Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Just for the sake of clarity, Filmic Blender renders with more dynamic range than a regular IRay render? But with IRay you can use canvases (as described here: Esemwy's Guide) to do something similar?
No, it takes an exr from Iray (rendered through canvas) or a render out of Cycles and tone-maps it in a certain way. It's a bit like using more than one exposure from a RAW photo and combining that into one fake HDR photo.
When a renderer such as iRay or Cycles renders an image, it produces internally an HDRI image, so each pixel has a floating point value for each of red, green and blue, which can contain both subtle variations and extremes of light and dark. This then needs to be tone-mapped to produce the image we see on the screen which has only 256 levels for each of red, green and blue. The color space for screen display is what applies a gamma value of 2.2 as standard. Different tone-mapping profiles give a different look to the final image and can affect brightness, contrast, color tint, etc. I don't know how the Filmic profile varies from the standard iRay one.
About the same. Just looks like you lightened exactly the same shape and bump.
So Filmic Blender is an alternative way to tone map. The Tone Mapping tab in IRay doesn't produce the same results, because it uses different software/methods to convert the full range of real colors into what can be displayed on our screens? In theory there could be a plugin that would use this alternative tone-mapping in DS itself?
I would think so yeah, if a plugin can have access to that stuff. Not familiar with the Daz Studio API.
As you asked, I'm going to be picky, maybe even harsh; please forgive me.
The skin doesn't look right; in particular for a man, where there is no stubble (although it is barely stubble), it is just far too smooth. The stubble itself is too perfectly smooth - I mean the divide between stubble and clean (ultra clean).
The lack of any signs of facial hair kill it for me; it is the first thing I noticed. In some respects, the stubble draws attention to the lack elsewhere.
The eyebrows look heavily mascarraed, basically they don't look real.
The teeth are a little off, but one could probably get away with them.
The eyes look decent, although the lack of eyelashes looks odd. There might be too little detail in the eyes from this distance, but they aren't what kill it for me; this can change (I've noticed in my own renders), once other things are fixed.
The hair itself looks wrong; I can't describe what it looks like, only that it doesn't suggest something real.
The facial features seem to lack any (or effectvely any) asymmetry; this is particularly noticeable in the cheekbones and eyes; shapeing one side of the chin so it doesn't mirror the other would also help. The same can be said of the eyebrows.
He's a great render, if you're aiming for stylised; reminds me of Superman, even without the hair quiff/curl.
Affinity Photo will accept an OpenColorIO profile available online and work on exr files. I haven't tried it yet, but from videos it looks fairly easy. https://vimeo.com/192599627
As a non-texture making and non-sculpting audience viewer take my opinion for what you wish but...
This sculpt and the Elvis sculpt are good but something looks wrong with the Reeves sculpt like the chin cleft is way too deep and wide most glaringly.
For the skins as a viewer your blurriness is OK if they were FHD renders and the entire 3D person was in the frame but they are too blurry and not detailed enough skin pore wise otherwise in closeups like you have shown in this thread.
Regarding the size of Reeve's chin cleft it seems to be a makeup & camera trick Hollywood used as I looked pictures of him and it's only in the Superman movies to a great extent that I noticed.
I did some work on my characters' eye textures while awaiting feedback on my attempt to fix the eyebrows, and after getting said feedback, I tried again on the eyebrows. This is the result. I think the eyes at least should definitely look better, though I'm still not sure about the eyebrows, but I'll let you guys be the juidge. Thoughts?
Most definately, the scelra need a bit of greying and yellowing but not too much.
Thanks! Do the eyebrows look any better?
I still can't really see any individual strands in the eyebrows for reference here are my (very real) eyebrows
The general form is made up of lots of individual strands
Even If I were wearing makeup and things were more filled in, you would still be able to see all those strands.
Can you in your image follow a single distinct line somewhere in your eyebrows that is more than a quarter inch long? Because I still cannot at all
Much better sclera. As j cade says those eyebrows still are not looking like they're made out of hairs.
I think I'm getting warmer, but again, I'll let you guys be the judge.
Yeah, that's way, way closer. Towards the inner brow, you're probably going to want some vertical hairs, they usually turn that way.
A bit more work on the eyebrows and eyes as well as some on the teeth and lips.
I think this one really comes close, IMO (at least I think so right now, but I'll probably take a look at it tomorrow with fresh eyes and be like "nah, still far" lol). Anyway, TONIGHT I like it enough to sign it. Tomorrow, who knows. heheh :)
That's totally awesome!!!
Holy hell...that looks amazing. If it weren't for that one little bend in the lower right front, I would have thought it was real.
Laurie
Fantastic. You really have the asymmetry thing down :). The hair looks incredible.
Laurie
Here's the current state-of-my-art eyebrows and eyes!
And here's our girl Kumiko with her new eyebrows, eyes, lips, and teeth.
Feedback is welcome!
That's excellent diva! If I had to nitpick, the hair falling down in front of her and covering the face partially while she looks up is a bit strange. And perhaps the eyes are looking a bit too dead on straight. Pretty minor stuff though. Looks real at first glance, always a good sign. Excellent hand detail, that would have easily given away that it's CG if it wasn't there with the hand so prominent.
Diva, the face and pose look good. The hand doesn't seem to have enough substance/thickness/fleshiness... maybe it's an angle thing. But it's very promising.
Disagree with above comment, the hand looks awesome, as does her face. Very nice work. In a thread about photorealism this is IMO one of the better examples.
That's very pretty and the hands are fine. My are so wierdly wrinkled too.
I discovered something very strange about this: if you use a remote render service (I used Nimbix), the resulting .exr files properly exposed, so this is definitely a Daz quirk. Your technique for dealing with teh over expose is interesting. I just use an exposure layer and push it down to somewhere in the -10 to -12 range.
"And here's our girl Kumiko with her new eyebrows, eyes, lips, and teeth."
I think the biggest problem with your renders (besides the hair) isn't in the geometry, but in the textures for your model. Someone mentioned earlier, that they appear blurry. I second that criticism. Its as if you used low-resolution textures and stretched them over your model. Either that or they were taken from a low rez source. The result is a blurry, indistinct look. I often see this results when someone uses software like Facegen to make a model. In that case, there isn't much you can do. A low res source will give you low res results. If you are going for realism, then first you have to ditch the low-resolution textures. That will make the biggest impact on your photo, IMO.
"Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?"
Nothing off, go directly to print.
The render is not really photorealistic (more painterly-realistic), but still a very well done piece.
"I think this one really comes close, IMO (at least I think so right now, but I'll probably take a look at it tomorrow with fresh eyes and be like "nah, still far" lol). "
This is one of your better attempts. The middle shot (as opposed to the closeup render) seems to have done wonders for your character and the pose helps a lot too. I think your skin shaders (which appear to me to look slightly on the jaundiced side) are perfect for the "story" this render looks to be telling. I think storytelling is also an important factor in simulating realism.
I was talking about the eye, eyebrow, and mouth textures, not the geometry. Anyway, I actually started with a high-res merchant resource. I'm beginning to think the problem was my attempt to be more professional and have the bump map not just be little more than a grayscale version of the diffuse map. I went into Photoshop and experimented until I found a decent method of separating pores and other 3D details, which would form the bump map, from mere color variation on the surface, which would form the diffuse map. The process did involve a Surface Blur, though the bump map should restore most or all of the detail that was thus lost in the diffuse map.
The results looked fine to me at the time, and for a few months afterwards, they apparently looked fine to others as well. That's what boggles my mind! How is it that this blurriness, which has been there for months, only now seems noticeable? I've made it clear on most of my published renders that I seek critique with respect to photo-realism, and yet while I certainly got plenty of critiques, this is thread is the first time those criticisms have suddenly tended to involve my skin textures looking "blurry."
To be honest, at least from the camera distance Kumiko was rendered at, her skin still looks fine to me, which is why I'm suspicious that at least part of the problem may be that alot of us here are so used to looking at characters with 3D details (pores, small wrinkles, etc) baked into the diffuse map. Nevertheless, I've been wrong before, so I'm off to experiment with some re-sharpening.