Daylight settings in Iray

Asari

I have a question - do you have any tips for rendering daylight settings in Iray? I feel I have mastered 3-point based studio quite well by now and twilight / dark lighting setups too but I totally struggle with natural light, especially daylight.

I have tested renders with several hdri maps and generally my renders look a lot "plastic-y" and a bit like rubber. The plastic feeling extends to everything in my scene, be it scene props, clothing or the figures, and especially skin. Only hair and eyes still look good. Hair usually looks good and I get results where the hair looks very realistic and the skin looks plastic, which worsens the overall look of the render.

The renders tend to get better if I tone map the final render in postwork, so I guess tone mapping settings are partially to blame. I also add extra subtle filler lights to figures to get rid of string shadows which also improves the render. But still, part of the plastic rubber remains.

Any tips you can share, or any tutorial you can recommend?

Paintbox

Outdoor light is usually the sun, which has an incredible strength in terms pure lumens. It's also a light that casts parallel shadows because of the distance. A proper HDRI will reflect this power and you end up with harsh shadows and "plastic" looking people. The way photographers deal with it is with two things : either a sheet to dim the light a bit or a bounce, to create rim lighting or shadow fillers.

Above is a setup by Peter Lindbergh, one of the great fashion photographers.You can see sheets, a beauty dish, a bounce panel, a spotlight to manipulate the light to his will.

Masterstroke

Paintbox said:

Outdoor light is usually the sun, which has an incredible strength in terms pure lumens. It's also a light that casts parallel shadows because of the distance. A proper HDRI will reflect this power and you end up with harsh shadows and "plastic" looking people. The way photographers deal with it is with two things : either a sheet to dim the light a bit or a bounce, to create rim lighting or shadow fillers.

Above is a setup by Peter Lindbergh, one of the great fashion photographers.You can see sheets, a beauty dish, a bounce panel, a spotlight to manipulate the light to his will.

funny, this looks like a render.

Doc Acme

I'm not sure when it changed, but when you first load up a figure or such and look at the render Tab for Environment, you'll probably see the ol' Ruins-B as an HDR.  If you click the Iray Defaults button now, it'll all switch to a Sun-Sky config set at 6PM. Go down to the Time of Day & adjust accdordingly.

Give that a try & see how you like the look. 

 

 

Asari

Paintbox said:

Outdoor light is usually the sun, which has an incredible strength in terms pure lumens. It's also a light that casts parallel shadows because of the distance. A proper HDRI will reflect this power and you end up with harsh shadows and "plastic" looking people. The way photographers deal with it is with two things : either a sheet to dim the light a bit or a bounce, to create rim lighting or shadow fillers.

Above is a setup by Peter Lindbergh, one of the great fashion photographers.You can see sheets, a beauty dish, a bounce panel, a spotlight to manipulate the light to his will.

Thx @Paintbox this is very valuable advice. Never thought it that way, I never noticed that people photographed under harsh sunlight can look plastic and rubber-like too but then I never paid attention. I'm currently making strict g usage of fill lights and tone mapping during postwork and it works better, albeit I'm not 100% happy with it. I will mimic the cover technique in my next project and see what comes out.