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Yeah you can see the difference in the shadows and colour of thr skin. Man I can't wait until I get my new super duppa computer and play.
To get back to the topic of the OP.
What people usually rave about is Poser's subsurface scattering and lights, which in the right hands work marvelously. All you have to do is surf the New Galleries at Rendo and see the type of work Poser can produce. Poser has had content creators and users for a long time and therefore the surface settings can be a Make Art Button so to speak. But only because others [Baggins was mentioned earlier for example] have taken the necessary time to master that application's ins and outs and thankfully for others, share their knowledge.
So to answer the question: Poser is a wonderful 3D tool which creates awesome renders in certain artist's hands.
Daz Studio can also be a great 3D tool and make stunning renders. It probably takes more work because of the lack of proper documentation but then that is the challenge in it [at least for me]. When using Daz Studio you are forced to actually learn and understand the interplay between surfaces & lights to get the program to pull off what you envision. Just like a traditional artist learns the interplay between brush selection, paint selection, canvas, etc.
I think DS can pull off great lighting and subsurface scattering in its own right. Perhaps not the stylistic Poser version but DS and Poser are separate applications, each with their own strengths and limitations.
For example, below is a test with Ubersurface2 and Zev0's Vascularity in DS3A. There is only one distant light and the UberE.There are no sss strength maps used. All of the sss is created by the surface shader interacting with the lights.
cipher_X I 100% agree there.
Poser has been around a lot longer than daz Studio so there lies the issue...time, time ofr us to learn about what Daz Studio can do and to be honest I think we have finally got to the exciting time of Daz Studio where some are making good use of 3Delight.
Anyhoo
Here are two renders the first done in DS4 with one Distant light and UE2 with GI.
the second is a Poser 8 Render (smoke being the only postwork) but again the IDL lighting (called Photobox) comes from another that knows a bit about Poser. This can be done in Daz Studio with Shader Mixer IDL lights but my old computer couldn't cope.
Very well said and great render!!
The image below is just another example that DS is capable of good renders quickly. It's a character I've been working on, so I've put a bit of work into the skin shader, but similar results on the shin could be achieved out of the box with several of the products available here. The background and lighting are from Innana Glory's Photo Studio 2 available here at DAZ3D. The render took 12 minutes.
I'm not trying to push DS over Poser, they are both capable of outstanding results, and the latest version of Poser has some great improvements in both render quality/capability and speed. But DS 4.5 also has some speed enhancements, and is now capable of producing renders in acceptable times.
Hey, Guys, this is fantastic, you guys are showing me possibilities, but getting those results can be difficult. What I've tried to do is share my material settings for skin so people can pull them apart, play with them, get better results, and, hopefully, throw those material sets back at the community.
Here's an example... I would love it if people would critique it and tell me where it's falling short.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/66181/view/21/DAZ-Studio/WC-SSS-Materials-for-Genesis-D|S4.5
Unfortunately I do not use DS4.5...I may never install it so I can't take a look at your material settings.
The image you have posted though has a lot of over exposure, very strong specular, which isn't natural looking. Very oily skin or someone who is wet may have a sheen [not shine] but even that is broken up by the pores and isn't uniform. I shoot for supple skin not greasy so I use a specular map to create a more natural breakup but not all specular maps are created equal so I have made my own, which I use over and over no matter what the underlying diffuse texture. Also I never use white as a specular color, I go more into the light blue or grey range.
Your diffuse texture seems to have lost a lot of its definition. Again not all bump maps are the same. Most content is created by Poser users and their bump maps tend to go from "black to white." I create my own bump maps for every texture, and mine are more like DS displacement maps, going from [grey] 128-128-128 to 255-255-255 [white] and inverted. I can push the bump pretty high, -0.3 to 0.3 without getting strange artifacts from self-shadowing. It is important to have a good bump, as you will lose some of it because of the SSS & Velvet settings. I have been experimenting with Normal maps as well but still in the early stages on that.
Without knowing your other settings I can only make suggestions:
• If you are using Ambient don't. There is no reason to use Ambient at all for skin with the Ubersurface shader.
• Don't use Transparency, as it is not needed either.
• Don't set the SS Refraction too high, as you will get noticeable bounce back or banding.
• Scale should be set for every texture on the model that shares a commonality [like skin] so that you get a natural blending between parts.
• Shading Rate on Ubersurface set to 1, especially if you are using Uber IBL
• Scatter and Absorption Color are a matter of preference but a dark blue for Scatter and a red to orange for Absorption.
• This last one is my opinion only, and is debatable but I don't use strength maps. I let the shader do the work. People will argue that our models are hollow so we wont get real sss but that is why there is a Refraction setting in the shader to create a faked layer so that the light will scatter.
My ideas for what they are worth...
I always use about 10% ambiance for my skin shaders. I get much better results.
I always use about 10% ambiance for my skin shaders. I get much better results.
Ambient makes the skin glow and negates the reason for SSS and Backscatter settings. In the old days you could fake SSS with Ambiance and also lighten a very dark skin texture but there isn't a reason for it if the Subsurface channel is set up correctly.
Now you might use it in place of backscatter. For instance, to get a specific color backscatter, in conjunction with an ambient map to confine the effect, to the ears but ambient is too uniform a setting to replace what you can get using the SSS channel.
I know that there is a phrase that, "a person is glowing" but humans don't glow, we are not light bulbs.
cipher_X again I totally agree.
When talking Realism/realistic whatever you want to call it, one thing many of us HSS/US/2 users agree on "NEVER USE AMBIENT ON SKIN" ambient should come from the lighting to get better looking results.
I think there is something all of us suffer from at one time or another, and I am not saying that it is always a bad thing, but we want a holy grail setting that works every time, in every situation. DS is a biased renderer so there will never be a one size fits all setting. That is a good thing because it allows us to be more creative, and the artist is in more control of the finished product than the renderer is. But the caveat is that the artist needs to understand lighting & surface fully so they can create the magic.
We see beautiful images and promos created with DS [or Poser] and because we would rather spend our time being creative than techincal, we believe the program should do it out of the box for us. I can't anwer if this is a right or wrong way of thinking, that really is up to the individual and what their goals are [hobbyist, professional designer, content creator, etc.], but there is a certain high from working for months on something that just finally clicks and comes out the way you intended, even though there are a whole lot of failures along the way. :-)
I would never say don't do this or do this becasue as you say the freedom is what makes us creative. It is not for me to say don't use Ambient but if the person wants realism then not using Ambient applies.I must admit I ahve never thought like that.
IWhen I first started I had no preconceptions apart from thinking it was really hard to learn. Boy was I right. Yes you are correct in saying there isn't one size fits all approach which I try to get across as often as I can to folks.
It really is down to attitude of learning...I often see folks complaining about the time it takes to render in Lux and Daz Studio and the time it takes to learn and too be honest as soon as a person starts moaning about that or says they are too lazy to learn I switch off and I don't want to help them any more. Maybe that is a fault of mine but I don't want to spend my valuable freely donated time to help others who aren't prepared to buckle down and learn it themselves.
Totally agree.
I'll share ideas when asked. My concepts work for me and hopefully I can logically give others the reasons why but any advice I give should be taken with a grain of salt. The end product I display will either prove my points valid or not. What we do really isn't in a vacuum and there are a lot of factors involved so to say this is what everyone should do 100% of the time, without fail, would be presumptious and concieted on my part.
I have recieved and read many great and useful tips and tricks here in the forums, from users [yourself included Szark] far more knowledgeble than myself. Many times it is a combination of different artists viewpoints that led to a major breakthrough for me. Sometimes advice doesn't hit me right away, as I am not up to the skill level to understand it at first. But I am always up to learning something new and greatful for the users here willing to share their expertise.
While I completely understand this: I learned a while back that the teacher learns faster than the student! Lazy people are stepping stones on the road to your success :)
To add to the confusion, I just want to say that for me, Poser don't give good renders, mostly because I'm very uncomfortable with the GUI, and I think setting up lights is very difficult compared to DS. I've only played with P8 & P9, and P9 renders better, but I think I can get as good results from DS just because I know my way around it.
Something I find very annoying...
Back when DS3 was first out, I did a render playing with all the UE settings and experimenting, a lot. I consider it a great render...but I did not, and for the life of me can't figure out why, save the scene.
Of course, after all this time, I have no clue what my settings were...
The final result is postworked...passed through a b&w filter in GIMP and an exposure correction filter, because it looked 'over exposed' after going through the b&w filter...
Like all things, it is a matter of taking the time to learn in order to get the best results out of it. Poser or DS, it will not matter except for which one you feel works best for you. Regardless of which program you go for, in the beginning you may find yourself relying more on presets from others but as time goes on you should see yourself moving on to discovering new ways of doing things as you explore the program.
Below are 3 of my renders, all done in DAZ Studio using standard DS lights and pwSurface2 on all surfaces. (except the saber glow)
Great renders, Mattymanx!
Very well done Mattymanx.
I could never come to grips with PWSurface for some reason. There have been numerous posts in the old forum regarding them and I have seen others do wonders with those shaders [TheSea for example] but I just never hit the sweet spot myself. At some point I will probably go back and revisit them, now that I know a little more.
It has been a long time since I tried them but if I remember correctly those shaders do not play well with the UberE correct?