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the key to photorealistic characters

Chris Fox ArtChris Fox Art Posts: 380
edited November 2018 in Carrara Discussion

I would like to share my experiences i've made over the years working with 3d.
A few things are really essential for making realistic characters.
Setting a scene and working with what you've got is easy to do but to make more realism it is important to learn more about textures and shader settings and lights.
the easiest way to handle lights is just using an HDRI image as background that does all the job.
The software itself is an important point as it's always have it's limits in some points but that doesn't mean you can't get great results out of a cheap software.
the render engine is the same like the software, i've for example got good results from Carrara's native renderer and octane renderer just the octane seems a bit easier and much faster to handle, so knowing about the render settings and what they do is also an important key to get great results, so learning the software you use should be the first step.
Just because some people get good results with one software doesnt automatically means that it's the best software to get great results no matter what you do.

But i come to the two most important point in my opinion right now.
The best way to get realistic characters is really to don't use base figures but sculpt the figure you want and make it how you really want it, than you are free from limited morphs that doesn't really always give you what you want.
That doesn't mean that you can not get great results out of the base figures, there are lots of artists here that showed that it is possible to do so but it always have their limits.

The most important part in my opinion is texturing.
working with the shaders, textures, maps and so on, that is the key.
When i look at the store, i often see the same thing.
good looking renders that looks like a puppet or a doll.
Also most mature renders doesnt look as mature as they should.
A few wrinkles around the mouth doesn't make the character mature.
When i work with textures, i always take a look on how the skin looks.
What's the condition of the skin, can you see the pores on them, can you see little hairs on the skin, are there characteristics in the skin like freckles, wrinkles and so on.
a realistic and also a mature skin have it's own story that it tells, most people wants realism but also perfection but realism isn't perfection, realism is unique, for example most people really have two different sides, the left face for example can be smaller than the right side, one arm can be a little longer than the other, fingers are not always the same length, one eye can be a bit bigger than the other, it can sit a bit higher, the nose isn't always in a perfect shape, not everybody have big, beautiful red lips, some are small, same are wide, some are big, and so on.
So looking on the skin of any realistic human you will see that the skin is never stainless cleaned like in some magazines.
in magazines, 99% of the pictures are retouched.
Thatswhy the textures you are working with are very important, i've got tons of textures but only a few i am working with because some textures just have some unnatural look, if i want to make render of dolls they are good but if i would like to render real people, they are not the right choice.
So before modeling the character, the skin is the most important part to go for.
I use often a base figure and than test out my textures for the project i am doing next.
If i am unhappy with the textures i've got, i'll mix some together like i did for a few characters.
For my character Kaelyn for example, i liked the eyebrows but the skin and lip textures wasnt like i wanted them but i've got skin and lips textures from another image i wanted, so lips, skin, eyebrows and even the nose was on four different images and i've made them all into one skin.
The darker image was Kaelyn with some of the textures i've already had, the brighter one was mixed textures together to a new unique one and i think it looks much better and more realistic.
Both images was rendered with octane renderer but shows a big difference in my eyes.
On the third image you can also see a little facial hair around the chin what is normal on every human skin.
My other character Amy have a much more realistic mature skin + a scar on the face that tells it's own story.

So to make it short, it is important to use unperfect textures and make the character as a real human, not as a real doll.
So texturing and light is very important.
Looking and learning human anatomy and skin.


 

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Post edited by Chris Fox Art on

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