My First Real Render - Looking for feedback

wmiller314

So this is my first real render with lights and framing. I've been doing 3d art for about a week now, and I'm just looking for honest feedback. I'd specifically like to know how to get more realistic skin. If anyone can give me a few pointerst here, I'd sure appreciate it. Also, the lights. Are they good? Do they need more work? I was going for a nice soft blue, like moonlight, but the final render did not look like my preview, so it's more like daylight. 

 

The character is by Second Circle, BTW and the out fit was bought on Daz, but I don't remember the name. Sorry. 

mmitchell_houston

wmiller314 said:

So this is my first real render with lights and framing. I've been doing 3d art for about a week now, and I'm just looking for honest feedback. I'd specifically like to know how to get more realistic skin. If anyone can give me a few pointers here, I'd sure appreciate it. Also, the lights. Are they good? Do they need more work? I was going for a nice soft blue, like moonlight, but the final render did not look like my preview, so it's more like daylight. 

The character is by Second Circle, BTW and the out fit was bought on Daz, but I don't remember the name. Sorry. 

Wow. Very nice work. You have accomplished a lot more than I did in my first  month, let alone my first week! My honest feedback is that this is a very good start. Lots of emotion is apparent in the body language. I like that she is actually standing on the floor (not hovering above it). The pose seems mostly realistic, like the kind of thing you'd see in a fashion magazine (you know, where they always put models in extreme poses); her center of gravity looks about right to me. The light rays are also very impressive. I think that the God Rays are doing a nice job and appear to be very realistic and stylish.

In terms of things that need work:

• Look at her sleeves: the geometry is intersecting (possibly a Deformer or DForce to correct?)
• You are right, her skin needs work. It is very dead. There are numerous skin products here at Daz; just look into them and purchase one (or cruise the forums looking for info on skin for Iray).
• The hair also looks a little lifeless. Maybe look for better shaders or just increase the specularity/relfections.
• The lighting is dramatic, but it does seem to be a bit strong. Now, my advice is to leave the lighting alone and go into the Iray settings and change your ISO to 100 (or even 60 or 50). This will simulate real-world film, and is more likely to shift the colors to where you want them to go. Also, if you are familiar with camera settings, take a look  at your fstop and your shutter speed (faster is better for bright lights). Just play around with the settings and see what you get.

Again, EXCELLENT first work! Very impressive and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

Hylas

Certainly better than anything I managed after one week, lol!

The lighting is beautiful, especially the godrays! Very moody!

This cool light might not be the best for this particular skin though, she's looking kinda gray. Not every skin looks good under every light and this particular skin might look better with warmer light. Or you could try and and mix some yellow/pink/orange into her skin...

I often place a warm Point Light in front of my characters forehead to illuminate their faces.

I interpreted the scene as day. Nocturnal scenes are generally hard to render, just FYI!

To get rid of the grainyness you have to render longer. Under Render settings -> Progressive Rendering set Max Time to zero to let it render as long as it needs. You can also increase the value of Rendering Quality. There's more to it (and I'm not an expert either) but this should get you started.

Her pose is ok but her arms are clipping through each other and the situation with the sweater cuff and her right hand looks a little weird.

Hope some of this helps, good luck!

 

 

 

markusmatern

Very impressive for your first work. I really like the light and especially the natural pose. To reduce the grain you could try a post rendering denoising technique. I used the Intel denoiser in the attached version of your image.

See the following threads for denoising:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/334881/use-this-a-i-based-open-source-de-noiser-from-the-comfort-of-daz-studio

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/316206/denoise-renders-and-save-a-lot-of-time-nvidia-not-reqd

wmiller314

Wow! Okay. Thanks to everyone. This is all really helpful. 

@mmitchell_houston My ISO was set to 100, so I'll try lowering it in future. I did notice that her little sleeves are kind of poking into each other, but I don't know how to fix that. Is there a tool in DAZ to change how the fabric lays? And what is a Deformer and Dforce? Is that something I can buy?

@Hylas Thanks for the tip on the progressive render setting. Mine was set to something like 720. I changed it to zero. Let's hope that helps. It took me like ten minutes just to find the function.

@markusmatern That is so cool! Unfortunatly I'll probably have to have my boyfriend install it for me because that looks a bit more complicated than just buying from the DAZ store. Thanks for the link though. Definitely going to check this out. 

 

Question to all: Under render settings, should I be rendering with CPU, or gforce gtx 1050, or both? Right now it is set to gforce option.

mmitchell_houston

wmiller314 said:

Wow! Okay. Thanks to everyone. This is all really helpful. 

@mmitchell_houston My ISO was set to 100, so I'll try lowering it in future. I did notice that her little sleeves are kind of poking into each other, but I don't know how to fix that. Is there a tool in DAZ to change how the fabric lays? And what is a Deformer and Dforce? Is that something I can buy?

@Hylas Thanks for the tip on the progressive render setting. Mine was set to something like 720. I changed it to zero. Let's hope that helps. It took me like ten minutes just to find the function.

@markusmatern That is so cool! Unfortunatly I'll probably have to have my boyfriend install it for me because that looks a bit more complicated than just buying from the DAZ store. Thanks for the link though. Definitely going to check this out. 

 

Question to all: Under render settings, should I be rendering with CPU, or gforce gtx 1050, or both? Right now it is set to gforce option.

You definitely want to render with the GPU! You will get faster results. As for the CPU, I'm pretty sure it will use that, too (I don't do a lot of Iray, so I'm not 100% sure). Lower ISO and a different fstop will give you different results. And since you are trying for a special effect, don't be afraid to push the numbers (ISO 30, maybe).

• DForce is a dynamic clothing simulator that makes fabric behave like it does in the real world (more or less). You already have it with Daz Studio, but you should definitely go to YouTube and look for tutorials before attempting to use it). 
• Deformers are kind of like magnets. They pull fabric one direction or the other so that you can distort things a bit. In this case, to make the two areas of frabric look like they are touching and not intersecting. Again, you already have these and YouTube has great videos.

I also noticed what wmiller said about the sleeve looking odd at the wrist: that is definitely another area where a Deformer could help you.

Best of luck!