Checking out Iray Server (Patreon)

Today I've had the pleasure of trying something I've had on my radar for years: Iray Server. It's a mythical stand-alone application that can process Iray jobs we throw at it - from compatible applications. DAZ Studio is one of them, it has some interesting settings hidden in the Advanced Render Settings section (under Bridge).

All I had to do was hack in my server's details, then instead of hitting the blue render button, I submit my job to the server - without the need to install any assets on the remote machine. It only takes a few seconds for DAZ Studio to send over the packaged scene, and moments later it starts rendering while I can setup my next shot, or even shutdown my computer completely and go to bed. No more "missing asset" messages!

I'll provide an in-depth look at Iray Server soon and show you how it works in practice, along with some practical experience I will hopefully have made over the next few weeks. I just wanted to quickly share today's success with you as I've managed to:

• download and install Iray Server
• make it work with DAZ Studio (YEY!)
• access the web-based queue
• send single image jobs to it
• download said images from the Iray Server

This slinky (with Substance Materials) was rendered via Iray Server. #result

Sadly there's a caveat I haven't been able to overcome yet: although it works great with still images, it looks like the animations feature has not been implemented. Iray Server definitely supports it, but DAZ Studio only sends over the first frame rather than the whole sequence. There's a forum thread from 2016 that suggests it wasn't working then, and although many features have been added since version 4.9, I couldn't get animations to work 5 years later. 

It's early days though, so I'll see what else I can find out about this mythical application. Other that queueing jobs, there's also an option to stream the rendered viewport data back, which is great news for underpowered laptops and Mac users. There's also the option to utilise multiple computers to act as a network (both locally and in the cloud) to accelerate the same scene, let's see if I can make that work too.

If you're interested in trying it out for yourself, head over to the Iray Plugins website and grab a free 30 day trial version. Iray Server is $295 per year (credentials are "admin" and "admin" by default), and there is integrated documentation on the About Tab of the web interface.

In somewhat related news, I've been contacted by a cloud rendering company that has servers with 4x RTX 3090 cards available at an hourly rate. They promised me a free account, and I'd love to test it with Iray Server - I'll let you know how that works out.

Controllers Article

I've been working on an article about creating controllers in DAZ Studio today. I've shown this in my crab animation video, but didn't have any written instructions until today. Controllers are quite powerful and are somewhat related to JCMs and MCMs, something I've had many questions about. I've started writing about those too, they'll be available on my 3D Website soon and join the many other useful snippets and ramblings.

PS: Tomorrow (August 13th) my first official DAZ product is scheduled to be released! It's a set of stream-safe modesty textures Dorelle and I have been working on. Twitch and YouTube don't like 3D characters without clothes on, so this should prove to be a handsome workaround.

More news as it breaks, and thank you for reading!