How do we make rendered image more similar to preview? What are ways to increase quality of renderin

Hi guys, how do we make the quality of our renders better? Or more similar to the preview? Things like skin texture do not seem to show in the render.

Thank you,
Emmanuel

Comments

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,886
    edited December 1969

    The word "quality" does not spring to mind when referring to the "preview", it is a low quality OpenGL viewport designed to let you see what your doing when building a scene.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,774
    edited December 1969

    I agree with Bejaymac, but if you explain what it is you want to achieve we may be able to make suggestions - ideally, post a screenshot of your preview and a render side-by-side. It will also help if you post a screenshot of the Advanced tab of your render settings. And indeed, specify which application you are using - we are assuming DAZ Studio (well, I am for sure).

  • edited December 1969

    Thanks Bejaymac and Richard!

    I have the screenshots here.

    The rendered one looks really strange. Is it because of my light settings? I don't get this issue with OpenGL but the quality is not so good. But not totally crazy like this one where I used 3Delight.


    Thank you,
    Emmanuel

    rendered.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 142K
    preview.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 245K
  • edited December 1969

    Here are the settings.

    preview.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 235K
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,774
    edited December 1969

    The light won't be helping, certainly, but the specularity needs taming - raise the Glossiness a bit, perhaps, and lower the Specular Strength. It would probably be a good didea to take screenshots of the material settings for the face (in the Surfaces pane) and post them here.

  • edited December 1969

    Hi Richard, here are the pictures.

    That's her face now because of the problems I am having.

    Thank you

    preview.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 245K
    preview.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 257K
    preview.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 256K
    preview.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 260K
    preview.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 261K
  • edited December 1969

    Just to add, I think the preview is of a much higher quality than the render. I have a feeling it could be the settings. But I just used the default settings. Do we need to tweak them to have better quality?

    Thanks

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,774
    edited December 1969

    You need to select a single surface, such as 1_SkinFace, by expanding the entry for Victoria 4.2 at the top-left of the Surfaces pane and clicking on the surface name - as it is several of the properties, including some of those most likely to be at the root of the problem, are just showing multiple values which isn't useful. Which texture set is this?

  • edited December 1969

    Hi Richard. I have been trying to reply to this thread but I kept receiving error messages. It says I don't have permission or something. I haven't tried your recommendations yet. The texture i used is the snake girl product from "most digital creations".

    Is the issue of the preview looking better than the actual render a common problem? I mean even when I don't have issues like what I am encountering now, I feel that the renders can often be higher quality like what we see on the DAZ site. Sometimes they are of lower quality than the preview.

    Thank you,
    Emmanuel

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,886
    edited December 1969

    Is the issue of the preview looking better than the actual render a common problem? I mean even when I don't have issues like what I am encountering now, I feel that the renders can often be higher quality like what we see on the DAZ site. Sometimes they are of lower quality than the preview.

    The simple answer is yes it is common, especially amongst new users, when you look at the promo images you have to remember that those were done by experts, people that know their way around lighting, cameras and the surface settings better than you know the back of your hand.

    What doesn't help new users is that much of the non Genesis content is in Poser format, with Poser material settings, these materials are of no real use in Studio as it can't read most of what's in them, and what it can read don't transfer over all that well, main issue being Specularity, you either get no Specular leaving things dull and flat, high Specular leaving things looking like they were dipped in varnish, or a white out like you have which is caused by low Glossiness, light color and high strength.

  • tiagoandriottitiagoandriotti Posts: 39
    edited December 1969

    DS skins might work better, but the light set is very important when you are rendering: in a scene without lights the camera works like a spotlight, I had the same problems in my first renders and the faces were looking weird.

    If you want to render something like you see in the viewport, disable the specular maps (put none) and set its color to black or other dark colors, also set a glossiness of 50%.

    Here 2 samples, one with low glossines white spec and other with med glossiness black spec

    Good luck

    medglossblackspec.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 331K
    lowglosswhitespec.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 315K
  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,886
    edited December 1969

    Setting the specular color to black basically turns off the specularity, which isn't good for skin (or anything else for that matter), for skin with the default shader I set the Glossiness to between 60% and 70%, the Strength between 15% and 25%, color depends on having a good specular map or not, with a map I use RGB 200,200,200, without I use RGB 128,128,128, the lighting model depends on your taste, Plastic, Metallic & Skin all work well those settings.

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited April 2013
    Post edited by wancow on
  • tiagoandriottitiagoandriotti Posts: 39
    edited December 1969

    Bejaymac said:
    Setting the specular color to black basically turns off the specularity, which isn't good for skin (or anything else for that matter), for skin with the default shader I set the Glossiness to between 60% and 70%, the Strength between 15% and 25%, color depends on having a good specular map or not, with a map I use RGB 200,200,200, without I use RGB 128,128,128, the lighting model depends on your taste, Plastic, Metallic & Skin all work well those settings.

    Sure, you`re right.

    I gave him just an easy option for rendering without lights in old characters, like those ones made for poser.

    I`m still studying the basic DS shader for a "perfect" render, sometimes setting an uber or advanced skin material back to default material in order to change the maps and etc.

    Also I faked environment light in the skin via reflection maps and etc, but for a beginner in DS materials think it is good to give an easy recipe.

    Working with specular maps and lighting is an unending learning. I`m trying to master it for 3 years while people says it is amazing and I say it is not good enough :(

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969


    I`m still studying the basic DS shader for a "perfect" render, sometimes setting an uber or advanced skin material back to default material in order to change the maps and etc.

    You might try using Spec Lights. From your posting, it seems you're unaware that all the shaders in DS are RSL shaders (Renderman Shader Language). You would think we'd have access to a whole lot of amazing stuff... I've been experimenting with Lighting quite a bit, which seems to be the key to good skin renders, but the skin shaders have to be comliant with the light... I'm now working mostly with PWShader2 for my own stuff, but before that I was working with this set: http://www.sharecg.com/v/68286/view/21/DAZ-Studio/WC-Soft-Skin-Lights-for-DS-4.5

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,902
    edited April 2013

    First, some words of wisdom - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17351/

    Like all things, this will take time and does not happen overnight. To get better quality renders will mean learning about the different aspects of the software and what can be done, lighting and surfaces being two of the biggest ones. The built in render engine, 3Delight, is a very powerful, pro level render engine used in Hollywood studios and is based on PrMan from Pixar. There is no easy anything about it but that does not mean you cannot learn. But you will determine how much you learn. Do yourself a favor and reject any notion that this is easy. Except and embrace the creative challenge and enjoy it too.

    To start you off and help you learn I would highly recommend this tutorial on lighting - http://digilander.libero.it/maclean/DStutorial.htm

    This is the old list of DAZ Studio tutorials - http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=134854 - I do not know where the current one is.

    And cemmanuelc, change your shading rate to 0.2 The value you have set is going to kill your render time with no noticable increase in quality

    Here is the technical info on the some of the render settings - http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/RenderMan_Controls

    Speaking of render settings, for test renders, your settigings are fine, except for the shading rate. For tests, you can change the shading rate to 0.5 or 1.0 for increased speed but a loss of quality. But for a test render, who cares. From my own tests I recommend you increase the bucket size to 32. It seems to be the best for speed according to my tests.

    For a final render, and what I am about to suggest will increase render times, I would suggest changing the following:

    Raytrace Depth: If there are no refelctions that are important, leave it at 2. If you were doing a scene with lots of reflections between object, such as glass items, you can increase it to 6 or more but this will slow things down while giving you a more realistic result.

    Pixel Samples: Increasing this will help give you a very natural blur effect if you use depth of field in the camera.

    To give you an example fo what I mean, if you look at the full size image of this render I did - http://mattymanx.deviantart.com/art/Minami-Yaguchi-151295850 - you will see the grain in the image due to the low Pixel sample value.

    But in this new one - http://mattymanx.deviantart.com/art/Big-City-Girl-361401732 - you will not see the grain in the blur since I increased it. Was set to 32 for the record.

    Shadow samples: Leave it low for tests, I set mine to 32 for final renders.

    Speaking of shadows, raytraced shadows will render faster then shadow maps and look more natural. Shadow maps are limited in size.

    Post edited by Mattymanx on
  • tiagoandriottitiagoandriotti Posts: 39
    edited December 1969

    wancow said:

    I`m still studying the basic DS shader for a "perfect" render, sometimes setting an uber or advanced skin material back to default material in order to change the maps and etc.

    You might try using Spec Lights. From your posting, it seems you're unaware that all the shaders in DS are RSL shaders (Renderman Shader Language). You would think we'd have access to a whole lot of amazing stuff... I've been experimenting with Lighting quite a bit, which seems to be the key to good skin renders, but the skin shaders have to be comliant with the light... I'm now working mostly with PWShader2 for my own stuff, but before that I was working with this set: http://www.sharecg.com/v/68286/view/21/DAZ-Studio/WC-Soft-Skin-Lights-for-DS-4.5

    I disabled the specular maps for that preview lol, it was a simple test for a beginner, just an example.

    I use uber lights in my renders and sometimes uber surfaces.

    dslightubere_US.jpg
    1128 x 646 - 300K
Sign In or Register to comment.