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I usually have Crush Black at 50% and Burn Highlights around 60-70%. I leave all other Tone Mapping values to default except for Gamma, which I usally up to like 2.4-2.5. I use Spectral Rendering, and keep Pixel Filter at ~1.1. Hope that helps.
I would prefer spectral rendering for its colour transitions, but I have an issue with it. On humans, the seams of the UV map become visible as thin dark lines.
Thanks for the reply, but I still can't get my shadows black enough. But, I guess I can use Photoshop and edit the curves, and set the black point to one of the shadow pixels.
My tonemapping sttings are as follows:
F/Stop = 3.00
Burn Highlights = 0.00
Crush Blacks = 0.00
Gamma = 1.00
Evety scene starts out with these settings then I tweak them on the fly as needed.
Something to keep in mind. You can change Tone Mapping, Filtering and Progressive Rendering settings during the render. There is a sidebar on the left side of the render windows that you can open up to reveal the settings.
Bravo! To my eye these black and white renders look real. Posing is percect, eye contact is perfect, smiles look natural. Hair behavior seems naturalsitic generally, WOWOW! There are noise grain giveaways, but if I was presented with this series of images without anyone to tell me to look for errors I would not be looking for any. As far as when she is in color its much harder to pull off successfully.
I've already stated before in previous thread discussions with you that its a real uphill challenge to get hair this "platinum" to look very realistic. The main reason is that no adult human would ever have this color naturally, it must be an artificial color. Even the most Scandinavian individuals have "some" degree of pigment in their hair. And for this reason, having it be perfectly unfirom from root to tip this exact brightness seems unlikely to be realistic. The roots at least, should have some degree of darkness compared to the tips. Hair tends to lighten with age and sun exposure so extra bright tips are fine, but roots not so much...unless this entire thing is a hair coloring promotion for L'oreal and she just left the salon this morning. If the hair itself is already that close to white in base color then there is very little room for a viewer to discern specular highlights on the hair, which are essential. I'd dial down the "whiteness" factor of the hair just a tiny smidge overall to expose just a hint of yellow/gold, but especially at the roots, and try to get some specular happening.
In terms of skin, to my eye there is again a specular issue, this is most evident again in the color photos. The specular on her legs and face again seems too uniform. Not all areas of the face and body have the exact same specular. Areas of the face where the skin doesnt need to move much, such as the nose, are going to be smoother than places where the skin moves a lot. So typically on a human face the shinest part is the tip of the nose. By shiniest I mean that the specular reflections on the nose will be crisper and "tighter" more mirror-like than it will be in rougher areas of skin such as the forehead and mouth and pretty much everything else on the face.
Also on most human beings the face is generally much shinier than the rest of the body, so again I would avoid uniform specular solutions whenever possible.
But seriously, I like your style and I see what you're going for and I do think you are making strides. At times it does feel as if you might not be willing to step outside of certain things you're comfortable with, such as the hair suggestions I am again making. My suggestions are susually pretty good I tend to think, but then...I'm a psycho too so there's that...Anyhow I think if you actually try my advice you'll find it works. What's the worst that could happen? Anyhow I've also included a couple of stock photos of super platinum hair to demonstrate what I believe I am perceiving in real samples that I am not seeing in your examples. All the best as always!
Also to add, I think ti is always wise to wtudy more than 1 character ata time. too muvch time spent tweaking a single character for months and years for hours on end daily will almost certainly lead to some degree of selective blindness. its not about getting it right in this one instance, at least for me its about kbnowing how skin should look generally and how to specify that as needed based on the details of a single character at a particular time. Knowing for example whihc parts of the face have the tightest reflections is more important than trying to get shots of this one woman looking perfect in any one instance.
Many good things happening here! A couple of things I'd consider to perhaps improve even more.
"Black Magic" is the name I give for those awesome silhoutte defining specular highlights we tend to see on darker skinned people. It is indeed magical and really levels up the realism of darker characters. But in this instance it is a bit overdone.
It helps to know the "reasons" why the Black Magic effect occurs. Firstly, darker skin tones are not more oily than lighter skin tones bynature, so you dont need to use higher specular values for darker skin than for lighter skin. The magic should manifest itself automatically simply from the contrast difference that visually arises from white specular on dark skin. White specualr on white skin wont stand out as much. No worries. More on that in a moment. But to return to why the magic haoppens, its also due to the fact that many darker skinned people apply oils to their skin to avoid dryness. However, unless they are specifically beach-bod oiled, most darker skinned people wearing lotions and the like should be slightly shiner than those who do not, but still not as shiny as someone who has skin that is outright wet with water. So basically, you need to do one of two things, either dial back the total value of the reflections, or you mneed to increase the skin roughness to spread out the reflections. I actually think the latter is the one I;d try first.
The elderly lady..she seems to exhibit the opposite qualities, she seems to matte to me in terms of specular. I would guess you have a much lower specualr reflection insenity assigned to her, and I bet probably a highrer roughness setting as well. I would suggest using the exact same specular reflection intesnity settings on both ladies, and you will automatically see a difference just due to the differences in base skin color between the two ladies. Youre recipes shouldnt need to differ that much.
Also to my eye, and I do think this is a common issue, the ageing aspects are too exhagerated, the pocks and age spots and pretty mauch all other details are baked into the texture at too much contrast. I alsoway think it wise to allow the render engine to do as mich of the work as possible and avoid baking in anything not entirely necessary. One of the problems can come from using a uniform scattering color rather than using a map. A map will alreayd be darker in certain reas whihc whii produce less SSS which already adds additional darkness to those straks and spots and what not. I usually settle on 50/50. 50% of the effect of a mole for instance is baked directly into the texture and the other 50% is derived through rendering engine SSS settings and mapping to reach the final contrast goal I am seeking for that particular mole.
Let the engine do some of the work, give the baking of the textures a little slack.
There's no doubt Jeff is in a class of his own. I love that he is willing to be transparent and share his experiments and processes. And I think he is actually getting even better than he used to be. There are many reasons why his renders tend to look more realistic and along with all the things he discussed himself such as posing and lighting and texturing concerns, there is the overall quality of the works that really serves, and that is that these are "mundane" type renders. These are not at all the promo style most DS users are looking into. Part of why they dont look fake is because as viewers we cannot discern any logical reason for anyone to have gone through the trouble of faking such a mundane image in the first place. So already based on subject matter alone we are already not approaching it from a "deep and expressive artist comentary" standpoint. One of the biggest downsides of realism is that it is pattently boring when it is done correctly because artistic commentary becomes secondary to photo accuracy, and Jeff knows this well. But I do not mean boring in a bad way, these realistic images on an unconscious level make us want to believe them. Jeff is super super super smart in this!
For those who are kicking themselves because they've never reached this level of realism, dont feel too bad. "Deal with the Devil" kind of scenario. It must be noted that most DS artists would not be willing to work within the constraints that Jeff is working within in terms of content he deems suitable for environments, hair, and character packages.
Also Jeff isnt being consigned by clients to meet their specifications into situations where some of this current techniques might be less successful...he placed her in this particular bedroom because that's where HE wanted her because it is a very good bedroom model, not because the client requested it. The imaginary client in this case could well have requested her picture on a subway platform or on a sunny beach, and Jeff would have to start from scratch to make it work...which I have no doubt he could do! As we all learn working for yourself is different than satisfying the demands of clients. This is probably the reason why we havent and possibley might never see him with any rendering products for sale anytime soon. Even the tutorials people requested may not really be feasible or useful to very many people due again to the currecnt constranints required to pull this off.
What I am hopeful for is that Jeff will continue to find ways to extend his unmatched realism success with other more diverse types of settings and lighting situations, that may not be so mundane in context and more risky in terms of subject matter. And if current indications are anything to go by, I think Jeff will get there. One day we will get a fully bright more or less fully focused outdoor scene under a tree and all of it will look photoreal. If anyone can do it, Jeff can!
I love Rashad's comments because he's very insightful and spot on. Kudos! I love this "we cannot discern any logical reason for anyone to have gone through the trouble of faking such a mundane image in the first place" -- it made me laugh in a good way because it's so true. And yes, this is definitely not 'art' per se -- it is, as Rashad noted, purely to see how far I can push it to see if people notice it's fake or not. "One day we will get a fully bright more or less fully focused outdoor scene under a tree and all of it will look photoreal" -- I appreciate your optimism that I can do it... maybe... but not now. I've tried...outside scenes, and frankly any brightly lit scene tends to break down the realism given the rendering and model constraints (and my skill talents) using Daz alone. I wil ltry though, as a challenge, to see if I can do a realistic outdoor scene. WIll likely have to be HDRI background, which I usually hate, as the outdoor scene models, while some are pretty good, are just nowhere near the level of realism to pull it off. Also, I've been trying some short video clips, too... interesting. One of these days I'd like to give it a go using a high-end modeling/rendering package such as Maya, etc, but I'm gunshy to start the 5+ year journey to become at all proficient in that space. Anyhow, happy renderings all.
Thank you for this comment.
You‘ve caught me there. I do like retro pics, also for in order to cloke rendering issues with a bad quality photo style. You are right, it would be much harder to achieve photo quality with color.
I will go on working on her hair shaders for more natural, less of a wig look.
To increase photo realism, I‘ve started using https://www.daz3d.com/isourcetextures for my character. There are some nice unclean skin options availeble.
Her smile in the last photo is custom made and it looks good on this particular character only.
You can also achieve good results with HDRI.
No doubt that the realism is contained to that scene lighting specifically. The character would not 'escape' that scene and look real in other lighting scenario settings.
ie - a Sunny beach.
But, to that effect, even though bound to that world, in that scene he can create a believable narrative, which is awesome!
Well done!! :D
Excellent! I didn't expect an Iray render to be that good. Love her face, as this normally reveals a render.
This is definitely a great image. Love the lighting. Maybe try to put a bit blur on it. It is very crispy and this may reveal it as a render.
I've tried HDRI a number of times, with mixed results. It tends to make the eyes too glassy for some reason (suspect it's large reflection cast from the 'world' scene). So, I usually mix in a subtle Spotlight to help fix that problem. Also, of course, the biggest problem is that it doesnt really work out of the box for indoor images or rather any scene where the geometry blocks the HDRI light casting into the scene. I need to look into light probes, though I've never seen those really work in Daz. Anyhow, some attempts attached...
Are you kidding?? these are awesome. Great morph around the waistband in the middle image. Is it a preset or custom made? Great expressions too. Could really use a video "Making of ..."
Thanks! the waistband morph is from the Ring Bikini collection... highly recommended. One of these day's I'll do a making of... been meaning to.
This is a test render where I turned up the Render Quality to 8 just to see.
This also has dForce applied to the hair and dress. (The hair is just enough for it to be moved by her hand and hat)
That's awesome actually .. Especially the third image I'd swore it to be a real photo. Very good job there.
Thank you for posting some of your tricks for us. Your work is incredible.
I've tried emulating a stark single flash style photography myself, but am stuck. Are you familiar with the photographer Terry Richardson? That is the look I'm trying to get with my renders. Your low fi look really captures his feel.
I am familiar with him -- and I think you did a pretty good job. A few comments:
1) The skin is too glossy and overall seems an odd, ashy like color... perhaps add some richer red, yellow tones.
2) The skin is too imperfect...you need to add some color variations, pimples, acne, freckles, viens, etc....
3) The eyebrows are a bit of an odd color... like brown/grey? May want to revisit that...
4) The hair could use a little more sheen/shine
5) The model.. is it G8 or an earlier version? It looks a little low-res to me... but could just be me.
6) For kicks, recommend you go with a fully black colored outfit (as opposed to white). White anything will break the illusion of reality...
Look forward to seeing your next attemps. Attached is a new one of mine...
Thanks, Jeff.
Hey guys and gals have you seen the promo images for this set and the realism of the human characters?
https://www.daz3d.com/iradiance-pro-series-16k-hdris--abandoned-mine
For me there are a couple of interesting things to note. First off, the shots of the girl when illuminated only by indirect lighting are pretty much spot on for photorealism. I think that most people who were not told to do so would not assume tese were rendered images.
However, the realism falls apart a bit on the images with sunlight directly on her face even though I feel certain the skin settings are the same in each shot.
This isnt due to any issues with the skin settings, but to do with the way Iray calculates shadow terminals.
The issue: Harsh (sharp edged) shadow terminators
Cause: There are two culprits. Both are required for the effect to become noticeable
1. Small but very bright point-like light sources (such as realistic sunlight or light bulbs) These are clearly awesome hdri's if they preserve the true size of the sun, which they apparently do! Bravo Dimension Theory!
2. Bump or Normals settings that have high values
This does not mean we should turn down all of our bump and normals to near 0, because that will not work either from a realism standpoint. It's just important to know in which areas the rendering engine will fail to return a plausible result so we can account for that in our workflows.
It should be noted that many rendering engines even unbiased ones have this problem of harsh terminators from point-like lights in the presense of higher bump/normals settings. At first I used to think it was a geometry smoothing issue but nope, its a shadow issue.
Octane used to have this issue but they fixed it in version 3.
Iray will need an update in order to overcome this issue.
Lesson 1: Shots with direct sunlight or other point lights could cause unavoidable harsh shadow edges which could be a distraction from the attempted realism. Fun fun!
Lesson 2: Skin settings that look good under diffuse or indirect lighting might not look as good when lit with point-like lights. To truly call a skin realistic it needs to work under BOTH types of lighting Diffuse and Specular, just in case your client has needs that differ from the content creator who may prefer to work with lighting which tends to be either more diffuse or more specular. Bravo As well to Dimension Theory for understanding what buyers need to see and that they may have very different needs from the same product.
Notice as well that the harsh shadow terminators dont just affect the major features, but everything from the subtle wrinkles of the lip and even the subtle bumpiness on the tip of the nose. The skin looks much more "paper-mache-like" when lit with strong sunlight.
Iray has a limitation in this one area, a limitation shared with just about every other engine on the market. Praying for an Iray update!
Thank you for your input. I consider you an absolute master.
I totally agree with the skin tone color issue. I simply don't know how to add those tones. Where do I do that? Is that a surfaces trick?
The model is g8.
I'm most interested in your lighting and render settings, although it seems you're really minimalist with those settings. I have to believe something in those settings is helping to achive your realistic renders.
Your attached render is just incredible. Very inspiring.
I've attached a render of the same model but with a dual spotlight render, and with softer more balanced shadows. It seems when I switch to harsh shadows and a single spot is when things start to go a bit wonky, but that is the look I'm trying to go for. simulating a single harsh flash mounted on a camera.
Thanks for all your advice.
Just more fun rendering at high render quality settings.
This was rendered with the "Sun-Sky Only" Iray environment and the "SS Time" set to 17:30:00.
I feel the the "Sun-Sky Only" does a good job of emulating the shadows softening as they get farther from the origin point, and bouncing light back into the shadows.
That doesn't work fine. While the girl is absolutely realistic as always, again she and the chair don't integrate with the environment because of the hard shadows. Giving a "collage" effect. Your previous pictures don't have this issue and they are amazing.
I fear it's more a technology limit. Unbiased pbr engines just take the geometry as it is. There's not a "smooth" shader as in traditional raytracing. This gives the terminator issue. So the only thing you can do is to increase the subdivision level to get a more "realistic" geometry for the pbr engine to work with.
Since you have anyway to crank-up subdivision for HD displacement to work, this is usually considered not a big issue.
This is pure HDRI (from HDRIHaven), saved out as a 32-bit EXR (via a beauty pass canvas). The skin feels really good to me, although if I'm hyper critical, I can see there isn't any wrinkling around the armpits, the fabric doesn't have any depth, and there's something a little weird going on in her left (right in the image) eye. Plus, the frames on her glasses aren't as smooth as they should be, which is annoying, since I made them. I believe she's set to 3 levels of subdivision, but possible 2 or 4.
Great post and insight, Rashad. I have Octane, but haven't used it in years. Setting up the materials just takes too damn long.
I can't tell what material the glasses are, they just seem fake. It may be rubber for the frame and very thin plastic for the lens. Also the lips miss details such as bumps. If she's supposed to wear some lipstick then more reflections could help. I'm not too much convinced of nails too, I'd use a little bit more reflections there as well. The scapulas area is off, body mechanics gets the scapulas to follow when the shoulders are moved forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRIz6oOA0Vs
EDIT. In general, when attempting realism, it is very useful trying to mimic an actual real photo or a real subject. Then odds and whatnots will be much more evident.
That video is wonderful. I'm not sure what could be done within DS to emulate the motion, since as far as I know, there are no morphs for that, but it's cool. The lips, though, I think are actually within the realm of real lips. I just did a Google search of no lipstick lips and the degree of bumpiness/wrinkling is highly variable. Kylie Jenner, for example, has fairly smooth lips:
(Yes, it's ironic that the no lipstick search turned up this, There are other lips wihtout any makeup that are also like this, but I went with the super famous celebrity.)