WHY!?!
kon
Posts: 389
in The Commons
Why does every genesis 3 skin look like wax!?!
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What skin is that? I only have two G3F skin sets, Victoria 7 and Sasha for V7 by Raiya and neither looks like wax.
Which engine are you rendering in and what lights are you using?
Are you using Iray mats in 3Delight renders maybe?
What lights are you using? 3delight? Iray? It doesn't look like you're using any type of lights at all; if not, you need to add actual lights to your scene.
step back a bit and read what folks are asking.
To get the best from both render engines you need to use lights and not just the headlamp, there is more to getting good results than surfaces alone you need proper lighting. I would have to assume the wax look you are getting is down to the SSS (SubSurface Scattering) settings but first you need to look in the surfaces pane and see which shader you are using for the skin. Then once you have that you can refine your Google search for the shader and SSS Settings
I dont know but here are 2 renders of V7 and Sasha I did:
Do they look photo realistic? No, but I also do not think they look like wax figurines.
When it comes to rendering realistic skin, there are so many things that affect how it is going to turn out.
Render engine:
The choice of render engine makes a huge difference. If you are rendering with 3Delight which is a biased renderer, do not expect more realistic behavior than you would get with Iray.
Lighting the scene in 3Delight is much harder to make it look decent than it is in Iray for example.
Lighting:
This makes the biggest difference. You could have the best looking skin maps and skin shader but if you do not know how to light your scene, you will not get good results.
Skin textures:
Some are more realistic looking than others. You have got to make smart choices and know what you are after when buying characters.
I think what you need to do is try out different render engines, learn some things about how to setup a good lighting for your scene and then see what results you can get.
I would start by switching to Iray since it really is much easier to get decent looking renders there.
Go to the surfaces tab -look for the diffuse color bar. Right above that is a box called lighting model. Change it from plastic to skin or matte and see if that helps. It defaults to plastic for some reason
Could you link a few promo examples so that we can all be looking at (and discussing) the same thing?
BTW, I'm not saying that I disagree with you, as I have often had thoughts along similar lines. Two things you may wish to keep in mind:
1. G3F can't use the huge library of existing V4 textures (that have been developed over the course of many years)
2. IRay, being PBR, generally requires textures that are a bit different from 3DL for optimal use
I think that these 2 things may account for what you are observing. IMHO, G3F is a step backwards in this regard - in that it obviously isn't building on the foundation that already exists. This is by design and not by accident.
- Greg
i think it's the skin bump maps, doesnt render well
I don't use Studio and I don't use and un-biased renderer, such as Lux, or iray, but no matter the renderer or the software, if you have bad lighting, even the best textures will look like crap.
That being said, I have seen many renders by artists here, and in promo images that go way overboard on Sub-surface scattering. In my opinion, this could be the waxy look you are seeing.
Although, the promo image you posted as an example of having skin not gritty looking enough is probably not a great example, because it looks like the character is supposed to be heavily made up. When you have that much makeup, it is meant to cover blemishes and smooth things out.
Perhaps what you need and aren't sure how to ask, is, are there minimally made-up, high res skin textures available?
Also, learn lighting and shading together, as they go hand-in-hand. The shading engine is designed to work with the render engine. That's why Poser shaders don't work well in Studio and Studio shaders don't work well in Carrara- different shading systems and render engines.
grey
This. A thousand times this.
Recently I was despairing of what utter crud my portraits were in IRay. And then it dawned on me to play around with lighting. Yeeeah.
Here's a before/after:
The second image is probably over-sharpened, but I wanted to really bring out the nooks and crannies. More reasonably I'd find a happy middle ground. But the first, almost all the skin details washed out because the lighting was too diffuse.
Even with photography it is easy to make human skin look waxy. Too much light, the wrong color lights for the skin tone, the wrong direction for the lights.
Go to a photo studio and see how many of them point lights at their subjects... Direct lighting will wash out the skin and make it waxy. This is partially due to SSS, the direct light penetrates too far. In film and professional image photography, makeup (especially powder) is used to *kill* SSS.
This isn't just a 3D thing, but it is much easier to see it here.
Kendall
Better reference, this is the same wizard with good (IMO) lighting without the heavy-handed postwork:
(And yes, the head zone has a texture mismatch I can't really help)
I think you bringing it up is fine.
Many people wonder about the lack of "photorealism" in their renders without realizing that what they're seeing in "professional photos" isn't the whole deal. I work with Photographers constantly and see the lengths that they will go through to make a portrait. Rarely is a photo used "as is". Most times there is color correction done to remove "greenness" caused by Fluorescent lights or "jaundice" caused by high-pressure Sodium lights. There are changes made to contrast and brightness. Halo's may be added, and highlights added to cheeks and chins. If the subject has particularly bad skin (not acne -- thin skin, pale, flushed or extremely dark skin, etc), then the photo will be retouched or airbrushed to "normalize" the skin so it doesn't detract from image.
While some of these are not "problems" in 3D, trying to replicate the look of (or compare to) professional photos will lead to disappointment because the targets are different. Many times I've had to provide reference photos to people to show that renders actually DO look like the desired subjects. There is a bias applied by people when they know that the image is 3D rendered -- a perception that it will look fake/bad regardless of actual accuracy.
Kendall
You're missing the overall point -- lighting has a huge impact on how things look and how details pop out. Adding one light changed things dramatically. More work would help more.
(I actually dropped the subd from pic 1 to pic 2 because the render was taking f'in forever, and I was more interested in seeing how the skin came out; among other things, the image would be improved by returning the hair quality to subd3 and possibly tweaking translucency a bit)