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There is a quality to skin, eye, and hair translucency in this photo on the lady that absolutely isn't coming through on any DAZ 3D iRay render or any other render engine that I'd seen too date. Those always come through too hard edge and if you try and up translucency too high and disguise it by making the underlying colors that come through too saturated and dark it just makes the character too dark toned rather than more realistic. In fact I'm at a loss as to how to describe the lady in the photo because the reflection and refraction of all that light through her complex body isn't easy to describe and even harder to model in 3D either anatomically accurate medically or artistically. It's much more than hard well defined geometric boundary conditions created by a 2D array of pixels in a photograph or render that the eye is noticing. I made a render recently that is coming closer (it has two main color map layers and 2 more bump/normal layers gleened from 3 different skin material sets included with 3 different DAZ 3D products) but still not really posessing the qualities in the photo of that lady. jeff_someone does a good job hiding the 3D model limitation with blurring and blooming and that's one of the things I've been doing in more recent renders to good realistic effect.
I think that to ever get there the DAZ 3D iRay skin materials need at least 5 layers and they need to accurately reflect the visible function in the the human body as they wind up doing photographically (naturally) in people. To combine all that in one diffuse layer is going to fail in every render that doesn't have the exact lighting conditions the diffuse material layer was photographed in.
Yeah, that's my biggest frustration. I don't know what I have to fix. There's somethign missing (or something extra) and I don't know what it is. The heavily stylized and made up model image I posted and the Amy Adams picture (with the dogs) are two opposites and I'd think I could work towards at least one of them and get something very close, but, sigh, no… And as much as @Jeff_someone's work impresses me, that's not the kind of art I want to make, so his answers don't necessarily get me closer to my own goals.
Ha. Is posting on a dark, rainy day as unwise as drunk posting? I should throw some positivity in there—compared to what I could do, what almost all DS/Poser artists could do, in the pre-Iray era, things are so much better now. Even compared to the early days of Iray.
Phantastic thread! I'd love to hear more about the aspect @masterstroke referred to when mentioning this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/152516/dynamic-range-of-iray-renders/p1, wich is dynamic range. The article behind it is https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/secret-ingredient-photorealism (for Blender, recommended read anyway) and in Blender 2.8, these color management settings of filmic blender became even part of the product.
Is there any chance implementing something equivalent into DAZ Studio w/o using .exr files?
This seems like it would be a great addition to Iray, and could well serve to fill in many of the realism gaps we've been discussing in this thread over the past several weeks!
I am all for that. I'm just afraid, this is not Daz' choice to make. Since this would be an Iray feature, we'd have to kick Nvidea's booty.
FYI, you can do this with Iray, but you need to use EXR files.
I've been exporting the exr's to Affinity and applying "filmic blender" there, then importing to photoshop and applying the ACES color space. In my view, this makes a subtle but important change to the look of the render.
If anyone wants to play with filmic tonemapping, I attached a template blender file here.
All you need to do is go to render settings and disable tone mapping
Go to advanced tab, enable canvases and add a beauty canvas, and press render
Open the .blend file, open the exported EXR file, choose output directory, and press F12 to render.
If you want, you can control the exposure and contrast from the right side
Here is a comparison between default Iray tonemapping vs filmic. (gif)
More info about filmic tonemapping here
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Rendering/PostProcessEffects/ColorGrading/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9AT7H4GGrA
These are the main benefits of filmic tonemapping over the old tonemapping
1. brighter light acts more realistically. it becomes less and less saturated, not the other way around
2. more dynamic range (more detail) especially the highlights. They were clamped (limited) in the old tonemapper
3. better lit surroundings so no more need for fake "ghost lights"
which is which? they both look good to me to be honest. I will have to try this.
The overly saturated window is the old tone mapper. See the link for more info about saturation changes.
I havne't imported my EXRs into Blender, but I suspect filmic is just a LUT (look-up table). You can get those pretty easily (I have scores, many of which were free), and they're easy to apply to a linear render in Photoshop or Affinity Photo. I think Canvases ignores the toning settings for the .EXR output (I tested this a long time ago, but I don't remember for certain that it doesn't). I usually overlight my scenes a bit, just to contribute towards cleaner rendering. Overall, I usually get about 12 steps of exposure with .EXR output.
Now I understand this is another medium but take a look at someone like Dru Blair: (Image is linked directly from artists page at Fine Art America)
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/tica-dru-blair.html
This is an airbrushed character from a real person named Tica. I don't think I have ever seen anything at that level in CG.
That is insane. Although at that point I really have to wonder, why go through all the trouble? Just make a photo. I mean they probably did and he then replicated through airbrushing? But why? What's the artistic value beyond just the insane show of skill? I don't see any at least in this case.
Show of skill is right. To some that is an art in itself. For myself, I can appreciate art and/or skill and wouldn't presume to know how to separate them.
Just a word about the image though - look at the folds at the armpit ... when we get details like that with DAZ figures, I'll be happier. Same for the smile - the mouth corners. I suspect we are going to need much stronger computers that can process and render extremely dense meshes before we get that.
On the first page of this discussion, somebody posted a link to another angle on this model, so there are people working at that level of photorealism with 3D, My suspicion is that before you get to this point, you probably migrate away from Daz products to where you're more directly involved in all the elemets, not to mention a heck of a lot of time perfecting your skills with both software and obseving people. (The Artstation page with the unrendered Zbrush model is here.)
I've seen painting from centuries ago with that sort of technical skill, og people and forests and whatever.
Now that I'd mistake for a photo, no doubt.
This guy is also really good
hey, why dont we all just post our favorite cg right here. for study purposes.
Digital Emily again (right side is CG. The only thing needed is a little darker shadows):
Chris Kosta:
This artist is a CG instructor. He teaches you how to make his characters in Maya in his "Fly on the Wall Studio" courses. These were created in real time in his course.
Vahni Brighella's Samuel L Jackson:
Making of Elton John digital double
Character created from a process that makes TexturingXYZ textures compatible with any model. You can theoretically apply it to Genesis 8.
Been trying a few things that were suggested, this is with EXR / Tonemapped. The amount of detail and tone is already a lot better than in a standard render. Still a few things are CG-ish.
I also went for B/W grayscale to see if that makes a difference in the process.
The tone map isn't just for pulling out detail, it's also for creating a realistic contrast curve (which means it won't do much if your lights don't have at least approximately physically correct brightnesses). But our eyes are super prone to working within a contrast curve for a while and considering it normal. That's why it's important to have a reference image. Something with the kind of brightness/contrast and even color that you're trying to match. Keep flipping back and forth between them to readjust your perception.
Good insight. I will try this!
The hair isn't great, but I thought my skin came out pretty good. Would love any critiques!
The bump is too high for that close of a shot, so the skin looks really dry. One thing a lot of people do is adjust the bump down on close-up renders. I'm not sure if more bump is needed on distant renders, but up-close, its easy to get too much. I can't assess the skin outside of the bump issue—it covers up a lot of other things. Artistically, this isn't bad, but I'd prefer it with softer shadows. Can you make the light on the right of the image (the model's left) bigger? I watched a video on professional portrait photograghy (with cameras, not Iray). The photographer used a single light set up (in a well lit room), using huge diffuse lights—1 or even 1.5 m diameter. The shadows were gorgeous.
Yeah, I get what you are saying.... why reproduce an airbrushed version of a photo? I think he has done work from actual live models as well. My reason for posting it was to illustrate whether you are copying a photo, or airbrushing something from your head to produce something so lifelike is amazing. I would love to reach that level in CG personally and after seeing some of the work posted I have to admit some have reached that level.
Artistic value? I guess it is based upon whatever your opinion of what work has artistic value or what does not. Some would say that if you buy an off the shelf pre-made CG model, add textures, pose and render....what artistic value is that? As if the only artistic value resides with someone who creates a realistic figure from the top of the head with no so called cheating by using photos, or references or God forbid textures from a real human being. Of course this is ridiculous as using human reference is not only needed, but the best way to replicate realism in my opinion.
Me personally, I am trying to replicate a realistic photo....so I would pick a human reference and use a CG model with similar skin tone, hair and lighting to come as close to that photo as possible.
I think your figures are absolutely top notch and have helped bring DAZ figures to a new level of realism I am looking for. The rest is up to DAZ and hopefully Gen 9 brings us that much closer.
Yup, I saw that one and its freakin insane....I did kind of feel it looked a bit CG but super realistic.
I stand corrected...forgot some of these oldies but goodies.... great stuff
All great stuff and Elton looked freakin real to me. Digital Emily is a digital scan I believe but very believable.
If it looks like photo, then its artistic value will be judged by photographic standards and that one looks utterly trivial. Only the husband or maybe mom and dad would give damn about it. I'm sure there are fans of hyperrealism who would see it differently and would love the fact that you could mistake this painting for a photo, but artistic value comes from getting to see something through the eyes of the artist, some interpretation of reality, but if the painting is just a dull photograph then what's the point? The artist replicated what he saw through the camera, to such perfection that the viewer cannot see a difference. There is no more artistic value in that than there would be in the photo. So if it's not an interesting photo, then what's really the point as an art piece? Just as a show of craftsmanship it is amazing but is that enough?
Any crappy "Poser" art has more artistic value than this if you ask me. While the craftsmanship is obviously lacking compared to this technically masterful painting, at least I know that someone has put together a scene creatively and not just replicated a dull photograph.
I'm reminded of what I was thinking a while back. Once we reach absolute photorealism and our renders are not distinguishable anymore from real photos, what will the point of creating CG renders be then? Are we perhaps striving for the wrong thing? Wouldn't it be better to have some clear indicators that what we're looking at is not real? Sure we could make fantastical scenes that can't exist in real life, but what if you just wanted to make a simple portrait? Someone might think yeah this is a nice photo, but the fact that it took a thousand times longer to create it isn't going to matter one bit. Even people who are into CG renders would eventually lose interest as they couldn't tell any more if something is a render at all. We couldn't say "this looks so realistic" any longer, unless we knew beforehand that something is indeed a render. Wouldn't this change everything for the worse?
Deep thoughts
I don't think many even care for complete photorealism, maybe just 10% of us do.
I care more about art than realism myself, but it's just really interesting to see photorealistic cg because barely anyone has reached it. It's always interesting to see people reach something that no one has reached before. It's like colonials discovering America, or the invention of the lightbulb. Once we reach it and everyone knows the secret, I don't think any of us would care anymore. It's just fun to be challenged to go where no man has gone before.
Also, art often can't do without realism. For example, Norman Rockwell who draws humans very realistically said that he could not have done it without first studying the human skull in a lot of depth. the deep study of realism can help complement our art when we need it to.
I guess it comes down to your opinon. I actually see and admire the talant in being able to replicate all the details of a dull photo using an airbrush or whatever medium you choose to use. I am a fan of hyperrealism in any form.
Maybe when we reach being able to technically make something absolutely photo real we can put much more concentration on scene content and story telling. You can do this now, but backed up with absolute photorealism sure makes it a much sweeter deal to me! As far as making something look extremely real and using it for nefarious reasons....its scary for sure. Should we just stop trying to shoot for absolute realism? As long as people want photo realism and willing to either pay for it in either time (learning skills) or money its going to happen. As they say "the genie is out of the bottle".
Very deep thoughts my friend