Help, please....

Megarig

I'm trying to do a close-up (okay, I know it's only Genesis, but she's all I got right now), and through some trial and error and trying some lighting that Blackbirdwake used, I actually got her to look okay. But I tried to adjust the specular settings, and some others, like glossiness, and I got this. A girl that looks like you'd peel her face off like an orange, :gulp: I know, the eyes are messed up too, and I think I might be able to fix that, but...

What did I do wrong?

These are the settings I altered, and what I changed them to:

Bump strength: 158% (The face bump is V4LanaRRFaceM1)
Displacement strength: 151%
Trace Displacements: On
Diffuse color: 255, 255, 255
Diffuse strength: 77.7%
Diffuse Roughness: 4.25
Specular color: 143, 176, 186
Specular strength: 72.6%
Glossiness: 32.8%
Specular Sharpness: 42.3%
Ambient color: 255, 255, 128
Ambient Strength: 11.6%

Megarig

What I did with the corneas:

Diffuse color: 255,255,255
Diffuse Strength: 100%
Specular color: 128,206,255
specular strength: 50.7%
Glossiness: 36%
Specular sharpness: 60%
Specular color 2: 255,255,82
Specular2 strength: 100%
Ambient color: 170,255,238
Ambient strength: 100%
Reflection: Active
Reflection mode: Raytrace
Reflection strength: 100%

Richard Haseltine

Your bump and displacement strengths seem very high - what are your Min/Max values?

The Glossiness is also lowish - that makes the highlights larger (the way a rough surface, with low glossiness, spreads out the areas that catch the light) which combined with the high strength is making the highlights obvious.

Megarig

Richard Haseltine said:

Your bump and displacement strengths seem very high - what are your Min/Max values?

The Glossiness is also lowish - that makes the highlights larger (the way a rough surface, with low glossiness, spreads out the areas that catch the light) which combined with the high strength is making the highlights obvious.

Okay, for the bump, the min / max values are set on defaults of -0.010 / 0.010. Displacement values are the same.

Megarig

I sort of re-did this a bit so you could see what I had before I messed with the specular settings, changed bumps and stuff. The lighting is the same as in the first image. Maybe it's my lack of experience with Daz, but this one (to me) looks far better than the one above. But then, I also know that it can be made to look even more realistic. I just need to figure out what I did wrong with that first one.

shaaelia

This is what I do in DS3 or 4:

Bump strength: between 20% and 50% at standard min and max.
Displacement strength: 35% with min at -0.15 and max at .15
Trace Displacements: On
Diffuse color: 253, 240, 233
Diffuse strength: 100%
Specular color: 47, 43, 39
Specular strength: 100%
Glossiness: 75%
Ambient color: 9, 0, 0
Ambient Strength: 100%
Lighting Model - Matte

Don't forget that what you do to the SkinFace surface, you must also do to the lips, or else you end up with weirdness.

I never particularly like the eyes on my characters, but here's my standard settings.
Diffuse color: 255,255,255
Diffuse Strength: 100%
Specular color: 0,0,0
specular strength: 100%
Glossiness: 50%
Ambient color: 0,0,0
Ambient strength: 100%
Reflection strength: 0%

Megarig

I applied the settings you listed to skin face, head, neck, lips and torso. I also used your eye settings, but I don't know what to say about the eyes. I guess this looks better than previous examples.

shaaelia

that is weird. Did you apply it to the corneas or the iris?

BTW, my skin settings are based off this tut:
http://afina79.deviantart.com/art/Sugar-Skin-In-Daz-Studio-159087559?q=favby:narehdawn/45067968&qo=1

And some eye settings that will be better than mine :-) are here:
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=23797&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Questor says:

Cornea
Check l/r cornea and remove texture maps if any (for some reason some merchants apply the eye texture to this)
Reduce glossiness to 80%
Reduce ambience to 0%
Check multiply specularity through opacity is off
Remove map from opacity filter
Remove bump map
Remove reflection map (it usually doesn't match my scene anyway)
Make sure lighting model is glossy plastic
check paramters and make sure Cornea Bulge is set to around 100%

If you feel so inclined, though it's not really necessary.
Change Refraction Colour to white, strength 100& ROF 1.38

Eyewhites
Check glossiness and change to same level as cornea
Check multiply specularity through opacity is off
Change Ambience to light grey and 15%
Check bump map with spot render tool (no shadows) and reduce/increase accordingly
Remove reflection map (it usually doesn't match my scene anyway)
Make sure lighting model is glossy plastic

Iris
Check glossiness and change to 84%
Change specular colour to light grey
Check multiply specularity through opacity is off
Change ambience to light grey and 15%
Check bump map settings with spot render tool (no shadows on lights) and reduce/increase accordingly
Remove reflection map (it usually doesn't match my scene anyway)
Check parameters and that iris is 50-75% OUT not 100% IN (never did understand why that is default)

Pupil
Remove texture map, change diffuse colour to almost black.
Remove glossiness and specular values
Remove ambience value
Remove bump map (why in heck do people apply bump to the pupil? )
Change opacity strength to 86% (this is not necessary, but I sometimes do things inside the eye and it helps to have this partially transparent)
Remove reflection map (it usually doesn't match my scene anyway)
Leave lighting model at Plastic or change to matte
Check multiply specularity through opacity is off

Notes.
Some merchants add fake reflections via maps to the eyes of the models. There are a variety of reasons for this, the most common being that Poser4 cannot do reflections and this helps to "liven" the eyes up. Poser 5, 6 and Studio don't need that, as they support raytraced reflections. To save time, if doing close-up renders you can leave the reflection map applied as it cuts down on render time. I don't personally like it very much, but that's me. I do however, utterly despise the habit of painted highlights. These never, ever, ever match the lighting I use, nor the poses of the characters I use. These abominations are either deleted out of my library or - if the eye texture is a good one - cloned over.

Transparency maps. I have no doubt you've seen these appearing since Aiko3. They are useful in some circumstances but, for myself, I don't get the point. For Anime (toon) renders I can understand it kind of, but I've seen these things used on Aiko "realistic" and frankly it looks daft to me. (shrug) Personal preference again I suppose.

The primary problem with eyes is they are instantly fake. No matter how cool something looks in a render, they're fake, you will always know it, and there are all manner of reason for that from logical to fantastical. I'll let you make your own minds up there rather than try to pummel somebody with my opinion.

For every lighting solution you'll need to tweak the eyes to get a good result. For different ranges of camera focus or position you'll need to tweak the eyes to get a good result. Don't make the mistake of thinking the merchant knows best, they don't. The poor battered merchant has no clue at all what in heck you are going to do with the textures or what lighting and/or scene you're going to stick them in.

Just like anything else, don't take the default, it won't work right. Tweak it, fiddle with it, take the time to make it the best you can do. You'll learn something, discover new tricks and produce better renders.

Nuff said.
Hopefully something there is useful to somebody.

Megarig

Shaaelia said:

that is weird. Did you apply it to the corneas or the iris?

I applied the settings to the cornea. I think I need to go in again and tweak the eyes, but what are your thoughts on the rest? I think it definitely looks better than the first render, but what do I know?

shaaelia

It does look better than the first render. What lights are you using though? My favorite lights are a freebie by InnaneGlory. You can get them here if you like:

http://inaneglory.deviantart.com/art/Simple-Soft-Lighting-Freebie-193115008

The most beautiful, easy to use light set. The only thing you need to remember is to get rid of graineness,
Go to the surfaces tab
Select the UE
Go to the parameters tab
Click on lights
Bump the Occlusion Samples up to somewhere above 64.

I usually bump them all the way up when doing the final render, but leave it around 24 for the test renders. They are my go-to lights, and the ones I usually test everything with.

Megarig

I copied a lighting setup that another member had described in another thread. The are three distant lights in various base colors placed at key points under and to the sides of the camera, a spotlight above the camera, and another kind of light if I recall. He said it worked well for him, so I tried it.

shaaelia

Fair enough. I can't get lights set up right unless I use a pre-made set. Still learning :)

Megarig

Shaaelia said:

Fair enough. I can't get lights set up right unless I use a pre-made set. Still learning :)

I should maybe do that more often (use a preset), or even continue to copy the set up that's in these images. One problem that I run into is that my computer takes a long time in some cases to even do a spot render (which is why there is no hair in these, or it would take even longer), so a lot of times I have to wait a long time to see what the lighting will actually look like, and then if it's not right I gotta tweak it and do another lengthy spot render.

Speaking of hair, should I do the settings for it similarly to how the skin is done, or does hair have its own needs?

Megarig

Okay, I know this isn't the closeup we've been discussing, but it shows the entire figure with the skin settings all the way down. I just wanted to do this to see how it all looked together. And to my point about rendering time, just this took ten minutes. But, I've got "Astronomy" to read in the meantime, LOL!

kylumi

That looks 100% better....well done :coolsmile:

I always leave the hair "off" for the overall test renders as well ;-)

Megarig

kylumi said:

That looks 100% better....well done :coolsmile:

I always leave the hair "off" for the overall test renders as well ;-)

Thank you! I barely feel like I can take any kudos for this though, considering that with the lighting and the skin settings - I copied what others did. 8-/ But then, this was just an attempt to learn how to do something better than what I have been doing. I guess I can just take what I've gleaned from this and make things better with future renders.

kylumi

Megarig said:

kylumi said:

That looks 100% better....well done :coolsmile:

I always leave the hair "off" for the overall test renders as well ;-)

Thank you! I barely feel like I can take any kudos for this though, considering that with the lighting and the skin settings - I copied what others did. 8-/ But then, this was just an attempt to learn how to do something better than what I have been doing. I guess I can just take what I've gleaned from this and make things better with future renders.

LOL.....................thats how we all do it, ..............see and read what other people do then go from there. I am always looking at other peoples artwork, then I copy it, :lol:

Megarig

Then I guess I'm on the right track, then. :coolsmile:

shaaelia

The render looks great. I love the shadows created by your lights, but I would maybe reduce the light pointed at her forehead to 40% - 50% of what it currently is.

Hair has it's own specific needs too, but most are specific to product or at least vendor, from what I gather.

The lights I mentioned before don't take as long as other lights I've used (half the reason why I love them so much!) and if you leave the Occ Samples low enough, it only takes a few minutes for a spot render. The machine I'm using is about 7 years old, so I know what it's like not to have much processing power for renders.

Remember, displacement maps, transparency maps and hair, raytracing, shadows or using ambient occlusion are some of the things that will slow down and older machine. What I usually do for close ups or large scenes is set it to render over night, or through lunch or another time when I have three or so hours spare. Does wonder for your patience. I also use task-manager (running Windows) and turn off everything that's unnecessary before rendering - particularly with the multi figure scenes I'm pasting together.

Found an updated tut for Gen 4 figures/Eyes here: http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=51042
The pdf download is broken, but Nysalor goes through the settings he used as you scroll down.

Some interesting details about render settings here: http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=144303&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Can't find anything hair specific, but will look again after the kids have breakfast.

Megarig

I'll look at lowering the intensity of the one light, and see how that helps (not tonight, though - no time, gotta work later).

I'll take a look at that lighting set you mentioned and try it for test renders of a project I'm currently working on, though I'm concerned about it rendering at all, given the number of figures and especially the number of props, regardless of what light I use. I ran into a situation once with something I was doing where I got a memory alert message during a render, though I think Daz and the system may have just been having an argument at the time. My system is about six years old and has a hard time running this thing.

Question - what is light occlusion? I've seen that setting, but I have no idea what occlusion sampling is, or what messing with it will do.

shaaelia

Here is some info on Occlusion. It's worth a look at, because it includes images so you can see what the difference between low and high sample rates are.

http://greywulf.net/2009/05/second-steps-with-daz-studio-uberenvironment/

Sorry about taking so long to reply, I occasionally have trouble where I'm not able to log into the forums at all. All I can do is wait till the next morning and try again.

Megarig

Shaaelia said:

Here is some info on Occlusion. It's worth a look at, because it includes images so you can see what the difference between low and high sample rates are.

http://greywulf.net/2009/05/second-steps-with-daz-studio-uberenvironment/

Sorry about taking so long to reply, I occasionally have trouble where I'm not able to log into the forums at all. All I can do is wait till the next morning and try again.

No worries. I get in here when I can, and it's not always right away. Thank you for the info on occlusion! :coolsmile: