IRAY Photorealism?

charles

Who's bathroom is really perfectly organized?

 

charles

Imo it is if you're image can pass the uncanny valley gap at second glance. Meticulous detail is important here. I think the image does a pretty good job at first and second but not a trained 3rd eye! which almost none do.

emoryahlberg

luquesky

j cade said:

Zilvergrafix said:

after 52 pages of sharing knowledge, how many of you have improved your realism on renders? 

are there a compendium of steps to replicate any technique you had developed here?

So this idea intrigued me, but I didn't have any real similar comparisons. But then I looked at my latest render and went "hey I've definitely rendered someone with nice cheekbones and strongly toplit with emphasis on bounce light before" (actually I have a lot of those)

true the 1st render is from before this thread, but I think its still valid so before:

some notes: this is pre sbh built in that hair was made in garibaldi and then converted to mesh, I really don't miss having to export out giant 100mb objects and then having them just sitting in my scene. those eyes just make me sad.still like the bouce light on the neck and emphasizing the curve of the jaw.

 

and after:

notes: character blends more with the scene thanks to adding just a bit of dof and making sure theres a backdrop reflecting light. sbh that you don't have to export as an object is much more effective - I was actually lazy here this is togatta hair by redz with some tweaking. mesh eyebrows are superior to painted on ones. I can't take credit for the eyes vanilla Torment - genesis 8.1's new eye set up is so much better y'all

Looking pretty great. Which character is this one you used? I'm trying to get this realistic

charles

emoryahlberg said:

The natural sun system is really good in Daz for realism. Sand is one of the hardest things to get right. I'm currently in Cancun on the beach working on photogqmmetry for this. Art is important! 2 weeks of not being stuck in suckvill.

larbihoss

Hi there, this is my first Post ever here in DAZ3D Forum

 

margrave

Gordig said:

Someone commented that one of my recent renders could probably pass for a photo in black & white, so I'll let you all be the judges.

His face is a little too sharp, and I think his head is tilted too much while his neck is too straight, but that might just be me. Also, the high contrast, rich black tones, and lack of sepia tint detracts from that faded, worn-out WWII aesthetic. I'd totally buy that guy in the background is real, though.

margrave

M-C said:

I recently had the same issues with transparent pixels and spectral rendering (natural) as well.
Took me some time to find the culprit but as it turned out it was the lighting setting wich was set to "scene only". As soon as I switched to "Dome and Scene" the transparent pixels didn´t appear anymore.
Strangely enough it was an indoor scene where you couldn´t see the dome anyways. Even turning the "Environment Map" slider down to 0, which essentially turns off the dome lighting, worked well.

So I have to add a dome to a scene I'll never see to prevent transparent pixels from appearing on a character's face?

Oh, Iray. Never change! 

golem841

Gordig said:

Someone commented that one of my recent renders could probably pass for a photo in black & white, so I'll let you all be the judges.

This picture is really impressive, by the way, B&W are generally more realistic. From my point of view, the only problem is the right eye / eye socket relationship which is a bit strange, the upper eyelid outside corner should be a little more open, or the eyeball slightly rotated up. That's just a very subjective opinion anyway.

As for clothing, it's much better than the average available.

Congratulations !

 

j cade

Been having more fun in the shader mixer and experimenting with some stuff...the eye in particular represents something particularly exciting

RayDAnt

j cade said:

Been having more fun in the shader mixer and experimenting with some stuff...the eye in particular represents something particularly exciting

Yeah, been watching with much glee the explorations you and others in that thread have been making recently into the undocumented side (which is vast) of Iray photoreal rendering capabilities accessible in Daz Studio even today. I highly recommend anyone with an interest in this thread's subject matter checking that thread out/contributing to it.

aaráribel caađo

j cade said:

Been having more fun in the shader mixer and experimenting with some stuff...the eye in particular represents something particularly exciting

That hand is stunning. Harder to say about the eyeball because I don't look at eyes outside of the skull very often :p

j cade

The eyeball has something I'm very very excited about. proper refraction without being super dark and getting weird errors.

compare: the default eyes

you can see from this angle there isn't any real refraction and the iris looks flat. The further you view from the side the more incorrect it will look

With thin walled turned off:

super darkened and weird errors. This isn't even the worst case lighting most of the time it's completely unusable.

My new refractive shader.

Still darkening things a bit, but much improved over all. Actually usable in all lighting situations whereas the normal proper refraction very much isn't.

j cade

now a tricker use case I have lit the figure primarily with a single area light

the default settings - not bad by any stretch, but kind of flat and dead

turning thinwalled off and behold the monster absolutely unusable

My alternate shader - still a bit dark but nevenly dark rater than weird shadow errors - this is completely fixable

my alternate shader with the textures underneath brightened to compensate I could have brightened them more, but this felt like a good amount

aaráribel caađo

j cade said:

now a tricker use case I have lit the figure primarily with a single area light

I'm not sure why, but the alternative shader one—the last one—looks a bit cloudy, like some sharpness has been lost (or like it's been lightened by moving the black-end slider on levels towards light, crunching the dynamic range). The new shader does look better overall, so I'm being picky in the hopes its helpful, but I don't think it's quite there. 

j cade

aaráribel caađo said:

j cade said:

now a tricker use case I have lit the figure primarily with a single area light

I'm not sure why, but the alternative shader one—the last one—looks a bit cloudy, like some sharpness has been lost (or like it's been lightened by moving the black-end slider on levels towards light, crunching the dynamic range). The new shader does look better overall, so I'm being picky in the hopes its helpful, but I don't think it's quite there. 

Oh its still very much not quite there yet and not nearly as nice as the still impossible  ideal solution (making a material not cast a shadow, currently impossible in iray)

 

the cloudiness is a combo of A) it is much slower to render so theres probably a bit of the the denoising filter still bluring it also I do tend to kill test renders early B) it requires using a bit of refraction roughness (between .01 and .05) the more refraction roughness added the more it is literally bluring the textures

 

honestly its mostly the denoising this shader is not fast to clear up. and by not fast I mean it takes more than 8000 samples to clear up.

 

the way I'm brightening the texture mostly increases contrast I'm adding it with itself so the dark sections brighten less than the light sections.

 

but it takes ore than 8000 samles to clear up which is... less than ideal

this is the worst case lighting situation, mind you, single small point lights do not play well with refraction, but its not exactly a super common lighting situation. In normal situations it should be a bit faster

Tugpsx

Great work j cade, definately adds a level of realism to the eyes. Will keep following your progress and looking forward to more information being shared.

Tugpsx

Here is one of my attempts. With more info from this group I should be able to get closer to a more realistic render.

Larger image in gallery.

Masterstroke

Tugpsx said:

Here is one of my attempts. With more info from this group I should be able to get closer to a more realistic render.

Larger image in gallery.

Oh wow, that is a good one.  

frank0314

Tugpsx said:

Here is one of my attempts. With more info from this group I should be able to get closer to a more realistic render.

Larger image in gallery.

That looks real already, wow.

codex34_f5f1fb6f55

Tugpsx said:

Here is one of my attempts. With more info from this group I should be able to get closer to a more realistic render.

Larger image in gallery.

 Seriously? Just needs some image processing. Put it in photoshop, copy to new layer, use the auto levels on the copy. Job done. Could set the copy layer to multiply, or even colour burn at 50% and can always flare it out again using a layer of flood fill white set to 'screen' at about 20-30%.

Constructive criticism (sorry) a tiny bit too shiny?waxy? in places (8.1 has a different detail shader to overcome this), also the anti gravity bracelet is a dead giveaway.... :)

Tugpsx

Thanks for the tips, there is still work to be done.

 

j cade

Okay I've added bump to it, so if anyone wants to experiment with my cornea/eye moisture shader have at it.

 

It is released as is and unsupported, If you have any extra questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to explain but I am not going to do a full walkthrough and explain every single thing about it.

 

the main shader setting you might want to tweak is refraction roughness - the rougher it is the more smoothly it will transfer light, but the more it will blur the underlying texture. I have set the min and max to the range where it works without too many issues - if you get weird shadows up the roughness a bit from the default until they go away.

Reflection weight controls the strength of the reflections set it to 0 and you just have refraction with no shine.

 

known limitations

• much slower to render
• not see through in viewport. you will just see grey
• does not like point and spot lights with the geometry set to point (don't use them any way because they're physically innaccurate)
• in general, the smaller the light source the more the shader will struggle (this is where you might need to turn up refraction roughness) HDRIS on the otther hand generally work well
• will darken the underlying surface a bit no matter whart you do

the easiest way to compensate for the darkening of the underlying surface is to take your sclera/iris texture and use the layered image editor and add it to itself. 2 layers both with the same eye texture with the upper one seet to add usually with its strength set to around 50%. The strength will depend on how big your light sources are. Smaller light sources you will need to brighten things more. (and yes this means if you change your lighting you may need to change the material to compensate)

 

also included is a comparison render in some actual nice lighting - here the proper refracted version is actually lighter than the default

 

lilweep

i just did a preliminary test.  it didnt seem to make much of a difference in one render, but in another made quite a big difference.  guess this is due to lighting. (I only let it render for like 1000 iterations)

i need to get some better eyes.

lilweep

Torment's skin with some adjustments. Was using the isadorekeeghan shader.

I like the way the skin on his arm and face look.  Torso is borked.

j cade

lilweep said:

i just did a preliminary test.  it didnt seem to make much of a difference in one render, but in another made quite a big difference.  guess this is due to lighting. (I only let it render for like 1000 iterations)

i need to get some better eyes.

The refraction is more evident in directional lighting, there basically has to be a light source to be refracted. I probably should have added that as a note, but didn't think of it, because my default lighing is dramatic

I have a list somewhere of my favorite eyes. I do know Torment's were on them, obviously not the red ones, but the natural colored ones are one of my go tos, Most of the 8.1 eyes are pretty great (probably because they don't have a seam in the middle of them, so much easier to texture)

 

 

In youre other image the body hair seems to be forming a bit of a halo like its not quite sitting on the figure. I noticed thatt more than anything with the chest

lilweep

j cade said:

lilweep said:

i just did a preliminary test.  it didnt seem to make much of a difference in one render, but in another made quite a big difference.  guess this is due to lighting. (I only let it render for like 1000 iterations)

i need to get some better eyes.

The refraction is more evident in directional lighting, there basically has to be a light source to be refracted. I probably should have added that as a note, but didn't think of it, because my default lighing is dramatic

I have a list somewhere of my favorite eyes. I do know Torment's were on them, obviously not the red ones, but the natural colored ones are one of my go tos, Most of the 8.1 eyes are pretty great (probably because they don't have a seam in the middle of them, so much easier to texture)

 

 

In youre other image the body hair seems to be forming a bit of a halo like its not quite sitting on the figure. I noticed thatt more than anything with the chest

yeah i should probably leave out SBH body hair for 8.1 until i can actually spend time to groom it properly.  Im still using SBH body hair i made in like 5 minutes so it leaves a lot to be desired.

j cade

lilweep said:

j cade said:

lilweep said:

i just did a preliminary test.  it didnt seem to make much of a difference in one render, but in another made quite a big difference.  guess this is due to lighting. (I only let it render for like 1000 iterations)

i need to get some better eyes.

The refraction is more evident in directional lighting, there basically has to be a light source to be refracted. I probably should have added that as a note, but didn't think of it, because my default lighing is dramatic

I have a list somewhere of my favorite eyes. I do know Torment's were on them, obviously not the red ones, but the natural colored ones are one of my go tos, Most of the 8.1 eyes are pretty great (probably because they don't have a seam in the middle of them, so much easier to texture)

 

 

In youre other image the body hair seems to be forming a bit of a halo like its not quite sitting on the figure. I noticed thatt more than anything with the chest

yeah i should probably leave out SBH body hair for 8.1 until i can actually spend time to groom it properly.  Im still using SBH body hair i made in like 5 minutes so it leaves a lot to be desired.

SBH is also a pain for body hair because it emits from the base res  mesh, so there are certain areas where the base mesh and subd mesh have a bit of a gap. Shoulders and ears are 2 areas where I know the gap tends to be pretty signifigant. I've yet to figure out a non-painful workaround

codex34_f5f1fb6f55

j cade said:

the easiest way to compensate for the darkening of the underlying surface is to take your sclera/iris texture and use the layered image editor and add it to itself. 2 layers both with the same eye texture with the upper one seet to add usually with its strength set to around 50%. The strength will depend on how big your light sources are. Smaller light sources you will need to brighten things more. (and yes this means if you change your lighting you may need to change the material to compensate)

That's some impressive rendering you have there.

Biggest problem i've found with any eye wet shader is it reflects colour, whereas most eye closeups show the reflections to have a lower saturation, never found a shader that works correctly in that way. But eyes are difficult anyway, especially in daz, there are a lot of issues, from basic eye and iris shape, eyelids being too thin, no wet transition on the eyelid to eye 'lip', boss-eyedness, no shadow on the iris (maybe due to eye geometry and eyelid thickness?) , baked limbal shadows!! Lots of little things that make eyes just look not real. Daz eyes always look like large plates with textures on them set too far out of the socket, and usually not gamma matched to the rest of the textures, giving them that stargate goa'uld vibe. A quick desaturation b/w image usually tells you what's wrong.

Daventaki

Heres a quick play both renders about 5000 iterations.  G8.1 with Babina's textures because I think G8.1s textures look caky to me.  Babina's are to orange but I would usually adjust with postwork.

JCade's Cornea with texture adjustment for darkness

Babina's default shader