Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part IV
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Kyoto, if you missed it, this technique works pretty well for combining Iray sun and a skydome:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/63014/yet-another-iray-skydome-technique
It's not perfect, but as long as you avoid very specific situations (highly reflective/glossy surfaces that show how distinctly bright the sun is vs. skydome), it's very good. Note that you CAN have reflective surfaces that show the skydome, just make sure the reflection of the sun isn't in frame or it'll blow it out.
Personally, I prefer it to struggling with HDRIs and other methods I've tried.
Here's a new one. FWSA Livia HD. Love their stuff.
...I thought skydomes always blocked the Iray "sun". Also when I use the Iray sun, I never use the Lat., Long., Date, & Time settings, but the "Sun Chain" instead which is easier to use for matching the correct elevation and azimuth.
..OK though it's been a while here is a proof render of the final railway station scene with all the characters included (8 total).
Still not sure about the platform lights, especially considering I have (re)learned a lot about lighting for Iray since I built the setting. Also, still can't seem to really get good bump/displacement detail on the track ballast.
Also have they changed the maximum file size limit for attachements? I thought I was able to upload files larger than 2 MB before. Even exported as a .jpg, this is 1.75MB in size.As a .png It is 2.45 MB
Train scene looks real good imho
Hi kyoto kid,
cool mood. Where did you get the HDRI from? Or is it a simple backdrop?
Pitty that I can't find really suitable HDRIs corresponding to the skydomes of Glasseye.
Please see the example, I produced with 3Delight and the Uber-lights of omnifreaker.
To produce the bulb lights with iRay is not the problem - but the sky HDRIs (?)
...I used one of the Skies of Economy Uberenvironment HDRIs (not the standard skydomes). I then added a "fog cube" just in front of the rendering camera to which I applied the Dispersive Water Iray shader and added a bit of refractive roughness to achieve the damp misty appearance.
I like the appearance of your example even though it is 3DL instead of Iray. Gives me the feel of a nice yet lonely summer night. One minor tip though, in Ihe UK the approaching train would be on the opposite track. (just as street traffic there is).
..thank you. Lots of work (and trial & error) involved as I was still learning how to work with Iray.
Inspired by Wilmap's latest outfit...
Here's a closeup of Livia. Absolutely love FWSA's stuff, both together and separately.
Tried Wills method with Skydomes and tweaked it a bit for myself
It is the Dreamlight skydome from In Bed with the Summer Day sky. The Environment is set to Sun & Sky Only, Glasgow, Scotland, 21/05 at 13:00 hrs. Move the sun and the shadow moves, move the Skydome and the clouds move. Something I did notice is that there are now cloud shadows on the terrain and, if a cloud in the backdrop covers the sun, the figures can end up in shadow with sun shining on other parts of the terrain 
Love the Livia renders. ;)
Thanks. I'm sure she will be one of my favorite renders. The promo image(s) with the Dragonfly hair are outstanding.
...I did that here, notice cloud shadows on the land across the bay (3DL render).
I moved the dome round and changed the sun settings on this one. I have attached the render and Skydome settings too.
What would I save the Skydome settings as so they can be used again? Would it be Materials or Shader Preset or something else?
Sounds good when you gonna get it done so we can all use it :
I seen this at rendo and thought of you about the Iray HDR skydomes , these look promisining. I have not used them myself though I postedd the link to the Iray Skydomes , So hopfully the daz mods wonl't remove the link until you have a look at them and let me know what you think. https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/?ViewProduct=111831
You can save it as a scene preset by first removing any character and other objects you don't need. That way, everything will come back -- Iray and environment settings, any additional lights, the skydome geometry any textures, everything.
Tobor
Yes I know, I've done it that way in the past with other things. I saved it as a Material Preset and loaded it into the Skydome for the Australian Outback and it is rendering at the moment and I will post it when it finishes. Not all the settings were populated properly but most were and I just reviewed them in my picture and changed the one or two that were missing.
Hey gang, I've been trying to up the ante with the realism in my figures. Many real-world female models have fine downy body hair which shows up near the terminator of shadows, and the lack of this subtle sensual feature in 3D renders is one of the things that I think can give them a plasticy fake feeling. I've occasionally painted the little hairs on in post with Photoshop, but I wanted to see if there was a solution to render them. There's a bodyhair for V4 product made by Exenem available over at the other big 3D figure store, and after some months of hemming and hawing about whether it would be usable on G3F, I finally gave it a chance. I did the V4-G3F fit technique of autofitting it to G2F, and then autofitting it to G3F. Fits like a charm. :)
Here are some little hairs in action, most visible on the belly, thigh, and close forearm. Theyadd more to the render than I even hoped for, really glad I finally gave it a try.
I've had really good results leaving displacement off and using normal maps instead. And unlike increasing SubD for displacement, normal maps add little time to the render. Bump maps work really well with this online tool: http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/
If there isn't a bump map, it can be a pain to get the grayscale right starting from a texture (diffuse map?) but some of the textures work well without any adjustments. (I prefer working with grayscale images because I find it easier to see where I need to tweak, but the tool works the same with full color images. I assume it "looks" at the luminance of the colors...)
This comparison image is from a work in progress, each image was rendered to about 90% convergence, cpu only, in less than 30 minutes. The set is Chalet de Sevilla from the anniversary mega-bundle. (This set does not include bump maps.)
That is really amazing. I've often looked at female renders, my own and others', and felt like something wasn't quite right. Now I realize, in at least some cases, the issue is the lack of body hair.
Is this hair anything like REAL Hairy? If so, you may be able to make the hairs finer, (if you want finer,) by applying an Iray hair shader like those from Mec4d's Unshaven 2. I used it on body hair for a render of Derek a while back, and the results were really nice. (The image is here, if you're interested.)
OK,
here's a render with my current setting for the glossy effect.
glossy layered weight: 0.5
glossy roughness: between 0.5 and 0.6
no use of any specular texture.
For the hair is the same concept, but roughness round 0.45 - base bump at 2.
Image removed for nudity. Please see this thread for info: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3279/acceptable-ways-of-handling-nudityHi Will,
the "translucency concept" sounds interesting.
Could that be a possibility for me to transfer my outdoor setups (with skydome and distant light as the sun) to iRay?
That looks really good, Andy. However, the lack of a top on the one gal is a TOS violation.
Maybe you could re-render with a skimpy swimsuit top for sharing here? Or post it somewhere else and just link to it... with a "nudity" warning, of course.
I really like the scene, and nipples in an image per se don't bother me. You've done a very good job and have every right to be proud of the render.
Edit: Here's a link that you might find helpful, regarding nudity on DAZ: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3279/acceptable-ways-of-handling-nudity
Pearbear,
The strands of hair are a nice addition. But to my mind there are two issues. 1. The hairs are far too long. 2. There aren't nearly enough of them. What you need is the equivalent of a pelt of sorts, but with a very low density and with strands that are not much more than a millimeter in length. The strands are so short that they barely have the opportunity to curve.
Thanks! Nice use of Mec4D's Unshaven 2 in your render! That's a great product, and one of the only times where we have something nice made for G2M and only wish there was a female equivalent (so I had to use female bodyhairs made for V4). The Exenem bodyhair is interesting in that it has no UV mapping, so it's just pure geometry with no way to apply opacity maps (unless you wanted to make you own custom UV map for all the hairs). But it makes up for this by having a lot of morph options for hair length and thickness, and a nice amount of seperate options like three different kinds of forearm hair, multiple belly, chest, leg, and pubic hair options. That render was with the default thickness, I haven't experimented much with adjusting it yet, but I did see that you can dial them thinner or thicker and longer/shorter, or overall distance from the figure. Sadly, there's no face hair with the product, so a DAZ compatible solution for the facial peachfuzz effect still eludes us. I've seen some high end 3D face models made for Maya the appear to have each little strand of facial peachfuzz modeled. I'm assuming one of the real difficulties of doing this with DAZ would be getting it to conform and move/morph perfectly with the contours of the face.
Possibly!
Some images look good, some don't. You just have to play...
The approaches I've used:
Simplest is take the skydome map and put it into the render setting environmental map. Generally, however, any directional lighting is absent, and the sky sort of uniformly glows. Objects have drop shadows, but nothing else. You can augment this, if you are careful, by creating a spherical or spotlight a great distance off and being careful to line it up with whatever sun is in the actual sky image. The biggest problem here is if the image has clouds that should be in front of the sun, because, well, they won't be.
Skydome, diffuse map copied into emission map. This can be slooow. But sometimes it looks better than just copying the map into the Render Setting. Also, with some transparency, you can create a spherical/spotlight just OUTSIDE the dome, behind where the sun should be. This, plus experiments, lead me to...
Skydome, diffuse map copied into glossy color, refraction IOR 1/weight 1. Then Sun environment, carefully matching sun to the sun in the skydome. Essentially, the skydome is becoming a giant gel. The big problem here is that any color in the horizon dome transmits through, and sometimes the lighting acts weird. The look of the skydome is a lot more washed out than 'skydome as emission.' With a cloud map in the refraction weight (so that clouds are slightly more opaque than blue sky), you can get great cloud effects.
Some maps seem to work better than others, I'm still experimenting. And I'm also wondering if I should mix all the approaches, at least a little.
The EASIEST approach I've come across is a skydome, emission, with a spotlight just inside. So long as the sun is off screen and nothing is very reflective, it easily gives me the backdrop I want, and controlled lighting (I can make shadows softer/sharper by changing the spotlight's disk diameter).
Just to be clear, I used REAL Hairy for Genesis 2 Male for the body hair, applied the Iray Uber Base and then applied Mec4d's shaders to the hair. (The hair looked fake to me, in Iray, until I added Cath's hair shader.)
I might be able to get some of the way there by playing with the dials, but you're right that there aren't enough hairs in the Exenem for total realism. Still, I like how it's working out. Here's another test, this time with the abdomen hairs dialed thinner. I might need to learn how to make some little hairs of my own in z-brush eventually though...
Image removed