iRay Render Issues

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COMIXIANTSun, Feb 16
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COMIXIANTFri, Jan 17
It's really not my day today is it, lol, I'm having a few issues with iRay as well.
ISSUE 1:
I can no longer get ambient objects to act as a light source. I used to be able to turn-up the ambience of the material which would cause it to act as a light source. Now all I get is the material itself looking ambient, but it doesn't give-off any light!
ISSUE 2:
Bit harder to explain this one, but imagine a slightly see-through swimsuit fitted tight against the skin. The result expected is that areas that press against the fabric appear the most transparent while the areas that are furthest from the fabric appear darker. If you're understanding me correctly then the breast area behind the fabric will look more transparent than the area between the breasts.
Well for some bizarre reason, I'm getting the exact opposite, so for example any folds that are lifted away from the skin look more transparent than the parts of the fabric that are right up against the skin. It's doing the opposite to what it's meant to do, I've never had either of these issues before and can't figure out what's going on with it!
Either I've switched something accidentally or they broke the renderer. I've been going through the render and material settings routinely, toggling them ON/OFF to see if it makes a difference, but nothing has!
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I've just thrown this together to show you what I mean. Check out the colour and brightness between the breasts, underneath the two folds, and at the navel and you'll see what I mean. No way is that right, because for starters it would be impossible for the fabric to lighten the skin behind it. Since the skin is covered by a fabric then even with a light coloured fabric like this, it would make the skin at least a little darker beneath the fabric, not lighter!
It goes against the whole point of physically based rendering and in fact it's doing the opposite of what it should be doing. But this is what I mean and as you can see, the folds look lighter than the parts that are tight-up against the skin and that's just wrong, it should be the other way around, it looks weird.
So, just as with the sudden loss of ambeint materials no longer giving-off light, both issues are new to me. I've never come across either of these things before, it all seems really weird so any help on either is much appreciated.
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COMIXIANT
Sorry Pinspotter, I didn't see this post last time I looked. I wish the forum would use a purely linear system so that the newest post always goes at the end, and include the ability to quote another post by highlighting the text and clicking "Quote" instead of reply.
I love the general design of this place, but this indented reply system is a bit of a pain.
Anyway, I've literally gone through every setting of Iray, adjusted it, toggled it ON/OFF etc but nothing works. The only conclusion I can come to so far is that it might have something to do with me using the CPU to render. I don't see anyone else complaining about these issues, so that makes me think you're all on Nvidia and not using the CPU as I am.
I wish I knew what's causing it though, it's doing my bloody head in!
If I can't fix it, I'll have to fork out for an Nvidia card and do a complete drive erase and reinstall everything, start again from scratch so to speak. But I realistically cannot afford to be doing that right now so I really hope it doesn't come to that otherwise I'm out of the game until I can realistically afford an Nvidia card. I'm not prepared to put myself in financial peril just to buy a card, and I never buy anything on credit.
So that's it, I'm out of the game for the time being unless I can fix it!
Karma: 1,955
Thu, Jan 16Sorry Pinspotter, I didn't see this post last time I looked. I wish the forum would use a purely linear system so that the newest post always goes at the end, and include the ability to quote another post by highlighting the text and clicking "Quote" instead of reply.
I love the general design of this place, but this indented reply system is a bit of a pain.
Anyway, I've literally gone through every setting of Iray, adjusted it, toggled it ON/OFF etc but nothing works. The only conclusion I can come to so far is that it might have something to do with me using the CPU to render. I don't see anyone else complaining about these issues, so that makes me think you're all on Nvidia and not using the CPU as I am.
I wish I knew what's causing it though, it's doing my bloody head in!
If I can't fix it, I'll have to fork out for an Nvidia card and do a complete drive erase and reinstall everything, start again from scratch so to speak. But I realistically cannot afford to be doing that right now so I really hope it doesn't come to that otherwise I'm out of the game until I can realistically afford an Nvidia card. I'm not prepared to put myself in financial peril just to buy a card, and I never buy anything on credit.
So that's it, I'm out of the game for the time being unless I can fix it!
I suppose you are using version 4.23, to know if the problem comes from an involuntary modification of a parameter you have to install another library in another folder, with only the objects of the scene. Connect Daz to this new library and especially disconnect the current version of the library. The answer will be in the rendering. If the rendering is identical you should redo the rendering with an earlier version of Daz (version 4.22 or version 4.12)
Depending on the rendering results you will know if the problem comes from the scene, the version of Daz or a modification of a parameter
Depending on the rendering results you will know if the problem comes from the scene, the version of Daz or a modification of a parameter
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I think guy916007 is on the right track. But I stumbled across something else in your description. So just a quick question here:
You write that it has always worked with the settings so far, but you talk about Ambience (as a light emitter) in connection with Iray. Honestly - I've never seen an Ambience option when working with Iray. I only have the Emission option. This is probably because I give my material an Iray Uber Shader before I start ??!??
And to stay with Iray Uber: what do you use for transparency - cutout opacity or refraction maps?
You write that it has always worked with the settings so far, but you talk about Ambience (as a light emitter) in connection with Iray. Honestly - I've never seen an Ambience option when working with Iray. I only have the Emission option. This is probably because I give my material an Iray Uber Shader before I start ??!??
And to stay with Iray Uber: what do you use for transparency - cutout opacity or refraction maps?
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Pinspotter
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Wed, Jan 15Both Uber and stock Iray should have an ambient channel, although it may have a different name.
Issue 1: It's "Iray" - not "iRay".
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/iray/
Issue 2: What in the heck are you talking about?
"turn-up the ambience of the material which would cause it to act as a light source"
"the material itself looking ambient"
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ambient
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/iray/
Issue 2: What in the heck are you talking about?
"turn-up the ambience of the material which would cause it to act as a light source"
"the material itself looking ambient"
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ambient
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@guy91600
I thought about that and it's beginning to look as if that's what I'll have to do unless someone out there has the answer! Also, I'm beginning to wonder if it's a CPU rendering bug because when it comes to Iray, I'm on AMD so I'm forced to fall back to CPU rendering.
@Pushee-Ri
Apologies, I meant Emission, not Ambience. I'm using Cutout Opacity in the example. I'm still getting used it Iray in some ways, but nevertheless I've never come across either of these issues before, and both have surfaced at the same time so it makes me think that they're related. Also, see the attached image for another example of the transparency issue that was previously demonstrated with the swimsuit.
@stevenjoseph8844
Actually, I'm normally very strict on using the correct capitalisation, but since companies these days keep changing stuff around it gets old after a while. Daz for example have so far gone through three iterations for Daz Studio:
1 - DAZ | Studio
2 - DAZ Studio
3 - Daz Studio
But thanks for the correction, and Iray (and Daz Studio) it is then.
But yes, I did indeed mean Emission, not Ambience. Even the simplest of scenes and material adjustments will not work. I could start a fresh scene, bring in a cube, set both the Diffuse and Emission Colour to pure white, bump-up the Liminance to such levels that would normally blow the scene into a complete whiteout, yet still it will fail to give-off any light. The cube just sits in the scene glowing in its own, but not actually 'radiating' any light whatsoever.
It gets worse too, because whatever is causing this, is also effecting hair scalps as can be seen in the image. This is the default 'out-of-the-box' scene with the included 'Kat Genesis 9' added, and the included 'G9 Base dForce Pixie Hair' attached to it. So this is completely vanilla in that I've not touched a damn thing, haven't tweaked a material at all but this is what's happening!
It might look as if she's going in for some face painiting competition, but actually, she's as confused as I am wondering WTF is going on. As with the swimsuit example, it clearly involves transparency, and in this case it's the hair scalp that's causing the strange coloured cast on the skin.

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Hi - no apologies necessary (Ambient -> Emission) 
Take a look at how I write, for example, iRaY ... uhh irAY ... uh IRay
A - perhaps very stupid - question: have you adjusted the Render Settings: " Photoreal mode " should be set there, " Interactive " could cause problems ...

Take a look at how I write, for example, iRaY ... uhh irAY ... uh IRay

A - perhaps very stupid - question: have you adjusted the Render Settings: " Photoreal mode " should be set there, " Interactive " could cause problems ...
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I've tried all of that so many times I've lost count (and I just tried it again), but it doesn't fix anything.
Out of curiosity, have you or anyone anyone else contacted Daz support in recent times and can tell me how long it took to get a reply from them?
Also, has anyone noticed a problem trying to log into the Daz support portal where your previous support tickets are listed? I have an account on there that is strictly used for purchases, and while I can log into the PA support section under that account (even though I'm not a PA), I cannot log into the standard section where all my tickets are without pulling a few tricks. Is anyone else having this problem or is it just me and my seriously bad luck again?
I mean, you tell me, how many other people on earth, or hell even the universe (because why not), could possibly install Marmoset Toolbag and not even be able to navigate the viewport? I bet it's unheard of, but it's true, I literally cannot rotate or pan around the viewport! The only navigation that works is zooming in and out with the mouse wheel. I've been so tied-up trying to solve other issues that I never got around to contacting Marmoset and there's only four days left on the trial now, so that was a bloody waste of time as well!
Then I read that Substance Painter 2025 is officially going to be released under a perpetual licence on STEAM, yet it's already overdue and there's still no sign of it despite the statement apparently coming from an Adobe employee. And now I've got all this weird render stuff to deal with from Daz Studio as well. I mean flippin' heck, at some point you do have to wonder if it's an omen and that this vending lark just wasn't meant to be - lol!!!
I did get some work done despite all the struggles I'm having, because I made a start on my first Genensis 9 character a few days ago (see attached W.I.P.).

I arrived at the sort of face I had in mind pretty damn quick and that's not always easy, so I'm very pleased with her so far. I've also been digging deeper into the shader parameters to get a more realistic look to the skin (or at least what I personally think looks more realistic and and a bit more 'radiant'). Will play around more with the eye shader too because I'm not happy with it at the moment (still too much translucency from some angles as can be seen).
Haven't touched the body yet apart from neck proportion (in fact the pose she's in is to make her ready for body sculpting). But she'll be getting a slender, ballet-dancer's body which is why she has a long, slender neck (it's to make her look more graceful as a dancer). There's definitely some sculpting to do on the face and neck before I move onto the body and I haven't even touched the ears yet, but like I said I'm pleased with her so far and with a bit of luck, she'll be quite pretty and graceful-looking by the time she's finished.
I really wanted her to look pretty without make-up. I thought well seeing as makeup is often used to 'fake' facial contour, why not set the lighting accordingly during design and shape her so that her actual face shape mimics the effect of makeup. To me she's definitely pretty without makeup even at this stage, so I think it worked. She's face-nude here and you might be surprised at the resulting profile when she's viewed from the side. She has quite a flat profile to the face and lips, and is also undershot is an attractive sort of way.
Anyway, I'm babbling too much and haven't even decided what to call her yet, but no doubt she'll be my first character once completed if I ever get that far!
For now she's "The Ballet Girl" by COMIXIANT and she's just a WIP, so that's all for now. But anyway, talk about going-off on a tangent, if anyone could enlighten me about Daz Support times (and any support login issues if you have them too), that would be great!
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This is just to show that the skin (at least at surface paramater level) is pretty much perfecto now.
It actually looks and behaves more like real skin, not wax or cardboard.
The side profile of the face is visible in this one, so you can see that slight undershot. Some people (me included) find this to be attractive feature but I'm well aware that others don't. I've intentionally kept the cranium out of view since it's not been sculpted yet, nor have any of the secondary mild details been sculpted on the face, so at te moment she still looks a bit too smooth and mennequin-like.
I suppose I should really have started a W.I.P. thread, but this is the only other pre-release render I'll bother with anyway, so might as well post it here.

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There's no point looking at me like that, it's not my fault you still have no hair!
On a more positive note, damn, what's cookin' good lookin'?
If that tight ballet-dancer's body I promised you turns out to be as pretty as your face, I think we could be on to a real winner! And that reminds me, I'll have to do you a bush as well. Can't have you going around in public with eyebrows like that unless you have a matching bush to go with them. It's expected. And some vellus hair too, because looking at the tip of your nose it's really only the lack of vellus hair letting the skin down at this stage (and that damn bug of course).
So anyway peeps, still a lot to do but I wanted to show you this because take a look around her eyes and you'd be forgiven for thinking I was lying. When I said she was face-nude with no make-up whatsoever, I meant it. What you're seeing here is not blue eye-shadow, it's that damn bug again!
What's also become apparent is that this transparency bug appears to be proximity related, because the colour cast only ever seems to happen when in close proximity to something else that's transparent. The skin technically has a form of transparency, so due to the eyelid folds being in close proximity to each other, I'm getting that colour cast again just as with the earlier demonstration of the colour cast caused by hair scalps (no doubt due to transparency proximity again).
I did get a reponse from Daz by the way, but the ticket was nothing to do with this issue or my COMIXIANT account so I'll have to open another one under COMIXIANT and ask one of Daz's team if they'd be kind enough to take a look at this thread, see if they can figure it out because I'm buggered if I can! I'd post on Daz directly but apparently you need to have made a certain amount of posts before being able to post images and I don't fancy going through all of this again, so I think it's best to just ask them over here to take a look. But this is a real pain. I reckon I have the skin parameters pretty much spot-on now, and knowing my luck it'll all need tweaking again if/when the bug gets fixed (and that's assuming it is even a bug at all)!
Here's a viewport grab to show there's no make-up applied to the skin, there's no eye-shadow, nothing:

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Well I've requested a visit from Daz. I asked if they'd kindly send over their Iray expert for a quick look.
Cheeky of me I know, but fingers crossed they do or I'm gonna need a new card I think!
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Nice work ,, & speaking of the journey of your issues here, I can tell you that the Iray version of Daz Studio has several quality issues especially with Transparency (Cutout Opacity) & the Translucency ((which is heavily tied to Transmission & Scattering, if you don't catch the sweet spot of settings of all of them altogether that fits your textures & the model's geometry -after some try & error maybe-?? you will see waxy look & darker areas & in some lightings you will see ambient glows from eyes edges or whereever you don't expect))
Sure the usage of CPU with Iray is not well supported like NVIDIA's gpu drivers , I know it is a pain $$$$ trying to have a decent gpu for graphics works nowadays,,, I didn't read everypost above but my eye caught how not easy to reach out to the DAZ forums for support & you are right about that too.. For the moment I could expect you have some older shader files conflicting with your current Daz Studio's version & its Iray resources files , but still most of the issues you got are not your fault at all, it is Iray being nice but not so friendly too .
Sure the usage of CPU with Iray is not well supported like NVIDIA's gpu drivers , I know it is a pain $$$$ trying to have a decent gpu for graphics works nowadays,,, I didn't read everypost above but my eye caught how not easy to reach out to the DAZ forums for support & you are right about that too.. For the moment I could expect you have some older shader files conflicting with your current Daz Studio's version & its Iray resources files , but still most of the issues you got are not your fault at all, it is Iray being nice but not so friendly too .
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Hey Zoro, thanks for the heads-up on that!
I've re-dowloaded the default resources which have been updated, but sadly still no luck. The problem does appear to have something to do with SSS and Translucency though, because if I switch them off then the problem goes away. Trouble is, if I switch them off then everything looks aweful, and if I leave them on then there literally is no setting that will get rid of the problem.
It never used to behave like that. I never used to have a problem getting objects to radiate light either, but now it's stopped working. Both of these things appear to be related somehow because they both surfaced at the same time. Trouble is, it's not as if I could realistically go back to an older version and use that, because if I did and I was to sell the character then it wouldn't work right, because the rest are using the never version of the software, so that would break it.
And thanks for the kind words mate, I appreciate it. I've gotten the skin, eye and teeth shader parameters to my satsifaction now, although looking at her in that last render, I've definitely got to fix the mouth and chin shape before I start sculpting the final form. Looks a bit rigid, the mouth corners need pulling in a bit, a little more plumpness needs adding to the top lip, the chin needs shortening a tad because it's too tall, and the bulb of the chin needs pulling outward a bit because it's a bit too flat from some angles. Once that's been done I think the whole face will look proper natural.
Gonna leave it for now though, it's absolutely doing my head in not knowing what's causing these problems. You're not kidding about the graphics cards either, and if it turns out I need to buy another card, then the best I could manage is a 16GB RTX 4060Ti, and wow, they want over four hundred quid even for that!
Nice little card I suppose, but nevertheless I reckon they're milking everyone due to people using them to mine Bitcoins. Such a card would probably retail for around 180 if it were not for the existence of Bitcoin, yet they want over four hundred for it!
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Well I've given Daz as long as necessary to get back to me and they've not done so. I originally put-off downloading most of the products I purchased, because I didn't want Daz to be able to claim I'm pulling a fast one. Since I'll be contacting them again on Monday, I need to be ready for them so have finally been pushed to download the other products.
Not a single one of these products is usable due to this issue, and not a single character I downloaded, regrdless of vendor, has any surface setting that removes or even hints at removing the problem, not even in the slightest. It is literally irremovable, and it's as prominent on each figure as the other. So it's not the version of Studio I'm using and it's not the default resources I'm using either (because they've also been updated). It's not the vendors of the figures themselves, nor is it something I'm doing wrong. I know how to use a renderer and honestly, I've never seen anything like this before!
Nevertheless, I do need this to work so I'll really push the boat out this time and allow them as long as I feasibly can before my Daz+ is due to auto-renew. They shoudn't need that long, but I've no choice in the matter.
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Well, I'm pleased to say they did indeed pay the thread a visit ... they saw ... and they resolved!
Thanks to Devon for the fix, and to Fernando for the account stuff. I was convinced I was going to end-up having to buy a new GPU or something. Thankfully, in the end it was all down to a setting that doesn't toggle if you already have another toggle set (elsewhere) in the program, and that toggle is set to a different setting to the one that you need. I've intentionally not pointed out what the toggle is called or where it's located (because it could potentially cause more support requests for Daz if people start messing around with it), but nevertheless that's what it was, it was down to a setting, thankfully not CPU rendering.
This is another (athletic) character for another project, but as you can see, the transparency behaves correctly now since the nipples and breasts appear clearer as they press against the fabric, than the gap between the fabric and the skin at the underside of the breasts where the skin dosn't touch. Before it was working in reverse. So this fixes everything; the transparency, the colour cast from scalps, even the Emissive function is radiating light once again. I did say that I was convinced they were related, so at least I got that part right!
Just reposting this as upscaled because I keep forgetting I'm on a Full HD monitor so the image will be half the size for those using 4K:

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