterday:
https://forum.reallusion.com/451727/RE-Iray-has-RTX-support?PageIndex=2#bm451759

Ha!!!! That is where I read it! I was looking for that thread. Thank you!

So I went out and got one. LOL I got the RTX 2080 and couldn't wait to see how much faster it would be!

I like this one lol. Made me laugh. As amckenzie says - I love your commitment! :D

I would like to start a business using iclone but with the current rendering engine i can't. Taking everything into unreal is not poswsible as the scenes are fairly complex so for now i'm stuck. Iclone doesn't seem complete without a way to render video very fast and with raytracing quality. If there are any plansfor reallusion to update their rendering engine, we would really love to know.. That would be the best news for many of us.