Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part II
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Yeah, great point. It helps you to direct the viewer's eye, and is an easy fast way to add to a render's sense of photorealism, even if you use it in a barely noticeable way. A teeny tiny bit of bloom goes a long way too. I'm usually not able to get a bloom I like from Iray, but there are techniques to add it in Photoshop. I think it really glues an image together, seeing bright reflections bleed slightly outside of an object's geometrical contours.
...Gimp has a similar filter called "Softglow".
...used just a bit of haze in the pic of the girls at the bus stop. Like you mention seemed to add to a better sense of realism.
PBR Tutorial Series
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52529-PBR-Tutorial-Series
"I took a picture of Her
just to study the skin
Watching the sun
dance off & go in
to Her
again"
Skin study from earlier this week is also in the Gallery. http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/65602/
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I was hoping to showcase my translucent upgrade to one of my characters, but the scene file keeps crashing. Trying to troubleshoot but nngh.
(I don't think it's actually the new character, since it crashes even if she's hidden)
Are using Memory or Speed?
Speed. I've been poring over it trying to make sure everything is converted to Iray Shader (because I strongly suspect that if the engine has to convert on the fly, it slows/strains things)
Edit:
Thank goodness, starting to render. I had to be a bit more judicious about hiding anything not in frame to lighten the memory load, and also switched on both CPU/GPU to prevent hitting a wall.
Still debating translucence skin, because it's HARD to keep the skin light enough (though it's easy to do medium to dark skins)
Finally I finished my skin studies. Just played with Iray settings, no Photoshop on textures, no PW. Settings differ significantly from the ones from http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54239/P285, but there are many ways to kill a flea, aren't they?
Olympia is my favorite, I used Parris' Macro Skin.
well I stuck this in the wrong thread... so here it is again
5000 Iterations, probably needs to go long to clean up the noise.
Whew. Finally got it sorted out. (It was important because this room is an important set for the comic)
Posting my initial stuff from a month+ back, and then what I did now.
Luy (the human) has skin based on gamma-corrected diffuse map into base/translucence/glossy, translucence weight at .5, and a touch of yellow to the base color and pink to the translucence. I'm pretty pleased with how it all came together.
(I should also note that the first image, Luy is Genesis 1, second she's Genesis 2)
Isla
Whats this? I've rendered a man? How strange.
Does anyone have suggestions on material settings for strand based hair? Mine's not quite there yet. Still tweaking the skin settings too.
Honestly, the only thing actually finished is the morph, but that's okay because I really love the morph; I had to export it to blender to sculpt the cheekbones how I wanted them.
Technically he's based on a real celebrity (though the word celebrity is definitely overstating it), but if anyone guesses I will eat my computer.
I was going to say Tom Cruise (I see it in the nose), but he is very much a celebrity, so I guess not :)
My second try at portrait lighting with Iray. I'm having trouble with shadows from the fill light though - how on earth do you switch off shadows on a photometric spotlight? I thought I could just set shadows to "None" but apparently not.
Edit: Nevermind - sussed it. You can't turn off shadows in photoreal mode, but you can in 'interactive' render mode.
You cant switch off shadows, part of the whole physically based idea.
But if you want to make the shadows less noticeable, easiest way is to set the light geometry to something other than point and increase its height and width. The shadows will still be there, but very soft
Oh yes, of course! Just like increasing the scale of the sundisk softens shadows. You're talking about soft-boxes, like pearbear was mentioning.
Thanks Kamion - good tip!
Edit: Much better. Can even start to see some of the veins in her skin texture now. Added a comparison to sun-sky lighting.
In both images I haven't bothered to convert the textures over to Iray base - I let them auto-convert. The poor portrait attempt is done with a point light as key, a softbox rectangle for fill and a sphere for the back light. The sun-sky attempt is done with environment intensity at 1.5, sundisk intensity at 0.4 and sundisk scale set to 6.0 for softer shadows.
WOW.....I have been away from the forums for a couple of days, and more really great renders appearing. It is very encouraging.
I had previously said I would wait for some 'Professional' made Iray textures and shaders to appear in the DAZ Store once DAZ Studio 4.8 Pro came out of beta, as I was getting quite frustrated in my attempt to achieve some character realism.
However, I did give it another try using some of the advice and techniques others have written about lately in these forums, and I am quite pleased with this latest render.
I used the Pixmar HDRI which seems to be a popular choice, and a photometric spotlight set at 20,000 lumens, with a sphere light geometry to be the reflection in his eyes.
The model is Gareth https://www.daz3d.com/gareth-hd-for-michael-6
:-)
Musicplayer, quite a realistic render.
can you share your skin settings?
Good pic, but I think you might have used the standard settings for the camera, with a focal length of 65 mm. Try increasing the focal length to 100 mm (which is what a real life portrait photographer would do) and moving the camera further away from the subject, it will give a more pleasing perspective, with a less prominent nose and ears that no longer look like they're folded back flat against the head.
85mm is a good focal length for portraits.
85-135 mm is what professional photographers use when using a 36x24mm camera (i.e. 2-3x the diagonal measure of the negative/sensor of the camera), some prefer 85 mm while others prefer 100 mm and others yet 135 mm. Lenses optimized for portraits, with special soft focus and "bokeh" features, seem to mostly have a focal length of 100-135 mm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_photography is a good starting point for those who want to learn more about it.
I don't know, looks pretty darn good to me.
My efforts have fallen along the following lines:
Black hair: Pretty much just black with gloss. Gloss should probably be some form of gray for soft highlights, and then you can push highlights toward yellow or red.
Brown/red hair, backscatter-driven seems to do a good job.
Brown hair: PBR Specular/Glossiness, Base color very dark brown/black, glossy layer .5, share glossy inputs off, glossy color faded medium yellow-brown, glossy specular close to black, glossiness .5, backscatter .65, backscattering color the desired hair color (more or less), backscattering glossiness .75.
Translucence .2, light/bright orange (adjust to taste)
Top coat .8, fresnel, IOR 1.55, very light yellow/yellow-orange, glossiness .8. Again, adjust to taste, depending on how glossy you want the hair -- this is where the actual shine of the hair comes from.
Blond: You can base it on the brown hair, but I noticed metal actually looks pretty nice as high gloss hair, so I think I like this approach:
This is a simpler model, using metallicity and gloss to drive shine and no top coat at all.
PBR Metallicity, metallicity .5, base color very low-saturation yellow, .5 translucency pure white, gloss weight .5, gloss color white, gloss roughness .2
When I was working the most was used 100-135 mm it all depends of the facial features of the model too.
For Portrait Olympia will looks best from 85 mm to 100 mm and Victoria from 100 -135 mm
quote author="tomtom.w" date="1429450878"]
Yeah, and the extra length means you stand further away from the subject, which usually makes it easier for nervous subjects to relax more than if photographer is right in their face to frame shot with 'standard' lense.
Here's a quick example of the settings I mentioned previously. (I DID find that the gloss was too tight on the blonde, had to change it to .4).
Thank you scottidog2 for your kind comment.
This was just a trial render so some of my settings may, or may not, have been necessary to the final render outcome, but I attach screen shots of the settings I used, as requested.
I loaded Gareth and then applied the Genesis 2 Base Male Iray shader. I then deleted all his lower limbs, torso and arms, so all that remained was his head and shoulders. This technique freed up memory in Luxrender, so tried it here with Iray.
I left all the face texture maps exactly where they were after the conversion, but added a strong face bump map to the Base Bump, Top Coat Color, Top Coat Bump, and Displacement Strength, and altered some of the other settings, as the screenshots show.
Hope this helps. :-)
Many thanks tom-tom.w for this suggestion and I will certainly give it a try in my next render. This was just a trial render that I did with the Perspective View camera, which came out better than I expected. I had also removed most of the character except for the head and shoulders, so guess this is how he came to be so close to the camera. :red:
I really need to brush up and practice on my camera settings.
Cheers :-)
Time for more sexy poses!
(The hair stuff I posted earlier works tolerably well for regular hair, assuming you have good cutout and bump/displacement maps)
That's more LAMH, isn't it?
I would dearly love to have some succinct tips on how you work with that plugin...especially how you get to Iray; that would be enormously appreciated
Well, how to get to Iray:
Click the pane, click 'to Obj,' then apply a shader to it. Not... much more than that. I just go to obj only as a last step before rendering and don't save the scene with the hugeness that results from it.
Note that the beard is actually Unshaven Beard, not LAMH.
What else would you like to know?
It's Sunday afternoon and that means it's time for KungFu Theatre! Today's presentation is "Midday Monk Part I" Please visit the gallery to see the full screen Iray action for yourself! ;-)
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/65732/