How can I make my renders look more real?
unclesben
Posts: 45
in The Commons
When I render scenes some people tell me they look like they came from the sims game. How can I make them look like they didnt come from a game?
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Which render engine are you using?
post an example.
Post an example of what you're looking to create.
It helps us if we have a clue about what you are wanting to create. 'Real' has many interpretations, and I've seen real life 'situations' that didn't look real. :)
Like a image like this How can I improve on it? Make it look better.
...looks like you're using 3DL. First off, better lighting. For 3DL there are three types of lights you can use, the standard default lights, UberEnvironment/Uber Area lights, and the AoA Advanced Lights. The first two some with the Daz programme the latter can be purchased from the store. (Advanced Ambient Light, Advanced Spotlight, and Advanced Distant Light). Depending on your system the Uber Environment lights tend to render slower as they also use GI (global illumination) but do give the most "real" results. The AoA lights give excellent results and render fast but they do not include GI.
Next for 3DL Daz has native SSS (SubSurface Scattering) which helps to improve skin quality. Also there are some really excellent character skins and skin resources available as well.
For more "photoreal" rendering you need to use the Iray render engine. This again will be slower than 3DL (without UE) unless you hav a good GPU with decent memory.
Try to make a photo of real people in the same situation, then correct the poses according to the photo. One thing seemingly wrong in your scene is the way the man stares at a point over the head of the woman. If two people argue / talk, they normally look at each other's eyes. And his left arm should be moved a bit to the front, if I try to get my own arm in the same position he has, it hurts.
Not necessarily; a lot depends on the story behind the image.
If the male character is being depicted as a supercilious jackass, then that pose pretty well nails it! That, at least, is how I'm reading it. The expression is a bit bland, however; unfortunately, in all of my expression packages, I have yet to find one that unarguably expresses 'pompous twit'! Try a little tweaking around the mouth, maybe a hint of a self-satisfied smile, with a bit of a moue (pursing the lips a tad)....
Since Kyoto Kid already touched on lighting and shaders, I won't. But pretend I did, because those two things really are key.
I used 2 different lights this time and made him smile a little bit.
If you want a more realistic look, I highly recommend Iray.
Just compare lots of promo pics of newer stuff rendered with Iray vs. 3DL.
Think of render engines as in movies:
Iray = Avatar
3DL = Toy Story
Each has it's advantages. If you want real without a full day of rendering, Iray is the way to go.
Well I think first I would have the characters looking at each other. Try tilting the mans head to foreward and use the point at option to have the characters eyes stare at each other.
I would then adjust the lighting so that light is coming from the window.
Consider tilting the camera to a more dramatic angle
I like it. It reminds me of a Carol Burnett Show skit for some reason. You know, just sort of harmlessly weird with Harvey Corman as the doctor and Carol Burnett as the patient. A lot, if not most people won't have seen that show, even I've not seen it since I was a child but it's that sort of show if you ever wanted to create comedy skits that would be a good model. The clothing and the makeup and the sets from that show reminds me of DAZ & Poser models.
...this is where creating several different cameras can be a big help. For example to get eye contact position a camera so it it looking at one character's face from the other's viewpoint. You can do this for both characters. To get rid of the outline of the camera so it doesn't obscure anything you can hide it (the camera itself will still work). it isn't unusual for me to have a half dozen or more cameras in a given scene especially a very complex one that slows down viewport response. Cameras don't have an affect on render time and also make it easier to zero in on various areas of the scene without having to move your main render camera all the time (when I am satisfied with the angle and setup of the render camera, I lock all it's transition sliders so it cannot accidentally be moved)
Also what size are you rendering at? This last sample is quite small and therefore it is difficult to see details. I usually do tests at a minimum of 900 the vertical edge. This will allow you and others to see more detail while not having a major impact on render speed.
Can you also provide a screen shot of the viewport showing what kind of likgts you are using and how they are positioned?
Below is a scene I did where I used multiple cameras to get head positioning, eye contact and the hands to interact correctly. This was rendered in 3DL (even the vignette effect). The only postwork was adding a softglow filter to heighten the glow effect around girls from the window behind them.
Eye contact always helps ...
Damn, this is good.
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Practice and time will contribute to making things look real. It isn't often a one click solution. Buying products that have them helps, but when you do that, you're telling someone else's story, not your own.
But the products that have things set up for one click renders are great; they allow you to examine important aspects.
- Camera angle. With depth of field and other camera functions considered.
- Poses. And expressions where appropriate.
- Lighting.
- Composition.
There will be some I've missed.
sometimes to get "real" you need to go fake. Because the eye captures light differently than the camera does consider 3 and 4 point lighting as a common solution to effective lighting to visually "pop" all the elements of the scene that would not be accomplished otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting
another thing overlooked is the "used" condition of the elements of a scene. While your background is dingy the characters are crisp and without any used look to them making them seem unnatural to their surrounding. If the room needs to be dingy there should be dirt, old furniture, musty books , something the viewers mind can use to tie the scene together. The man has his head wrapped, what if you put some a spot of dried blood on the bandage, scuffs on the womans shoes. Photo realism is only part the battle for realistic, the bigger part is to engage the viewer.
Secondly DS is not exclusive to Iray as the only means of photo-realistic output. Octane and LuxRender can be used to archive more realistic compositional renders as well. My older CUDA card offers me no benefit to Iray and I prefer LuxRender for a number of reasons. 3Delight is also highly capable outside of Daz Studio so any comparison to Iray vs 3Delight is purely for DS only. On it's own 3Delight is used for major motion pictures and is a fantastically capable rendering engine whos overshadowing by Iray's abilities are exclusive to Studio.
http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php/projects
Strat x9000.
And while Iray will get you a good big step of realism, but the only thing that's going to get you halfway there. To get a REALLY good, mostly realistic scene is just going to require practice and learning, and you can do that reasonably in Iray or 3DL, particularly for what you are talking about.
My biggest advice is to buy AoA lights (when they are on a decent sale); doing so sped up and improved my renders in 3DL a LOT. Also, avoid UE2. It does add some subtle realism, but you are WAY better off trying to fake it with AoA ambient; UE2 makes 3DL renders go from 20-30 mins to 3-4 hours.
(not ALWAYS; sometimes I try out UE2 and on some scenes it's not so bad)
On the flip side, if you have a good NVIDIA card with CUDA cores, Iray is pretty awesome, too. And it can be easier to hit that realism. Render times, considering how realistic things can look, can be on par or faster than using 3DL UE2.
I have two GTX 970s for a total cost of maybe $500-600, and I can get a lot of decent scenes done in an hour. (2160x2160, using canvasses, 2-3 figures and an environment)
Always remember that all 3D is simply a simulation of reality. Sometimes in order to get something to appear photo realistic means that the actually scene or settings may be waaay off from what they'd be in the real world. For instamce a pose or expression that you might think is exaggerated may look completely natural once rendered.
But generally I find that lighting and textures are the number one things that cause something to look less than real, especially when it comes to the face and eyes. I'll see lots of really good renders in the gallery and as long as you don't look at the face, you'd swear you were looking at a photograph.
...yeah, eyes, skin, and hair still have a ways to go in Iray. Where it really shines is with hard surfaces, particularly metals and glass with reflectivity (cars look incredible).
This is why I like 3DL as it is easier to keep a sense of visual continuity in scenes.
As to the AoA lights here's a few scenes I did with them.
The renders I'm seeing that come close are the iRay renders of skin, hair, eyes in dramatic portrait style. Many times I will think it's real until I look at the clothing worn or the modeled surrounds. The best ones use an abstract canvas background leaving only the clothing as the easiest giveaway. Comparing the amount of texturing and modeling work done on DAZ 3D iRay PBR skin and eyes compared to the clothing it's easy to see why the clothing is the quickest giveaway.
The image with two light definitely looks better. It might help people to help you if you included a bit more about the image. like what figures and clothing you used, the render engine (3Delight I'm guessing), the lights used, and larger images can also help a bunch.
Like others have noted already, materials/shaders, lights, and posing a very important. Based on the dress, I'm guessing the the female figure is Genesis? (the dress looks like Summer Casuals Sun Dress), and the male is maybe M4?? The quality of the the textures and the shaders and details of older model, it can be very difficult to get away from the "Sims" look. But good lighting and tweaking your materials a bit can often help a bunch.
I've attached several examples below to show the differences materials and lighting can make. Just in case my guess above was correct, I used the Summer Casuals Sun Dress and Genesis (1). Please forgive the quality of the renders, as these are just quick examples, and not intended to be ultra realistic. Also, 3Delight is much more difficult for me than Iray. I did one Iray render to show what the same scene would look like in Iray. Hope these help to demonstrate some of the points others made above.
This is just a load, poser, and render using all the default settings including the default lighting in DS (3Delight).
This render uses a light set from Photo Studio 2 by InaneGlory, Nothing else was changed from the first render (3Delight).
For this render I added a bit of SSS (customized from the Human Surface Shader or HSS), and adjusted light intensities a bit (3delight)
For this render I used Iray. I converted all of the shaders to Iray shaders using the Iray Uber shader from DAZ except for Genesis, which used SkinRay from Most Digital Creations. All of the shaders were adjusted to my liking, and I used my own 3 "mesh light" setup to light the scene. Oh, I used UTH2 for the hair
...I rarely do portraits save for tests of character concepts. I primarily compose full scenes and that is where the quality of skin and hair really breaks down in comparison to the rest of the scene elements. Transmapped strip textured hair is a real pain to get to look "marginally good" in Iray even with substituting Iray based shaders. Don't have the resources for the newer fibre mesh hairs or LAMH. right now.