Question about Genesis 2 Female Renders
scottidog2
Posts: 319
G2 Female Characters were made for Daz Studio.
So their shaders don't need too much adjustment to render out using Studio 4.7.
Bur carrara's render engine and shading system is very different.
So what adjustments have to be made in Carrara to get decent looking G2F renders?
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Shader adjustments are about the same for G2F as they are for V4 - if you use the basic or no SSS version of the shaders. Typically you lose bump and spec maps in the translation, but otherwise they usually do quite well. If you want SSS, or any other more complex surface setup you will need to do it yourself in Carrara, just like with V4. Getting one (or more) of Ringos sets would be a great "starter kit" for building your own (but they don't work well for Octane or Lux).
Hope this helps
Thank you. dustrider are you using daz studio for G2 Character renders or is everything through Carrara?
I do most of my work in Carrara, though recently I've done a couple of renders in DS using Reality 4 (had to justify the upgrade..... and remind myself how slooooow Lux is :-S ... but at least it doesn't crash DS like the Octane plugin does :gulp: ). In fact, I've used G2F a lot more in Carrara than in DS.
If I'm creating a character that I will want to use again, I will use DS to create/save the character preset so I can use it in either DS or Carrara. Otherwise, I do everything in Carrara, including putting the cloths/hair on G2F, posing, etc.
I will use DS to "convert" .dsf assets (older Genesis 1 content) to .duf so I can use them in Carrara, and occasionally (once ..... maybe twice) re-saving an outfit on a figure that doesn't want to work in Carrara. I guess I've been lucky and haven't experience nearly as many problems as some others seem to have had. G2F has worked great in Carrara for me. I will say though that Poke Away 2 for G2F (http://www.daz3d.com/poke-away2-for-genesis-2-female-s) is pretty much a must have to make using G2F in Carrara easier. There are still situations where you will need to use the the vertex modeler to fix poke through, but it is seldom needed with Poke Away 2 (note - moving the sliders to the left makes the poke away morphs only affect the clothing item, moving it to the right affects the clothing and the model geometry).
Can you get Carrara renders similar to what Reality 4 can produce?
Hmmm .... that gets a bit more subjective. I think Carrara is capable of similar results. Reality 4 makes getting good SSS skin rather easy, getting similar results in Carrara is more difficult (at least for me). Some materials will be easier the get "right" with Lux (mostly SSS and colors refraction/caustics) than Carrara, but you can get very close/good results with Carrara.
With either one, the best results will almost always require shader customization. Like with Carrara, many of the shaders/textures designed for Poser of DS will look bad with Reality/Lux, especially those with "burned in" specular/highlights. For me, the speed of rendering in Lux is glacial compared to Carrara, unless you enable ray traced DOF - then IMHO Carrara actually gets slower than Lux. Like so many other things in 3D, it's really more a matter of personal choice/preference.
Below are a couple examples from each. The first two images are from Carrara, with the first being a good example of glass in Carrara, and the second is one of my better attempts at mild SSS for skin, and has some other good shaders (I really like the white ball on the end of the "wand"). The last two were done with DS/Reality 4/Lux. I like the SSS materials for the dragon decorations in both. The skin shaders on the last image I modified quite a bit to work better in the lighting, and to reduce the SSS effects a bit. The Skin in the next to last render is pretty much straight out of Reality 4 (slight adjustment to specular). None of these are even close to some of the best renders I've seen with either product, but they are probably a good reference to compare results from the same person in both render engines.
Edit: OPPS: Hit the wrong button - I'm finishing the post now!!!
UPDATE: Now I think the post is finished - I hope!
EDIT II: I should probably add that the Carrara renders both took less than 4 hours each. The first Reality 4/Lux render took ~30 hours, and the last image took over 40 hours.
...and if using Global Illumination (Sunlight enabled) rendering, be sure to enable "Light Through Transparency" or the eyes will turn black.
dustrider, I really like your work. Thank You for your insight, very helpful indeed.
I like the Reality 4 renders more than the Carrara ones. They skin is more realistic.
I'm still pondering on using Daz studio 4.7-Reality 4 for G2 Figures and using Carrara for things like Landscape and vegetation.
The answer is surprisingly yes it can come very close. In my opinion, closer than any other biased engine I've seen in side by sides with unbiased renderers from the same shot (for me I've compared Thearender, Octane, and Lux with the same shot in Carrara).
To do this though you have to tune the Carrara render settings to be as realistic with light calculations as possible, the defaults won't give similar effect in the renders. I highly recommend PhilW's 'Realism Rendering in Carrara' course to explain all the different settings in the Carrara render room and in the shader room to get the most realistic light calculations possible.
Light calculations for renderers is sort of like solving Pi. All render engines, biased and unbiased, are trying to solve light calculations for realistic render effect, it's just they use different math calculations to try to arrive at the correct answer. So for example 2+2 = 4 in one render engine, while 1+5-2=4 in another. Except that for light calculations the problem is very complex, more like solving Pi. And to stretch the analogy the unbiased render engines will solve Pi to infinity while biased engines will only solve Pi to a certain number of places. Carrara just so happens to have an extremely exacting renderer when doing light calculations, it's like it solves Pi to 27 places or something, while most other biased render engines will only solve it to 5 places (I've probably really destroyed this very poor analogy lol).
One of the keys (imo) to getting Carrara so it will perform light calculations most realistically is setting the gamma correction to 2.2, to allow for the linear workflow of the render engine. You can get great renders without this, I'm only speaking from the perspective of the light calculations, since you've mentioned Reality and are talking specifically about how to get Carrara native engine to render more like an unbiased render engine.
I've seen multiple render engines compared side by side with the same scene and the same light setup and Carrara does better/closer to the unbiased result then any of the others I've seen, including high end apps like Modo and C4D. This is particularly surprising since the Carrara render engine is older, but I guess the programmers just put some very exacting math into it's ability to calculate light. Carrara render engine is not too shabby at all. PhilW routinely produces Carrara renders that are mistaken for having been done from unbiased render engines, as one example.
Don't forget though that you also have unbiased render plugins available to use directly in Carrara if you like. Luxus for Carrara is the equivalent of Reality, since it lets you render in Luxrender, and Octane for Carrara plugin will let you render in Octane. I wish there were a Thearender plugin for Carrara, but not yet at least. :) And Sphericlabs is working on Luxcore as a plugin, that thread shows tremendous promise.
Thanks Jonstark. Think I will tryout PhilW’s ‘Realism Rendering in Carrara’ course.
Skin is the most difficult thing to get realistic looking and I am chasing realism with my renders.
Have been playing with daz Studio 4.7 for a week but I just love Carrara.
Ideally I just want to stick with Carrara for all my renders.
Fenric has a Carrara plugin that helps with Carrara's problem to import Poser shaders:
http://fenric.com/wordpress/store/products/poser-shader-doctor/
Have not tried it on G2 though.
Thanks 3drendero. Will definitely look into it.
Thanks! If you would prefer staying with Carrara, as Jonstark noted there are several choices including Luxus, Octane, or the upcoming LuxusCore.
Luxus for Carrara would require more shader work than Reality, but would definitely be a good option. JonStark had a very good thread here with some great info on setting up skin shaders in Luxus which would help a lot.
Octane is a lot more expensive, but the interactive nature, performance and ease of use make it by far my favorite. It is pretty easy to get good skin shaders with Octane (it comes with a couple sample shaders, one for V4 by PhilW and on for G2F by me). Otoy just implemented out of core textures with Octane, so we should see this great feaature in the Carrara plugin very soon. This means that we will no longer be limited to the amount of RAM on the video card for renders, so large multiple character scenes will be possible (WOOHOO!!!!)
LuxusCore looks like it will also be a great option. It's much faster than LuxRender, and will be quite versatile giving you the option to use GPU only, CPU only, or Hybrid renders. Plus, it gives you an IPR similar to what Octane does which is a huge improvement in workflow!
So far with Carrara, I haven't been able to get a SSS render with "ear glow" similar to the one below. I did come very close a few weeks ago using mesh lights, full indirect lighting and ray tracing, and gamma set to 2.0 to 2.2, but I had some unwanted glow under the chin. I can easily get this with either Octane (what the attached image was done with) and Reality 4/Lux (and have come quite close with 3Delight too).
Part of the reason it is hard to get the ear glow with Carrara's SSS is that it does not support maps that could help drive it.
Not all is lost though. If you have an elite texture set, you already probably have maps that would help with SSS in Poser or D|S. I don't know the little naming conventions for them offhand, and it would be difficult to load a shader I have set up, as I am rendering at the moment, but I can post tomorrow. Suffice it to say for now, that I stick a multiplier in the glow channel and put a color SSS map in one slot, and one that looks like a grayscale version of the color map in the other slot and adjust the brightness sliders below the image map thumbnails until I get the desired effect.
The following image uses the method I described above. It is not meant to look like a rival to an unbiased renderer. I didn't even use GI
Edited to add that I forgot that I used caustics, although the reflected light on the pillars and such are spotlights with light gels to enhance the caustics effect.
Actually, for the ear test, an SSS map really isn't needed. I got great back-lit ear glow in Carrara using just SSS and the "proper" depth settings and a lighting set-up like the image above. The problem was that I also got a nice glow under the chin/jaw on the right side of the image where there should be shadows :bug:.
Here is an image with similar lighting done using Reality 4/Lux ..... with no SSS map. Sure, and good SSS distribution map can help, but you can still get good results with the proper SSS color and depth/thickness (at least with Octane or Lux it is possible, and in theory should be possible in Carrara)..
"Otoy just implemented out of core textures with Octane, so we should see this great feature in the Carrara plugin very soon. This means that we will no longer be limited to the amount of RAM on the video card for renders."
My video card has only 1GB RAM so I never looked at octane.
But this is very good news for Octane and for Carrara users.
Sure. But it takes so damn long to calculate that crap on my old dinosaur. If I can fake- er...simulate it, then I'm happy. ;-)
I am a Mac user.
Is Octane for windows only?
Sorry, I forgot you were on a Mac. Unfortunately it is Wndows only for the OR4C plugin. I'm not sure about Luxus or LuxCore, they could be as well.
Sure. But it takes so damn long to calculate that crap on my old dinosaur. If I can fake- er...simulate it, then I'm happy. ;-)
Lol - "Simulating" does have it's advantages!
Sorry, I forgot you were on a Mac. Unfortunately it is Wndows only for the OR4C plugin. I'm not sure about Luxus or LuxCore, they could be as well.
I just checked, and Luxus for Carrara does have a Mac version. Right now the LuxusCore preview is Windows only, but It could also have a Mac version when it comes out since SphericLabs supports Macs with Luxus.
Thank You dustrider.
Heya, also there's a good selection of Carrara tuned skin shader sets in RingoMonfort's Store ...
I've really enjoyed the bundled V4 / M4 Carrara tuned Elite shaders, and what Ringo offers is pretty much the same idea , premade Carrara skin shaders for Genesis & Genesis 2... Easy drag and drop, getting you optimal SSS, Highlight, Bump and Reflection settings for the skin.
They do require owning the original skin packages of the same name and I find I have to go into my Daz Genesis Textures folder and copy over said named texture sets into Carrara's runtime folder (have always had to since the Gen4 Elite skins). Else you'll get carrara asking you to locate said skins each time. ;)
Hadn't tried them yet with the LuxCore, though i think they're needed / works best with Carrara's native engine.
@Mohandai, Thanks.
Also there are high quality characters that are labelled "HD".
eg FW Ellie-Jane HD for Victoria 6
I am assuming they will not work with Carrara 8.5.
Can anyone confirm this please?
Currently not.
rk.