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I'll just add that just because an image is not "life-like" doesn't mean it is flat of dull. For some people, a level of hyper-realism is the ultimate goal. They need 4k texture maps, normal maps, displacement maps, and on and on and on. All of that means nothing if the lighting is crap. I can't stress this enough, shaders and lighting go hand in hand. They are like peas in a pod.
Now, you can have great lighting and great textures, but you also need good composition and a compelling subject, or even a mundane subject presented in an interesting way.
Wow, Some really good info here. Thank you. I do think some of you went much deeper into things than I intended, I was more comparing the difference between a typical child's drawing of house to that of High Schoolers architectural concept of a house... And you went to the Master Architects drawings (not that I'm complaining, good info to know).
Yes and No. I have examples, but as they aren't my work, I don't feel comfortable tearing them apart here... just doesn't seem fair. But I'm sure everyone has cringed when they saw some pieces before... However, I will include one of my recent pieces to be shredded (although I don't consider it nearly as the ones I was thinking of when I started this thread).
As for the camera work, that is something I'm still getting used to... Not having any background in photography beyond the Point and Click Basic Kodak 110 pocket camera, I tend to forget camera aspects, and tend to build the scene around the camera... (only recently have I realized how helpful it is to have multiple cameras scattered around the scene.) Stuff like DOF and F-stop, while familiar with the terms, the meanings are not yet there... I'll get there though.
After thinking about this for a bit, one thing that seriously bugs me with Daz and many renders, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, are the points of material interactions... Where a soft item like cloth meets a hard item like a table... While most people remember to deform the bed when they put someone in it, they seem to forget to deform the character to match... or how to make the legs squish when sitting in a hard chair. I really hope at some point Daz can include a basic "gravity" setting to help with some of this. I know this is what Dynamic clothing is for, but it does go beyond just clothing... Even some basic grips look odd because the fact that the hands don't naturally deform around the item being gripped. I think some do a much better job at hiding these flaws , but it definately comes into play.
Now below is an Image I rendered the other day. It is as close to a doodle as I've been able to do in Daz, so it isn't anything I consider close to serious... I was working on the Fox Skin, and needed to do a couple test renders... I was playing with poses, and came across that one, then built the scene around it. Things I can see that I'd like to improve: The hands need more variation in color, I only used one light in the scene, I'm not thrilled with some of the shadows, I probably should have picked a different color for the shirt, The tail need more transparancy to make it look fluffy and not solid, the grasp in the flower looks wrong... What else? Mind you, I'm not totally pleased with the way this came out, but I'm not seriously upset by it either, I just know there is room for improvment, but overall, I'm happy with it.
The flowers and the purple tree look like they might have ambient set too bright (normally ambient should be at 0% so black shadows are completely black, although there are times when you may want to use it, such as to fake light-emitting surfaces or transparency for example.) There are very dark shadows under the figure's arms and legs and in the background foliage, but not on the flowers/purpletree, so these objects seem to not match the scene in my personal opinion. But, possibly that is the effect you intended, I'm not sure? Something to think about.
You're right.. I forgot to even look at the ambient... The plants and the flower are from the "Alien Plants Set" which is a Blacklight like set intended for darker scenes.
Depth of field indicates how much of the scene is in focus. Here's a randomly-googled article, the very first picture of which illustrates it nicely. The front and the back ends of the table are out of focus, only the middle part of the table is in focus: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm . One would typically have the entire scene in focus since of course there's no actual lens on your computer causing focus problems. However, it may be of value to fake it by intentionally making part of the scene blurry. For example, maybe you want a portrait of a person but you don't want to draw attention to the background, so you'll intentionally make the background a hazy blur like those foggy wedding photos with only the face sharp. Or, maybe you want your render to stress how small something is, like an ant. So, you could make both the background and the foreground blurry just like you would see if you used a macro lens in photography, generating the illusion that you ARE using a macro lens, thus making the viewer immediately think "that <whatever> is so tiny you can barely even take a macro picture of it".
I haven't looked into use of the F-stop for renders. For an actual camera, changing the F-stop changes the diameter of the iris of the lens. If you make the diameter very tiny, you let in only a tiny bit of light, but it's more in focus. If you make the diameter of the iris very large, it lets in a lot more light so you can take the picture faster (important for moving subjects), but the resulting picture will be a bit blurier.
Well, here's some thoughts on your image, which I hope will help you:
It looks very "busy." I assume your character is the subject, yet it is darker than many of the background elements in your scene. Use lighting to bring out your subject from the background.
The lighting is similar to that in a photograph taken around noon. Professional photographers tend to avoid mid day sun since it casts unflattering shadows on subjects.
The color palette has no unifying theme. The individual items simply don't look like they fit together in the environment. I don't think I can explain this easily since an understanding of artistic color theory is just something you have to research for yourself, and entire books have been written on that subject.
So simple, but yet so enlightening.
From Cube to Awesomeness: Getting Started in CG
http://www.creativeshrimp.com/from-cube-to-awesomeness-getting-started-in-cg.html
True regardless of app or renderer.
Also, if the plants are supposed to glow, then you need lights to indicate that. You could do it via global illumination if using a biased renderer such as Studio's version of Dreamlight.
I also agree with daveleitz that you need some kind of way to unify the the image and emphasize the character, while still retaining the fantastical feel of the background.
I did an image with glowing plants for a Carrara challenge some time ago. I based the idea and look I wanted on Avatar, and worked on it from that perspective. I'm not saying you should slavishly copy stuff, but if you have seen an image or illustration that is similar to what you want to achieve, then look at it closely and figure out what areas that are giving you grief or don't know how to do, and ask here about how to do them.
For what it's worth, the issues in your image that my eye are drawn to are:
Just my 2c of course - as creator of the image, you're welcome to ignore everything I say
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To me Physically Based Rendering/ Unbiased Rendering makes a huge difference... Sometimes even just a simple stock PBR render can blow away a well made Biased/ Reyes Based render.
Granted, high end software using Reyes gives more power/control, but using 3D Delight or Firefly, the Reyes algorithm seems a little weaker and further behind anything unbiased or PBR...
The first time I made a render using a crappy model of mine in Kerkythea... I was happily shocked by the difference in amount of effort/skill VS results.
Then again maybe I'm biased against biased rendering?
Just agreeing with what others have said about light and materials/shaders. Even with Iray, great or even perfect lighting with poor shaders/materials will give a very flat image. With the lighting just as it now for the attached image, the shaders/materials on the cloths as they were loaded and auto converted to Octane made everything look flat - very flat (rendered using Carrara and the Octane plugin). After a little adjustment of the shaders, things looked much better. For example, the skirt was so flat that you could barely see the pleats, and the top was so flat and lifeless none of the details that can be easily seen now (be sure to zoom to full resolution) weren't even visible - it looked like someone took a black Sharpie and to draw the top on her.
Other things mentioned like DOF, etc. are also quite important, but without the lighting and shaders being set-up properly, nothing else will really make any difference.
Sadly, the artist that created the plant set opted for a single diffuse image to apply to all parts of each plant, instead of different shader zones... I'm sure with some masking or repainting of the Diffuse map, it wouldn't be as bad, but for now that green flower plant has been removed (too many other things to worry about to play with that at the moment)
That is odd, as there is only the single light source in that image... maybe it's the ambient setting on the plants themselve? (I did drop that in the rework)
Well, the fox fur is a WIP, and this was only a test render, I just wanted to see what he looked like with other things in the scene. As far as the tail... I'm not sure if this is going to be the tail I use. It was designed for a different kind of character (a two tone cartoon type) and lacks a lot... I can probably fix it, but It might just be too much work. I'm going to try some other tails first. I'm actually surprized no one mentioned being able to see the seams on the tail... The whiskers, kind of the same... I might be able to drop the opacity/Specular some to get a better look...
Wow... I couldn't find what you were talking about at first... but I don't think that is pokethrough, if indeed I'm looking at the same thing you are... I might just have to fix that in postwork...
I don't disagree, I just wish there was an easy way to fix it, (ok, maybe sending it to wrinkle, and applying a morph... This goes back to a earlier comment about wishing for a way to apply gravity...
I Thank all of you for the comments, They will be helpful. I just want to say that many of the issues mentioned are because this wasn't a composed piece, I just sort of tossed a bunch of stuff together as I found it in my content library, so yeah a buch of things don't work entirely properly... I am reworking the scene some, to see what I can improve just by playing with Light/Shadows and removal of a couple unneeded items... Starting with Cutting the Specular\Ambient colors on many of the Glowy things... Some things are already looking much better.
I don't disagree, I've seen renders that are clearly intended to be "Animation" that have a lot of life/realism in them, and images that were ment to be Hyper realistic that fall way short.
So True... I remember playing the StarTrek 25th aniversery game in the early 90's, and thinking how amazing the graphics were... now, lol... However, soon, and I think very soon, it will be much harder to tell a CG graphic from an actual photo... There will be a time when the human eye will no longer be able to tell the difference... so long as the artist doesn't make people/things too perfect. (Symetrical faces, even tan lines, perfect hair/teath/skin, etc)
If you are really inspired, it shouldn't be TOO hard to convert a diffuse map into a glow map:
Grab the diffuse map, put it in Photoshop. Use it as a guide to wear to put blobs. Then erase the backdrop. Blam! Glow map.
But that's just it, It is more work than I want to do for a "filler item" at the moment.,, The point was to work on the Fox character skin, (and by Default, a number of other characters, as I'm using Gimp layers, and saving the ..XCF file, so all I'll need to do is change a color layer for other skins in the future.) I am probably going to have to do that to the shirt however, as it only comes in that red....
Dformers could probably be used to simulate gravity. Apply one to the object, make sure the field only covers the part you want to bend plus maybe a little extra, then just rotate or move it a little bit to make it bend slightly.
Very true but even the default 'headlight' in Iray can provide "proper lighting"... Unfortunately the current problem is that a lot of people don't like change or they can't afford the updates... I can't say I blame them. A lot of people resist change. If you look at technology and its progress, we see the rendering engines and the enviroments shifted to photorealism as a standard but still we don't see photorealistic characters and we can't light cartoons till they look real..
I'm hoping one will come out soon. Great render btw... thanks for sharing.
Materials. GIGO
One important thing when it comes to 'life' imo is the composing of the picture. I usually thinks an image looks more life like if the main object is not exactly in the centre, like in DustRider's pic of the steampunk lady above. More than one people (or other beings) in a pic is another winner, especially if they clearly interact. And if you have people not really facing into the camera or flowerpots not sitting in the exact centre of the table, or a curtain a bit skeved. And perhaps a slightly tilted camera. Imperfections in another word.
Then one can always play with camera angles. Frog perspectives or bird perspectives and really tilted cameras for instance.
And don't forget to have fun
Story.
If the image doesn't tell a stort - which makes it art - then it relies on lighting, composition, poseing, camera angle and many other things. I see a lot of images that don't tell stories; lighting, composition, poseing, camera angle, etc, etc, are all used to tell a story, but if the person putting together the shot doesn't know, the rest of us have no chance.
And very often it just becomes a technical piece, that can look great or not; but then the viewer isn't asking I wonder what is going on, but is examining the picture for technical merit. Once we start doing that, I would guess, a lot of the potential is lost.
I own a book called Framed Ink. Nothing but black & white (and greyscale) hand drawn (and painted) images illustrating the process of visual storytelling, because everything else is built on top of that foundation. Don't let yourself get so bogged down in the software that you neglect your vision. Indeed, you already instinctively "know" what looks good, so let that guide you.
I have a hard time getting people to like my images. I try my best but I guess there is something missing.
Maybe someone can tell me. Here is my gallery. Not all my images are here. I been practicing 3Delight lately. I'm a reality 4 user most of the time.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/40634
Very interesting discussion. I'd love to add a few thoughts.
Realism is a wonderful thing, I know that I tend to strive for realism above all else because it has its own standard and needn't be compared to anything else in order to be appreciated. But the sad truth about realism is that it tends to be quite boring visually. Seriously, take a simple photograph of a single step on the staircase to the master bedroom and notice that as physically "real" though it may be, the image itself will be boring. For this reason it is wise to distinguish between technical merit and artistic merit.
When the OP says images are sometimes "flat," does this mean in terms of technicalities or artistic vision? I'd say from my experience that most people are more proficient in one area or the other, and tend to judge the works of others based on the areas the viewer's strengths tend to lie within. Those who are more technically inclined will notice that the reflections arent as sharp as they could be or that the shade of blue used for the sky is too red shifted and looks purple or that a column is floating in mid air and violating gravity giving away the falseness of the image. The more artisticlly minded individual will notice the subtle quirks of a facial expression as being less than genuine, or the detail in the beveling of the armor of a solider as being particularly well done, or will notice the cleverness of the font used on a character's tatoo on their backs and shoulders. Different people focus on different things. So an image that pops for me might seem like a dud to you.
The problem with Realism
Realism is boring and often limiting because of the way our human minds are designed to operate. In everyday life, our unconscious minds are really busy and has no time for pointless exploits, and is thus always scanning the environment for sounds and sights which could be potentially beneficial or potentially dangerous to our well being. When the unconsious mind finds something "unusual" in an image or a sound it will send a signal to the conscious mind to focus its attention on that same issue. This is why you can often "feel" someone looking at you from behind. In reality your real eyes caught the eyes of this person looking at you as your eyes did a quick peripheral sweep of the room. It was only the unconscious mind that noticed the guy looking at you. Your unconscious mind knows after millions of years of evolution that when two binocular eyes are focused on you it might be a predator so the unconscious mind tells the conscious mind to wake up and look behind us fast. We don't remember the act of looking backward a few seconds ago, all we remember is the "feeling" of being watched so we turn and face the guy and ask him if we can help him with anything and if not to please stop staring us down. Our brains are always busy scanning the environment for those things that stick out, those things that are abnomral. Typical normal stuff simply isn't compelling so we usually disregard it. For this reaosn, the better we get at producing "realistic" rendered images, the less likely anyone will even notice our hard work. Their minds will accept the rendered images as real and will simply move on to the next more interesting thing. One step on this staircase looks just like all the others. There's very little room for the artist to "comment" when realism is the goal.
When working toward Realism, the question one should aways ask themselves is "what sticks out to me as I view this image?" Because anything that "sticks out" from the rest of the image, is most likely violating the the scene in some subtle way and likely needs to be fixed. People who are good at realism have become masters at listening to their unconscious mind as it points out what simply doesn't fit, and are good at diagnosing and fixing those issues.
Technical vs Artistic
I'm driven by curiosity, so I'm more of a technical guy. Personally, in all of my years doing CG, I have only had artistic inspiration in mind a handful of times. Literally maybe only 5 times in thousands of renders. Aside from commissions from clients EVERYTHING else I produce as "art" is really nothing but a technical experiment that somehow turned out to be interesting enough to claim as "art." I tend to wonder how is it that people set out and endeavor to produce "art" when there are so many technical aspects to get to grips with first. Someday. maybe twenty years from now I will feel like I've finally got my technical legs beneath me enough to step out with a particular artistic goal in mind. Til then, its all just one giant study session.
Artistic vision without the technical merit to pull it off will lead to lots of frustration for the artist. Here in these forums, too many people set out to produce finished artwork long before they probably should. For me, I think it best to focus less on the artsitic vision part, since that part can scarcely be taught, and focus much more on the technicalities, because that part CAN be taught and discussed academically without causing offense. Instead of purposefully trying to make a realistic human today, maybe I should just play around with the SSS feature in a general way just to see how it works and only after that should I try to use it with humans. Instead of planning a full landscape as I see it in my head, maybe I'll just experiment with the Instancing tool just to see what happens with no particular finished result in mind. That to me is how you learn to make an image "pop" when you want it to, and look more flat when flatness is the goal. Exploration should be as "fun" as producing finished artwork...maybe even more.
I think your gallery is quite awesome. I liked everything I saw. I'm quite inspired by your work. Bravo in my book!
Mostly I was asking from from a technical standpoint. I'm very happy that so many went way beyond the original thought. I kind of wish I could provide the original image that got me thinking, but I hate to rip on someone who is trying. Basically it reminded my of that of a childs drawing, totally lacking depth and dimesion in spite of being a 3d piece, and filled with things that should have made it better. I think the major issue they had was the flat lighting, harsh shadows and a lack of texture on the props, making the scene look like it was filled with boxes with images applied.
I love catching movies and TV shows that ignore this, you know the guards walking down the hall, and someone standing in a side hall goes totally unnoticed by standing against the wall?
This has been something that has been bugging me about Daz, and is something that has been holding me back. I dislike calling myself an artist, I tend to think of myself more as a craftsperson. However, I have worked with Clay, Paints (Oil, Acrylic, and Watercolor), Glass, Beads, and more. In each medium, I've been able to find a way to "Doodle". A doodle to me is the purest form of creativity and artisit release, in that you let go of preconceptions, plans, desire to impress anyone, or anything else that can distract you from creating. 99% of doodles go right into the trash after, and it is extreamly rare that you end up with high art. However, a doodle often allows you to experiment with and come up with techniques you might not have though of otherwise. However, I have not been able to achive this with Daz as yet, which means Daz remains a set of blocks to play with, a really great set of blocks (sort of being let loose at the lego factory, with any and every block you can think of), but still a set of blocks. I have hope though, as the image I included earlier, flaws and all, was about as close as I have come to the doodle thus far.... I've included below two of my Watercolors, one was a composed piece that took days (The Pansy) and the other was a doodle (The blue/yellow Flowers) that took about 10 minutes, after a long day of tedious line work. and I'll tell you the doodle was far more fun.
Well, I have retexture a lot of items, and messed with various stuff, and do find it almost as much fun as setting a scene...
With all due respect, right here is cuts to the heart of the problem... Two little letters... VS. It's not a compitition when you understand that realism isn't the goal, its a standard, realism is the way to true creativity. Technical and aritistic were never in compitition my friend.. not everything is a battle. Two ideas can coexist at the same time. Ideas don't compete, egos do. What I expect is that you will make something realisticly look very artistic... How real can you feel? Can't wait for M7 :)
Like that render Snow!
SnowPheonix
Indeed VS might have been too strong of a condition. I consider it more to do with how a project gets initiated and completed is different for different people. Interestingly I consider you to be one of those people who does have a very good marriage of those two thought processes. But my own mind simply doesnt operate that way, and it took me a while to make sense of the way my own mind worked. For example I disagree in that realism isnt the goal, because for some people like myself it is entirely the goal. Make this sphere look as realistic as possible...seems like a simple enough task. And by realistic I mean show the image to 100 people and see how many of them would observe definitvely that the image was not real.
Below I have included two renders of Interiors made by yours truly. They are separated by several years of techncial skill and even by different versions of the progam in question (Bryce, of course.) I gladly offer these two examples as evidence of one way a person might appraise the value of rendered content they encounter in the forums and online.
Both of these images are rendered using fake GI techniques. So really these scenes are contrivances to give me an opportunity to practice light and shadow.
FIRST IMAGE
Here I tried to make something like a corner office of some high level executive who conducts meetings and interviews often in his/her office. The scene visually has interest because it has several props each arranged and displayed in a way that cannot be an accident. Several details are added to give the world of the scene a little more weight, making it easier for the imagination of the viewer to fill in the rest of the information. Artistically, the image is a success in my book. However, the image could be still improved a lot in composition and other artistic considerations. From a technical standpoint the image is sufficient as a standard 3d render in an app like Bryce, but doesnt quite rise to the level of looking even for a millisecond that it could be a real photo. Why? All of the reasons are unconscious. Because highlights and shadows are inaccuate. Some places shadows are too deep or specular highlights are too garish...there is a general lack of subtlety that lends itself well to artistic expression but can distract from the sense of hightened realism.
SECOND IMAGE
To begin with, this is a wonderful model. I love it. Anyhow in this study I created a sitation where the goal was to illuminate the entire space using indirect lighting (faked GI). Those who know the set will appreciate knowing that all six walls are in place, I did not leave an open side to make skylight entrance easier. No shortcuts for me, I take on the full challenge if I can. Realism or the closest thing to it was my goal. The amount of lighting and other tricks used here are too many to discuss here. Suffice it to say that the incredible effort isnt supposed to be perceptible to the fnal viewer, the result is supposed to look easy and in this case it does. From an artistic standpoint this image doesn't really pop at all. Even the bluish color and the mood of this image are pretty much the very definition of FLAT and DULL. The only model I added myself was a plant or two and the office desk. With everything else, my primary intent was to remove as many signs of "Rashad" as possible and leave the image as neutral as possible.
In this second image I created a bright sunlight entering through the window. I then placed another set of spotlights on the floor where the sunlight struck the floor and faced those lights upward so they could serve as representations of sunlight bouncing upward. I then set up an entirely different set of lights to provide skylight fill around the room. Careful attention was placed on light leves, shadow depth, and smoothless of the illumination since it was all done with point lights which cast hard shadows so lots of lights were needed to blend away those bands. I also used one of my Bryce tricks for Velvet material rendering, something never before seen from Bryce. Within the room itself, I've focused on realism of the behavior of the light. To my eye the thing that sticks out the most with this image is the building outside the window as being too generic to contribute to the overall sense of realism in the scene. And because the outdoor part doesnt quite fit it distracts from the overall realism of the scene which was indeed the only goal. Clearly, I got lazy with the exterior, having focused so much energy on the interior.
From an artistic standpoint, I think very few people would disagree that the first image is more interesting visually and appealing despite the lack of Jack's model. It has more "stuff" and it provides more opportunities for artistic commentary where I can "rashadify" the image. In the second image, the technical merit is much greater. The indirect light levels had to be tweaked based on my visual assumptions. If rendered unbiased I could test and see how well I judged visually these values, and I'm pretty sure that if I did so I'd find I was totally wrong on many of these values. While still quite far from true realism, it is no doubt to me that the second image gets a bit closer to "realism" than the first image, and the reasons are mostly technical. In the first image my thought process were "What would look nice if placed here? Should I add a plant here to balance out the room? Artistic choices. In the second image my thoughts were "hmm, just how bright should those spotlights on the floor actually be? Are the shadows under the desk too deep or does the velvet on the fabric appear too coarse? Technical choices. The more "stuff" I would add to the second render the greater my task would be to represent all of those items realistically, thus keeping it simple goes a long way toward fostering more realism. With realism the question isnt "does this look good?" the question is "does this look accurate?"
Where the skill comes in is knowing WHEN to purposefully break away from accuracy. This the artist does to draw emphasis to the things they want the viewer to observe as standing out. We already do this stuff every day, but we dont do it consciously. For some people like myself, treating artistc and technical as different hats helps me to focus on issues because at least I now have an idea where to start. Instead of hating an image, I can usual find the particular elements that annoy me in a specific manner.
For some reason I couldt upload both images in the same post.
I agree with Rashad as to your images, LadyLuck. You are among the artists I always click, In all cases, if I click, I also like, but seldom comment. I too suffer the too few Likes issue. Don't take it to heart. It's not really about your ability in the galleries. There are, if you look, only a handful of folks who like/comment. Unlike the Rendo galleries, there is no report on how many "Looked". So, it actually boils down to what you do, and how you present it (your preview image). Also, if you look at the top images ribbon, most who make it there are professional artists or vendors. My best rating ever was 11 likes. I still present to the gallery, but I do so hoping for constructive feedback, not an elevated Like count.
I am among the few who would disagree. Were both of these presented in "Town & Country" they would be judged not on artistry, but on individual preference. You are rendering two distinctly different "styles" of office space. One is traditional, old world, "banker" while the other is lighter, more modern... more feminine. Different, but not un-equal.
You have a very good feel for interior design. Excellent renders, my friend.