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Tackle the eye first. Try using an HDRI. The lighting your using is making your eye look flat and your scerla shader needs tweaking. It's looks to plastic and not fleshy.
Here's an eye I render for comparison.
Such as?
Such as light rays bouncing around and reacting in a physically plausible way to geometry and shaders, creating convincing global illumination. Since I've never used Poser (3Delight user) I'm kind of curious, what possibilitys are there in Poser to do just that?
I'm quite sure Poser does all of that, and I'm using most or all of that functionality. Global illumination is a render engine option that can be turned on or off, and I can't remember the last time I had it turned off. The latest version also has caustics, which I also have enabled. More generally, SuperFly is a physics-based render engine, or at least more of one than its predecessor FireFly. Poser even has a built-in implementation of Cycles.
Tks! Would be interesting to mess around with the Poser renderers, I've seen a couple of stunning renders done in Poser;) Can't afford it now though:(
Someone adviced you to use HDRI lighting, I think it could be a good idea to test your characters under many different lighting conditions, and also environments, y'know outdoors, indoors. The render of the girl (which is quite nice, don't get me wrong) looks a bit flat in my opinion, no noticeable ambient occlusion or bounce light and the shading of the props is also a bit flat. Maybe there's nothing wrong with your skin settings, you just need to find some environmental settings to give it all a bit of depth? Well you probably have thought of all this a million times, just saying it's easy to get "speed blind" if you focus too much too long on some details;) Been there done that
GI that Poser uses is what the Unity game engine uses and it's probably algorithmically the same thing as DAZ Studio's Sun & Sky. Isn't Cycles Blender's mildly biased version of GI & PBS engine (that's what Poser uses)?
"Superfly" is supposed to be an actual fork of blender cycles ported to poser.
https://www.cycles-renderer.org/
However I personally have yet to see many poser 11 renders that look anything like the renders one typically sees from the "real"blender cycles.
Not sure if it is merely a lack of education about materials & lighting or if SM somehow crippled their poser version.
Indeed ..here are some Examples of indoor& outdoor HDR
lighting using the free "smart IBL" system, for Blender cycles, to test some blender node shaders on some of my custom Conforming & Dynamic clothing I made for the Genesis 2 male.
Not trying for "photorealism" obviously
However the lighting certainly helps me get realisticly lit feedback on my shaders
Outdoor
Indoor
sorry, allthough the OP's render are good, I don't see his renders any near to photo realism. I am not good enough to give any advices or else I would have use them myself. Maybe here are some useful hints: http://zbrushtuts.com/2016/10/27/alex-portrait-of-a-young-woman-by-mao-lin-liao/
My advice would be starting with stuff like pots, apples, still life sort of stuff. If you can get relatively simple objects to be lit properly and look very realistic, you can then ease into humans.
Jumping straight to people is kind of monumental; eyes, skin, hair, all of it is very difficult to get right and if you don't have a firm idea of what you are doing, it will be extremely frustrating.
The eye looks really good. In the close up the skin looks very obviously fake.
In the head shot, there are a number of things that make it look like someone is trying to make it look real, yet also going for stylised.
Look at nDelphi's post; she looks really, really good; very believable despite the pointy ears. And folks in real-life have them - body mods are getting more interesting, and more out-there.
Gregorious,
To my eye there have been some major strides indeed since the last time I viewed this project. Definitely getting closer to something I could call realistic.
However there are a few issues I'd like to discuss.
Eyes
So I feel the need to be more specifc this time in my feedback about the eyes. If stark OMG realism is the goal, then the eyes must be accurate, not just interesting.
1. Human irises do not EVER demonstrate any amount of PURPLE...period....never....ever....ever...physically impossible unless you are an albino individual, and even then it will tend toward blue. Human eyes are not a collection of random color noise warped toward a center point, irises are specific tissue samples. There are forbidden colors.
2. This also means that any blue colored eyes you produce will need to be more green shifted than red shifted. Blue human eyes are the exact same shade as the blue of the sky, which is a green shifted blue, not a purple shifted blue, unless the sun is at super low angles. As you know the blue of an eye gets its color for the same reasons that the blue sky gets its color. Again, staying safely away from any color that approaches purple.
3. And this brings us to the greenish colors. Mal3Imagery has given you an excellent example of a couple of principles I'd like to discuss. Firstly, you will notice that the shade of the green is yellow shifted, not blue shifted. Human beings dont have teal or turqoise colored eyes, those greens are too far blue shifted to appear natural. All this to say that between the purples and the blue shifted greens on Reeves face (which looks good btw morphwise even if the chin still reads as too much to my eye), I can be certain these eyes you've used are not photorealistic. I could go on about green eyes, as they really are a tricky sort of thing. I personally feel that Mal3Imagery's green eye example is too uniform in its hue, but otherwise it is first rate. Most green looking eyes have elements of both orange (usually near the pupils) and blueish due to scattering near the edges where the sclera is met. These orange and blue dynamics are the reason why any green colored human eye will tend toward yellowness, not blueness, since there are no truly blue pigments available, but there are yello and orange pigments. There are not actual blue tissues in a blue eye, it is all scattering based.
Also realize that human eyes that are "lighter" are not very strongly saturated. Please see the example of a real eye that Wolf uploaded. The most saturated part of the eye is within that tighly fibrous area just around the edge of the pupil. Otherwise, the eye is generally quite grayscale, which is why just a little bit of raleigh scattering is enough to shift a truly gray eye to appear as blue. It is Extremely easy to overdo saturation when working from the memory of the mind's eye. Just because we are trained as humans to pay close attention to eyes, means our memories seem vivid, and thus the colors we think we see are vivid, but in truth it is merely our intense interest that make these things like eyes "seem" to be doing more than what they really are. Darker eyes, however, can be much more saturated, and you will notice that they always tend toward orange/yellow and away from blue. The same blue scattering occurs in all eyes, however with darker colored eyes the higher saturation of the natural orangeness means we don't notice it.
Skin
I still feel as though I am seeing striations of some sort...a kind of ribbing, only visible in the close ups, but quite distracting. Generally the skin surface appears hard
Hair
The hair is not even close. the skin is many steps ahead of the hair. I have no suggestions on how to improve it, but I do know for certain it is distracting from a realism standpoint.
Photo-Realism
First question for those seeking a "photo" is to determine the type of camera. Not all cameras are the same. So is this a Kodak, Nikon, Canon? What lens is used and all of that? What type of film? If you want a photoreal result you'll need to decide on what camera you are using first. Octane is great in that it forces you to make those types of determinations.
Render Engines
If you are using a physically accurate render engine....for which I am not convinced that you are based on the current results, then there is certainly something not yet accurate with the lights. I think your light sources might be too wide, literally too large, and this prevents you getting any kind of real specular highlights and deeper shadows. A good indicator that the engine isnt fully physically accurate is that if you need to adjust "falloff, and find that inverse square is an option, then you're using the wrong engine. A physically accurate engine follows energy conservation rules and can only work as inverse square bt default, no other options would even be available. It is my guess that if you need to set falloffs for the lights manually, that your materials are also not as legitimate as they possibley could be. This means I feel very certain you are not using an unbiased kernel, even if the engine has the capacities for unbiased you may not have engaged them. And with all that it also likely means the indirect light bounces are not as accurate as they would be.
Personally, I think you have gone about as far as anyone could hope to go, using this merchant resource, this render engine, and with Daz figures in general. What you have done is quite respectable...mind blowing actually. But I'm not certain how much farther a further investment of time, effort and polls will take you. You've done an amazing job already.
Enough nitpicking for now. Great work and do keep at it, if not with this specific study then with the next step. All the best!
For what its worth, a few of my latest Daz renders -- different type of photo-realism, but figured I'd share anyhow...
Aaah, I've seen your work in one of the "realism" threads and they sure work on me:) VeryCool
Here everything is just...right, the poses are superb, lighting works and post processing is so spot on=)))
Very well done indeed!
Thanks for the compliment :)
You're very welcome:)
This is why I don't bother with photorealism, if I want real, I photograph real stuff, much easier
I mean, there's so much more to it than having the latest stuff, latest technology, best textures, best rendering engine... you get what I mean
@RashadCarter
Thank you for your excellent post!
@Gregorious
I agree with Rashad that you've done well and really pushed the limits of what is possible with the tools and resources at hand, maybe it's time to start using the stuff to produce some art, study lighting, posing and creating environments that have the same level of realism as your characters? And study real humans, how they interact with the environment and eachother...just my thoughts FWIW,
Sven
I do, my problem is I'm not good posing characters... I wish I had better skills in that department.
Well, I've been working on a few things for the past few days, so it might take me a bit to catch up to some of the latest critiques/suggestions. Rashad, your in-depth remarks are always appreciated, and thanks for the compliments! Anyway, as a quick update, I recall someone suggesting I try an outdoor render and HDRI lighting (among other settings), so this is an experiment that combines both. I've also tweaked my maps somewhat.
Also, for whatever it's worth, here's a new eye close-up under my usual three-point studio lighting. The eye itself hasn't changed, but at least the skin around it will hopefully look a little better.
Some observations... my 2c...
- I say I miss highlights/specular in your last image. Skin is a bit oily, and you should get a bit of sheen in most situations.
- The eyebrow completely betrays any hope you have of realism, its beautiful, but looks painted
- The eye itself doesnt seem to have any depth, now, this could be because of the lighting.. looks a bit flat. As if the whole picture doesn't really carry any deeper shadows, while I do read a lightsource that says tells me it is sunny or lightly overcast.
Hope you can work with this! Good luck!
I've been watching this thread and the good progress. I too strive for photo-realism and I thought I'd chime in. I have found that with DS Iray is necessity and lighting is the key. I don't make my own skins or characters (and therefore greatly respect Gregorius' effort), but I think Daz Originals characters are very very well made and one could inspect them closely and learn from them. I include my take on striving for photo-realism, Edward 8, Iray HDR Outdoor Environments by Dimension Theory + one DS spotlight towards the face.
Excellent work! My only critique would be that you might have overdone the skin translucence/SSS a bit, as it looks slightly too waxy IMHO. In any case, I envy you!
One thing I don't quite get is why some of you identify lighting as a crucial factor in realism. Assuming the textures/shaders are of sufficient quality and the render engine is sufficiently accurate physics-wise, any render should just look like a photo would under a real-world duplication of the modeled lighting conditions, whatever those conditions happen to be. A softly lit image shouldn't automatically look fake. It should look like a softly lit photo. A starkly lit image shouldn't automatically look fake. It should look like a starkly lit photo. If the same character varies in realism according to lighting, that's a clear sign that the crucial factor lies in the textures/shaders and/or in the geometry, not in how it's lit.
Someone commented that, if I have to manually choose inverse square falloff among multiple other options, then I'm probably not dealing with PBR. I checked, and the option for inverse square falloff seems to be a legacy feature for older types of lights. On area lights, which I use exclusively, the relevant drop-down menu is grayed out. Given that SuperFly is supposed to be physics-based, I suspect (or perhaps hope) that it should default to inverse square falloff, but I can't really tell for sure. I wonder if anyone knows of a quick test for this.
'any render should just look like a photo would under a real-world duplication of the modeled lighting conditions'
Because almost always, lighting things in a basic way is not going to resemble any realistic situation anyone ever photographs.
Furthermore, a lot of photos look terrible. There's a reason 'photography' is a thing, and why photographers use all sorts of tricks to make for good shots.
The WORST habit to break, early on in modeling, is the idea that 'if I put things in that correspond with real stuff, it'll just look realistic.' No. No it won't. And the sooner you can accept the wisdom of a lot of people with prior experience, the sooner you can get past and start really improving.
(Another, related, early obstacle is 'postwork is cheating'. No it isn't)
And let me be clear, I'm not speaking out of superiority or a degree in Photography or whatever, this is nonsense I had to disabuse myself of thoroughly before I could make any progress.
I would make really cool scenes with elegantly posed figures and nice composition. And the renders would look like garbage, all flat and lifeless, because my lighting was what I thought was realistic. But it was terrible.
Greg,
I think I can see a next step for this project.
You've been so deliberate and specific in your choices regarding the materials, to the point where you have almost rebuilt the entire texture sample.
By comparison, you have invested only a few minutes on your lighting setup.
After all this investment in materials, it shoudlnt seem too expensive to invest a bit more time into your lighting.
Three area lights...will lead predictably to a flattened result. You need to balance your lights to get any real feel for how responsive your materials truly are. You've condicted too many tests with this one light set up. Try switching out at least 1 of those area lights with another tyep of light that isnt so physically wide and large. Your lights are just too big...smaller, brighter light sources will create some specular noise if indeed the render is doing as it must.
The reason why people are suggesting you toss out all of your current lights and go with an HDRi is because the uneven light and color dynamics of an HDRI make it much more suitable for creating lighting variations that mimic to any extent the variable of light in most real world situations. The premise of your current lighting is already far from realistic, such that you current lights are working AGAINST your materials, instead of showing them off.
Here are a couple of my own recent render studies for comparison and comment. Feedback is awesomely appreciated.
That sort of work is on the level of Mal3Imagery!!!!
AMAZING!
Naturally, there are a few giveaways but it's quite good overall. The HDRI is providing very good colors and light dynamics for the shiny metal of the horn to play off of, which classes up and generally increases the overall realism of the scene substancially. The materials on the fabrics are truly excellent. The DOF forces the viewer's mind to concentrate on the areas that are well in focus, in particular the human face. The Edward skin here looks incredible, the SSS on the tip of the nose is just on the cusp of overdone but I'd prefer that to being underdone.
I think there could be people who would see this in a magazine with no heads up about its origin and I suspect many maybe as many as half woudl assume ti was a real photo unless forced to look for artifacts. Tht level of belief suspension is about all we can ask for. Great work!
I didn't say that. Of course "putting things in that correspond with real stuff," by itself, isn't automatically going to produce a realistic render. You also need sufficiently good textures/shaders, a physics-based render engine, and the right render settings. I'm not necessarily claiming to have personally perfected all three of those, but I'm talking more about the general principle of the matter. Assuming optimal textures/shaders, a decent physics simulator as a render engine, and high-quality settings, the particular lighting shouldn't matter when it comes to realism. It will certainly matter when it comes to artistic merit (as you said, photography does exist as an art form), but not when it comes to whether it looks like a photo or not. Most of the time, even poorly lit photos are easily recognized as real.
Again, the question is, "Does it look like a photo?" It is not necessarily, "Does it look like a good photo?" I've only been using three-point studio lighting because it seemed like a good basis in which to test my textures/shaders. I figured that, if the model looks realistic under lighting that's actually designed to provide sharp focus and broad illumination, chances are much better that it'll hold up in a variety of other lighting conditions. I guess ultimately what I'm trying to avoid is any reliance on lighting tricks to compensate for shortcomings in the textures/shaders, and to me that means not using a single light that wouldn't need to be there if I were to reconstruct my 3D scene in real life.
On area lights, they're not necessarily as large as the name might suggest. They're essentially square mesh lights that can be resized at will. All three of my lights are sized to fit into the heads of the model light fixtures that I have in my photo studio scene. The largest of them is also the dimmest. Nevertheless, I'll try an experimental render with point lights instead and see what happens.
On what, exactly, are you basing this notion?
It's just a logical consequence of having sufficiently accurate PBR. If the render engine is programmed to handle light in a way that closely emulates real-world optics, which is presumably a part of what it means to be "physics-based," then whatever light(s) is/are in the scene will interact with an object in a way that emulates how it would in the real world (again, assuming you have good textures/shaders).
Now, the light may interact with the object in a way that would make a professional photographer cringe, but it's not going to betray the fact that it's not a real photo. Even if a render looked like a photo that was just spontaneously snapped on a smartphone, I would consider that a success!
If it was rendered with PBR, the only excuse for an image failing to fool anyone is bad geometry and/or bad textures/shaders. The lighting can't be the problem, because no matter how a light is sized/shaped or where it's placed, its interaction with objects in the scene is entirely governed by real-world physics, or at least the computer's algorithmic simulation thereof. If a render looks real but just very amateurishly staged, then you can blame the lighting.
Granting for the moment that lighting does matter even with PBR, it may be worth noting that, ironically, I revised my light setup a few months ago because a commenter on the SmithMicro forum said it looked too stark. Now it seems I'm getting the precise opposite advice (i.e. too soft/flat) here. This is why I'm often rather cautious in tweaking things at others' recommendation and why this pursuit is sometimes downright frustrating. It's not uncommon for me to feel pulled in opposite directions.
Not point lights, just point-like lights. Just small enough to represent a normal light bulb. All you need then is to assign a ball park correct illumination output for that bulb...is it 60 watt, 120? These things matter because in the real worl light bulbs are not designed at random energies, they are quantized and standardized and on an unconscious level we as viewers know this so when lights dont behave as we expect we know the image is a simulation in at least some manner. Again, this is an unconscious observation, so its not likely to be drescribed well by most observers very often.
I don't even think of absolute realism,.but I must say that Iray has made it a lot easier to get much closer without ridiculous amounts of set up and lighting.