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I think the problem is that the exported exr has tone mapping disabled. If you turn off tone mapping, the normal renderered output looks the same as the exr.
Yeah. The first thing I do when tonemapping an image is set the exposure close to where I had it in DS to get good lighting, and the brightness is usually right on track. (the weird thing is, I swear to god DS is applying gamma correction to the exrs, because I never have to).
Gregorius,
Firstly I commend what you are trying to do here. I think much of what you are doing is moving in the right direction. I actually think the things you are doing with the bump mapping are working well in that regard. So bravo on the bump map itself. What is off for me mostly is the color range, Human beings simply arent that uniform of a red tone. One of the biggest issues is that we tend to focus too much on adding redness and forget that we need greenish and blueish aspects as well. Notice in the image of jCade's real brows how much color variation there is in just that small part of the face. The skin looks more green that red. Now we can admit that the coloring of lights can have a huge impact on the look of skin, but for a skin to end up as red as the examples you;ve posted there would need to be some strong red biasign of the light. I get the felling that your lights are actually more grayscale, so the redness cannot be explained.
Also, it is essentially IMPOSSIBLE to separate details such as pores and lines from a "real skin" photo capture. If you are sensitive enough to have opinions about the pores and lines in a skin texture, you are ready to start building your own skin texturs from scratch. Then and ONLY then will you truly have the control you want. All the best!
This looks like a real photo. Absolutely convincing especially for those who have been given no reason to doubt the legitimacy of the image. Everything comes together perfectly, especially the hd morphing! Bravo!
The figure looks great. I think the background is a bit off, it gets too blurry toward the top, I don't know if you're using depth of field here, or that's just what the image does, but its not quite right. Also the angle between your model and the background seems off, it might be less incongruous if we saw the rest of her in relation to the environment - is she falling, jumping, flying, or is the terrain behind her a hill or something that would rise vertically as it seems to be doing?
I like this a lot, especially the wrinkles on the hand. I'd agree with whoever it was though who said that the way the hair sits on the face looks immediately wrong - her head is tilted backwards but her hair looks to be falling forwards. Without a logical reason for the lay of the hair, if I were to see this image promoting a figure in the store I'd wonder if the seller was trying to hide a problem with the ears. This is not because I think sellers are that devious, it's just because I'm that cynical :)
Yeah George takai posted a link to some article about it and the people complaining about it are friggin insane. Theyre all talking about how you are so bad because you use a 3D model instead of "hiring a real black woman" lol.
Oh ffs....*facepalm*
Sometimes I think people need more to do. LOL
Laurie
IIRC your using Superfly/Cycles?? I don't know much about it, or your shader set up (obviously). My guess is that what is causing all the comments about blurred textures is due to how you have set up your SSS. SSS will typically blur the details of an otherwise very detailed texture map if you don't have a detailed texture map in the SSS "node". If you do have a detailed texture map in your SSS node, then disregard my ignorant comment, if you don't, that might help both on the details, and general realism.
i'm thinking the hands look great; the character is slim, not much in the way of spare fat to add needless bulk. Plus the pose with the stretching in the area seems believable too me.
Thanks for the helpful feedback! Here's a test of some hopefully improved skin textures. Better, worse, or about the same?
Just a few more new one's I've been working on...
Those are really good, it is the lighting and skin material that sells it (not necessarily the texture just the way it reacts to the light), together with the natural posing.
Yeah, the posing is probaby the most uniquely excellent part of those renders, though like you say, the shaders are superb too! I suspect that the very realistic, casual, and homey surroundings help as well! I wonder if she'd look just as good in a simpler, more portrait-style render.
This is ridiculously good.
I love these because it still looks photoshopped somehow but it's not the character who looks artifical. It looks like someone tweaked the enviornment in photoshop or something but the character looks real. It's fantastic. What skin texture/shader is that? I love the imperfections and details.
Yeh, these are amazingly realistic. I agree with FWIW, the character looks more real than the environments, however both look quite real. I wouldn't have known they were CG.
I suspect if the images were higher resolution, e.g., 1080p, I'd be able to identify them as CG.
About the same. Texture still too blurry/uniform for such a close shot. Also, given the proximity, my brain is expecting to see things like pores and peach fuzz. The eyes are too white and teeth too undetailed. I feel a real-life pic would also have more super-bright spots of light reflecting from oil on skin's surface, and an open mouth would look far more wet.
Just the opinion of once person, so take it with a grain of salt. :)
Thanks all. The skin texture is a custom one I made in Photoshop -- and yes, up close it's not as good because I had to really exaggerate the skin imperfections to make them noticeable at distance.
Really? You don't see the scattered brownish spots, especially on her nose bridge? And if nowehere else, at least some hint of pores should be visible on the tip of her nose. You don't see them either?
I'm thinking now it only looks odd to me because it is too light. I remember ages ago when I was getting photography training they warned about showing hands that way (palm out) in a glamour photo as they would always be lighter/brighter reflecting more light and take away from the composition. They told me to not take photos posed like that and then told the model to change her pose.
Yes, I see the brownish spots. If I click on the image, I notice it enlarges a bit. I *think* i might see some pores on the right cheek but not the nose.
What my brain expects is something more similar to Sangriart post on this page: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54239/fiddling-with-iray-skin-settings/p88
Notice how the pores are indirectly hinted at by the specular making segments of skin very bright/white. It makes it highly realistic. I dunno, I think if I saw your skin texture under different lighting, perhaps something that could give it some specular pop as in Sangriart's example, it might strike me differently.
The right cheek would've been my second suggestion for an area with visible pores, but I thought they were a bit more obvious on her nose.
Yeah, specularity really helps bring out bump/displacement. I think that happens most in my image on the left side (or right side, from the viewer's perspective) of the character's face. Honestly, either one of SangriArt's renders (one lobe or two) looks awesome! The second one just looks more oily, not necessarily more real to me.
It's quite possible that lighting makes the difference. I tend to use 3-point prortrait lighting in my renders, and I don't think that style is particularly catered to emphasizing the shine of skin. I think it's more about keeping things even and yet well-contoured. Still, I suspect it might be worth experimenting with a Ks_Microfacet node to complement the Blinn node.
@Gregorius I recommend rendering in Iray. It's WAY more difficult to get photo-realistic results in 3DL than in Iray. :) It's cool to see your progress so far.
These look really good. I love that she's a bit more "plump" and more "girl next door" and less super-model. The one thing I'd recommend that (to me, and it's just my opinion) make it less realistic is the eye size. Her eyes (again, imo), look too big and kind of kills the realism for me. Other than that these look SO GOOD. My favorite is the one with her sitting in the kitchen. The glasses partially obscure the eyes, which make them a little smaller and more natural looking, imo. Eyes are crazy important as it's been tested that most people look at the eyes first when looking at an image of a person. I think if you bring the size of her eyes down a tad it would help. I'm sure the graininess and small size of the images helps to sell it. Really cool renders! :)
Oh, that was 3DL? Wow. Well, for 3DL, it's definitely one of the more realistic images I've seen.
However, I agree with Diva. Iray is the way to go if photo-realisim is teh goal.
Thank you for the awesome feedback everyone! That "reaching" render went through 4 versions before I got the lighting just the way I wanted to help bring out the details of the normal maps and displacement maps. Several mentioned the hair, and I meant for it to look like the hair is blown into her face a bit, I guess I failed at that. lol The fun (and challenging) part is the trial and error. I've created 7 different render settings to accommodate different lighting and skin types.
Now I kind of know how photographers feel - my grandparents where photographers for 40 years and watching them set up photoshoots was exhausting with how much tweaking they had to do to lighting and camera settings and using different equipment to adjust brightness and reflections and all that jazz. Whew! Trying to get decent "photos" in Daz Studio is starting to feel kind of like the same thing. lol
Oh, I guess it might not be 3DL? I mean, by the looks of the renders, to me it looks like 3DL. I could be wrong though (it's not an uncommon occurance lol). :)