Realistic Renders.....NOT!! 13: A new room to fill!
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Another Poser render. Looks like the characters with SSS settings for Poser are getting better and better.
Below is Seven's Chrissie for V4. And I like how ornaments came out. Have to make more renders of them.
Very nice!
I've always thought Seven was more a Poser artist anyway.
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Have you ever looked at the DS promo renders for the original V4 Elite and wondered why they look so good and then yours don't look quite so good when you render them in DS!? I've worked out why...
Crafty old Yannek used a reflection map on his skins! He included the means for us to do likewise, but, most of us ignored it. We all clicked on the MAT All icon and thought we were getting it all, well we weren't quite! Had we looked closely at the other MAT icons, we would have seen one that said MAT Skin REFLECT. Clicking this loads a reflection map onto the skin. These reflection maps corresponded to environment maps for the UE. THIS was why his promo renders looked so good! It wasn't just the EHSS we needed.
The map still looks good with the AAL too.
Give it a try!
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I just looked at the promos for his male textures and I get a sneaking suspicion he used the same map in his promo renders for them too, but, this time he didn't include the MAT file for it. The reflection map is in Runtime/Textures/omnifreaker/HumanSurface and it's the TIFF file you want. Under Reflection in the surfaces for the EHSS you click ON then choose Environment Map and plug the reflection map into the first reflection setting, click the square beside the colour number (which should be 255 255 255) and hit Browse to locate the map. Then you plug the specular map for your texture into the second reflection setting, when you click the square next to the colour number you will already see the texture listed, just click the one that says S in the name. Obviously as there is no MAT file for this bit you'll have to go through each surface one at a time to apply the specular maps. Bit laborious, but, it could be worth it.
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Thanks for the comments and the tips about reflection maps, Rogerbee. Have to try it myself.
Your render is looking really good.
I know, and, if you have a look at the promo renders for Olympia, I think they're still using them.
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Congratulations on the first place. I have not spotted it at once.
Oooh, just found Omnifreaker's guide to the EHSS again, something I'm sure will be interesting to read:
http://www.omnifreaker.com/index.php?title=HumanSurface
I don't know if anywhere in the current forums links to that.
This guy might be onto something as well:
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Skin-and-Hair-Mini-Tut-302518883
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Here's what I came up with with the MAT files loaded as standard but with the bump reduced to 30%.
Amy is ok, but Maya fares a bit better. I might try the suggestions that the guy on DevianArt made at some point.
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PS (Mmm, Gia is a bit odd looking with a different texture!)
Me too always been a Reality user. I too cant go back and wait patiently for long render times my new batch is looking good. I m remaking some stuff I did when I started out I will post comparisons when all is a ready. Paolo mentions that R3 will work with GPU rendering.
As far as I've been able to guess in the time I've had Reality (well over a year now) there is no way to create a fog object without explicitly using the fog prop provided with Reality. While this is great for some cases, there are times you want more localized or even shaped fog, so being able to create primitives and give them unique settings is a major plus for me.
Even before Luxus I was going into the output Reality files and tweaking materials here and there, using Mix materials for some items to give better reflections or adding cloth where there was previously glossy. In all seriousness though, it left me wondering why some of the newer materials weren't simply added in as an update since most of the settings are identical to existing ones and it wouldn't require much work to include.
That said, I'm interested to see what Reality 3 brings to Daz Studio. I'll give Paolo credit, he knows how to simplify the process of getting the right materials. The results I get out of Luxus are a direct result of examining the files exported by Reality and playing around with material settings. With Reality 3's bonus of subsurface scatter and procedural support, I'll be grabbing it as an extra tool my my Luxrender arsenal.
The downside is we haven't heard much on Poser 3's availability for Daz Studio yet, so it could be many months before it ever hits the store.
He is working on it and I rather that over a buggy rushed version. For my needs 2.5 is working just fine
Hmm, I don't really have any decent light sets with the UE so I've nothing to really compare the AAL renders with. Whatever, I plugged the reflection map into the original Lee and below is what emerged. Yannek should have released his promo lights.
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No UE light set eh, well, I just made my own! I just added the UE light and a distant light and I was ready to rock and roll.
I actually think I like this better than the AAL setup I was playing with, who knew!?
Lee likes it, though I might perhaps turn down the reflection strength on his body a little.
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Marie looks good with the UE too.
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Looks nice. Is that the V4 Marie Elite texture?
...my thinking is that any texture which uses HSS will fare better with UE than other lights. Some of the early work I did with Steph4 using her HSS shader looked pretty bad in the normal Daz lights (didn't use UE very much as I was working in 32 bit).
I've been using AoA's SSS shaders instead and they work nicely with the AAL/ASL.
Yes, it is, probably one of the best textures for V4 that Yannek did.
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I did some experimenting with the different HDR's and maps available in Runtime/Textures/onmifreaker/Evironment and one I liked was CornellBox. It gives a nice subtle effect and softens the skin a bit and you don't get any flaring. I also muted the background colour down to 255 249 247 and it looks better than the white.
I then changed her pose to see what differences there were in her skin, I really like the way it looks now. I looked at Omnifreaker's store last night and he has Ubersurface 2. Oddly, Daz didn't bundle this with DS in the same way they did with UE2, I wonder why that was...
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PS (Sorry if the renders get repetitive, they have a tendency to when I'm experimenting!)
That is true, and some textures originally designed for the HSS don't look quite as good with the SSS shader, although Rob did look really nice.
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When you get so used to loading other people's lights, you realise how little you actually know about the lights themselves. The UE as a lot more to it , like intensity scale and the dfferent HDR's you can load. I also realised, through the Elite textures that it isn't necessarily one for all. Lee looks better with Cornell Box and Marie favours Studio. Then I saw the benefit of adding a specular light, ok I cheated a bit there as I nicked the one from Lantios! As a departure I did use Stratton and Sol earlier too!
Anyway, more experimental renders I'm afraid, but, we all have to learn...
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PS (I now know that I hate the Amy texture and want to get Katie instead!)
...the HDR component is part of the reason I don't use UE. Save for the ones that come with a UE light set like Cloud9 or Lantios, I don't have any I can use for creating my own lighting setups. I don't have a digital camera to create my own HDRs (nor the software to do it with) and at the moment cannot afford to purchase pre-made ones.
About the only time I use the Uber Area Lights anymore is to create mesh lights.
Of course the other issue for me is render load. I can create much more complex scenes using the AAL/ASL than I can with UE. The Diner scene I posted earlier has eight figures including 2 Aiko3s and 6 Genesis characters along with a tonne of reflectivity. It was lit completely with AASLs and ASLs.
I've been reworking my Summer in the City scene to include an AAL and the render time is about a tenth of what it was with UE.
It's not actually as hard to come by them as you might think, and I have a little program that can make HDR's, sadly the makers no longer offer that program for free, but, I have found an alternative:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/index.html
Also, if you google HDR's you will find plenty of sources for free ones, Hellboy got the one for his amazing render here:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
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...still, cannot afford a digital camera. Doesn't have to be an expensive professional model, just one that is capable of wide/panoramic view shots and has a decent resolution.
Not sure you really need one, try experimenting with the HDR's in that link. The one Hellboy used is called Old Industrial Hall. I just used it on Lee and he looks great, so good that'll probably be my final test render with him. I also tweaked his eyes using settings I remembered I had, the link for which is sadly dead.
Here are the settings anyway:
Morphs:
EyeCorneaBulge morph set to 40%
EyeIrisSize to -10%
EyeIrisBulge to 5%. (Couldn't actually find that one in M6.)
Iris:
Diffuse Color: White
Diffuse Strength: 100%
Glossiness: 85%
Specular Color: Black
Specular Strength: 40%
MSTO (Multiply Specular Through Opacity): Off
Ambient Color: Light Grey (231, 231, 231)
Ambient Strength: 60%
Opacity Strength: 100%
Lighting Model: Plastic
Lacrimal:
Diffuse Color: Very Pale Red (240, 240, 240)
Diffuse Strength: 100%
Glossiness: 90%
Specular Color: Light Blue (193, 212, 243)
Specular Strength: 95%
MSTO: On
Ambient Color: Pale Dark Red (171, 141, 133)
Ambient Strength: 60%
Opacity Strength: 100%
Lighting Model: Glossy Plastic
Pupil
Diffuse Color: White
Diffuse Strength: 100%
Glossiness: 85%
Specular Color: Black
Specular Strength: 0%
MSTO: Off
Ambient Color: Black
Ambient Strength: 15%
Opacity Strength: 100%
Lighting Model: Glossy Plastic
Sclera:
Diffuse Color: Very Pale Red (240, 240, 240)
Diffuse Strength: 100%
Glossiness: 85%
Specular Color: Dark Red (49, 18,26)
Specular Strength: 60%
MSTO: Off
Ambient Color: Light Grey (231, 231, 231)
Ambient Strength: 20%
Opacity Strength: 100%
Lighting Model: Glossy Plastic
And here he is below....
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Hmm, got a bit bogged down with all the vintage stuff there. Time to move forward now and leave Gen 4 Elite where it belongs, in the past. There's better textures and better shaders, and indeed lighting to be found with newer stuff.
I decided to make a character out of M6HD and set about working on the face. The major thing you have to remember about morphing faces is that real ones have a lot of nuances and aren't perfectly symmetrical like the figures are with their face morphs zeroed. Far too many characters have decent textures, but quite dull looking faces underneath. You really have to bring out the best of both.
The less perfect the face the better it looks, even handsome and beautiful faces have little nuances that make them special. One eye higher, a slight twist to the nose, try to put in as much as you can, but don't overdo it.
I didn't do a head and shoulders portrait of this guy as I wanted to do something different for a change. The hair is from Share CG and is done by Hellboy under the name Soto, it's FiberMesh and the best short hair I've ever used. I'm going to buy up as much as I can of that as it is brilliant, ok, it takes time to render, but, the best things always do.
Here he is anyway..
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Amy texture is ok. I think she has freckles. I haven't used her in a long time. Maybe I should render her soon.
The latest renders are nice. The colors and shadows look natural. That reminds me, I should try making a simple portrait of Genesis 2 male and render him using high quality settings.
I tried six ways to Sunday to get Amy looking good, and never succeeded. As I said, there are better textures.
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As I previously mentioned I am re rendering some early stuff.... The old......made these a few months into learning render
Thew new...