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I think you nailed the photorealism and jumped over the uncanny valley there Jeff Someone, amazing progress! Well done!
I am a long way away from that level of artistry
@jeff_someone I really love your work. Did you try the denoiser ? It's a lot better than daz and 2048 samples shouldn't really be necessary. Guess it will look fine at 256.
I did use the denoiser... it actually makes a big difference applying the denoiser at 256 samples vs. 2000 samples... 2000 was required to get the pores on the face to resolve without the denoiser washing them out.
Well, I am glad I found this thread. To be fair, I am really frustrated with my results with skin setups in Blender, with Daz figures (which I exported via the Diffeomorphic addon).
Although my results are fairly good, they aren't anywhere near the photorealism as some of these images. I've been using the MhSkin2 shader (from Blender Market) but tweaking it to get good results has been a tedious chore, at best. It is a tri-level SSS shader, but I am not sure it's even necessary, given what I've seen here.
So I have to ask, does anyone have a recommended nodes setup for high realism (ideally photorealism) for Daz figures in Blender? I'm sick of trying to tweak overly-complex shader arrangements, so I'd appreciate some help here.
For what it's worth I don't have any images to share (right now) because most of what I have at the moment is art nudes, which Daz doesn't allow.
Jeff, as usual these are excellent. But I would say they're a step back from your photorealism with Iray. To my eyes, the skin is a bit too glossy or maybe there isn't enough SSS?
Yeh could be... it is true nothing quite compares the Iray and the daz native PBR shaders...
I started out with a 3 layer skin shader too. Tried a few of them. Drove myself crazy trying to get them to work. The worst part was that even when I saw something I didn't like, I wasn't sure where in the node noodle mess to fix it. The more I read, the more I realized that 3 layer skin shaders aren't really used anymore. My understanding is that the subsurface scattering RGB depths give us the soft skin appearance that we are looking for, and the SSS map mixes with the diffuse map without having to try to mix 3 layer colors.
Well, it's good to know there's a better way. I wasn't aware that 3-layer skin shaders are considered obsolete, but I can say that they are really tedious to work with. I've been in touch with NeonCreeper some, the author of the other shader I tried (to mixed success, at best), the Dermis shader, as found on Blender Market. It needs heavy tweaking of values to get even remotely acceptable skin with Daz figures, as with the other 3-layer shader setups I've tried. From what I can tell, aside from the issues from being a 3-layer shader (with regards to Daz setups), the SSS settings are set far too high for Daz maps. I may suggest some other approach to him, for a Daz-specific shader.
In any case, I'll try the setup @davidtriune posted back on page 2, for his Kayo render, and go from there. It's pretty simple.
As an additional resource, we had a discussion on skin shaders a while back. Couple different node setups there.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/441922/skin-shader-from-scratch-version-1-1/p1
The skin shader you mentioned by davidtriune - with the Subsurface value set to 1.00, you are getting 100% of your diffuse color from the subsurface map. When it is at 0.00, you get 100% of your color from the diffuse (base color) map. I guess since the texture map is the same in his setup, it does not affect anything. Just wanted to let you know in case you use different maps for Base Color and Subsurface.
Thanks, I appreciate the info. I'll take a look.
These look great!! any advice on how you set up the hair and skin shaders? Are these materiald straight out of Daz into Blender via Bridge? Love to see your node setups.:)
Welp can't really compete with that level of awesome but here's a few I've recently goofed off with.
And one for a comic thing I'm horsing around with using a variety of shaders I'm slowly adapting cuz covid captive:
First try with Cycle
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/035/989/826/large/sebastien-azemard-plan-01.jpg
Dunno why nobody commented. This looks fantastic!
latest test render from my currrent blender class, no daz assets because my blender bridge still will not install and I think the help desk gave up.
@deathbycanon Wow, that's nice... what Blender course is that? I need to get better at reflective/refractive water surfaces.
it's a udemy one - https://www.udemy.com/course/blender-environments/
I signed up for it like a year ago but never completed it cos im lazy. But it seemed pretty good.
@deathbycanon
If you're lazy, then I'm even worse. I apparently purchased that same course in October 2018 :)
What version of Blender are you doing to course with? Given its age, are you having any trouble performing the examples, e.g. menu options moved or removed altogether? Given your results, I'd assume not, but just thought I'd ask.
@sebastienazemard_fb70236d I'm with @Leonides02 That looks spectacular.
Excellent.
Thought I would put an 8.1 character through their paces. Here is Brooke (https://www.daz3d.com/brooke-8-1) with her default Iray Uber shader brought in to Blender 2.92 via Diffeomorphic 1.5.1. Obviously not fair to directly compare Daz to Blender and the lighting is so different, but I'm gonna do it anyway. The light is the same in setup in the two Blender versions- only the Diffeo import settings have changed.
The eye cloudness jumps out at me as the biggest thing I'd have to tweak. There's also a strange thing happening to the texture under the eye with both Blender imports, almost like it's a really old burn scar, which didn't change when I moved the lighting around. I'm not so worried about the hair and clothes, because I don't usually use Daz versions of these, but I note there's more clipping and the weird skull cap artifact... I believe there's fixes for these on the Diffeo thread tho.
Blender particle hair and cloth sim. Custom skin shader with the base daz albedo painted over in Substance + new maps. My color grading still needs a lot of work as the skin turned pretty dark whereas the second image shows what it should look like.
Nice
Yes, nice work.
Color grading is a whole thing, takes some time to learn. You have a great start though!
That looks fantastic! I love this course. I still need to do the castle scene as well as I picked up his new one and haven't really been able to delve into it yet either. But I think this guy's course is what helped me really understand everything about creating stuff and textures, etcetera in Blender. Highly recommended course!
I'm back to the Urban Future 3 model with some more items. Somewhere in the changes, the scene got darker. Not sure why. I'm in the process of converting a couple of Jetbikes via Diffeo to have them weaving in the next version. Soon I'll start learning how to layer proper sound effects.
this is using the cartoon shape with the face transfer on ny friend's photo...rendered in blender 2.92 with 16 samples with the AI denoiser. Post work in photoshop and after effects.
i had the same problem with daz bridge, but downloaded it today and it is working...I must say, it is much improved. Might switch from the differomorphic input. This new bridge does almost everything that diff does. It let's you load a lot more morphs than diff, but it does not give you previews of poses in pose import.
Some fun practice