Is it possible to achieve the same photorealism and high quality textures in Blender? (Daz Models)

Dazzle_4578436

This is a fairly noob question, im sure.

But i've seen a few AVN artists that tranisitioned from Daz to Blender after a few years, and the model skins look kind of like plastic, or plasticy.
Is this isolated to my examples? or a real situation? i was under the impression Blender would be able to do anything Daz could, and more.

Singular3D

Blender can do similar things like Daz and more, but the Daz models are specially optimized for Iray. Cycles can provide amazing results, but it may be necessary to tweak the shaders accordingly. I'm still refining the process of getting Daz characters to Blender, adjust them and combine them with Blender assets and landscapes.

Just have a look at Chris Jones work at Youtube. The possible results for realistic characters are amazing, even though they are not derived from Daz characters.

Diffeomorphic is a good start though.

lilweep

The PA mal3imagery renders in Blender and his Daz characters look realistic. https://www.daz3d.com/mal3imagery

juvesatriani

simple answer is yes , but is that as simple as in Daz Studio , the answer might be not . Diffeo plugins can help you but  if you need beyond the basic you need learning about Blender`s note editor . In the end Blender`s cycles really powerful render engine and more than capable outputting hyper realism render

if Ok , can I ask what exactly your main reason to choose rendering in Blender ? 

Ilena

Very much so. I have not tried since pc is not up to par with that branch, but a friend has a beast and she managed to get exactly that . Even if not better. As for rendering in Blender from what  little I have experience myself and seen it's much faster then in Daz.Iray is great don't get me wrong, but usually once you start Daz renderer you can't use your pc for anything else. Blender is different subject.

844d1cc615

Decades ago I was professionally trained in an expensive nurbs modeling software to "Pro E" workflow.  When you factor in manufacturing processes, materials, ergonimics etc it was quite daunting.  When you think the future of warfare is going to be autonomous / semi-autonomous you add many more layers of difficulty but you basically elliminate the budget aspect if you can get a contract.  This was long before anyone ever said the words "drone" or "UAV" but I could see it in my head, knew it was the future & I wanted in.  Life doesn't always go as planned.  Many, many years later, very ill I managed to teach myself Autodesk's Maya.  Because I had the industry standard navigation controls cached in my muscle memory I was able to adapt fairly quickly.  It almost felt like cheating as I could place objects within other mesh without adding verts, splines, boolean beveling, splicing, merging, fretting about stucture heat map computer predictions (if this gets dropped on a hard floor is it going to break? - is it anggled enough to be pulled out of the machine? - will this support a 400+lb load?.)  As long as it rendered okay nobody was going to see the mesh inside other mesh   Just keep it quads & you're good.  The digital only environment was a respite from bringing a vision in your mind into a real life product to be touched and used.  Even our models had to be hand sculpted pre-prototype.  We used markers and paper.  I'm that old.

Dabbled in old school Poser for a few hours, (V4 erra?).  Then I tried Daz but it seemed too complicated.  That may sound funny but once you're accustomed to a workflow an unfamiliar UI can get your head spinning.  Years later I returned to 3D to slow ever increasing cognitive decline.  Aware of Blender from dabbling in the Linux world that was my first choice however I hit a wall when I found at that time most all tutorials were based upon Blender's unique hotkeys, not the industry standard.  I remembered Daz, forced myself to get over the Daz hump & I did.  With a few years of part-time Daz rendering & full-time Daz product shopping under my belt I'm beggining to feel the constraints.  I want advanced particle physics & colliding objects.  I alo like the open-source concept.  So now that AI is at the door almost ready to do all this via voice command I, now like 1,000 years old & a shell of my former self decided to return to Blender.  Daz to Blender Bridge just got an update in the DIM so I'm looking forward to trying that out.  I hope Daz continues to improve upon that.  I know there is an alternative but it links assets from the Daz runtime into Blender *last I checked.  I prefer to compartmentalize as much as possible & if Daz puts it in my DIM I'll use it and export the fbx to a folder or drive of my choosing.  Similar thing can probably be acheived via the alternative but I'm going to try to stick to Daz's exporter to encourage future development, aaaaaand because I'm old, exhausted & now very dull.  YouTube user "Bad Imagery" has a video on his page titled "Daz to Blender my way."  What stuck in my head after a casual viewing was his 3rd party specular map usage using the character's nose as a reference point to dial it in to his liking.  It's worth checking out that video.  Someone else's video explained that you don't need to bake the container after every change with Blender 3.5+ so if you want to create water splashes or the like in Blender first try a simple cylinder.  I made the mistake of exporting a heavily morphed HD character with dForce hair as an OBJ to use as my object for the water cube to colide with.  Brought Blender to a crawl though I give it credit for not crashing.  I used a Wacom tablet back when I was young but I didn't have to pay for it.  Even if I had the Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 I'd still buy an Intuos Pro MEDIUM.  I learned the hard way the biggest isn't always the best.  Man I hated lugging that thing around.  Almost as large as my portfolio.  Can't...reach...keyboard.  Today's large is probably the size of what was the medium back then.  Sculpting in Blender is something I'm very interested in.  Never got the Zbrush itch.  I think if I was a Daz exec or content creator I'd be looking towards AI integration & built-in sculpting plane because eventually you'll get to the point where you'll just sculpt in Blender or have an AI app creat an .obj .blend or .fbx file, texture it in Blender if need be, rig it in Blender, and / or export it to Unreal Engine & rig, animate and render it there.  I hope you enjoy your creative journy, wherever it takes you.  I enjoy seeing what ya'll make.  It's your world now.  Have fun with it.

Chris Fox Art

You can achieve photorealism within blender but there are two things that needs to be done correcty. First thing are textures and the most important, shading them correctly.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

Chris Fox Art said:

You can achieve photorealism within blender but there are two things that needs to be done correcty. First thing are textures and the most important, shading them correctly.

Three things: Lighting.

inmymoonsuit

I use Daz for character creation/base meshes and elements to kitbash. With some things I export from Daz, I use materials that are converted, while for others I create materials from scratch or use Blender-specific material libraries. Often lots of nodes and shading adjustments still have to be made.

I completely agree that lighting is super important, as are many settings and adjustments in the rendering pipeline that do not just convert seamlessly with the bridge or Diffeomorphic. An example for my own projects is an ACES implementation. Another example would be the HDRI or sunlamp that will get pulled in from Daz.

I'll attach an image from this project: View on Artstation | Daz Gallery

From another project done with the same workflow:

I think this shows a level of realism I was happy with. If these results interest you, I can try to get a rundown of the skin material's shader setup.

(For these Daz to Blender characters, I use maps from Daz characters I've purchased licenses for, but there's a lot more I do, too. Sometimes I layer the maps and mask them in Photoshop. I'll sculpt my character in Blender, bake normals from the multires modifier, and even mix them with some of the Daz normals on a lower poly version of the character -- all sorts of things. I use Textures XYZ elements, texture painting, anything that gets the job done.)

But none of it matters if the shader setup, render settings, and lighting are completely broken. But with some know-how and elbow grease, I do think Blender can produce some pretty realistic and incredible results.

 

That's my 2 cents. heh

I shared addons and things I used for this project on blenderartists.

inmymoonsuit

Another result I think supports a Daz to Blender workflow and the ability therein to achieve photorealistic results: