Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part V
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...shafts of ;light (or "godrays") is somewhat difficult to do in Iray as you need to use volumetrics which really slugs the render time.something fierce. It would also make the shadows from the moon and two light sources I have even more diffuse. As to shadow definition, the issue with mesh lights is that the shadows cast tend to be more diffuse. The only way to get more defined shadows is to use photometirc lights but then I am back to dealing with setting up 3DL styled lighting which is really cumbersome and a total PITA and defeats the whole purpose of physics based lighting. Even worse when I st up photometric lightrs I have to use totally ludicropus luiminance values (akin to using Uberlights) to get them to do their job properly. I used to work in theatrical ligjhting and find having to use kluges rather annoyoing.
The whole attraction to using Iray was the fact that I could (supposedly) create mesh lights that actually configure to the light sources in the scene instead of having to set up a "fake" a very complex lighting array.
..BTW I grew up in Milwaukee just 65 miles north as the crow flies.
As Rafmer suggested I the Bloom filter intensity for the tie & shirt was what caused the bleeding light in my render, so to make my render settings easier to render I turned off both the Noise filter and the Bloom filter (which is how those are configured by default) and rendered again.
That got rid of the bleeding light on the tie & shirt but there is a bug that keeps showing up when I do something like set the rendered image dimensions to Ultra HD and then to a ratio like Golden Portrait. What should happen is the Ultra HD gets rotated 90% and clipped to match the Gold Ratio for Portrait, what does happen sometimes is the Ultra HD gets clipped, unrotated, to the largest dimensions possible that fit within the Ultra HD and give a Golden Ratio for Portrait and why I say sometimes is because then most times later the Golden Ratio for Portrait is still correct then the image dimensions is shrunk way down from the dimensions it was originally clipped from, in this case Ultra HD, to create the original ratio. It seems it has something to do with opening saved scenes, applying (and unapplying) one morph or more, and the saving the scene and opening the scene again. Wala, the Golden Ration for Portrait is still correct for the camera but the dimensions are been shrunk and even reselecting Ultra HD does not change the Goldren Ratio for Portrait to Ultra HD again. I have to create a new scene then to get the Ultra HD selection to work.
As you see the bug in DAZ Studio 4.9.1.30 led to the Golden Ratio for Portrait to be still correct in my saved and reopened scene file but it lost sight of the fact it was set using the Ultra HD dimensions, not the biggest Golden Ratio for Portrait available in my DAZ Studio Viewport which as you see is only 500x650 pixels. As I said this bug didn't appear until I unmorphed the head to make my plain render using the Genesis 2 Male head and then reapply the head morph, save the scene file and then exit DAZ Studio and reopen the scene to make the render you see here.
Thanks! I used one of the brushes from the Particles pack for the sparks and a smoke brush from another set, can't remember which one though.
Iray turned out ok, still working on the lighting though
D&D theme! Heh
A render for this month's posing contest.
Inspired by AHS's Elsa Mars:
Rendered in Daz Studio 4.9 with Iray, post-work in Gimp.
The thread about G3 and superheroes got me thinking, so tried out Genesis 3 with Ultrabodysuit fitted to it. While I'm not on the G3 train, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the result.
(Also playing some more with photoshop to get the backdrop, and Ron's Steam brushes)
I particularly like the hair
Yeah, it's the Sapphire hair and... it's stunning. I didn't do anything but choose a color.
I'm going to be using it to inspire settings for other stuff. I was ALSO really impressed with the settings on the skin for G3, and am copying that, too.
@toyen that silky material is fabulous and the pose is really naturalistic.
How do we feel about things that are half-iray? until Iray has proper strand support i'm going to use blender for hair from time to time. (and even if we get proper strand support I still find blender's hair tools way easier to get good looking stuff with) It takes time both for rendering and compositing (the hair was 6+ hours to render, but there's about 80,000 strands there with a shader using transparency and translucency, so i'm just happy I could render it at all)
The figure itself is still Iray though, I'm still way more comfortable setting up skin in Iray I should probably figure out good blender skin at some point, but ehhh...
I am now always rendering with an exr output. Among other things, it does nice things with photoshop's RAW tools. While I often aim for something more painterly this one I was really aiming for a very photolike look and adjusting the exposure, highlights, adding some film grain, etc can work better with higher bit images (especially the exposure related parameters)
Since this is the Iray thread I'm also sticking the head as it was rendered straight out of Iray (with a BG added so its a jpg and not against white)
That's a great portrait and for once the hair looks really natural. Grown out sun bleached sort of look. Love it!
I'm amazed you can actually do this. I think it looks very nice.
Beautiful work... she has a striking resemblance to Angelina Jolie I think
G3F with Genesis Supersuit and G2F Catrina with some G3 values to the skin and Sapphire hair on both. I adore that hair, and will be seeing if I can copy the qualities that make it work onto other hair.
I also discovered why G3 skin is so much darker/tan... the translucency color is rather dark. (I ended up changing that... but leaving the somewhat more intense SSS and higher bump)
(I'm also realizing a lot of skins lack good normals)
They both look good but searching images for '20 year old female' (with strict filtering on if you please) will show mostly those two photos are missing in highlights so not bad. When you see heavily photoshopped images in that search in some stock photosites they will show no missing highlights but whether it's pancake makeup or a zealuos photoshop editor I don't know.
So, aaaaages ago when DS Iray was in beta, Mec4d commented about how most skin maps, designed for 3DL, were over saturated and suggested using Vibrance. Frustrated with the orangy bottle tans of a lot of Iray results, I tried that... and really like the results.
Also trying some of my observations from Sapphire hair (which can be succinctly summed up as 'the purist notion of only using white for glossy can kiss my hiney') has lead to much nicer hair. It even worked really nicely for the beard!
Also, for the translucency weight, I ended up making a corrected map from the very dark specular map to have more control. Came out nicely.
Just messing around with some recent purchases and the newly free Nik Tools plugin
Just messing around with some recent purchases and the newly free Nik Tools plugin
Well pure white & pure black will be as rare as hens teeth and most whites and blacks we see that aren't artifical are actually other colors but called white or black relative to how they appear to the surrounding colors.
The purist view is that glossy should always be pure white but you then yoke back on the weight so that it overlays.
That might work in a perfect simulation, but I consistently find that colored glossy values help capture the range of common lighting effects where the color of objects and the light they reflect changes depending on lighting.
I will find out as I try and make a PBR skin shader material preset without any diffuse colors I guess.
One approach that people have tried early on was that diffuse color should reflect melanin while reddish coloration comes from translucency (and/or SSS).
I'm finding it a pretty interesting way to go.
I meant to say diffuse textures not diffuse colors in the post above.
There are 2 types of skin melanin and everybody but some of both so it will be interesting to see what I need to do. Ideally I'd have a sets diffuse gradient maps and one would dial up or down the melanin concentration(s) like you can dial up a 'The Girl' head or body or not. Same thing with size and locations of freckles, pores, hair follicles and so on but I think that is beyond the Surfaces Tab's capabilities. I've seen enough of your other posts to know you've messed around a bit with such things yourself. Maybe for DAZ Studio 5?
I know I want a layer with an appropriate degrees of opaqueness, but, for example with freckles, I want the freckles shapes and locations and edge fading only and no coloration in the map so it's really almost more like a mask than a layer except I've never heard of a thing such as a gradient mask...but maybe LIE has a gradient mask. I have a lot of learning and value look-ups to do. And with that you probably can proceedurally generate freckle masks if you also define sun exposed region mappings and intensities. Same concept really with a farmer's tan, a tanning bed tan, or a beach tan...
The nice thing about Vibrance is that it dramatically mutes the color a LOT. I think I'm permitted to show an example of the free starter essentials?
Here's the M5 Phillip face diffuse map with the original on the left and Vibrance -100 on the right. It's not really melanin, but it gets over that way.
And on an unrelated note, my fern lake render.
Image removed by Moderator
That's a cool scene and as far as the Phillip texture it makes me want to give up shaving when I look at the bloody parts of his beard stubble.
By the way, my pic two posts back, the guy with toussled hair, I'm so happy about that. It's Micah hair, and EVERY previous time I've used Micah hair, I've been really dissatisfied. I had just about written it off.
By using different principles and doing things a little different, I'm very happy (combination of UHT and some pointers from Sapphire hair). I'm also really happy with the beard.
I've got Micah hair but I've never used it because the product icons look so bad. I've also the UHT on my wishlist. It looks like based on that render it needs to be moved towards the front of my wishlist rather than whenever it's on sale for 99 cents or whatever.
I HIGHLY recommend UHT. Although I also highly recommend making a Normal map of the BumpTN and using that, it helps immensely.
The big shift I've made is simply to do translucency and glossy as a fairly rough, slightly lighter color from the main diffuse hair color, and then a more glossy even lighter color for top coat. Gives the hair a nice shine to it, and you can play with the colors a little to get nice effects.
Again, the purist view of 'all glossy should be white' is interesting but not helpful, IMO, at capturing some of the look of hair. Some hair products use backscatter (UHT has an option to do that) but I just don't like the results compared to simply having colored glossy.
Another portrait, this time with a good bit of postwork. (though less than you'd think) I'm going to be going to this method a lot I think, Its right in my wheelhouse. Nicest thing, its not like I have to change my methods in Studio at all the skin and eye material settings are pretty identical as is the lighting.
For fun, once again I'm also posting the unedited 8-bit output, I probably could've kept the coloring closer to the original, but I'm having way too much fun expririmenting right now.
I'm going to go off and pick some good reference to emulate