Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part IV
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There would be extra work if the PA's had to create correct diffuse, spec and albedo maps for Iray. It has been mentioned several times that the 3DL maps have shortcomings. We currently have to adjust them ourselves, but, if they were already created properly they would be easier to work with.
CHEERS!
Beautiful.
I don't touch any texture for my ""renders"", but I struggle sometimes with the Glossy settings, that's all.
The other thing with us mere mortals trying to do stuff for ourselves is that finding information that we can understand is very tough. You get experts that can only talk to you as though we know as much as they do, or you do a google search and get taken to a page that has only one part of the formula on it and you then have to trawl that forum to find the parts you really need. Take Albedo fo example, because the forum search on here is so pathetic, I had to google it and it took me ages to finally piece together what everyone was on about. That little recipe that Cath posted was onlly a third of the story, it took an age to find all the other pieces of the puzzle!
Another thing she did was to decrease the 'Vibrance' of texture maps. You can do this if you have Photoshop from CS3 onwards, but I only have CS2. I then spent hours searching for a free photo editor that had the same function, again through googling. After going through nearly a dozen of them, I did actually find one that had that function.
I think you can see now why letting PA's do the work for us is a good thing
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..I believe you can adjust vibrance in Gimp.
No, you can't, I do have it and did look, which was why I had to find an editor that did have the exact function that CS3 does.
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...maybe not with the base application but I thought there was a plugin or script for it..
I think I searched and didn't find it. I have one now that does what I need it to.
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..what programme?
It's PT Photo Editor, there is a pro version available, but, I only need it for the vibrance so the free version will do me.
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..hmm, I'll have to look into that.
Wow, that looks great!
Thanks Taozen and jag
Yes, it is fabulous!
Thank you barbult
There are many ways to kill a flea, and so, each artist has diferent ways to achieve the same, and looking for information is painful and you end up more confused. I adjust my settings according to this link http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/DigitalEmily2/. You'll end up surprised that the research does not mention any albedos, aborption, dispersion, or other fancy terms, that BS is not needed for Iray, by the way it mentions anything it all, but it shows just the principles in graphs.
The image attached show the results of applying the graphs.
First ninive was rendered with the default settings, no adjustments, second, after applying Iray Optimized G2F mats, third after adjusting skin setings, fourth adjusting specular values, fifth after adjusting translucency(nose), sixth after changin tone and raising speculars. No gimp, no Photoshop, no skills, just DAZ Studio.
Ok, but, try explaining how you did it in a way anyone can understand.
CHEERS!
Easy. "I flailed around and messed with every setting 'til I got something what looked good" that's my method for everything.
Got to admit that I have spent a great deal of time doing that myself, but with mixed results.
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I came across a site called "Girls Working On Cars Wrong" and it seems there is a whole genre of photography that shows girls dressed up for manual labor wearing completely inappropriate clothing and hodling tools which are silly for the job at hand. I guess it's the equivalent of NVIATWAS for gear heads. I thought I'd try my hand.
This thing was taking forever to render out on my little laptop, lots of grain in the dark areas and the face in particlare was losing all detail in the darkness. So I tried something different, I save that off with convegence still hanging around 50% and then did a quick render in Iray preview mode. Much faster, much brighter render with no Ao as expected. Then I overlayed them in Gimp with blending mode and because the noise was in different spots, a lot of that just disappeared, and the face was better illuminated in the composite as well. I liked it better than either raw render so that's what you see here. Someday I'll fix the facial lighting and let it run overnight if that's what it takes but for now, a good start.
Very nice!
CHEERS!
Still have a lot of things to figure out, but I think I'm slowly getting the hang of Iray stuff now. :) Genesis 2 Female, lots of other accessories, couple of color correction layers in Photoshop.
Very nice!
CHEERS!
awesome
Thats really awesome man! May i ask what skin that is. It looks kinda like Vivenne by the way the legs are but i am not sure since i cant see the face.
Daniel
Gorgeous! And you've really retained your own style as well
EXCELLENT!
Thanks very much! D. Robinson, the texture is actually Sumiko (http://www.daz3d.com/fwf-sumiko-for-mei-lin-6). I didn't have any particular reason for using that one here (the character isn't intended to be Asian), but it's a good basic texture that takes postwork well.
I still need to figure out how to use specular maps correctly in Iray, haven't had much luck so far. It's not too important for the style I like though. :)
Before a disclaimer, I'll drop some lines about Iray, light and materials, if this bothers you, I recommend go read some McGyver posts about monkeys, apparently they were missing.
First, we must understand how Iray works, it's about light and how interacts with material surfaces and it's interior. Metals are the simplest materials, you have a color and index of refraction and glossiness amount, light only interacts with the surface, metals always look good. Skin materials are a little bit more complex, because light interacts with the surface as metals do, and also interacts with the interior. If we have good textures why Iray gives unexpected results? Because we are giving Iray altered textures for the surface and altered textures for interior. Iray does the job with the supplied input, it is programmed to use the physical models and approximations, cutting the BS, it is just a simulator. By altered textures I mean image maps with acompanied color other than white.
What do we need? You skin textures and speculars map. Bumps, normals, displacement maps as always.
I always start with the Iray Optimized Materials for G2X character, G3F are already applied.
If we want an aproximate simulation of skin we have to give the purest textures to materials in Iray. We have to use the PBR Specular/Glossiness Mixing. Base and Translucency Colors use the same textures, for purity we need White. Translucency Weight .5 with a Scatter & Transmit Base Color Effect. Full Glossy Layered Weight(1.0) with the artist provided specular maps. Purest Glossy Color, White. Glossy Specular and Glossiness adjustable to your liking, thats it for the surface. IOR 1.4 or 1.44.
For the interior we instruct Iray to not color anything, white color means, coloring of light will happen as light travels inside the volume, Transmitted/Scattered Measurement Distances .25, Transmitted Color White, Direction -.5, SSS Amount, you decide, but keep in mind as this is a simulation light/dark skin scatter differently, if in doubt, start with .3
SSS Reflectance is your friend, if skin is too red. Translucency maps can be used for areas like nose and ears.
Finally as for the graphs in the Wikihuman project, a really good specular map is one like the Total Specular Additive, all black with whites and grays.
Treat the above (BS if you wish, but keep it to yourself, btw BS is a bad word) as guidelines for skin simulation.
This is the reason I visit this thread, admire beautiful images that inspire.