Jul 02
iray studio scene
I’m sharing an iray studio setup with multiple HDR environments I created with HDRlightStudio. There are seven different configurations in this one file. You can even switch between them in this single .max file by simply using the scene states option (tools/manage scene states).
Renders:
You can download the file from HERE. You can use 7zip to open the archive (it’s free and compresses better than winzip or winrar)
Keep in mind, no single preconfigured studio setup will be optimal for every scene or object. Sometimes you get lucky, but most of the time in order to get the best look for any particular model (especially things like vehicles) you need to carefully place the reflections/highlights. That is why applications like HDRlightstudio are lifesavers.
43 comments
Trackback e pingback
-
Download gratuito para 3ds Max e iray: Cena de estúdio | Allan Brito
[...] e renderiza seus projetos com o iray, a boa notícia é que o artista Jeff Patton publicou no seu ...
Generous as always. Thanks Jeff!
Awesome! Thanks Jeff!
Awesome! Thanks for your sharing!
Thanks Jeff
This is very useful Jeff, thank you! I really appreciate your blogs
Thank a lot Jeff !
Thanks for sharing Jeff
Thank you again !
thank you very much Jeff!!
very nice. thank you.
mentalray world!!!
i dont know why people working on vray…?
Awesome, thank you!!!
Thank a lot Jeff.
you are so nice Jeff! thanks a lot!! cheers!
Thank you very much, this has really helped me get my head around the difference between what mental ray and iray can do. cheers. have a nice day!
Hi Jeff,
thanks for sharing this. I have a small question though. Just for ‘fun’ i switched from iray back to mental ray and then the lighting is so much different. no colors anymore in the materials. Maybe a stupid question, but why is that?
greet,
Oswald
That’s normal since the scene would need to be reconfigured for use with mental ray. Keep in mind that iray is not a preview for mental ray or vice versa. At least that’s how it is as of right now, maybe that will change in the future if some GPU calculation options are added to mental ray. For the scene to work with mental ray you’d need to activate the skylight with FG to pickup illumination from the HDR. Even then you’d be hard pressed to get nice area shadows from the HDR with FG. For that the better option would be IBL and that requires different tools & configurations.
The materials would also need to be adjusted for use with mental ray. For example, since iray doesn’t use samples you’d need to tune the glossy samples of the materials in mental ray to find the sweet spot between noise and longer render times. An alternative to that would be unified sampling but just as with IBL it requires a different set of tools to be installed.
When I say “different set of tools”, I’m referring to scripts that 3rd party developers have made to unlock many of the useful features of mental ray that are hidden away from 3dsmax users. Scripts like THIS and THIS are most helpful.
thanks, that clears things out. I thought because you use kind off the same setup (same materials, same lighting setup) you wouldn’t expect such a big difference, but you’re right. Time to learn some more about iray, ibl etc.
switching on the skylight works indeed. Is this how you would do a ‘standard’ setup if you want to use an hdri, skylight with hdri in the environment? For an outdoor scene putting an hdri in the environment wouldn’t be enough to light the scene, you need this skylight with it?
thanks again, those scripts btw look very promising.
“For an outdoor scene putting an hdri in the environment wouldn’t be enough to light the scene, you need this skylight with it?” – Correct. Mental ray in 3dsmax will not pickup illumination from the scene environment without a skylight, set to use the environment or with a HDR assigned directly to it, and FG enabled or some other form of indirect illumination like IBL/importons/IP.
ok, i see, thanks for your help.
i have yet another question about MR/daylight system/interior, but this is not the place i guess for that. Is it possible to send my question in another way?
Oswald
Its a shame, Iray could use a Trace/Bounce weight or multiplier. Limiting bounces speeds up renders dramatically, but you can not simply tell it to overexpose or ramp up those bounces to fake a more complete calculation.
Hi, Jeff.
Have a simple question: where are these hdris stored? I mean where can I change them manually, without using scene states?
They are in the scene background/environment. Simply hit the 8 key and drag the environment to the material editor as an instance copy and change the background/environment map.
Hey,
I have one problem with the scene. When i move camera a little bit up, so it’s facing the objects downwards I get the thin horizontal line at the background. Do you know some tip how to remove it, so the background stays smooth all the time?
I’m not sure if you’re referring to a reflection or geometry, etc.. If it’s a reflection issue and the reflection is the from the environment then you’ll need to rotate the map, or put in some blackout geometry, or build a new one that works for your scene. If it’s the ground plane object reflection then you could use a matte/shadow object instead or build a new ground plane/studio backdrop that better fits your scene/objects, etc..
Hey Jeff,
Just wondering if you could post your render times with the scene at default, as is from the download. This could provide a general benchmark of comparison of your rig, and our respective rigs.
Here is my base system: Intel Core i7 2700K, OC’ed to 4.5 ghz, 16 gb ram, Windows 7 64bit
GPU: Quadro 4000 + Geforce GTX 570 with 2.5gb ram (EVGA)
Tests:
Total – 7:46, Render Time 6:34, Translation 1:12 – GTX 570 Only
Total – 7:36, Render Time 5:33, Translation 2:03 – GTX 570 + 8 CPU Threads
Total – 5:26, Render Time 4:19, Translation 1:07 – GTX 570 + Quadro 4000 + 8 CPU Threads
Total – 6:07, Render Time 4:48, Translation 1:19 – GTX 570 + Quadro 4000
I chose the 570 2.5gb because it seemed to operate at a safer clock to keep heat down during rendering, and the respectable amount of ram for the types of renders I would be doing. I also got it for a steal at $250 and may pick up a second one for $220. I am encouraged to pick up a second one. Heat output from my rig increased, but modestly. I am noticing a slight odour from the PC, but that could be due to some dust being unsettled. I may under-clock to ensure better longevity for the GTX 570.
One thing I have read here and other places is that CPUs when added to IRay may slow down calculations. Since this CPU has an embedded GPU, I wonder if it helps give it a little boost. My embedded GPU is set to disabled on the i7, but I wonder what would happen if I enable it. Maybe I will get more power, a gpu boost (even though it is non-cuda), or maybe I will see the same results as just adding regular CPU cores in IRay. Interesting times!
Downloaded the file & rendered with 1x Quadro 6000 + 2x Tesla c2075 for a total time of 2m 18s. Below is the info from the render message window at the end of the render:
RC 0.4 114 MB progr: progressive: finished (sub)frame 799 in 0.65455 seconds
RC 0.4 114 MB progr: progressive: finished (sub)frame 800 in 0.21545 seconds
RC 0.4 114 MB info : progressive: stopping rendering due to max samples constraint
RC 0.4 114 MB info : progressive: total rendering time was 136.56 seconds
RC 0.4 114 MB info : progressive: average frame time was 0.68 seconds
RC 0.4 114 MB info : progressive: stopping rendering due to user request
RC 0.4 24 MB progr: rendering finished
RC 0.4 24 MB info : wallclock 0:02:18.02 for rendering
RC 0.4 24 MB info : current mem usage 24 MB, max mem usage 174 MB
GAPM 0.4 24 MB info : triangle count (including retessellation) : 140340
MEM 0.3 22 MB info : physical memory detected: total 12279 MB, free 8914 MB
MEM 0.3 22 MB info : physical memory detected: total 12279 MB, free 8928 MB
MSG 0.0 17 MB info : Total non-render time: 36.1766 s.
MSG 0.0 17 MB info : Total geometry translation time: 0.2340 s.
MSG 0.0 17 MB info : Total object data translation time: 0.0000 s.
MSG 0.0 17 MB info : Total number of entities translated: 0.
Keep in mind this scene isn’t a good benchmark because it’s far too simple. There are other more complex benchmarks on various website like THIS where you can run better tests.
FWIW I’m also building a benchmark scene myself that I’ll publish in a future blog article. It will be compatible with iray, vray r/t, octane, and randomcontrol’s maxlive GPU renderer and I will also include my render times of the scene(s) with each application.
Hi Jeff. Thanks for this scene, it’s always fun to compare each others lighting setups.
I rendered this on CPU only (Dual Xeon X5690) and I am looking to exchange my GPU.
Currently it’s a FirePro V7900 which doesn’t help with the rendering at all. Even if i wanted to add Tesla’s they wouldn’t work because your whole setup must be NVIDIA only correct?
RC 0.4 progr: progressive: finished (sub)frame 799 in 0.74257 seconds
RC 0.4 progr: progressive: finished (sub)frame 800 in 0.39036 seconds
RC 0.4 info : progressive: stopping rendering due to max samples constraint
RC 0.4 info : progressive: total rendering time was 319.01 seconds
RC 0.4 info : progressive: average frame time was 0.79 seconds
RC 0.4 progr: rendering finished
RC 0.4 info : wallclock 0:05:20.15 for rendering
RC 0.4 info : allocated 133 MB, max resident 988 MB
GAPM 0.4 info : triangle count (including retessellation) : 140340
MEM 0.3 info : total memory: 12285 Mb
MEM 0.3 info : free memory : 5884 Mb
MEM 0.3 info : total memory: 12285 Mb
MEM 0.3 info : free memory : 5891 Mb
MSG 0.0 info : Total non-render time: 75.1301 s.
MSG 0.0 info : Total geometry translation time: 0.1872 s.
MSG 0.0 info : Total object data translation time: 0.0000 s.
MSG 0.0 info : Total number of entities translated: 0.
Thanks again!
Hi Jeff,
We just got our new system. It is a high spec setup with DUAL CPUs (16 cores total), 64gb RAM, 1xQuadro K5000 1xTesla K20 cards. I have tried to run your scene and got a respectable render time of 401seconds. However i get the following errors…
IRAY 0.36 warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type “max_base_GBuffer_lens”
IRAY 0.36 error: CUDA device 0: invalid device symbol
IRAY 0.36 error: CUDA error on device 0, cannot use this device for rendering
IRAY 0.36 error: rendering fragment failed on device 0
IRAY 0.37 error: CUDA device 1: invalid device symbol
IRAY 0.37 error: CUDA error on device 1, cannot use this device for rendering
IRAY 0.37 error: rendering fragment failed on device 1
IRAY 0.36 error: CUDA device 0 failed during first frame, deactivating it and re-rendering now
IRAY 0.36 error: CUDA device 1 failed during first frame, deactivating it and re-rendering now
IRAY 0.36 warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type “max_base_GBuffer_lens”
I’m guessing this means my cuda cores are not being used? I am rendering on 3ds MAX Design 2012 SP2 and i have the latest card drivers installed. If anyone could advise me on what may be going wrong and if my setup is actually taking advantage of the GPUs i would be very appreciative.
Thanks,
Matt
Support for Kepler based GPU’s was just added to 3ds Max 2013 in PU06. AFAIK there is currently no update for 3ds Max 2012 that will allow the use of Kepler based GPUs.
Thanks for the info Jeff! We were holding off on installing our copy of 2013 as 2014 is just around the corner but this will force us to upgrade, no problem.
Just installed 3ds MAX 2013 with product update 6. Now rendering with Kepler based cudas.
DUAL CPUs (16 cores total), 64gb RAM, 1xQuadro K5000 1xTesla K20 cards.
2min 21secs
Hi Jeff,
i hope you can help me out. I have a Dell precision T7500 and put an evga geforce gtx 680 with 4GB inside, but everytime i start to render with iray i see the processors starting to do the rendering andthat’s realy slow.
Also the studio setup i downloaded from you just doesn’t seem to work. I downloaded the drivers via the autodesk update, but still no luck.
What do i do wrong?
hope you can help,
thanks,
Oswald
Make sure your GPU drivers are up to date (get them from the nvidia site). Ensure 3ds Max / iray correctly identifies the GPU and then watch the render message window for any errors.
ok, i did. the drivers are downloaded from nvidia site. somehow it seems to work now, but still i see that few of the processors are working while rendering. about 25% of processor is used while rendering.
If its not too much work, to compare a bit, how long does one of your videocards render this scene on 800 iterations?
“how long does one of your videocards render this scene on 800 iterations?” – 6m 50s on a Quadro6000
————————
RC 0.4 116 MB progr: progressive: finished (sub)frame 800 in 1.04839 seconds
RC 0.4 116 MB info : progressive: stopping rendering due to max samples constraint
RC 0.4 116 MB info : progressive: total rendering time was 408.80 seconds
RC 0.4 116 MB info : progressive: average frame time was 1.01 seconds
RC 0.4 116 MB info : progressive: stopping rendering due to user request
RC 0.4 25 MB progr: rendering finished
RC 0.4 25 MB info : wallclock 0:06:49.88 for rendering
RC 0.4 25 MB info : current mem usage 25 MB, max mem usage 132 MB
————————
Hi Jeff,
oh wow, so this gtx 680 did 6m 06s, good to see that in this case it can compete with your card.
On more question (sorry) where did you get those messages from? I opened the render message and it just gives a warning:
IRAY 0.12 90 MB warn : non-physical exponent 0,00 of light Sky001|Light forced to physical value 2.0
Is it possible to see how big a scene will be on the GPU? before you start rendering?
Thanks a lot,
Oswald
HELP!!! in my 3d studio max 2012,
every time i try to render my scene with iray, Render Message window show this message:
IRAY 0.12 warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type “max_base_GBuffer_lens”
IRAY 0.12 warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type “mia_physicalsky”
IRAY 0.12 error: CUDA device 0: invalid device symbol
IRAY 0.12 error: CUDA error on device 0, cannot use this device for rendering
IRAY 0.12 error: rendering fragment failed on device 0
IRAY 0.12 error: CUDA device 0 failed during first frame, deactivating it and re-rendering now
IRAY 0.12 warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type “max_base_GBuffer_lens”
IRAY 0.12 warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type “mia_physicalsky”
my GPU dosen’t work! I have a GeForce GTX 680.
I have to set something in my 3d studio or in my graphics card?
For a kepler based GPU to work with 3ds Max you have to be running 3ds Max 2013 with Product Update 6 installed. Iray in 3ds Max 2012 does not support Kepler based GPUs.
thank’s Jeff.
so my GPU is unfitted to my 3d studio release… or viceversa….
AFAIK. They just recently provided kepler support in 3ds Max 2013 with PU06. I haven’t heard anything about them providing Kepler support in previous versions of 3ds Max.
The most odd thing is happening and I can’t figure it out. I tried out your studio scene. I’ve tweaked it a bit for my own needs, but it was nice to see how simple it was.
But the backdrop keeps duplicating itself! Do you have some sort of script running? I can’t figure out what’s going on, or why it would be doing that.
Actually it managed to duplicate itself into a completely non-related scene.
Is that some magic you are doing, or have I maybe stumbled upon some crazy weird bug?
“But the backdrop keeps duplicating itself!” – There is no special script running, just the scene states option. I have no idea why or how the background geometry plane would duplicate itself.