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It's quite mysterious that scenes rendered in Blender are more cartoonish compared to rendered with Daz Iray or with Unreal Lumen.
Do you mean this in general or regarding Daz figures in Blender?
In general but more obviously with Daz characters, I've rendered some shameful scenes in Blender not appropriate to show here and the characters feel different compared with Lumen. The Iray materials imported to UE5 with DazToUnreal look like wax sculptures, prefer to use PBR materials for use with Unreal, and the same PBR materials look more cartoonish with Cycles compared to Lumen.
Okay.Some simple examples below. I followed a tutorial available at a blender affine marketplace. 100% done inside blender btw. I'm still in the process of creating my very own characters, which is a lot of hard work, so kudos to the DAZ devs concerning G9.
About rendering / lighting / composition. It is always a question of knowledge imo. (And I can't show my Stahlnessel.com project scenes here due to the NSFW nature as well, for obvious reasons hrhr)
Info: Blender 3.3 E-Cycles fork, Cycles 128 Samples / OIDN denoiser, Render Time 11min32sec on my mobile rtx 3080 / 16gb vram
@SDev
Well Done!!
Very nice result that's something I want to achieve in Unreal, checked the DazToUnreal Iray Uber and PBR material parameters, and going to download a MetaHuman template to study the materials.
Is that course called "Human: Realistic Portrait Creation With Blender" sold in Blender Market? I've yet to find equally good tutorials for UE5 materials. The knowledge of using materials in Blender doesn't transfer to Unreal due to very different rendering pipeline.
As the mysterious cartoonish feeling from Blender renders, you probably would have the same feeling if watched many Blender arts. Agree that it's possible to ease the stylish results with extra work as the examples shown above. You can even tell if the image was rendered in Daz or in Blender. Also when I played some PC games I can tell whether it's made from Unreal or Unity or made from pre rendered scenes using DCC software, by the feelings of the rendered results. Anyone has the same similar feeling about this?
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Attached some quick examples after covered them with clothes, rendered to 100 samples with potato laptop, the Cycles render appears very stylish compared to Iray render, the characters use the same PBR materials not Iray Uber materials.
As good as, say, Diffeo is good at material conversion, it still must be considered as a starting point. It isn't representative to compare converted mterials to native ones. The idea that Cycles cannot produce realistic results doesn't even warrant investigation, it's so well disproven. @SDev 's results should be sufficient :) Too many people see converting things in Blender and think that that is Blender or in any way represents what Blender can do.
To flip the discussion, it's when the goal is to render a cartoonish scene in the non-pejorative sense that Cycles's poor cousin, Eevee, shines like a polished gem.
Cheers!
Many people are used to using prefabricated figures in Daz3D that were made for this programme and naturally look good there. They are then disappointed when they are not immediately successful in Blender. But before you can run, you have to learn to walk, that's nothing new.
The example above is from the tutorial "Human - Realistic Portrait Creation with Blender", which I use as a basis for my own figures. They're far from be worth being shown now. I'm working with Blender in a more or less serious way for about two years now.
My approach is also different. I don't care about time I need for a scene. I see this as a hobby in progress over time. I focus on the process and creation first, the result is secondary at the moment.
One of my typical scenes takes me about a month to create, as I make almost all the objects myself. (Realism is my top priority).Since the thread is actually for Daz objects in Blender, and this forum only allows SFW, I can't show my current work here.
As I said, I don't think images in Blender look cartoonish, and I don't think I can tell right away if the image was made in Blender.
Pic below could be done in modo as well, eh? :P Small excerpt of my aeee kitbash system and from my horse trailer project...
I would choose a different approach. Start with some lighting tutorials. Learn finetuning nodes and use them proper. Keep the light system simple and realistic.
https://www.youtube.com/c/RileyBrown3D
Optimize interior Renderings in Blender Cycles >
Unlock Better Color in Blender - Part 3 >
Part 1 and 2 is all about theory :)
If interested in environment, I would go the Rob Tuytel way. Here's his artstation page: https://tuytel.artstation.com/ he runs the free polyhaven site as well, and you'll find his products at a blender market :)
Thanks for the feedback about how to make better results after importing Daz figures and environments into Blender.
Considering it would take months to make the Cycles results look as good by unlocking some Blender secrets, very tempted to export assets from Blender back to Daz to render with Iray.
My approach is using Blender as ideal animation and modelling tool with the support of many plugins made with Blender's awesome Python API, and unless Cycles rendering becomes more newbie friendly, it may not worth the effort while even newbies could use Iray or Lumen and get the good enough results.
Well said!!
@catmaster
Render what In Iray?
You seem to be speaking from the myopic perspective of a still illustration portrait artist.
In which case, you are clearly better served by keeping your Daz/PA assets inside the environment for which they were purpose built
(nothing wrong with that of course)
Again.. “good enough results” rendering what??
Certainly UE5 users are making incredibly realistic animations
with the native meta-humans, NOT shoe horned in Daz or Iclone figures,
Any newbie can get Better results for VFX such as particles, Volumetrics fluids,Soft & rigid body Dynamics
,in Blender, than you could ever dream of attaining in DS Iray.
To say nothing of the results of animating their characters with a proper human IK control rig.
Hmmm. I think you mix different things.
My assumption, please correct me if I'm wrong:
Your workflow is to buy assets, tweak them a bit and render a scene in Daz. The shader works, the morphs, etc come from various PA or from Daz. Your focus is storytelling. You don't want to invest time in learning Blender, because you can use this extra time in Daz or Unreal.
Nothing wrong with that.
My workflow is kinda different. I started to use poser in 2001. Chimed in to use Daz figures in 2004. Hopped onto the modo tree when Daz did a modo sale. Made my renders (mostly tech stuff) under another name, as a hobbyist. I got bored over the years, because you are very right, some figures and props are the same style, have the same look, all the time.
To get rid of that situation I came to the conclusion, that I have to create my own stuff. At some point I found out that I not only need new props, but my own characters, to tell my stories in a proper way. This is an ongoing process.
I'm sure that most of the PAs at Daz had a similar approach.
Iray / Chaos VRay / Octane / Redshift / Cycles need a lot of settings and tweaks if you start a figure / texture set / shader from scratch. For you Daz is newbie friendly, because Daz and their PAs are doing this work for you. Again, nothing wrong with that.
I'm using some premade assets too, e.g Graswald, scatterpacks, scatter 5 and so on, no need to invent the wheel twice.
If you start a figure texture set from scratch, dev tools G8.1 as starter point, you will find out very soon that there is no newbie friendly one click super duper make a cool render button. It needs time and a willingness to learn. You can't shortcut that, neither in Daz nor in any other 3D program.
looking good
Hardly months.
You do realise it is used professionally and in production pipelines?
Actually I started playing with Blender since Blender 2.7, with other interesting software like Visual Studio, Unity, Unreal etc. I could make my own characters that look better than most of store bought characters, with face gen and 3D scan tools.
It's like being a jack of all trades but not specialized in any of these areas, and I'd say as indie game developer it requires a wide range of skills. The most valuable asset is the time which is always not enough, it's not possible for me to dive deep into both UE5 and Blender, which are both very complex in their own way, the game engine has to be the primary tool for game developing purpose. I've already been occupied by my ambitious open world simulation game project based on the very buggy UE5, and need to rely on the store bought assets to make that possible.
Considering just not very long before it's not possible to make PC games by a single developer, but this has become achievable thanks to the PAs and other asset merchants, who certainly are more professional in those areas than me.
Ha, fully understandable! I'm fulltime software/hardware developer / engineering IRL, mostly industrial systems, but have refused till now to go and develop tools for blender or create games / game asserts. Why? Because I will keep Blender/Daz as a creative hobby and some sort of IRL hideout, so time doesn't matter in my case.
(UE5 is pretty new, quite understandable it has a bunch of bugs, I started with Blender 2.78 and UE4 in 2018, C++ came in handy for me instead of BP :))
Back on the subject of Blender renders of Daz content
(EEVEE)
My First ever render in Blender
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/5361511589478400#gallery=newest&page=1&image=1284018
After too much time, I finally finished a project in Blender that relied on Daz as the initial character creator software. I wanted to create a "romantic high fantasy" fanart of Princess Garnet / Dagger from Final Fantasy IX, and I'm relatively happy with the results. Thought I'd share here in case there's a conversation to be had about anything I did right or wrong. ha :) I'd really love to hear what others think of this workflow and how to do it well.
I'll attach one of the renders here, but there are others in the full project upload. (The link above is to the post in the gallery here on Daz; the project is also uploaded on ArtStation and Artgram if it's easier for anyone to view in those places.)
I have been playing with FSpy ... yeah, late to the party. It certainly opens up a lot of possibilities!
Default Cycles render of Circulare Natural Environment transported to Blender 3.5 via Diffeo. Will work on camera angles
A book cover or a poster partly rendered in Eevee, with post-editing in Clip Studio Paint.
Cheers!
Work-InProgress, Birgit Evolution 37, my OC. Originally she was G8.1 based ...
Now: Grooming hairs in Blender...
Env: AutoRigPro, Face-It, X-Muscle system. More info at ArtUntamed.
Well done! Love the hair as well.
Started using Blender 1 week ago, made this during one of my experiment. Looks okay but still a lot to go
This is a WIP from a project I'm working on now. If anyone is interested in seeing more, or if you have any feedback that might be helpful, you can find the project here: https://blenderartists.org/t/final-fantasy-ix-steiner-progress/1479716
Love the facial details on this one!