alot of the daz photos i see seem so realistic
chris_settlemoir
Posts: 362
in The Commons
is it mostly the right shaders and combo of lights or what do you guys belive it is, just wondering because some of the ones i see look so amazing in general
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There are a lot of things that help get that photo real look in both render engines, but I think lighting is probably one of the major hurtles to getting that look. It isn't the only thing, but it is a big part. Other things include, but not limited to surface settings, tone mapping, and even how long you let the render cook.
Also, don't forget the usefulness of a fog camera. I use 3Delight and having a fog camera can really help capture a look with realistic atmospheric effects. Speaking of cameras, paying close attention to Depth of Field helps a lot to mimic the effects of a real camera. Don't be afraid of straying from the default 65mm to achieve some wide angle or telephoto results.
Any of Stonemason's promo images are like master classes in how believable renders can be with DAZ Studio.
^^^^ THIS ^^^^
Actually there are quite a few PA's I wish would do tutorials on how they achieve the looks they do. It definitely gives you something to thrive toward if photo-realism is your thing.
this guy has a great video on Photorealizm.
If you watch the extras on Zootopia that they sent the team to Africa to look at the animals.
The only thing that really looks real to me is some of the faces but most people exagerate female features so they don't always have realism. Clothing and hair and men and their things are still behind on realism,. I've noticed most of the pictures people think look real usually don't involve clothing and tend to be portraits. Those are easier to make look real than a scene with multiple characters and props.
I find that a picture with a person can look real if the face is not scrutinized too intensely. That is what generally tends to give it away. Now when it comes to architecture, locations and items, I've seen some amazingly photorealistic renders. Animals . . . forget it; they've still got a ways to go, but they are getting better. Elements such as water and fire are still a bit dodgy.
I agree 100% and that's why I originally cited Stonemason. Quality sets can and do pass for photorealistic. So do many objects (cars, furniture, etc). If you have anything that is alive and it doesn't have some degree of motion blur, it starts to look less photorealistic to me. Clothing is often less photorealistic than characters especially in closeup.
Now, believable (to me) is much more subjective. I know Shrek isn't real but I believe in him as a character and he doesn't look photorealistic. On the other hand, it's possible to have photorealistic renders of people that I don't believe are anything but waxworks. :)
First let me say I'm no artist, just someone who enjoys 3D, so my 2 cents worth on this subject is probably worth about 0.002 cents. So my advice is to take a quick look at my gallery(s) and decide for yourself the value of my comments, and if you want to read any further.
I hope you don't mind, but I took a look at your gallery here for reference, it helps to understand where you are at
(your images are quite good, especially considering they were all cone less than 6 months after joining).
I wont delve into photo realism, but more realistic 3D, as these skills need to be achieved before you can move onto true photo realism. As others have noted, IMHO lighting in conjunction with proper materials/shaders are very important for computer generated 3D that looks like real 3D. Poor lighting will make the scene seem flat, even if the mats/shaders are perfect, and poor mats/shaders will look flat even if the lighting is perfect. With Iray, and Iray specific shaders, getting a good combination of light and materials is much easier than if using 3Delight. But you still need to have these basic concepts in mind when working with Iray.
For example, if your using a shader that simulates velvet, under certain lighting conditions it may look flat, while under others it will look perfect. Often just some very minor adjustments to gloss, roughness, and/or bump/normals will bring the "3D look" back to life. Understanding how to effectively tweak (or even build) your materials is a skill that will improve your renders very quickly.
The same is true for lighting. One of the mistakes people often make with 3D is that they want everything in the scene to be illuminated and easily seen. With Iray, the camera head lamp that is always on by default "ruins" many render that might otherwise be fantastic. Sure, it will light everything in the scene, but it also kills the play of light and shadows from other light sources in the scene, effectively killing the 3D-ness of the render. The play of light and shadows is what our mind expects to see. One of the best ways to understand how to light a scene to improve your own skills (other than getting a book on the subject) is to buy a light set (not HDRI lighting) that produces the types of lighting you like, and carefully study the lights, and try to mimic it on your own.
Proper posing, expressions, and placement of objects in a scene are also very important. The figure(s) in the scene need to interact with the environment, camera, or mood both in pose and expression (the eyes are also very important too). The pose also needs to be balanced and natural, or it simply wont feel/look right. Don't over bend/twist joints, they just won't look right to the viewer if you do. I always either look for a reference photo or try it myself in the mirror. One thing that drives me crazy is when people use poses for women in high heels, and the figure isn't in high heels in the render. Many otherwise great renders are ruined (for me) by this simple inatention to detail. (Note: don't expect any poses you but to be balanced and natural, I've found poses where in the default position/view the look good, but when rotated you see the the figure is in a very awkward position, correcting the position, even when it's not obvious from a give camera angle, will almost always improve the "feel" of the scene - or or instinctive sense that something is wrong even though you can't put your finger on it. There are also many pre-made poses that have unrealistic bends and twists in limbs that need to be corrected to make things "look" right)
There are many other details that need to be addressed for believable 3D, but these are the some of the major points.
I've just posted a suggestion in the "requested products" forum that Daz needs more clothing and hair for active poses (and even some static ones) Hair is probably one of the top dead give-a-ways in destroying realism if the character is doing anything more than posing for the camera. For all the pose sets that include women lying down, it's amazing how few hair styles actually look realistic when applied to those poses. Allmost all include strands that simply defy gravity, or would require a bottle of mousse.
A lot of the problems with fabrics can be fixed, but they generally require software in addition to Daz and skills that the novice is going to have to acquire -- at which point they probably aren't going to be novices any longer.
Maybe a bit OT, but I always wondered about that term "Photo-realistic' or Photoreal'', after all a photo(graph) is anything but real. In the whole process of capturing an image (analogue or digital) and viewing it again (paper print or screen view), a whole lot of the 'data' is changed in one way or another... I guess it's more 'Photo-like' .......
(well, I've always been a bit different..
)
That's a semantics thing, but basically most people understand the term photo real to mean something appearing indistinguishable from an organic, or 'real' item that people are familiar with, or an item rendered in such a way that it appears to be something you could go outside see and believe it in fact existed. I can generally tell a manniquin from a human being, even in a photograph, yet I've seen wax figures that upon casual observation i could not; using the term as it is most often applied, those figures achieved photorealism.
Perhaps we simply need a new term, but the thing is people are trying to achieve a level of believabilty in the digital world that is indistinguishable to the audience from the real world, and under some circumstances that is being achieved on a daily basis, it's even been achieved in Daz studio.
Yep. I know,
but , well, here in Holland, we don't have a similar term, we would say "levensecht" (lifelike) or "net een foto" (just like a photograph), so as such the term always wondered me.....
In some ways, I think English speaking people like having terms where one can argue the semantics. I love the way other languages just lay it out in it's most exact terms while sounding cool!
Actually "Lifelike" is probably the most on the nose descriptive you could use. Especially now with the ubiquitous use of Photoshop, the idea of something being "photorealistic" is rather out of date when it comes to how most people mean the term. Lot's of photos now are undeniably "un"realistic.
I believe the concept of photo realism, deprecicates true essence of art. Prior to digital generated art, artist expressed on canvas, by ink, paint, etc..... Some of the most famous paintings in the world, has nothing to do with photo realism, example Starry night by Van Gogh. I see realism around me everyday in the real world. Want realism, put 3D software aside and go purchase a camera, venture into photograhy. It's easier to take a picture of a model, a car, animals, etc.... then to spend numerous hours on a computer trying to capture what can be captured in a instant with a camera. I'll never understand trying to achieve photo realism in 3D, but if this is what people choose to do, it's their freedom of choice.
You can set up scenes and scenarios in 3D that you can't really get in the real world. Achieving life-like appearances of the fantastical, mythical, and magical is something that a lot of people would love to achieve. Myself included. And even if someone is after the "every day"/non-fantasy photo-realism, not everyone lives in an environment (or can get to an environment) that is ideal for lovely photography. Nor can everyone afford good quality photography equipment. And not everyone can find a person/people to model for them. Just because someone has a computer doesn't mean they can afford photography equipment or afford to hire models to pose for them.
Adding "bloom" can also make an image appear more "real".
Laurie
Why is is that someone is always ready to decide what someone else's "art" is?
Taking a photograph is easy, taking a good photograph less so, taking a great photograph more rare than some think. I guess it's not "art" because you just hold the camera and click the button.
Photo-realistic 3D IS the art, no different than a toon render, manga style, or "other". It all has to be put together the same as a scene in canvas.
:: finger on nose, points to fastbike1 ::
...wandered off to deal with a few things and more posts appeared before I finished mine...so....yeah, what divamakeup and fastbike said.
I like the term "photoreal" because it is straightforward: Appearing as real as a photograph (literally, "light writing") of something real. Cinema has given us a visual code that has altered our perceptive acuities. We no longer expect an image to look like what we can walk outside (or inside) and see with the naked eye; we expect it to look like a digitized file of what we would see. If I show the viewer something that they cannot otherwise see, (say, a dinosaur or spaceship), I need only conform my projection to approximate those things they can see.
I started with Daz for the sole purpose of storytelling with photoreal elements. At the time, Elianeck was my beacon of hope, for she alone was getting prolific photorealistic results. It took me a year to get 3Delight people looking as photoreal as the promo renders by Raiya and Danae. But I had to jettison my presumptions about achieving photorealism when I started with Iray back in May. I "accidently" discovered the method that brought my people to photorealism (still hit or miss with clothing and hair), but I am yet searching for the means to bring my Iray renders of architecture and nature up to the standards set by Octane and Reality. At the moment, most of my renders of architecture look like very good 3D drawings of buildings, though they do resemble Jack Tomalin's promo images, and my nature images are near identical to the products' renders in the store. But neither are photoreal yet (at least, to my standards, which are based on Cinema 4D, Vue, and Octane renders I've seen).
When the Lord reveals to me the means and method of doing so, I'm going to tell everybody who cares to hear. Then Daz will be like music production has become: The amateurs have the same tools as the pros; so, the heart, vision, and craft are the only differentials.
...for myself, the quote in my signature below sums it up pretty well.
Oooooo! exactly that! Yes!!!
Been studying a lot of photos from the gallery and I've noticed two other things that destroy the illusion of reality for me. The first is rather simple, but it's amazing how many people overlook it, and that is anatomy. A lot of people pose figures in ways that don't appear naturalistic (in situations where characters are meant to appear natural).
In modeling and art, we were always told to use reference photos when ever possible, which has become so much simpler with digital cameras. That would help many people out tremendously.
The other thing is the eyes. This ones is a bit more difficult. One solution is to not show them if possible, there may be some shaders that solve the problem that there are lots of irregularities in the eye. Also your eyes tend to not be pure white which most textures are. Since I've decided to start doing tutorials like I'm a beginner again, I'm hoping I come upon some fixes for this.
If someone wants to claim that photography isn't art because "you just point and click", I'm going in full war mode. It takes years of expirience and some decent investment in lenses to estimate a proper shot and make it. It's not just point and click. It's: see the picture in your mind - change the aperture and lens to the needed one - change the white balance - put yourself in the right position with your camera - frame the shot with proper composition - sometimes make like 20 shots to get that moving object in the right place. Even architecture photography is tricky, leave alone wildlife photography or portrait photography. It takes a proper eye, just like a painter needs. Even if you're just copying what you see.
Same for 3D: it's not just load and render. It's load, adjust, load, make proper light, set proper materials, pose your figures up to the details, do like 100 test renders, and then hit the final render button.
+1 on poses. I can easily distinguish by pose promo's whether they're realistic or not. The weakest spot of the market are the "interaction" poses between the characters. As much as I love for example i13 sets, sometimes couple poses just don't look like real people. They look like dolls set up in a vitrine. And it's not because they have wrong hair or wrong clothing, at this zoom out all you look at is the way they stand and "move".
The couples poses have really been standing out to me as well lately, especially the dance sets. There's no illusion of weight to them. If he's holding her in the air, unless she defies gravity, the support of her weight needs to be reflected through his whole stance, muscles flexed, etc. Not sure if it's a limitation of the base figures or if the creators need to put more care into that detail.
A fine quote it is!
@nelsonsmith "The other thing is the eyes. This ones is a bit more difficult. One solution is to not show them if possible, there may be some shaders that solve the problem that there are lots of irregularities in the eye. Also your eyes tend to not be pure white which most textures are. Since I've decided to start doing tutorials like I'm a beginner again, I'm hoping I come upon some fixes for this."
Take a look at: http://www.daz3d.com/project-eyeray-eye-material-suite-and-merchant-resource-for-genesis-3-female-and-male
This may/will solve a lot of your concerns. IME, these will also provide natural (i.e. not baked in) catchlights and reflections.
It's like has been said in this thread already - often some of the building sets look very real, cars can look very real, but people not so much except when they are nearly naked. Now I've looked at some DAZ and Poser renders and there have been some almost realistic renders of people going a long way, way back even before V4 & M4. Well, that shouldn't be a surprise should it? After all they are taking high resolution photographs of people's skin and pasting those photographs to a 3D model. I'd be very worried it that didn't look like it was photorealistic human skin given that is exactly what it is.