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Hey all - so I finally have stopped playing around with my previous character and made a new one. A few things this time around: 1) Red head instead of my usual brown/black hair, 2) Bought me AutoFaceEnhancer (so awesome!) and added that to mix, 3) made a custom face displacement map in Substance Painter to add a little more realism to the otherwise 'flat' face texture. That's about it. Anyhow, let me know what you think please. Also, someone asked 1) Point Light Setting - it's actually not a point light per se... it's a spotlight, just with the Light Geometry set to point. I offset a little from camera usually, and 2) Camera settings - nothing fancy here... sometimes, rarely, I will simulate a very slight Depth of Field with the focal length/etc.
I'm actually having kind of a reverse uncanny valley effect - the character looks too real for her surroundings.
I'm really interested in seeing your skin shader settings (sorry if you've already posted them before!) but I think aside from realistic skin textures and all that, the shader settings (reflections, normal map intensity, etc) are also adjusted very nicely in your renders.
I'd greatly appreciate it if you shared a screenshot!
Wow Jeff, as usual fantastic work!!
Man...You got to stop doing this. Making my renders look like crap!!! But seriously, Totally awsome as usual.
haha, I like that comment -- interesting for sure.
Thanks!!
Thank you!!
Looks fantastic, Jeff. You should sell your skin shader settings.
Awesome. The artwork on the wall is funny.
1) The second picture gets unrealistic hard shadows as ususal. You can't simulate an environment light with a single point light and this is very visible. For some reason the other two pictures look better though, apart some lack of depth of field. 2) The shaders on the coffee cup are off that's not realistic at all. 3) There is too much overexposure on the foreground soap bottle that doesn't make too much sense in a closed environment. 4) The tv and pc screens cast too much light, it would make sense in a dark environment but not in a well lit closed envinronment.
As usual, very nice work on the character, far less on the environment, while the lights are totally off.
Hey Padone,
Would you be able to render something similar to what Jeff rendered with the corrections you are suggesting? I would love to see your work.
BTW: we allready know, that there is a single spot light, which simulates a camera's flash light. So hard shadows are natural. And again all these sets used here are the "european Appartment" set, that comes with a very realistic light set allready. So two great things are combining well in these renders. The artist's skills of setting shaders lights and camera and the use of a great product.
Here's a typical flash snapshot: https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/21081442415_e94c599b83_k-1200x1272.jpg
If the light in the room is low enough and the flash overly bright, which they usually are, you will get harsh shadows like that. I'd probably increase the size of the spotlight just a little bit to make it a tad softer. Even a tiny flash is not an infinitely small light after all. But yeah, overall I'd say that's the look he's going for.
@Siciliano1969 I have not the time nor the skills to make good photorealistic pictures, at least in my opinion. I love what others do and sometime I feel I can give them suggestions in areas where I have some knowledge. Specifically I believe Jeff can improve in lighting.
@Masterstroke I gave a look at the european apartment set and I agree it comes with good lights. I can't see those lights used in the pictures posted by Jeff though, it looks like he is using just the single point light.
@bluejaunte That is a very interesting example you got here. Indeed that room looks poorly lit with no windows plus the walls are dark so there's very little light bouncing or environment light. I assume in those conditions the camera flash was the main light source. And indeed there's graininess in the picture that is probably due to a high iso film to compensate for the lack of lights. As for this being a common scenario for point and click cameras I don't think so, I rather believe this is an exceptional case.
EDIT. Below there are examples of photos with a teenager in bedroom, there are hard shadows from the flash but they are mitigated by the environment light, as it is in common lighting conditions.
https://depositphotos.com/179710724/stock-photo-smiling-girl-sitting-armchair-bedroom.html
https://depositphotos.com/190031204/stock-photo-teenage-boy-using-smartphone-bedroom.html
https://depositphotos.com/254318634/stock-photo-worried-teenager-sitting-bed-books.html
I don't think these are low-fi flash photos. These are more or less proffessionally shot stock photos. Here's another one from the same site as before: https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Snapshots-Color-1950s-1960s-64.jpg
Looks like the flash is more to the left here, but the harsh shadows are there. They're brighter but if you look at the mirror on the wall on the right you see that very dark thin shadow again. With the limited dynamic range of old school or low quality cameras, it is easily possible that a harsh shadow ends up being completely black, just as much as is it possible to have completely white parts.
I think you might be confusing aethetics with realism. Jeff isn't really doing anything unrealistic here, just something that isn't pretty to look at. From a photography point of few at least.
I have to agree. The first of the three links posted by @Padone seems to be lit extensively from left of shot and it looks nothing like the old point-and-shoot film photography which fills my old albums at home. Jeff's images do remind me of those old flash photos although, on careful inspection, some things don't quite pass the reality check. As @Padone pointed out, the glow from the screens might be a bit too much, for example.
I think an argument could be made for a time vs technology mismatch as well. If these renders had a 60's or 70's vibe, they might look even more believable.
Hey, was that supposed to have a message? Lol I can't see anything under the quotation.
All,
Great discussion. Good points, observations and recommendations. For what it's worth, I do intentionally go for the 'old 70/80's' style flash photograhy. I do so, for a few reasons: 1) I think they convey a more 'amateur', 'real' look vice a staged photo-shoot...and that is the exact mood I go for, and 2) despite my best efforts, bright ambient lighting, or strong directional lighting, or any shadows on the figure itself tends to reduce the realism of my characters. See below for an example of the exact same scene from my previous postings but with a different lighting set up. You can see it doesn't pull off the same level of realism.
Agreed I did overdo the bloom effect from laptop and TV... partially by design as the bloom intersecting with the character figure makes the work seem more seamless and adds realism. I'll watch that more carefully in the future.
Bluejante - btw, your characters are THE BEST!!!! I hope you have more in the works!
Parsamohsneirad - sorry, my message was about how you said it had 'reverse uncanny valley' :)
_Jeff
Hell it is still so much better than anything I've managed. Hope the discussion gives you things to work on.
As for Bluejaunte, I've just today bought another two in the flash sale ... I'm almost loathe to use anything else but Bluejaunte characters!
Oh, thanks guys that is very kind
Yeah that looks worse for sure. Although the light was probably too small, judging from the harsh shadow behind the TV. Soften it up a bit.
What I meant by technology mismatch is that you use modern gear in a 70/80's snapshot quality renders. There were no laptops and flat panel TV's back then. One could perceive that such a low-fi look is out of place in a modern world setting. Of course an old camera could still have been used in any era. Not that big of a deal probably but just something I noticed.
I don't know Jeff that looks pretty good to me. I do see your point regarding the look that you are trying to achieve. This render looks great, but not in the same league as the old camera quick shot look of the earlier renders.
If it is intentional then you get your goal fine. But keep in mind that this type of "effect" is only possible with an old 70s-80s camera using a strong flash light in a relatively dark environment. Then you're limited to this scenario. Also I agree with @blujaunte that there's a "technology mismatch" in this case.
As for your last render it seems to me that you used a hard light as fill, again I agree with @blujaunte that softening it up would produce a more realistic result since it's unlikely for a fill light to have a small size. You have to think about what kind of real light you're trying to mimic, if it's a bajour, a window, or anything else, and set the light properties accordingly. A great help can be shooting a real subject in an environment where you know what the lights are, then you can use it as reference.
Also the skin of the character is reacting differently to shadows depending on the type of skin. A pale soft skin will have a high subsurface scattering thus reducing and softing shadows, while a darker or "harder" skin will have much less scattering thus showing shadows better. In your last picture you may try increasing the sss level and translucency other than softening the fill light.
Also the global tone mapping may make a difference. Below the same picture where I just changed the gamma and saturation other than applying a little blur. This gives it more a old low quality photo look if this is your purpose.
Here's my latest try at realsim. I went for an extreme close-up. I'm quite pleased with the result!
@jeff_someone: Right, that wasn't me :D You mixed up Siciliano1969's and my message, I asked for the screenshot of the skin shader. it's all good tho! Sorry for the confusion.
Sorry, if I missed that part. That thread has come a long way. Allthough we've seen stunning examples here, what do you think, what has to be done for being closer to photorealism.
Is IRAY the right tool, or will it never be?
It would depend on what type of realism... but for my purposes, I'd need the following to take it to the next level:
1) Higher definition geometry for the eyes. While the G8 model is pretty dang good, it is the lack of eye realism that holds it back from that truly convincing look
2) High-end, strand-based hair solution. I applaud Daz trying to go towards this with the recently released strand-based and dforce hair functionality, however, the simplistic and slow performing nature of it makes it all but unusable. Not that I would expect it to be free, but to go the next level, we need something akin to XGen, Ornatrix, others, to really make it a reality. Or a plug-in to integrate to one or more of these outstanding industry solutions for hair and fur.
3) Viewport performance - with one G8 model loaded, with bodyhair and complex textures all but chokes my quite hefty machine. Makes it very hard to work naturally. The same exact geometry and materials imported into Blender, for example, are far more responsive to zoom, pan, etc.
4) Additional renderers. Iray is free and decent, but it or Daz's implemention of it, just doesn't match the performance other industry leading engines.
Anyhjow, not whining... I love Daz and their ability to put out an amazing product for free... but these are just my wish list items.
Jeff
I tried some more HDRI renders... I kind of like them, but working with HDRI images is so frustrating in general. Anyhow, comments welcomed.
First things first...
Most things in Daz3D are glossy, abnormally glossy, like plastic. It is like everything is covered in oil or varnished or wet. Remove about 90% of the gloss/shine/reflect and you are half way there. The other half of the problem, besides repeating textures that are not correctly scaled and have repeating patterns and no "wear damage", is the lighting pre-sets and limits. A camera has a sharper fall-off than the "sun", and in Daz, the falloff is apparently shorter than most "lights". (There is a scale issue, where things in Daz are 10x larger than the light-scale, and thus, people naturally increase the light intensity, but the falloff remains the same. All they have to do is reduce the scale of the whole scene, and that corrects some of the light falloff issue. However, lights, like surfaces, have inperfections and 3D rendered lights in these programs are "perfect rays", like a lazer, but without a focus. You need to disrupt the light source with some refractive or reflective or noise-filtered lighting, or a transparent pattern that simulates something like a typical light pattern that you see when you hold a light up to a wall, or a flashlight, or a CFL tube. As opposed to the perfect linear casting of rays that come from the 3D sources they offer here.)
For expressions... Whatever you adjusted to make your expression, reduce that value by half. Everyone over-does expressions, a LOT.
Beyond that, there is also focal blur, which 3D programs simulate, rather horribly, with tricks, instead of actual simulations of focal cones. (True focal blur involves layers of blurred depths. In 3D programs, they simulate the blur by re-rendering at various focal-distortions and layering them up, which is why focal-blur never looks right. You can not get the small variations that a camera/photo will provide.)
For human models, the hair is another strong point of issues, besides the pre-posed expressions that are non-reactive to the flesh that would form them. It is like everyone has botox. Only advanced programs like Maya, has "muscle systems", that act like muscles, which flex under the skin, and can create and alter the prefabricated normal-maps and bump-maps, to correct the angles they are trying to simulate.
All in all, Daz does an awesome job, but it is up to the artist to finish the job, once it has been rendered. Most do not expect the rendering engine to "do it all". But a lot of them are getting closer and closer, with each passing year. Soon, they will be more realistic than photographs. (Photos are honestly a poor comparison. Every digital camera alters the actual photograph with filters now. Just as manual cameras have altered the final product with filters, lenses and chemicals, in the processing phases. You have to figure out what "device" you are trying to simulate. A Nikkon does not have the same output as a Cannon. A 32mm does not have the same output as a 106mm. An IR filter does not have the same output as a UV filtered shot. An umbrella light, in a studio does not output the same picture as one taken on a sunny day or an overcast day, or one taken with an iphone LED flash.) Yet, they are all photos, and are all photo-realistic.
Not to mention that most "photos" are edited... They don't normally come out of the camera looking perfect.