Momiji lick WIP1 (Patreon)

Optimize your render settings and transparency maps, kids!

Little different this time, this is a comparison of two of the three renders I've done for an upcoming Momiji PoV licking image. On the right, the "full" render; no details left out, 3570x2550 resolution, uber lights, raytracing on (for the main light only), and default shaders in DAZ Studio 3.1a. Generally I won't leave a render to run for more than an hour or two, but by the time I realized this wasn't going to be quick, it was too far in to cancel and waste it all.

On the left is a fix render, and much more optimized. Same lights and shaders - with just one extra specular-only light added (that was the fix) - but the hair this time has the uber shader applied, raytracing turned off for the shadows, and fantom enabled (a setting that makes the object invisible in the render, but still casts a shadow).

This is a pretty great example of just how resource-intensive even .obj hair can be to a render, with layers of mesh all with their own transparency maps that need to be calculated for the raytraced shadows. It's made a bit worse by my render settings - I shouldn't have used the default shader for the hair in the first place, the uber shader is more flexible and efficient - but even with the correct shaders, the hair is the primary cause of slow render times for my work. There are even a few hair models that I really love style-wise, but the way they've been built just makes them too inefficient to render, so I don't use them for any of my characters.

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If all that sounded like gibberish to you, no worries! I hope you enjoy this peek at what I have in mind for Momiji's entry into the "squishy showoff" series, and a view of what some of the renders look like before all the actual glass-squishing effects get added in.