How to render DAZ Studio RIB Files on another computer

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I have previously described how to render DAZ Studio Scenes without DAZ Studio. This is done by rendering to a RIB File (RenderMan Interface Bytestream), using the standalone 3Delight Studio to create the final render. The procedure frees DAZ Studio up and allows you to work on your next scene without having to wait for the render to finish.

I generally use Xender for PC for my file transfer needs, but I’ve been looking for ways to transfer such RIB files to another computer which does not have the content or even DAZ Studio installed, and I think I’ve found another one!

When used as described in my previous article, DAZ Studio creates a RIB file that references temporary files as well files on the local system. Neither of those can be used on a different computer because they most certainly don’t exist. This means your render will likely be missing a few textures.

There’s a handy command line tool that will collate all those files needed to render the image. The drawback is that – depending on the size of your scene – this may result in a rather large file (1GB or more). However the approach is great if you’d like to render that super long animation for several weeks without blocking your regular office computer.

Here’s how to do it.

1.) In DAZ Studio, render your scene as RIB File. You can do that on the advanced tab. Make sure “keep shadows” and “collect and localise” are ticked.

Screen Shot 2015-06-11 at 08.57.20

2.) This will create a file and a folder with your specified name. At the location of those, create another folder of your choice. You should now have your original file and folder, and another folder.

3.) On the command line, change into this directory containing those three items. You would do this to render the file now using the renderdl command. We won’t do that on this computer though.

4.) Instead, we’ll use the ribdepends command, specifying our new folder. Say my RIB file was called “Test3.rib”, and that second folder I’ve just created was called “testing”, then I’d execute the command like this:

ribdepends -package testing Test3.rib

The package parameter specifies where we want to collate our textures and shaders to (namely our testing folder), followed by the RIB file in question. 3Delight Studio goes to work and should come back without any error messages.

Make sure DAZ Studio remains open during this step, otherwise the temp files it has created for render optimisation may be deleted and our command won’t be able to collate those. You’ll be informed of such atrocities with a flood of files that cannot be located.

5.) Transfer your new folder (testing in my example) to another machine on which 3Delight Studio is also installed. Change into that folder and start rendering using the renderdl command:

renderdl -id Test3.rb

And that’s it! Your target system can be of any architecture (including Linux) and does not need to have DAZ Studio or any of its content installed. All you need is 3Delight Studio.



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10 thoughts on “How to render DAZ Studio RIB Files on another computer”

  1. Okay, this might be a totally nonrelevant or unanswerable question, but I figured I’d give it a shot. I have an old G5 PPC tower with X.5.8 on it, and was wondering:

    1. Have you heard of the current ‘universal binary’ standalone 3DL failing to run on the PPC architecture? (Well, I guess you have now, because that’s what’s happening to me; it doesn’t seem to be quite as ‘universal’ as one might hope.) If so, is there a workaround?

    2. If not, would an older version of 3DL (standalone) work on the G5’s system? And how do I go about uninstalling the current version, if it’s necessary to do that?

    I’ve been googling myself silly all day and can’t seem to find even a decent jumping-off place to begin troubleshooting.

    Reply
      • Ha! I figured it was a long shot, since these are odd questions indeed. I’ve also tried to contact the 3DL folks, but haven’t heard back from them yet; I’ll update the outcome here, since while it’s *possible* I’m the only one on the planet attempting to do this, there *may* be others out there somewhere who could use a helpful search hit on the googles.

        Reply
          • Okay, what 3Delight tells me is that the current standalone renderer is not in fact a universal binary and there hasn’t been one for a while. What I don’t yet know is what the last version is that truly was universal, or whee I can retrieve it from.

          • I may be able to help with that: Xcode, Apple’s coding tool for developers, stopped making “real” universal binaries for PPC and Intel with the introduction of Snow Leopard in 2010. So a 3Delight version from 2010 or thereabouts should do the trick. Equipped with that knowledge, head over to archive.org and see what snapshots they’ve made of 3delight.com over the years.

            Here’s a direct link to the download page from December 2010 – it definitely has a universal download. There may even be a more recent version available.

            Happy hunting!

          • Excellent call. I retrieved the v9 DMG, and with a bit more poking around found a v10 DMG from 2013 here:

            https://web.archive.org/web/20130911025456/http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php?page=3DSP_download

            After that they seem to have stopped linking directly to versions by number, and only to a download PHP script. Which the wayback won’t archive because they believe it’s a ‘live’ page currently available now. Well … technically it is, I suppose, but that means if there’s a v11 out there, and it might work on PPC, I can’t get if from the archive. I seem to be coming up snake-eyes on finding it elsewhere as well, though it very possibly is Intel only in any event.

            What I don’t know yet is whether v10 actually is universal as the link claims, since of course v12 is not. I’ll be cramming more RAM into the G5 this afternoon (maxing it out to its full possible complement of eight whole gigabytes!), after which I’ll try the v10 DMG first – since it doesn’t have that ‘render server’ rigamarole that v9 does.

            Also, the v12 install won’t let older versions overwrite it. According to 3DL, the workaround is to go to /Library/Receipts and delete the 3DL software installation receipt for v12, which will allow an older version to install. Haven’t tried that yet either, of course.

          • Okay, v10 won’t work on PPC either. And of course the link to the v9 ‘free license’ doesn’t bring much joy any more, which means I might have to nag 3DL again to create a license file for me so I can render without a watermark. Sigh.

          • Alas, no dice. Version 9 runs, but it throws a few nonfatal errors about missing shaders, and about existing shaders made using a newer version (one presumes of 3DL) … and just as it seems like it’s about to actually start rendering it throws several fatal errors, and that’s that. I’ve tried it with both v9 and v12 on my source machine (an x86 Mac), but v9 on the target machine just can’t seem to handle the newer shaders, or possibly instructions contained therein.

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