methods to get renders to be as realistic as possible?
torque3656
Posts: 18
What is the best element to use here to achieve an image as realistic as in the picture? (not my work someone else's) I am trying to get close to reality as possible but am having trouble doung so. I have seen some pretty amazingly realistic work from people who are using old versions of characters still with computers that are considered reasonable but not power houses.
What is the best methods/techniques to achieve the most realistic looking renders for Daz? please no hugely lenghty other complicated answers.
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Comments
I find that there are 2 very important things
1) the quality of the textures
2) lighting
And of course rendering in iray instead of 3dlight gives you an advantage :). There is of course Reality too, which can give you amazing results, but so can iray.
There are many free iray tutorials on youtube, deviantart and - if I remember correctly - sharecg, you can also buy iray tutorials here in the store (for example from the vendor dreamlight). Maybe look at those for some help.
There are also some threads here in the forum about how to best render with iray to get the best results... but if you're as easily distracted as I am and have a short attention span like I do... they might just be to lengthy.
Two threads I found with a fast look into the commons forum that might help you:
Tips and Tricks for Iray for newbies
Fiddling with Iray Skin settings
I agree with BlazeMystEra. Much of the realism is in the textures and lighting. I suspect that sometimes light postwork, similar to what is done to photos, is also helpful.
One thing would be lighting, and another lighting, and the final one.... lighting.
Seriously, textures/shaders, character morphs, and camera angle can help a lot, but the thing that really matters is how you illuminate you scene.
My rule of thumb is - don't light it from head on, move the camera angle off horizontal, some DOF helps but not always, avoid portraits (few people stand around looking at nothing), avoid low quality texture, and once you have the scene set up try lots of different variations of lights. And if you're still not happy, dump the project and start all over again with a new one. God knows, the gallery is full enough already with half-arsed images by people who haven't really tried that hard to say anything.
If all else fails, get a nice sword, and a temple...............
Portraits are good learning tools. The human body has many curves and planes and it is a great place to start practicing lighting.
Thanks guys!
You might be right Khory but close-up portraits would be one of the hardest things to convincingly pull off beacuse they are so dependendent on mastering skin shaders and the variations that lighting has so much effect on.
But maybe a good starting point with regard light experimentation. Some suggest consulting photography manuals and the basics of film photography, but who has the time or patience for that. I say play, and keep playing around and through trial and error you learn the most, Montessori style.
1- Textures
2-Shaders
3-Lights
4- iRay
I hope not in order of importance. Dodgy textures and shaders you can get away with if the lighting is right. But if the lighting is bad the whole scene is bad.
Hmmmm. If you light garbage, you'll get garbage. Start with quality then light it. Because as said, realism is desired, so if you are lighting realistically, those details should show up.
I agree 100% with the lighting. As for the rest, I'll agree with quite a bit of it
, especially the part about getting a nice sword and a temple. Start simple and, if you can get either to look good, you're well on your way.
Speaking of simple, keep your renders simple - it's so much easier.
I think one thing you'll find about textures is that (on the older ones with baked in shadows, etc) if you are lighting from a different direction that the texture was lit with, you will notice. Not enough that you'll know what you are noticing, but enough that you know something's just not right.
Agreed. You need to have your surfaces setup properly for the light to react on them how it should in real life. The posted example looks great on the skin, but the pose and body proportions take away from the realism IMO.
I use LuxRender via reality* or luxus over Iray
http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/daz_studio
LuxRender also supports network rendering which Iray will not. LuxRender supports AMD cards for GPU rendering along with Nvidia where Iray will not support any AMD card and has compatiblitly issues with older CUDA cards. LuxRender will allow you to adjust lighiting as it renders and film exposures and film type which Iray will not.
The LuxRender engine is free and open source. Iray is not.
Reality is $15 cheaper from the developer right now.
preta3d.com/purchase-reality-4/
"No hugely lenghty other complicated answers."
Practice.
My job is done here.
+1
What Evilded777 said. ;)
Also, don't discount 3DL. Skilled use of 3DL can look as realistic as Iray, and I'm finding that under some circumstances it's easier to get REALLY realistic stuff out of 3DL than Iray. Iray is _incredibly_ sensitive to good lighting, when you're trying to get that last stretch of realism.
As I've said elsewhere, Iray gets you from 0 to 80% realism with very little effort, compared to 3DL. But after that, Iray gets quite hard, and in some cases I think 3DL might actually turn out to be easier.
Other things: depth of field adds a sense of realism, even if almost everything is in focus. Haze and godrays help (and I'm really enjoying the AoA Atmospheric cameras to do this easily)
Consider: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Spider-lair-590287970
(It could be better, but the effects help a lot in creating the sense of place)
Texture and lighting is definitely key, but I find it's the little details that can make or break an image. An unnatural bodyshape will never look realistic no matter how fantastic the textures. A stiff/poor pose will take away from the realism. Are her hands tightly gripping that gun in a realistic way. Does the texture of her hair match her eyebrows believably. Are her feet solidly on the floor and posed to match the construction of the boot/shoe. Do her eyes/expression look lifeless. Etc., etc.
Lady Morana made me recall one of my biggest bugbears - shadows, particularly the lack thereof. So many images could be improved by the creator remembering that light, invariably, creates shadow.
(Edited) Iray makes the shadow issues less/no problem.
I'd be cautious using a pose like that, because it suggests that her spine is either broken or inhuman. (Which, even if people don't say "hey, that's a strange pose" can tend to make things look...unrealistic.)
True, indeed. But, alas, some people seem to have less "quality control" than others.
..true 3DL can get pretty darn close.:
http://kyotokid.deviantart.com/art/I-got-your-little-toy-399229232
Lighting and an Unbiased render engine.
I like reality. I'm struggling a bit with the learning curve and need to go spend some time in their forums though. Its a great program and I have had some wonderful results.
With Lux and in some cases Iray there is a heavy price to pay if you're going after realism. I've had a lovely Iray scene set up and it looked really good, the only problem being it was sitting on 7% after two hours. So back to a point I made earlier.... I dropped it into the recycle bin, bye bye. Learning to know when to give up is just as importiant as knowing when to persevere, and I wasn't going to win with this one. My time is too precious. In fact only about 5% of my projects ever see the light of day. I suppose you set ever-increasing standards for your work as time goes on..... and eventually I won't be happy with nearly anything I do.
...for an unbiased engine, I am primarily working with Iray as for render times, it is the most efficient as I am stuck with CPU rendering since I do not have a GPU capable ot containing most scenes I create. I find Reality/Lux render times to be glacially slow (I also have an old i7 that does not support the Reality 4/Lux 1.5 speed boost).
On the other hand, what I do like about Lux is its ability to render outside of the Daz application once the process is submitted (Octane works this way as well). I can close out the scene, even close the Daz application while Lux is rendering. If I have to leave and shut the system down, I can halt the process, close Lux, come back later and continue rendering where it left off. With Iray (as with 3DL) I need to keep both the scene and Daz application open until the process is finished, thus using up more memory resources.
lighting and skinshaders/ textures are the key for great studio portraits and closeups... while using HDRis i think that posing/scene composition and mastering the camera makes the difference.
How true!
This is ARTCollab's The Garbage Pile, lit with a skydome from HDRI Skies and rendered in Iray. Pretty much as it loaded except that I added DOF and lowered the saturation to get the look I wanted. It's not bad, in my opinion, but I think some displacement or normal maps would probably improve it.
lighting, lighting, lighting, then textures, textures, textures and the values of these (bump/disp/diff/spec very important), then camera angles and viewpoints as well as focus work (sharpness and unsharpness of for and background) and last but not least lighting lighting lighting
if Iray or 3Delight, well, you can really great results also with 3Delight. If you have the eye or the skills, then it does not matter if you use Iray or 3Delight, you can do also horrible unrealistic looking Iray Renders as well as great looking 3Delight renders. It depends on you.
The thing is, are all the renders done before Iray totally unrealistic and horrible? The answer is NO