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I did a render of Howie's Forest Drive at the same resolution, and that rendered in 204 minutes (3 hours 24) - see the renders thread. That scene is probably of similar replicator density although a lot more leaves, so I'm happy that my set is not abnormally slow at rendering.
Yes, given the complexity, I did not think the render time for the ford scene was odd. I was sort of expecting it given my experience with Howie's scenes. Both yours and his are worth the time, but I would be happy to hear of strategies to lower the render time. Also, I am very interested now in the Daz Studio default render time for 3DL. I don't suppose anyone has tried the bridge from Studio to Bryce? Would the instances transfer?
I have no idea about Bryce, sorry.
I know nothing about the bridge. However I somehow doubt that the instance would transfer. Bryce instances work completely differently to D|S instances.
Maybe they would need to use the ford instead.
Did a quick test of the bridge from Daz Studio to Bryce. Not surprisingly, Chohole is correct. The instances did not transfer (or I did not know how to activate them or look for them). The terrains did in a low resolution way.
One great place to start is to look hard at shaders. In large, intensive scenes like this, here's where I start:
Tree leaves - is there a translucency? If so, getting rid of that can make a huge difference.
While we're on leaves, is there an image in the Alpha channel? If so... perhaps replacing the leaves with any of those from the Carrara library would help. Trans-mapped leaves can realy slow things down in large scenes.
Water - in this case, I think I'd want the higher-quality water with refraction. But if you don't care about refraction, try turning that option Off in the Render room and leave the water shader's refraction setting alone for now. Are there any blurry reflections? Are reflections too high?
Volumetric Clouds can really tax a render. Disabling them completely will speed things up. But if you really like them, try making sure that you have a Sun Light in the scene, then edit the volumetric clouds to "only" use the Sun Light.
Check all of the lights' "Effects" tab for Soft Shadows. Turning those off will make a HUGE difference and, in many cases with Large scenes, won't make a bad render. If soft shadows are really needed, try using a light dome with around 88 lights without soft shadows. According to Tim Payne, reaching around 88 lights will cause the hard edges to naturally form soft shadows on their own.
Light through transparency is a big one in Carrara. Try eliminating as much use of trans maps in the alpha channel as you can. Transparency with Reflections and Refraction will also cause for a lot of calculations. If we need this stuff, try turning the max ray bounces down to 2 in the render room and se what that does. Sometimes it can really speed things up, but without enough iterations of reflected light (folks call it bounce) might look like ick in the end. It can be a trade-off sometimes.
Do remember, however, that: if there IS translucency On in the leaves' shaders, it WILL make an appearance difference in the render by turning it off. In these cases, using what is often called Bounce lighting can help to counter this. Try a Distant light set at a dark hue of green (or whatever the translucency color was) and then still keeping the brightness of the light low, say 6 or even less, turn off shadows and point it upwards and away from the direction of the camera - to add a subtle illumination to the underside of everything facing the camera. Sometimes it's prudent to add a couple more at even lower levels of brightness.
Yes, the tree leaves have translucency, as do some of the flowers. Cos they look ----ing awful without, IMHO.
No alphas in the trees - all my leaves & flowers are geometry. I learned how slow transmaps get very early on. Some of the weeds (dandelions, butterbur) are transmapped, but they add very little overhead.
The water shader does make a difference, according to my test a few posts up.
I Don't use volumetric clouds. My scene is set up with Realistic Sky. The Sun does have soft shadows set. I did a comparison of this against a "fake GI" dome rig some time ago, and there was very little time difference, frankly.
I do have light through transparency turned on. Playing with that might make some difference, and the general fidelity settings too.
Great tips, I'm on me iPad at the moment but yesterday I did get the render time to under 21 minutes on the default camera 3 scene thinking that it may be similar as Howie's setup.. today I'll try some fake lighting as Dart suggests to fine tune it and post my result later in the day... gotta have brekky now and watch the morning news to make sure we are all still here...
Managed to get the default scene rendered in 4 minutes ... happy with that
This one rendered in Carrara 8.1. Camera 3. Just over 35 minutes with the default render settings
No clue about Bryce either, but I tries and this is what I ended up with
Actually I kinda like that
In case you wondered whatever became of Guantomato bay . . .
"Containment Level" coming soon for Carrara and DS
An amazing set! (Another!)
Looks great.
Glad it didn't go to waste.
Looks awesome! This set is a great compliment to Crime Lab.
Ah, now I see the common thread running through your scenes... they drank too much cider, now they are truly contained after morphing into 'them'... and some will end up on the autopsy table, but their solicitor will demand a day in court for the rest, after which they will take their compensation to the bank, but keep enough to open a club and, then become patrons of the local theatre where their odd appearance will be a hit on stage in the musical, Last Tango in Alpha. Now they can afford a medevial castle place in the country, and survey the countryside from horseback, riding in the fields and fording every stream with the day ending at the top of the folly!
More cider please!
Brilliant!
Beautiful and scary scenes. The set reminds me of Resident Evil.
Zombie Ed . . . (and possibly a clue to the movie that inspired it)
How did you achieve this volumetric light effect? I can't get the desired effect in iray.
I made an SSS fog box, as per this tutorial
I left the lighting as normal (emissives on the fluorescent tubes) and tweaked Transmitted Measurement Distance and Scattering Measurement Distance to somewhere around 300. I think the optimal number depends on how big you have the cube primitive. Lower is more foggy.
BTW, the murky water effect in Country Ford works on the same principle.
you might have Donald Trump Chasing you next, nice work, looking forward to it
Another excellent set. And thanks for the link to the SY fog box tutorial.
TangoAlpha, thank you for the great tips and tricks. I've already seen this tutorial but never tried to repeat this in DS. But I used the same technique in Carrara and it worked well for me.
Just to keep you anticipating . . .
https://www.daz3d.com/containment-level ;
(and the rest of my store is 40% off too)
Are the zombies the good guys or the bad guys?