Why is the Skin way darker compared to the Product Promo?
AndyS
Posts: 1,434
Hi,
I got the Tween Ryan 7 product.
Setting him into an iRay scene, I found a very dark skin tone. As I analysed, it depends on the default, really unsufficient, translucency setting of that product.
Why doesn't the default (iRay) character look - at least his skin - like the pictures in the promos?
What are the skin settings used in the promo shots?
On the right you see the default iRay Tween Ryan 7 (out of the box) compared with other skins ( G1 Jesse-skin, G3 Eddie).
Post edited by AndyS on
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Comments
What is your lighting? Light makes a huge difference to the look of skin.
What version of Studio?
Two questions - what's answer is the least that could be done.
The lighting is easy to see in the picture: SunSky of cause.
And the version, of cause mjc1016 you know it from the other posts. I'm not a beta tester - so ?
--> the latest general release. (http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/89131/daz-studio-4-9-2-pro-general-release)
And the analysis why his skin looks that dark was already shown in the opening post. In detail: It is the influence of the gray version of the skin texture mixed with the intense red color at a factor of 0.5 for translucency, created by the vendor.
I by myself use a very different setup to get a better translucent effect for example for the ears, fingers and other thin body parts. But still getting a light and natural skin color.
So this is not actually a question or request for a way to change your look, it is a complaint about the original settings?
Oh yes.
It is very obvious, that the vendor used a real different skin shader for the promo contrary to what he delivered.
My request is to please describe the skin shader used for the promo. See the question in my opening post.
Your image doesn't prove that the shaders were different in the promos - it may be that the lights used account for the difference (or different tone-mapping settings). There aren't any other characters there with which to compare it, still less the oens you use in your comparison.
The image does not give much info at all.
So are all the figures IRAY?
Were they all converted to IRAY using the uber shader?
I'm presuming not as (at least) one has an IRAY setting available - but assumptions don't help: something to take away from this.
I don't know what lights were used or how it was lit - maybe HDRI, but again, that's assumptions. (Why, of course? You state in a later post.)
Position in a scene makes a difference, with lights shining directly on, or just missing a character. And this applies to HDRIs as well (they are lights too).
So shaders may be the reason, many are different, but answering you as the result of some maybe's wont be of any help.
... And you have the product, you can look at the skin shader yourself; what do you mean by describe the skin shader?
And you want information from a promo shot, you might need to contact the PA directly, but please be more respectful of them than of those trying to help you here.
All this has to do with translucency settings and the fact that there is no standard. A PA can use what ever setting they want when developing a character, if the render is too dark they just bump up the exposure for their promo image. And there you go, promo looks great with an exposure of 300iso when the standard for all other charectors is 100iso.
Vendors should test their charactors with the default empty HDRI scene (i think it's called RUINS-500 it's what loads when you choose dome). The default iso is 100. make sure your charectors work at this setting.
@Richard & nicstt:
some posts ago I stated that the "sun-sky" iRay setup was used.
And of cause all skins of the reference characters in the picture are iRay. Even the hairs are my adaptions for iRay.
As we all know: 3DL shaders won't work here.
A further reference are the beach sand and the sky in the picture. Everything must fit to each other. So please don't say: "If the skin is too dark, simply make the (environment) lighting brighter."
I 100% have to agree to nickalaman. PAs, and at least the product accepting board, should test and verify the assets and promos.
The promos are the first indicator for the customer's "I-must-have" decision.
We were not questioning your render - we were saying that there is no guarantee that the store render used an equivalent setting, nor that the other characters you use would not be bleached out if rendered at the same time (looking at the Ryan promo images I think the tone is visually between the way Ryan looks in your render and the way the other two characters look).
Oh sorry,
so I misunderstood you.
But I think in the promo there is some environment. And hopefully getting the same light (character and envi), even his clothing. I think the author deactivated translucency for the promo shoots.
Though it is that easy to set efficient transmission without detoning the skin color.
No.
We're not going to make a character to look decent in the worst lighting possible, we're going to make it look its best period. That means good lights, and good lights mean not the default empty HDRI scene with the camera headlamp on. It's not hard for a user to learn how to use tone mapping and light skin at its best for Iray. I have like three video tutorials and two written ones that go into this at some length.
Oh yes. Your tutorials a very helpful.
But what are they worth for, if the authors show promos which are not related to the real delivered product.
I for myself created two different setups, which are closer to what the promos showed; still offering the translucent effect.
In the attachment this time I used some kind of studio lighting, at 6500K.
I'm not a vendor and i've been doing this long enough to be able to correct things. But for arguements sake please, please hear me out.
You typical new user will go through these steps.
They will download Daz, and the free content. They'll do a few renders and curse as to why it's takeing 3 hours and why iray doesn't work on their 10 year old nvidia card. So once they selltle on that, they might decide to buy a product. They see a charector and they buy it, they hit render and guess what, the charector looks like they spent 60 hours in a tanning salon.
So after putzing around a bit they figure they can just increase the iso, maybe play with the gamma, the charactor the spent $20 looks better now, but hold on, their HDRI back ground is all washed out and supper bright.
So what now, hey they deicide to go on the forums. Maybe other people have had the same problem. They find some totorial from daz 4.6, they watch them but then they relaize they have studio 4.9 and the meus are all different.
In the end they just give up and move on.
No loss for me, but if i was a vendor, I'd make sure customers don't give up and move on.
I'm not a vendor and I’ve been doing this long enough to be able to correct things. But for arguments sake please, please hear me out.
Your typical new user will go through these steps.
They will download Daz, and the free content.They play with studio for a while and if they haven’t lost interest because of some bug or lack of documentation, they decide to buy a character they like. They hit render and guess what the character looks nothing like the promo, but like they spend way too much time at the tanning salon.
So after playing around a bit they figure they can just increase the iso, maybe play with the gamma, the character the spent $20 looks better now, but hold on, their HDRI back ground is all washed out and very bright.
So what now they decide to go on the forums. Maybe other people have had the same problem. They are told, they need morph packages, add-ons, a new video card, a new computer, a new monitor, more memory and probably a new job to pay for all this!!
In the end they just give up and move on.
No loss for me, but if I was a vendor, I'd make sure customers doesn't give up and move on.
I'm not expecting vendors to render their promo images with the default lighting, but they should at least test it with the default lighting. Becuase some useres, that's all they will use for the first couple of weeks.
I perfectly agree nickalaman suggestion.. To be frankly said,, when I get DAZ contents, I need not many artistic promo image, I do not hope to see artstic renders garrelly when I serch contents in DAZ shop, but need to get contents and clear infomation.. the more vendor try to change lighitng or set pefect tone map,, or mix with many contents which actually we can not get,, it make me difficult to know the skin tone,, or geometries which actually offered.
to show Skin mat product with most DAZ offer decent light set, is actually useful. to get product which I really need, with vendor recommend tone mapping.
(to show good promo image with techinics not bad it is interesting and useful,, but,, to show product with default decent setting is more recommend ,, it make us easy choose product what we need,, )
For better natural skin light result it need to check the "skin surfaces" and use "DIFFUSE" at 100% (or more)
most of the time by default, the skin diffuse is 50 / 60%, that provide a "darker" result
Also a good tips, is to apply GAMMA in your render setting
personnaly i use "GAMMA 2.20"
I have a similar complaint, but not about any specific model.
I have literally rendered-out over 100 models on 50% grey background, in "typical default IRAY lighting" (The default dome), and the measures of skin-tones and tints range from natural to completely alien, in most models.
Part of the issue is that people use poorly adjusted monitors, or old monitors, without "correcting them", for the decay of age, or generic cheapness. This results in them seeing "white", when it is actually blue, or red or green tinted, which then leads to corrections in the images that are reverse of that.
Another part of the issue is due to the fact that they may have no clue how to setup lighting, and in bad practice, use colorized lights or mixed-lights from Iray and 3DeLight, which can saturate the image, so they darken it, thinking they are correcting it... or make it brighter if they use dark lights. (Even the time of day when you edit can alter the brightness of the models. Sunlight and bright rooms tends to make people over-brighten and over saturate things, while dark rooms with bright screens, tends to make people over-darken and desaturate images.)
The last thing that I see a LOT of, is adjustments made poorly for the surface settings. Using gloss and diffuse to brighten things in odd light setups, and topcoats in a similar way. Adding to the fact that most adjustments tend to be over-done or under-done, due to them not knowing what things are altering what effects on the models... But it looks great for a single photoshoot!
I think the worst offender is the child-models and skins from V4 kids, which are green-tinted. Almost an almond-green color, like a creepy cereal-killer porcelin doll, from a 1970's horror show. Apparently, they had a lack of green in that monitor, and compensated by adding more green in the image, so it appeared "white", or "flesh-colored". But on our screens (I assume they had an old CRT. Ours now digitally accurate LED pixels.), the models all look green.
I literally laughed at the product, "Perfect skins", because they had the most alien colors and textures of all the skins I saw.
Standards... What are those? Daz isn't setup to enforce any, nor does it even attempt to offer any. This is a totally "do whatever" market, and people "do whatever", and daz gets the blame for it. (It only deserves half the blame. They let these things into the market.)
I suggest that you contact the creator, and suggest that you would like to see another skin that is more "tone favorable" to the sample models you are comparing them to. From what I see, it is the other models that are off. Your sand is too bright and reflective. xD. (That was a joke.) You obviously don't like mexicans on your beach. (Another joke.)
P.S. If you like the settings of the other models, match them on the new model you just purchased. Then save that model as an asset, in one of your folders, for loading later. If the skin is too dark, open it in an editor and adjust it to taste. (Brightness and contrast, or gamma adjustments.)
I am still waiting for a universal "Shade/Tone" mapper, where we can just select the skin-color we want. (Not this fake colorize, which is a horrible representation of colorizing anything.)
Camera headlamp
I cannot tell how many hours I spent trying to figure out why the skin and light situation looks different than it should be until finally I remembered to toggle the Camera headlamp from auto to off.
Simply put with no additional lights in the scene if you can see a colored openGL preview render it means the headlamp is on.
With just a HDRI background and the camera headlamp on the skin will look much brighter.
If the users now choose an environment with existing lights the headlamp with be automatically switched off and the skin looks darker...
@ light standards for promo images
In theory it would be great if characters of different artists would match in color tone and could be used together in the same light setup.
In practice let's talk about that again in a few years when either
- artists had more time to experiment with creating skin shaders that allow subsurface scattering, refraction and transmission effects
- the render engine itself was updated to offer more advanced skin shader solutions
- - -
-> For now we just need to learn to adjust both skin shaders and light setup to produce an optimal result for each specific character.
Yes !!
this should be addressed to the vendor "DAZ Originals" especially !
Even if there's a "standard promo light" defined at some point that won't change the fact that you will need to learn how to adjust lights and materials if you want to create anything else than "load figure, load default light, hit render".
Hi Leana,
even this doesn't excuse a vendor, especially DAZ Orignals, not to deliver a halfways normal usable skin setting.
How a customer finally lights his scenes is his own responsibity and like. But the product itself has to guarantee the optimal result possible.
That's the main problem, an it is existent since the "good ole 3delight days". Even with a physically-based rendering engine Iray is, many people tend to go by the same (and now even more inapropriate) methods for setting up their shaders, even when Iray is capable of using real-world measured material values (aka physically-based shading) which makes the job much, much easier, although to get those needs a little effort and research.
Even the DAZ standard materials for the Genesis 3 line of figures aren't completely flawless, Translucency Color, Glossy Reflectivity, Glossy Roughness, and Transmitted Color belong more into the realm of "over the thumb guessing" than being anything near "physically based".
For Translucency Color for example, take measurements for the wavelength ranges for the red, green and blue color channels and put them into the equation [absorption_coefficient = log(Transmitted Color) / (-1.0 * Transmitted Measurement Distance)] the Iray renderer uses to calculate the amount of light transmitted through a volume of a given material and distance (thickness). You'll get a mid orange color, not the dark red (RGB 167-0-0) DAZ uses in that place.
A while ago I opened a support ticket about the light pink (RGB 255-156-156) used in the Transmitted Color channels of the now denoted "Legacy" material. The 255 (1.00 in linear space) effectively disabled any distance based change for this channel, for larger distances it will look red and not change anymore if the thickness of the material changes.
Each linear space color value is the percentual amount (1.00 ~ 100 %) of light that is transmitted by the volume over the specified distance of measurement (aka Transmitted Measurement Distance). So, 100 % of the red portion of light entering the back of a figure's torso will come out at the front, even if it would be hundreds of kilometers thick. Well, they did change it from light pink to a light red now (RGB 249-97-97). But, again, take measurements for the wavelength ranges for the red, green and blue color channels and put them into the above mentioned equation. What you will get is always a skin tone (which is mostly a result of light absorption by Eumelanin and Pheomelanin within the Epidermis skin layer, and by oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin within the Dermis skin layer, plus absorption by water and the other water-free tissues. But their absorptivity is very low compared to that by melain and hemoglobin).
I don't know what you'd do, but having a skin tone of that color I'd cry out very loud for an ambulance. If I'd still be able to, of course.
Yeah, you might now mention that skin is different from individuum to individuum, and also different through the various ethnics. But there are still ranges in which the measured values will fall. Textures still mostly not entirely meeting the requirements of a PBR environment are the other side of the medal.
Keep in mind, that the color reflected by the skin is also effected heavily by the type of light being used ... I sometimes get very different results in color from using the automatic headlamp versus a mesh light, versus other sources.
It is because why I hope vendor offer product character skin with image which rendered with most decent light set DS offered. "with default tone map"
with vnedor offered mat preset default setting. it become "Criteria" to choose character, with skin tone.
without "criteria" who can compare character skin tone and say it seems more dark or yellow or pale blue than current corrections,
and find character which hope to use current user scene?
if there is Criteria we can easy imagine, how it show with User dependent settings. (Light type, angle, skin tone, enviroment reflection, tone mapping, or may use another shader
to adjust they like,,) it is same we need Diamond (gem) Grading Report to know the Diamond color. No one may offer Grading report with different light set, and tone mapping .
IF DAZ user like "real Photo real things" at same time, care much vendor offer "Criteria" with their product, to achieve your work easy.
What are optimal results?
You definition? My definition? The PAs definition? Daz's?
Or perhaps there isn't an optimal, just a look the user wants.
I learnt to get the look I like; not many products come with that look, but that's ok as far as I am concerned; if they came with what I like, they wouldn't with what someone else liked.
A PA produces the item to show what they like.
Now I will agree that the products should render 'as is' according to one (and perferably the main promo shot) out of the box. But as there are usually a number of different shots and settings, rendering to all of them for the price we pay might be unreasonable.
... And if none of the shots show the default look, then they should clearly state that.
At the end of the day, as customers, we can easily return any product within 30 days - no questions asked.
If it doesn't meet your requirements do that, I did a couple of days ago.
Less than a week ago, I bought a product I returned about a year ago; I didn't like it at the time, but reconned I could now figure out what it was I didn't like and adjust it - but you know what? I can still return it.
I am frequently critical of Daz, but this I feel we have less cuase for critque, due to the excellent return policy - that is worth a lot IMO.
Hi nicstt,
it is not a question of definition.
You only have to compare it with the skin of other G3 characters. And it is to asume, that tween ryan has the same migration background as the G3 base character Eddie. So the skin should be like a kid's skin of the "white races".
OK, if one don't like the delivered shader, of cause one can return the product.
But why??
If you're halfways capable to rework iRay shaders, you see what the failure is and you can correct it.
Again: But why??
The question is, whether DAZ Originals isn't able to deliver a skin shader? I thought DAZ Originals is professional enough and would be the master expert in designing the DAZ stuff.
Seems that I'm wrong but it looks that even the DAZ professionals don't know what they do.
Why is the customer forced to modify each product, before it is usable?
If I'm following your attitude, I had to return all the over 550 products listed in my DIM up to now.
My view on this is that tt should be mandatory to tell skin surfaces settings and what lighting and render settings is been used in promos and it would be also nice if there would be standard promo room with standart lighting that we could all use to test render products. some starting point to get to know the products we buy. i am noob in daz but i have find out that it is relatively easy to use when you know what you are doing but learning curve is sometime unnecessary hard. one thing that should not be hard is knowing how to use products we buy.
Stumbled upon this thread after facing the same problem with the character Xanthe which in all the promos is shown as a fair skinned character, and hoping someone might have discovered a fix since for me at least she was rendering quite dark. and reading the response to this question is irritating as all get out.
"It's your lighting"
"It's your version of Daz"
"It's your lamplight"
SMDH! Most models even with those things will still render fairly closely to their promo art. And considering he rendered the model side by side with other models that had the correct skin tones under the same lighting conditions many of those responses were downright condescending. His question was a completely legitimate one.
@Nelsonsmith
There's an inherent flaw in the op's comparison and your assertion, that the other characters have "correct skin tones".
Jessie is the default material for G1 present in the starter essentials and Eddie is the default material for the G3M present in the starter essentials.
Neither starter essentials has an iray preset for the characters.
Assuming the OP hasn't used an Iray converter script or applied the base iray uber shader, or another shader conversion, the shader settings are being interpolated by iray to something approximating iray settings. As such they are inherently 'off' when compared to actual iray settings.
This mixing of shaders may also be a contributing factor, in addition to what was listed in the rest of this thread.
In regards to your issue, if the Xanthe character you are referring to is the Xanthe for Stephanie 8, available here on daz3d, then i don't know where you're seeing the character as "fair", in the promos, that girl is tan. The red head or brunette in the schoolgirl promos are "fair". And the Lingerie promo really hammers this home.
Now if you're referring to a character available on another site please provide a link so i, or others, can do some comparison.
When it comes to comparing promos to one's own results, the phrase "Your results may vary", is rather apropo.