Digital Art Zone

Hi,

I’m quite new to this, and i can’t for the life of me figure out how to render a model so the fabric of the clothes looks nice and shiny, instead of washed out. I have purchased the MyPrincess dress, and the fantasy textures from renderosity, but when I use them, the rendered image ends up looking dull and boring.

What should I do to get nice, crisp lace and shiny satin to show up?

Can you post a link to the textures in question, please.  It is easier to give definitive answers if we know the product in question, and many textures that are bought from other stores such as renderosity are not optimised for use in Daz Studio.

It’s this one: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/fairytale-for-myprincess/85594

I know it says Poser, but since the original dress is for Daz, I thought it ought to be possible to achieve the same look as in the previews in the link. I have the same problem with other dresses/textures from the Daz store, it’s just that I’d really like to get the princess one to work - I need it for a project

Try something like this… With the dress selected on the scene tab, go to the surfaces tab.  Select the outer dress material (I don’t have the dress so I can’t speak to what it’s actually called).  On the surfaces tab, change the Glossiness to, oh, 65%.  Change the specular color to one that makes sense for the color of the material (e.g., if it’s red, a near white red color), change the specular strength to about 40%.  Give that a whirl.  If the specular response is too wide/big/covering then increase the glossiness percentage.  Reduce if it’s too small.  If it’s about the right size but it’s too bright, decrease the specular strength.  If it’s not bright enough, increase the strength.  It’ll take some trial and error but you’ll get there.

A long time ago I wrote up a mini-tutorial on how to adjust poser materials for DAZ Studio, you can find it over on the forum archives here: http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=156773

Thank you! I followed your instructions, and got almost the excact result I wanted Now I just need to play around a little to get all the details right, but you’ve saved my day, and possibly my laptop from unnessecary harm - I was almost ready to throw it at the wall

No problem.  I’ve been converting Poser mats to DS for a long, long time.

Glad to help.

One thing to consider/remember, often materials settings are lighting dependant.  What looks great under one light setup may look washed out or too dark/flat/etc under others.  So, the settings you start with are always going to be a ‘base’. 

Also, it isn’t just Poser materials that need tweaking.  There are many items that have rather basic material settings that can be vastly improved just by converting them to the newer, ‘advanced’ settings.  Or, the settings were made to be ‘passable’ in both DS and Poser.