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Hi Guys, I tried to start realism study, but at the beginning I encountered a problem. I thinks this is a bug.
First of all, the back I can't set the right color, I choose the color but due to linear work flow the color I choose doesn't represnts the rendered color. But that's ok. I just eyed adjust, there is no controls for gamma on the colors.
Next I disable the translucency weight and all other material layers of the skin material to get the diffuse only. And guess what? The texture is being multiplied by the color of the diffuse color... I kust want to have the diffuse color by itself, but there is no way in Daz. If i set the color to black, the material becomes all black. The closest thing I have to a diffuse color texture is to set the color to a grey color. But the diffuse color of the texture becomes mudded.
So I actually got to have the translucency turned on just to have "natural" colors on my models? This doesn't make any sense.
Mod edit :- Image removed due to nudity
i didnt say DOF doesnt exist.. of course it does... just saying if its forced too much, then it looks unrealistic. cheers.
Agreed... its not that DOF doesnt exist (as Padone would assume i meant), it's just I think it needs to be used carefully so as not to result in a fake look. Used properly, and subtly, it can make a huge difference... also, as a bonus it softens/blurs the image a bit which further helps hide the sharpness of the renders.
DOF is a funny thing. It is an entirely natural phenomenon that continuously shapes virtually everything you see (it is the oft' overlooked other physical mechanism - besides stereoscopy - that makes depth perception possible.) But since it normally only manifests in a subconscious way (things that your brain isn't actively visually fixated upon go out of focus because of it) being able to see it manifested as a consciously observable phenomenon (such as part of a still image) often makes it come across as something that's unrealistic despite the opposite being the actual truth.
Because of this (and other reasons as well), manufacturer bias for point-and-shoot style cameras (the niche that Polaroid created and cellphones carry onward) has always trended towards lens configurations with unrealistically deep DOF. Which then shapes people's educated perceptions of what does/doesn't resemble reality in a point-and-shoot style image.
The reality is that DOF-less point-and-shoot photography is completely unrealistic looking. But is also the gold standard for what people generally perceive as realistic photography. 'Tis one of the greatest ironies of the artform imo.
For depth of field, I think the tl:dr version is the right amount depends on what you're trying to do and what kind of camera you're trying to emulate. For a lot of my renders, I increase the virtual sensor size to reflect he kind of cameras used in the kind of "photos" I'm making (I often use backplate, aspect ratio, and lens length data from real world cameras). Of course, the other element that's coming into play is how much phone cameras rely on digital processing. That's going to change what we think of as photoreal as the technology advances and becomes more pervasive.
Ah, CGI, no matter what you do, you're always behind.
Okay, now that I tested some more. I know why getting photoreal images with daz is so complicated. The thing is there is a HUGE problem with the default lights, enviroment setup and the tonemapper. The characters skins are all dark. Them, I guess, what Daz team did was to cranck up the lightning all they way. So you can't have normal objects with Daz characters because the light explodes on the normal objects. Making it impossible to make photoreal scenes, unless you put everything on the same page.
So the first thing I did was to set a white ball. Yes, the ball is actually 255,255,255 white whithout any translucency. Them set the light to illuminate and not blow up. Cahnged the enviroment intensity and tonemapper settings. And this is what I got: A dark character.
So translucency makes the character too dark, or it has been setup that way because of the strong lights, making it impossible to fine tune, every change you do to the translucency on strong lights change the whole appereance of the character.
Now that you have the lights correct, you need to "light" the skin, having the white ball as a reference. I took the translucency out of the character, making it from 0.9 to 0.2. And that left the character pale. Unfortunately, you lose a lot of the saturation. But know the light will scatter and behaves correctly and is going to be predictiable and easier to get a photoreal look.
Rhis is victoria 8 whithout any changes to texture, just the translucency drop. She is pale, and whithout saturation. But look how on the pale close up you can cleary see the detail of the mouth and the pores bumps, while on the super translucent version the details are all washed out.
Well I hope thats been helpful for someone who wants to light thing like they should be.
Please don't post nude renders - either apply some clothes or zoom in on the ehad, as in the remaining images.
Yeah, it's really imortant to keep in mind that unbiased PBR rendering engines like Iray are really full-fledged simulation environments. Meaning that if your goal is photorealism, you need to pay attention to authentically modeling the entire photographic chain (light sources > light dispersion methods > scene objects > object-light interactions > camera lens-light interactions > camera sensor/film pickup methods) to get what you want.
I'm finding it increasibly frustrating that even when you get the perfect skin settings, they seem to only be perfect for ONLY certain lighting set ups. If I change things too drastically, the character ends up waaaay too dark and red.
This seems to be an issue with chromatic skins.
@Leonides02 That's also my point exactly. A pbr skin shader must work in any light condition, otherwise it's a not a skin shader but just a "trick". Then the light setup has to be realistic itself of course. That is, forget about point lights for example that don't cast reflections and have no size.
Indeed it is hilarious that most acclaimed "realistic" method here is based on point lights.
might be true, but this means, that you can forget about "photorealism" with IRAY.
It's not possible. period!
Maybe ten IRAY versions later.
EDIT:
That said, Iray can produce nice renders for sure, but If you want photorealism, you're better off with VRAY, Octane or maybe Cycles.
CGI has always been a trick. It's based on approximations, work-arounds, and artistic eyes. Given the audience for DS and the Genesis ecosystem, expecting to have a universal solution is asking a lot, almost certainly exceeding what most users can do and the computational resources they have access to. Watch one of SideFX's Houdini presentations—they demo amazing work, but part of that is letting things simulate for long periods of time on hardware few hobbiests can afford. Part of it is deep knowledge of the software. For most hobbiests who want to make nice images and tell stories, the only way we'll get close to photorealism is via tricks and "cheats," that hide the limitation of our computers, software, and skills.
One thing to bear in mind very few "white" things in the Real WorldTM are pure white diffuse. and by very few I mean I'm pretty sure its only theretical and literally does not exist. Pure white diffuse means 100% reflectance. no energy is being absorbed. From some minor googling it appears super white pure pigments hit in the .9-.93 range and those are pure pigments aiming to by white your average shet of paper or plain housepaint is going to be even less reflective
so to some extent its not that the skin is too dark its that frequently everything else is too light.
...you do realize you can add geometry to point lights right? given that the eyes in Jeffs renders are reflecting the point light I'm pretty sure thats exactly what he does (also the difference between a point light without added geometry and one with, say, geometry but its a couple milimeters diameter, which is a perfectly reasonable stand in for a cameraphone flash is real gd marginal)
So, I got really really annoyed with chromatic skin and how different it appears in every damn lighting condition. I decided to try the infamous NGS on a G8 character.
There were minor tweaks, but I'm actually super-impressed with how it came out...
See this article for 20 fine to extremely fine examples of what level of photorealism Iray itself was capable of more than ten versions ago (and a lot has changed for the better since then.) Keep in mind that when dealing with Iray in the context of Daz Studio, you are almost exclusively interacting with it from within the confines of Daz's own custom (oftentimes barebones) implementation of it. Specifically in the form of the Daz-authored UberShader and compatible 2nd/3rd party pre-packaged content.
Not if you consider the method (a specific fixed locational relationship between light source and camera) behind their use. Point lights don't realistically cast shadows. But real world selfie-style flash photography (where lens and flash emitter are almost on top of each other) effectively hide the existence of shadows anyway. Making their lack a moot point.
w.i.p. first test with specular/glossiness model
I'm not sure how to define realism and from what I've seen in this thread, there are many opinions. I think we can get sidetracked into searching for absolutes when what we are really looking for is something believable. The set of images from @jeff_someone are believable as snapshots from the kind of cameras we used in pre-digital days. Those camera photographs in themselves were not particularly realistic but they were images of real people. That's what, I assume, @jeff_someone is going for with the renders posted here. His people look more real to me than many of the so-called photoreal CGI images I see here and elsewhere. Early on in the thread he had to show his working process to prove that he had not faked them - which, in itself, speaks for their believability.
On the other hand, there are other discussions to be had about artistic merit. If you compare a Vermeer to a portrait by Lucien Freud you might say that the Vermeer is "realistic" but the Freud, for me, probably captures something "real" about the subject that the Vermeer just does not (they are two of my favourite painters, by the way).
love her expression and the camera angle
Thank you. I posted late and my bleary eyes didn't see how bad the yellow color cast was! I've fixed that:
That's better. I just assumed the lights were simulating old fashioned incandescent lighting or sunrise/setset.
Have you ever compared incandescent lights, 2700 - 3500 LED lights, and 5000 LED lights one after the other? It's surprising how orange the incandescent and 2700 - 3500 LED lights are.
@jcade If you mean to change the light geometry then it's no more a point light. For example rectangle is an area light.
@RayDAnt Point lights are not phisically correct. There's no way they can be even remotely useful in pbr. If we use a small area light instead then it's fine. Also point lights in daz studio are not photometrically accurate. In my tests they get about four times the energy of an equivalent sphere light. Below an example point vs sphere with the same lumens.
edit. I also have to correct myself since it seems point lights don't cast reflections only for roughness zero or very low roughness. That's again a non-sense in pbr where low roughness gets the maximum reflection. The image below is with roughness zero in the G8F lips to better show point vs sphere. Scene file included.
@marble There's a difference between making a "believable" image and making a "realistic" 3d asset. I agree that to make a believable image you can use any tool and trick you wish. But to make a realistic 3d asset you have to strictly think pbr. When an asset only looks realistic within a dedicated light set, then it's not a pbr asset. This is especially bad when a non-pbr asset gets in the shop since daz customers may rightfully expect for it to work fine in any light condition. That's why I believe PAs need to be sensibilized about pbr.
While I agree with the sentiment, none of these renders seem to be Iray Most seem to be using Vray or Mental Ray with a few otherthers like Arnold thrown in
one adds geometry to the point light and you may no longer consider it a "point light" but that is what the software is still calling it, and it stands to reason that may be what other people call it as well
saying " Point lights don't cast reflections." when I can add one to my scene, change a parameter in the properties tab and absolutely have it cast a reflection seems... a needlessly confusing distinction to make. Just tell people to make sure they go to the parameters and set the geometry to something other than point - same information but much clearer in terms of specifics of the software
This is again perfectly realistic* (following the rules of physics) the reason that point lights without added light geometry dont have reflections with no roughness isnt because its not "creating a reflection" as it were, its because any reflection it would create would be infinitesimally small. in the real world the strength of a light doesnt make its reflection any bigger. Of course, like many things we can do in 3d infinitsimally small lights don't exist in reality But that is the specific phisical rule that is being broken. the light still completely follows the rules of physics, just with a theoretical input
There does definitely appear to be something up with point lights. the differnce between setting the geometry to point vs sphere with a size of .0001 was unexpected and noticable (fwiw I generally use spot lights where there is no difference between setting the geometry to point and a sphere with a diameter of .0001).
TLDR I agree dont use point lights with the geometry set to point. but I think you should say "dont use point lights with the geometry set to point" and not "dont use point lights" because the latter is much less clear
Nvidia bought Mental Ray from its original developer Mental Images in 2007, ported its core codebase to Nvidia proprietary Cuda code so as to make use of GPU acceleration, and then started offering it as an independent product called Iray starting in 2010.
Why are you using examples that fundamentally deviate from the specific use-case in question?
Nice work! Imo you might want to change the cover photo for when you first follow the DA link to show a positive result example image from the guide rather than the negative result example image currently up there. That way people don't mistakenly assume that that's the look the guide is intended to achieve.
This is great work, isidorekeeghan!
Here's an example employing your technique. The first one is my own chromatic shader which I worked forever on, but ultimately grew frustrated because my character's skin color kept changing. I had NO IDEA you could change the base color values above 1.00, and that alters everything.
The second one is with your technique, and I think the SSS is beautiful. The only thing I noticed is now the inside of my character's mouth is glowing. Also, my SSS glow is yellowish when it should be red. But if I change the hue the lovely SSS diminishes significantly.
Any suggestion?
Old SSS
New SSS
Iray was shipped with mental ray for a while, before said renderer's demise, and perhaps they share some code, that is nvidias perogative. But given that Mental Ray was a biased render engine that did GI via photon mapping and Iray is definitely not (mental ray also had a dedicated sss shader rather than using volumetrics)
To call Mental ray an older version of Iray is very incorrect. They are fundementally different engines
Thanks, just change the sss color hue to more redish color like 28 or something ,sss color is different for every skin ,some people have red some orange some pink, and what do you mean by glow i dont understand, maybe send me a close up and also spectral rendering off or on?