Is it OK to render 3Delight surfaces in IRay?
lukon100
Posts: 809
in Art Studio
I do it all the time. And sometimes I like the results better than if I had converted the serfaces to IRay (because I do experiment).
But, is there some compelling reason for me to always convert a 3Delight surface to IRay for rendering in IRay? Am I going to break the IRay render engine?
Will there always be some little sacrifice in render quality if I refuse to convert?
Comments
DS does automatic conversion when you render (basically just applying the Iray base shader and not changing any other settings).
That said, automatic conversion doesn't always give good results, for example for glass or metal it can be better to use specific iray shaders. And automatic conversion can't handle surfaces using custom 3DL shaders.
What Leana says, Iray will always convert before rendering, but the quality will be better if you use specific shaders presets. pressing the control button while choosing specific shader presets will allow you to keep the general settings in place (choose ignore in the popup)
Plus render calculation time will be shorter when you did the conversion in advance.
Results of automatic conversion vary. Some very old sets convert beautifully, and some newer 3dl products need a lot of adjustment. Anything with some subsurface aspects (human skin, partly-translucent things like marble or jade) will need quite a bit of work. Most architectural stuff, in my experience, will require relatively little adjustment.
So the answer is:
As long as I like the results, there is no real problem, other than render calculation taking a little longer.
Basically, yes.