Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part IV
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From what I've read, and what I've seen in my own renders, turning on the Caustic Sampler doesn't make any difference with eyes, and it adds a lot to the render time. In any event, your render looks really good, like she's in a controlled studio environment for the photoshoot. It might look a bit "more realistic" if the skin were a little oily, or sweaty. However, your current iray settings may be just fine for her once you add hair and clothing.
...it's not so much "hate" as it is many of us cannot justify the high cost of adopting the figure because of the skin map issue.
I see, well, turning them off is no biggie. I was more thinking of outdoors as the HDR is an outside one. Her skin, as per what Catharina would do, looks great to me, I reckon lighting would make the most difference here. I upped the maximum texture compression to 4096, which is the size of her textures and it doesn't seem to have made any difference, but in case anyone notices any the render is below.
What other render settings would make any difference, or should I pay attention to the camera!? It is set to a focal length of 120mm, which was recommended for portraits by Randall Lloyd, the photographer that provided the reference for Reby Sky. It would have been REALLY nice if Daz had included some camera and render presets so we could experiment and see what would work best for us instead of flying practially blind which is what I feel I'm doing most of the time.
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There are no basic setting for Tone Mapping in Iray. Every environment will need a different set of inputs. In low light you will need settings that let in more light to the camera, in higher lighting situations you will need a different set and every situation in between needs different settings. All that will depend on the lights used the environment settings and whether an HDRI is also being used.
As far as I know.
You don't need the Caustic filter on unless you are viewing glass, water or light through a glass window.
Thw Architectural filter is used for inside buildings although I have used it in low light scenes and it does make a difference.
The Gaussian blur filter is set at 1.5 but I have found that, when using it in PS on my photographs, the size is better dropped for small pixel images and even raised for large formats. This can speed up renders I have noticed.
Thanks, I still think the odd few presets might give us a jumping off point. I swapped out the HDR, upped the IOR on the skin and turned off both samplers. The head and shoulders took 15mins and the close-up took 30mins and I think they still look nice. I guess there's no point upping render times if you don't need to. I'm sure hair and clothes with the proper shaders would up them enough anyway. I think I'm happy enough with the skin, now I'll work on her eyes....
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WIP still: Working on getting this render finished. It's been cooking for an hour and a half now.
A current render, using some of the things I've bought with the Rev Ups. :)
Having never tried changing skin on any models I thought I would give it a try. Not that it has turned out very good but seeing the process was interesting
Rendered in 3Delight because I couldn't get the skin to convert to Iray and it wasn't really something I wanted to spend a lot of time on.
The longer lens is recommended to prevent the ugly perspectives you get when using normal 50-55mm lenses (for 35mm photography) for portraiture. Photographers tend to use between 95-125mm, depending on their particular tastes, the specific lens, and the subject matter. I think I settled on 105mm years ago, for no other reason that I thought it looked best for a head-and-shoulder shot. Obviously, when you change the frame width, which you can do in D|S, you have to compensate the focal length as well.
As Sandy noted, you don't need the caustics or architectural filters. The arch filter is for indirect lighting, the type often encountered when lighting comes from an out-of-room source, such as through a window, or down the hallway.
Catharina understands Iray settings for skin, and her free advice is is priceless. I'd trust her judgement over others.
On the Iray Tone Mapper: In Iray, the tone mapper is a plug-in that basically lives outside the renderer. There are likely some connections back into the render engine (to support things like motion blur, not yet availble in D|S), so it does have some influence on the render. But generally, people fuss with it way too much as a way to solve exposure issues, and get frustrated by the outcomes. All it's really doing is a Photoshop-like adjustment of a 32-bit HDR image using whatever light is in the scene. When you output to a canvas, which is a 32-bit EXR, you turn the tone mapper OFF! This demonstrates the tone mapper is just adjusting bit levels, not "real" light.
Just like in a real camera, the tone mapper doesn't change the physical scene. It doesn't make lights brighter or darker. If the Iray renderer needs more light for a faster render, add light. If that changes the brightness of the scene, then you can alter the tone mapping settings to suit.
This isn't to say the tone mapping adjustments aren't useful. They are, but only in the context of the lighting already in the scene. And, eventually, the tone mapping may tie back to actual render changes, such as motion blur and film grain. Rather than relying on unreliable people like me to give advice
visit your local library and get even a basic book on photography. It will provide the solid basis to avoid the kind of frustration I see people have with these concepts. Don't expect film-like results like depth of field by changing the (current) tone map settings, but it'll help in understanding what the numbers mean, and what's happening when you make adjustments.
The way I use it is to think of the way I use my DSLR camera and just use settings that I am familiar with.
For outside I will set an HDRI if I am going to use one or the sun if I will be using that. Once the light is set I will add any bits and bobs for the scene. Then I will go into the Environment and Tone mapping to set light levels that look right for the scene and Tone Mapping settings that will allow the camera to see the scene and record it. The same with indoor using lights set to real world values and setting the Tone Mapping to get the scene looking right. If I can't then I will look and see if there is somewhere I can get another light into the scene then readjust the Tone Mapping settings to compensate.
Although in saying that each scene is unique and the flow can be fluid cahnging some things before or after the above sequence.
Sandy, I think your use of it is just fine. You're coming from a solid photographic background, and you understand there are only certain things you can do with the dails. I was just commenting on the tone mapper seems to be a source of frustration for many.
Tobor
It was more an insight in how my workflow goes that was the purpose of my post for those unused to the camera techniques than a reply to your post
Mmmm, looking good, the bloom filter isn't something I've played with, migth give it a go.
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Yeah, Cath has been on the ball for years, her stuff for M4/V4 when I had Poser was second to none. I'm looking forward to seeing what she can do with G3. Her males are always awesome.
I realised that my V7 wasn't HD, and I thought it would add to the render time, it didn't! I'm well happy with what's coming out now. I'll get some hair and fabric shaders next week and I'll be off to the races!
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Interesting, I don't doubt there will be a G3 equivalent to Monique 6 in the works.
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I'm not sure the Bloom Filter will actually be doing anything in that image other than slowing the render a bit as there is no light point in the image for it to work on. What I have read though is that it will work on lights that aren't in the viewport too so turning off lights outside of it is a good idea. Also something else I found was that if you have the Firefly filter enabled you have to set the Nominal Luminance value or it will wipe out the bloom effect or not clear the fireflies.
Bloom will work on reflected lights. If a character is very well lit, the entire character will glow.
I find careful use of bloom will improve many renders. (And careless use of bloom will ruin them. ;)
Thank you very much. It's minimal, and the main use of it is to smooth out the DOF in the background as well as soften the highlights around the accented poriton of his hair- which worked rather well.
The light source in this piece is not only from the HDR Environment map, but there is a photometric spot light behind the camera to assist in highlighting the scene. I hadn't touched the Nominal Luminance in the WIP, but I have activated it now in the render window. The three and a half/four hours it's been cooking so far isn't a concern to me since I render CPU. No NVidia card here.
I'll post the progress so far and a final render when I'm satisfied with the results.
Right, thanks guys, doesn't sound like something I'll need then. I might up the gloss on her lips a bit then write a MAT and shader preset. @ Darwin: What is upping the time in your render then? Is it the hair?
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Probably the mix of the shaders, hair and SubD set to 2. That, and I don't have an NVidia card, so I have to render CPU only. ;) All of the above, I would guess.
Bloom also works pretty well for when using mesh lights for in-scene lighting, glowing red eyes, that sort of thing. You can strike a balance between upping the luminance of the mesh and dropping the bloom, so that only the irradiates source seems to glow.
Here's an incomplete render showing an emissive sphere inside an eyeball, bloom added.
SubD on what? That V7HD is set on 4, I too am only using CPU and I haven't yet had a render take that long. I'll see how I go when I add hair and more shaders.
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SubD set to 2 on his displacement maps, his mesh. Each adds to the calculation times. Mainly, though, I believe it's the CPU rendering. That, and when you render water/glass, it always takes longer, and the eyes use both shaders.
Didn't know you could set it on displacement maps. I didn't notice any increase in render time at all when I set V7's mesh to SubD 4. I suspect it may be the eye and hair shaders that will be making the most difference. The eye surfaces on mine are default at the moment.
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Good for Terminators, I want to do eyes like that on my Grim Armour when I get round to an Iray version.
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What I had read was that it picked up on lights but I hadn't thought about reflected light. I have used it on street lights and one where it picked up the lights on the HDRI in the backdrop.
Funny thing about adding light inside the eyeballs is that (as I recall) G2F's eyes are open in the back. So the light from the sphere comes out the back of the eye and bounces around inside her head for a while, and it can come out strange places! The rim of light outside the iris is, I suspect, incomplete overlap in the geometry between iris and cornea. I liked the effect, so I didn't bother to try to fix it.
Based on my experience w/ G3F, I'm not sure what the "skin map issue" is. I understand everyone has different wants and priorities, but I keep hearing, i don't know , almost hurt feeling like people feel betrayed.
I get cost issues, but all the previous stuff still works.
You can't use previous V4, Genesis, G2F skin textures with G3F because it uses an incompatible uv mapping.