In this video I go over a couple quick tips: setting up Spotlights for Iray in DAZ Studio. From producing softer shadows, configuring spotlight specific render settings, to pointers that should help ease the process of aiming your spotlights.

Skill Level: Beginner

This is my character Liz (pic 1, pic 2) that I have been working on portrayed as Psylocke. I’m a big fan of Marvel Comics superheros! I had a lot of fun working on this character and the scenes I’ve rendered her in, so far. I think the superhero genre might be one of my main focuses from here on out.

Let me know who your favorite superheros are and if there’s any you would like to see portrayed in my render style!

This is a character I’ve been working on, with Victoria 7’s skin. She’s supposed to be a supermodel/superhero. I sculpted her in ZBrush from Daz’s Genesis 3 Female. She’s my first attempt at making a character in ZBrush. So far, I’m really enjoying sculpting in ZBrush and want to do a lot more of it :D. Please let me know what you think of her!

As of right now I’m considering her body and face shapes final. I worked on her face some more after posting the first pix of her on DeviantArt (laylo3d.deviantart.com), so her face is actually a little different in these pictures.

Now I’ll see about skin mats for her.

This is a character I’ve been working on, with Victoria 7’s skin. She’s supposed to be a supermodel/superhero. I sculpted her in ZBrush from Daz’s Genesis 3 Female. She’s my first attempt at making a character in ZBrush. So far, I’m really enjoying sculpting in ZBrush and want to do a lot more of it :D. Please let me know what you think of her!

As of right now I’m considering her body and face shapes final. I worked on her face some more after posting the first pix of her on DeviantArt (laylo3d.deviantart.com), so her face is actually a little different in these pictures.

Now I’ll see about skin mats for her.

I thought this robot, ASN 4, was super cool, so I picked it up recently during March Madness from Daz. This is the first render I’ve put together using it, so far. It’s not 100% what I was going for, but I think it’s about as close as I can get staying strictly within Daz Studio.

If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a big fan of using Iray for rendering with Daz Studio 4.8+. While spending time cracking out on it, I’ve figured out a few things I thought were important and worth sharing. I think they’re especially good to know if you’re considering buying a new GPU.

With that being said, I’m just going to dive right in…

1. • If you’re tweaking a scene, rendering then canceling, rendering then canceling, eventually your VRAM will get full and Iray will stop using your GPU for rendering and switch to your CPU. Which typically equals longer rendering times. It can even happen when letting the render finish completely, though, for whatever reason, it seems to manage the VRAM better in this second scenario.
   • The solution, when it switches over to your CPU, you have to close Daz Studio and restart it. Then everything will be back to normal again. Also, if you keep the number of render preview windows open at a time to a minimum, when your Render Target is New Window, it seems to help the VRAM from getting as full.
   • I have verified that this is a known issue with the Daz Development Team.
   • When it first happened to me I thought one of my GPUs went out. When Iray switches from GPU to CPU I can hear it, because the fans on my water cooler crank up. I then fired up my GPU monitoring software and saw one of the cards wasn’t being used. Long story short, I finally realized the only reason the other card was running was to run my monitor, my GPUs were fine, then I contacted DAZ…
2. • When using Iray with multiple GPUs, all the data being processed for rendering has to fit into each card’s VRAM independently. Which means if you have a 4GB card and a 6GB card, and the scene to be rendered requires over 4GB VRAM, the 4GB card will be excluded.
   • I’ve verified this with folks from both Daz and NVIDIA.
3. • If your NVIDIA card doesn’t have at least 4GB VRAM, Daz Studio will default to CPU rendering.
   • I also confirmed this with Daz. (After the public release of Daz Studio 4.9.)

Well, I hope you learned something! If you found this post valuable, don’t forget it to share it with someone else.

Catch you on the flipside…

LayLo