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Completely agree with this! But you'll get resistance because the pursuit of "reality" is almost a religion in much of CG. One example comes to mind: The Planet of the Apes used to use humans in suits and makeup to create caricatures of apes, but then they went CG. It looked awful to me. The CG apes, even with Hollywood budgets and production, seemed "uncanny" in a way that actors in suits and makeup never did.
This is an excellent image. The figure in this one isn't the un-real element in my eyes. The issue is the apparent bed made of stone. There is no distortion or compression of the mattress where the woman is sitting. Perhaps there is a way to add a morph or something to add the deformation? If that were possible for you, then I think that render could pass as real.
My personal style is not hyper-realism. I can appreciate a good "realistic" render, but for me the style of the render or the emotion I'm trying to invoke trumps that.
Now, that being said, I see other images where the artist says much the same thing as I just did, but the image lacks a depth, dynamism or detail that is needed. It doesn't mean they are being lazy or the concept is bad, but perhaps they lack an understanding of how shaders work with lighting, or the importance of using shadows or highlights to separate scene elements from each other or provide drama.
This is true for both biased and un-baised renderers. Unfortunately, many people see the un-biased renderers as magic buttons that can be pressed to compensate for poor lighting, poor shaders or poor composition.
Personally, I think there's a difference between "looks like a real person" and "looks like a photo of a person" I am a proponent of the 1st one. Think of a painting or a sketch; they can capture someone perfectly and most of them certainly don't look like photograps.
Mu ultimate goal for my renders is to look like a painting of a real person rather than a photo. I focus on realistic morphs and poses and worry less about if all the materials and lights are physically correct. Among other things I think aiming for painting-like also helps circumvent the uncanny valley a bit.
I never go for ultra realism and it's quite obvious in my renders when I do them. I like more of a comic book feel to them with allot of contrast, color boost and all that. I do appreciate a realistic render and what the folks here are able to do with iRay, Reality and Octane is mind boggling but it's just not my bag at the end of the day!
J Cade: Agreed. I'm interested in compellingly interesting stories (my webcomic) or art. And art isn't about photorealism, photorealism is a tool.
I only really started into things this past year, but I've had some works that really seemed to nail 'compelling art,' if not realism.
Which is why a lot of renders don't interest me. You have blank eyed slabs, who might be exquisitely lit and precisely textured, but... enh. But then, everyone has their own goals for this. So hey.
Thanks! Good call on the "stone mattress!" I can (and should!) add a d-former and make it compress in a more natural fashion.
this is all you really need. Move the nose, jaw, or eyes a bit different from side to side and it will break up the symmetry. You can do this with any figure...put people don't. People what do will get better results. It's not the model, it's the user.
Just remember, you can use those tools for not so realistic renders! I did with Reality/Lux and still do with Octane! it's not the render engine, it's the user and their direction!
Here's an octane render :) Realistic? I don't think so, but not because it failed the objective. And I like to remind people my avatar was an Octane render :)
I get in trouble for saying "Realism is overrated". But what I really mean, is people getting sold on realism are buying into it too much. Look at Disney!
This 100% percent!
Yeah, like : http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Fight-like-a-girl-556779099
Her nose is twisted a little. It's not immediately obvious, but it adds to the verisimilitude and enhances the thing, I think.
I love your style!
I keep saying you don't need to do Iray realistically. A little bloom and texture choices can do a lot.
I recently tried to go back to 3DL for a few things (inspired by Toon and outlining stuff), and I found the lighting and such a real pain in the hiney. And when I resorted to mesh lighting, hey, guess what, everything was slowed back to Iray speeds again.
Gonna assume you were looking at me.
Thank ya :)
Yep, this 100%. But you are willing to experiment and that helps a ton. Over time you can carve out your own path! Takes time, but well worth it.
I don't particularly care for Iray personally, since I don't strive for realism, nor care for it really. What I like is images which tell stories, and many images done in Iray are hyper-realistic images, but they just depict a face, or character, without much going on because the realistic character depiction is the focus.
I like to see characters interracting, and with things happening in images. 3d potraits rarely invigorates me that much, unless it is unsusual subject matter and that's what I see a lot in Iray.
In the end, both iray and 3delight are tools. Iray is popular now, but it doesn't make it better.
With uncanny valley I notice it a lot in female characters. Perhaps because I'm a woman and notice the oddities more. Not saying Michael and his friends do not have their uncanny qualities- they do, but just notice it less perhaps because their are fewer male renders.
Iray is better because it's much easier to set up a scene with proper lighting just by putting lights where they should go, and transparent/translucent objects are VERY easy. Also there's pretty much just one shader (Iray Uber Shader), which can do a bunch of sophisticated things (like tiling each texture independently), rather than going through base shader, toon shader, AoA shader, SSS shader, UberShader, Human Skin shader, DZ skin shader...
3DL is better because you can have realistic lighting when you want it (mesh lights/UberArea lights), or much faster less realistic lights. You have a lot more latitude in pulling off a wide range of things, like cartoon shading, lights that aren't visible, skydomes that don't cast shadows, and so on.
I occasionally toy with going back to 3DL because I've learned SO MUCH over the past 9 months, so a lot of the stuff I was finding very hard in 3DL I now have a better handle on.
(As an aside, are there any 3DL shaders that have that 'tile channels separately' thing?)
In general, this is how all Unbiased renders impacted the hobbyist market. Lux/Reality/Octane had the same impact. Easier in the begining to get a decent render. Now that everyone and their daddy can buy some premade iray materials and lights, everyone will be at the same level. Difference is Iray is free, and even while Lux was free it was a chore to use. Reality made it easier, but still cost money..and never got any real "preset sold on the store" support due to its free library. People often are steered by what they can buy to make their renders look better, they get inspired by what is sold to make things easier for them...
It's a phase. Once people get tired of looking at the same stock rendered psuedo realistic renders, people will need to learn how to do more. Give it a few years. Fashions fade, but style last forever!
But before then Iray on Daz will have the same cycle as 3DL. Metal shaders - Check. Improved Metal Shaders - Check. Super Faster Rendering Metal Shaders - Coming soon... Fantasy Metal shaders for fantasy scenes...Coming soon...
The greater range of options and tricks available for 3DL is calling to me. (LAMH, PWEffects, grass shaders, etc)
But MAN lighting 3DL is a chore.
I did not find it a chore after some practice. At first I used a few lighting sets. Learned from those. Then came up with my own 3 light solution that I could use for realistic and toon renders with some changes. You don't need 100 lights like some 3DL solutions used...3 lights will work for a lot of scenarios, assuming one of those lights is an environment light.
Funny is I have a friend who comes from the other world, not Daz. And he finds unbiased rendering solutions harder. And he's a 3DS Max user, tons of rendering solutions he has tried, not just Iray but mentalray, corona, thea, and countless other ones I can't keep track of.
He's really quick at picking up the biased rendering solutions for whatever reason. Not to say most DS users don't find unbiased easier to get started with. But that concept may not be universal. And while I have not used 3DL in years, I still know what I would do if I wanted to get a nice render out of it ;) And it wouldn't take long to set up. But that knowledge did come from months of practice.
I'm not a master at 3delight, but I like what it can do and some of the premade lights sets that come with characters like Fred makes are actually really great, so you don't need to start from scratch if you don't want to.
My direction these days is to do more postwork and I'm content with the output in 3delight for that result. I also have a large library of non-iray content so I'm more interested in making that work, than adopting and converting old stuff to work with the new shader. That can be never-ending and I have a big enough library to keep me plenty contnet for a while
I really like a lot of the promo art which was done in 3delight too. It has the right blend of color, and toony realism that I find appealing.
I also am not sure clothing has really kept the pace for the realisitc needs of IRAY. Toony renders, fine, but better and more realistic people need better more realistic clothing and only a few PA's have mastered that.
Lars: It doesn't help that most of the ambient lighting tends to eat up a lot of time. UberEnvironment, boy howdy.
I've found iRay does a nice job quickly, for reasons mentioned here.. lighting works like in the real world, materials react pretty much as you expect... You set something to be "silver" in 3DL and it could look like anything...in Iray..it looks like silver. (and those of you who are in my light a dungeon thread know the fights I've been having with 3DL and that :p)
And I do like the more ...realistic look for stuff..the syle I aim for is kind of super real...like models in a diorama..and I've had some gobsmaking results with it. Below is the old ebike model..I just reshaded it and did it inray, and was just jaw droped at how it wound up looking...not like a real bike, but like a real model of a bike....
I get good results with 3Delight, but Iray can just do wonders.
If I wasn't concerned that iRay was going to destroy my computer, I'd use it more.
Yea, I was... Mr. Tim was too quick on the reply button! lol
Most of the clothes have been generations behind for a long time now. One of the reasons I largely stopped buying clothes.
When I do photo-retouching of actual people I often have to move an eye and resize it to match the other one. Ears too.
With my 3D, I do the opposite!
This is the best quote. I've been saying this for years but in a much less eloquent way. Digital tries to mimic real world, real world tries to mimic digital. They are coming from opposite directions!
The image with the broken glasses is one of my favorite renders that I have done. It was done for a Carrara render challenge that had the Twilight Zone as a theme. This was my take on the classic episode, Time Enough At Last.
This is a highly stylized image that is not what I would "realistic." It has some real looking elements, but that wasn't the ultimate goal.
I didn't even use GI for the image. Just standard raytracing.