Approaching Realism in DAZ Studio and Gamma Correction Demystified

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Comments

  • Rev2019 said:

    approaching realsim is an dead end with Iray

    bring on V-RAY

    Iray is mental ray. Key Shot and Substance uses Iray. Maya uses Mental Ray. I think the issue is it is not as user friendly as other renders. Its very complicated. Even Cycles is more user friendly.

  • RexRedRexRed Posts: 1,181
    edited August 2023

    I am going to try and read this whole thread, I like the realism of the skin textures from GC but the lighting seems too even and not dramatic enough. 

    And the red colors of the skin texture in the first example comparing 3del with Iray is simply an issue of changing the RGB balance in the translucency node.

    I always finagle my Iray skin tone balance and add more lights if the eyes are not lit enough.

    The GC seems too evenly lit this is why I use spotlights so I can get dramatically lit faces.  

    The GC images here seem too clinical and not dramatically lit. That may just be a matter of how it is being applied.

    I need to understand/do things in a linear way like,

    1 convert the object texture to 3del. (by doing this)

    2 set this particular setting to this

    3 set this map's setting to this

    4 set this map’s setting to this...

    5 to get the dramatic look in GC change the light source size to this...

    Could someone please write out this whole GC process in this way?

    Write it as if someone has an entire "Iray" scene with dozens of i.e., objects/figures/hair with hundreds of textures that need to be replaced/converted.

    This would be very helpful to me, and I would be very appreciative of such a procedure.

    Thank you!

     On another note: I have RSSY 3del to iray converter I bought in the Daz Store and use a lot.

    It scans an entire scene, then in a couple clicks, converts the entire scene to iray.

    I do not have a product that does the reverse. Is there one?

    (A cautionary note: RSSY 3del to Iray sees Gen 8.1 and Gen 9 PBR textrues as 3del so you have to omit them from the conversion process)

    Post edited by RexRed on
  • thomasbrandy287@yahoo.com[email protected] Posts: 58
    edited August 2023

    kennfletch said:

    approaching realsim is an dead end with Iray

    bring on V-RAY

    Iray is mental ray. Key Shot and Substance uses Iray. Maya uses Mental Ray. I think the issue is it is not as user friendly as other renders. Its very complicated. Even Cycles is more user friendly.

    Maya use Arnold. (maybe the best renderer for skin). 

    Iray is user friendly. Iray in Daz studio it's not. Look how simple is to setup IRAY skin in 3dsMax

    https://www.lightworkdesign.com/images/support/3dsMaxDocumentation/features/materials/components/multilayered-sss.html

     

    Post edited by [email protected] on
  • PsychoPsycho Posts: 22
    edited February 15

    I don't really understand the focus on Iray when it comes to realism: I don't think I've ever had trouble producing photorealistic skins and so on, with Iray, just from playing around with lighting (provided the actual texture is high quality). A far (far, far) bigger problem is the underlying models. The hair is usually the worst culprit (only a handful of the very best hairs in the shop are anything close to photorealistic: most are comically bad, with visible straight lines and sharp angles and so on), but even the faces are usually quite badly wrong, except in the neutral (expressionless) position, and sometimes (with the best characters) with a few specific expressions (e.g. some of Bluejaunte's custom smiles actually look like smiles, to the extent that I've rendered images that are genuinely indistinguishable from photos... as long as you keep them bald, and don't ruin the illusion by adding janky Daz hair). I am constantly seeing new characters advertised, and glance hopefully through the preview pictures... only to see the same familiar "definitely Daz" expressions, bizarre and inhuman looking... like cartoons, or like the people are made of plastic, or something.

    I don't have enough experience with character modelling (and/or facial anatomy) to put my finger on exactly what's wrong, but it's as though there are muscles being ignored all over the place, probably around the eyes and in the middle of the forehead which is so important for facial expressions. The mere fact that the expressions in the previews are so "definitely Daz" (there are some regularly used expressions that are immediately recognisable as unique Daz expressions... not only does no actual human being ever look like that, but neither does any other system's 3D models) shows that there is something wrong with the Daz faces. One glance at a photo of a real person with a real facial expression should be enough to make it clear, when you look back to the Daz preview, that Daz people have much bigger problems than their skin textures. Recent characters are sometimes really good with their asymmetry and eye textures/reflection and skin details and many other little things... but dial in a few expressions (especially the ones that aren't smiles, like shock/surprise or anger... perhaps the artists focus on the smiles?) and the texture realism doesn't even matter, the render is so obviously not real, due to the weird inhuman structure of the face (and, usually, the visible problems with the hair as well).

    I'm still grateful for all tips on Iray/lighting/etc., but it feels a bit futile when the underlying models are usually so unrealistic. Maybe I'm missing something: I wonder sometimes if most people are rendering cartoon-like characters deliberately and so the expressions have been deliberately exaggerated/simplified to fit with that purpose. I do understand that hair is a big technical challenge (the sheer number of polygons, for thousands of random-looking smooth curves, is staggering)... but the faces? If photorealism is the aim, I don't understand why we're at generation nine and the facial expressions still look so strikingly unrealistic.

    I have a feeling none of this will matter soon, anyway. AI image generation is developing at a shocking pace: I don't think the kind of workflow we're used to is going to exist for more than another couple of years. You can already toss together a crude approximation of what you want in a tool like Daz and have AI transform it into a photorealistic image in seconds, and its ability to do that with more and more frightening accuracy (e.g. using a few reference photos to generate photorealistic likenesses) is progressing very rapidly.

    Post edited by Psycho on
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