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I made some adjustments to my latest girl:
Thanks for your comments, both critical and complimentary. I must say, the first sentene surprised me. While I might not quite be "there" yet in terms of photo-realism, I thought I was at least getting very close. Anyway, the hair prop is quite old (it was one of the first I ever got, back in the days of Poser 6), so I can understand how that might be low-poly by today's standards, but the model herself is Genesis 8 Female with 1 level of subdivision, so I'm not sure where the "low-poly" impression is coming from on the face. As for the skin blemishes, that might be the SSS muting them, but to some extent, I think that's actually a good thing. If you look at actual photos, most of the imperfections are usually rather subtle (except maybe for extreme close-ups).
You've said that you tend to look for detail in textures, particularly as a means of getting the most out of low-poly geometry, so I have to wonder if you're comparing the detail in my render to your own expectations or to what is actually typical in real-world photographs. Maybe it is indeed the latter, and I really am still nowhere near as close to photo-realism as I think I am (that's been true before), but I find it at least suspicious that your two specific critiques (low-poly and muted detail) just happen to match what you focus on in your own work.
Your render probably took 10 minutes because there's very little hair and it's a mid-range shot. Try a closer-up portrait of a character with a mane of trans-mapped hair, , and you''ll probably see your render time increase considerably. I have a dual-core i7 processor capable of 2.4 GHz speed. I have experimented with HDR environments, but I'm not sure yet if the comparatively minor reduction in render times is worth the loss of flexibility. For instance, if I want to change the lighting, I have to change it in my original studio scene, re-render a light probe, and re-convert that into an updated panorama that I apply to the environment sphere. If the scene is actually there, I just change the lighting directly, and that's it.
Here's the portrait that I spent the better part of a day rendering, with two levels of subdivision and a much more recent hair prop. What do you think?
Also, I should note that I can't take credit for the expressions, at least not building them from scratch. The expressions I use are generally mixes of presets that I buy, though the one above is just one of those presets dialed to 1.
Just look through some hair on daz. The outoftouch hairs look really good. I like this:
https://www.daz3d.com/linda-ponytail-hair-for-genesis-3-and-8-female-s
Looks like others here already mentioned it.
Sorry Gregorius I do not see much of anything that I would describe as approaching realism in your renders either. For comparisons sake just look at the last 3 images posted by Divamakeup, magnumdaz and Visuimag, all are really good examples of images approaching 'The Real'. Yours, all I see is cartoon looking people, smoothed out features, no detail in the shape, some blotches and what\not in the skin but that mainly reinforces my perception of cartoon people reskinned with non-cartoon textures. Im curious what your skin textures would look like on a normal model, how much the smooth cartoony shape is betraying the realism goal toward which you are obstensibly striving. Then again maybe I am not understanding what you are trying to achieve.
Thanks for your comments! I think one of us must be seeing something the other is not, because while I agree that Visuimag's render is pretty darn close to photo-real, those of Magnumdaz and Divamakeup just don't strike me as very realistic. They're not terrible by any means, but Divamakeup's tend to look a bit dull and flat, while Magnumdaz's looks like too much ambient detail is baked into the texture maps and perhaps exaggerated a bit (at least, that's the best I can do to put the impression I get into words). Maybe this has more to do with lighting or aesthetic tastes, but they just don't jump out at me in terms of realism. Visuimag's definitely does, though, so again, no argument there.
My focus has always been on photo-realistic textures/shaders, so maybe I just haven't trained my eye to pick up on nuances in geometry. Still, I use Genesis 8, so my characters' geometry should be no less detailed than in any other G8 character. The ones sculpted to look like real people especially shouldn't look like cartoons, at least not in terms of shape. The character featured iny last render before this post, for example, is based on actress Debby Ryan, pictured here. Maybe I've just done a poor or exaggerated job of capturing her likeness.
These multiple comments that my characters look low-polygon or otherwise cartoonishly smooth seem to have arisen rather suddenly, coinciding with my recent switch to softer lighting at the recommendation of a Smith Micro forum user named Ghostship, who has also provided alot of useful critiques in my quest for photo-realism. I can't help but wonder then if softened lighting may be washing out some of the detail in the geometry. To test this, let's revisit a render from just before I revised my lighting setup. Does this look any better?
Yeah that is still an incredibly excessive render time. and I'm speaking as someone who uses Iray with very mesh heavy transmapped hairs and who also is familiar with with cycles (in blender anyhow where it is definitely faster than iray). Unless your rendering an 8k render or something theres no way a single figure with nothing other than hair and no scenery and no DOF should take that long.
also using 3 sss nodes in cycles is an absolute waste of resourses unless you have actual custom maps for each (and even then its probably not worth it) cycles can set scattering distance per RGB channel (chromatic sss) at least blender can, if the poser version of cycles can't something is deeply wrong.
I also am afraid I have to second the lowpoly comment although low poly may not be entirely the correct word, I would more go overly smoothed and undetailed in terms of geometry. You have before, I believe, mentioned getting your textures to focus on microdetails, however it seems like when you took out the *macrodetails* you never really put them back in anywhere (like the geometry or a normal map). The problem with detail like shadows baked into the diffuse was never that it added to much detail it was that the detail was baked into the wrong place simply removing it doesn't really solve the problem.
And as to the idea that since you're using the same base mesh your morph will have the same detail, that I strongly disagree with. Look at diva's recent render specifically look at the nose or the crease under the eye. Can you really not see the difference in the level of detail in the morph?
If you are truly going for photorealism you cannot say "well I am just focusing on the materials" the mesh is at least as important when it comes down to it.
Long post....
Magnumdaz,
My feedback is always very detailed so please bear with me.
This is a beautiful morph. I've always loved this face. This is a Victoria 3 model, correct? Though a touch on the angular side, it still reads as sufficiently feminine to be pleasing to me. The tonal saturation might be a smidge too low, but like you I too would prefer to err on the side of undercooked saturation rather than overcooked. The blotchiness of the skin, providing a random sense of unevenness to the tone, works well here. It looks like skin damage caused by the sun and other life stresses which is believeable indeed. This effect however can also appear at times like a poorly captured photo of the real skin, that has been overly processed with contrast filters of various sorts. I feel like I see overprocessing of real human skins very often when sold as products, but more on that some other time. In this particular case it works quite well so no complaints. When building textures from scratch I accomplish this effect with turbulence noise brushes I use to create maps I steal from the terrain generator in Bryce. So man useful filters I can create there such as voronoi celluarl patterns and the like that I find essential to huma skin generating from scratch. But more on that later. Clearly the posing is a strong aspect. I find that whenever characters can interact with themselves in some way, by making contact with their own bodies, it somehow makes the scene seem more lifelike and believeable such as the hand at her waist. Nice work as always!!
Gregorius,
More crazy detailed feedback. Sorry but I can't help myself I love this stuff too much!!
Great great great!!!!! So many things. Firstly, you and I are on similar paths and I think we may even be able to work together at certain points in time. Maybe we can PM and talk a bit. Due to the fact that I am already working in a similar manner to yours, i can offer a few thoughts on what I'm seeing so far. Soon I hope this week I'll begin posting some of my own studies, and hopefully you'll chime in with feedback. Thanks, Bro!!
I love that you are working with Genesis 1 during this skin development study because I too find that swiching between genders helps me to see issues with skin textures I might not otherwise observe. In my opinion most male textures will look acceptable on females if one can separate out the masculinizing aspects such as stubble. When building your own texture from scratch such options of removing stubble become feasible. If it looks good on a female then there's a good chance it will look good on a male.
The examples you are posting are getting better and better for sure in terms of realism. Huge huge huge improvements!!!! I do agree with you that the texture demonstrates the potential for photorealism at this point in time. Potential is key and I'll return to this ideal in a moment. From what I can see there is a sufficient amount of height map detail to begin to make specular effects look reasonably realistic which from a PBR standpoint is essential. However as I've stated before, I do not think your height maps have the degree of detail and sharpness that they should have. What I would at least TRY if I were you would be to add a Gaussain Noise filter (Linear/ Monochrome) just to the height maps (Bump) at about 25%. This will help to replace some of the information that has been lost due to having to derive the height map info from the original color maps. Its not truly possible to do it without losing some info at some point so finding a way to replace some of that info is essential. This is why I abandoned trying to derive details like height from color, its just not the same at all.
In a similar manner I might try also try adding a slight Noise filtering to the color maps, but this time even more subtle at 10% and this time with a chromatic setting. Again, just a taste, as we don't want the noise to draw attention to itself but we do want to give the impression that the texture has greater resolution that what the camera is picking up at the current moment.
Some things however are missing, such as the deeper pores at the cheeks, also the fine line wrinkles under the eye. On the hands I believe we are missing the varying types of leather grain on the back of the hand, the bends at the fingers,the knuckles. But some of this could also be the resolution of the posted images.
More suggestions:
1. Try to paint in 3D if you arent already doing so. If that means using Carrara's 3D Paint feautre or some other appliction like Blacksmith, it really helps to work in 3D if you arent already.
2. Create for yourself a set of stock "brushes" you can use to paint skin details as needed rather than trying to derive them all from a photo based skin. These sample brushes should be roughly 512x512 in resolution and fully seamless. The example I have uploaded are samples I drew quickly on regular paper. But ideally you will want these same types of patterns on a transparent .PNG background.
A. Pores- You need at least one brush for tight standard pores. Youll need another where the pores are a little bit further apart for areas like the cheeks to the left and right of the nose where pores seem to be a bit bigger on most people. Often due to stretchin gthe bigger pores on the cheek are not round but elongated and oval.
B. Fine Lines- You'll need brushes that can provide lines over an area. The lines must appear to be somewhat random in distance from one another , length and other details.
C. Cellular patterns- Cellular patterns are key. I created my own by starting with a blank page and just drawing random triangles of roughly the same size and connecting them all until the 512x512 page was filled in. the black lines were the depressions and the white were the flat tops of the cells. I eventually add other features to break up the uniformity fo the white cells to appear more lumpy as human flesh would. You can also derive cellular patterns from vornoi noise generators but you do not want to capture shadows or any direction biases in the cells. More on that in days.
D.- Leather Grain- This is not so dissimilar to the lines, however instead of these lines being parallel they are instead perpendicular to one another, creating the appearance of crosshatches. Often you can create these brushes by simply using your Lines brushes and stacking them at varying angles to become perpendicular creating the final look of a grid. This is for the rougher skin at the elbows and knees. So long as the lines have the correct amount of randomness the resulting crosshatches should look like a grid with imperfect shaped cells.
E. You need to analyze the skin of everyday human beings, to see which areas are driven mostly by pores, or by leather grain effects, and combine and stack the various brushes as needed to create the desired effect within a particular area of the skin. IT IS NOT EASY TO PULL THIS OFF!!!!
F- All of these brushes are considered types of "noise." This is different than the type of noise I an suggesting you add to the overall maps by means of a Noise Filter.
All the best Gregorius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gregorius,
Forgot to add that a big part of the final realism will come from the way the SSS has been set up. Everything from tone to contrast of details is affected by the choice to enable SSS effects on the skin. One either works with SSS or they do not. Not working with it means that the surface of the skin will never accomplish the correct type of softness. This is aside from all the other potentially beleivebale aspect sof the skin. The SSS matter more than pretty much anything else. Even a uniform colored blob can look like a "real" blob if the SSS is convincing. Realize that with SSS much of the tonal painting we tend to apply is already included automatically, so baking in redness is unecessary when working with SSS.
JCade, I actually do have three different maps for the SSS, though they are procedurally generated versions of the same source JPG. There's a red-tinted, untinted (yellowish tan), and green-tinted layer. My triple-layered SSS shader is essentially a Poser adaptation of one or two Blender shaders that I thought gave excellent results. Trust me, it makes a world of difference! That's one thing I can say with great confidence! As for Diva's face details, I see one very deep crease along each lower eyelid, but that's not a universal human trait (the crease itself may be, but not the depth of it). Besides, are you telling me you don't see a similar crease in the latest render of my auburn-haired, hazel-eyed character? It may not be as deep, but it should definitely be visible.
Rashad, thanks for the in-depth feedback, and I'm glad you and I seem to agree on so much. I'm actually working with Genesis 8, though it was relatively easy to create a functional transgender-morphing version. If you're interested (and use Poser), I have a freebie on ShareCG that will do most of the work for you. My male and female characters all use the same skin and eye textures, with only masked features like facial or pubic hair differing between them. In fact, together with transgender morphing, those material parameter dials I talked about allow you to switch easily between sexes. The main one is a "Male" dial. At 0, it applies the female masks for eyebrows and body hair, and at 1, it applies the male masks. The facial stubble can be controlled with its own dial, so if you want a juvenile or otherwise smooth-faced male, you can do that. Body hair (i.e. pubic hair for both genders and armpit hair on males) can also be independently turned on or off.
I'll toy around with adding noise to my maps and see where it gets me. Actually painting details in Photoshop might not be a feasible option for me. I have a mild-to-moderate case of cerebral palsy, and one of the effects is significantly hindered dexterity. I'm not saying it's necessarily impossible, since I have had some success working with Poser's morph brush, but it will likely be much more laborious for me than someone with a more delicate hand would probably expect. Heck, even my characters' eyebrows, where I think the most improvement has been made, weren''t created by careful mouse strokes with my custom brush (which itself was a bit tricky to create). Instead, I drew a Path along what would become the middle of the eyebrows and used Photoshop's automatic Stroke function. Still, I think I'll at least try to paint some skin details if the easier tactics ultimately prove insufficient.
In any case, I'm certainly open to collaborating with you!
This one probably suffers from the same issues as mentioned before, but FWIW (and in case it inspires any further critiques), here's a new render of Superman.
Yeah thats exactly what I didn't mean by actual custom maps. Unless you're painting in like veins by hand the old 3-layer method is pretty much deprecated. Don't take my word for it though, listen to the fine folks at Arnold about 2/3s of the way down:
Same thing as the 3 layer, just way less overhead.
If you can't se the difference in level of details in the morphs I dont think I'm ever going to be able to explain it to you its not just has crease/doesn't have crease its how crisp the detail looks. I am a young an unlined person but not having crows feet doesn't mean that the corners of where my nostrils meet my cheeks is smooth, the geometries of your characters just look toony to me.
Gregorius Thank you for your reply! It is good to know you are using G8! I just can not bring myself to use anything newer than G2 because the head and eye sizes just seem unusual to me in the default state, and I just cant be bothered to used the "head size propogate" button, so rather than tweak V7V8, I decided not to use them.
But since you are using G8, please indulge me in one request! Can you try a render of your texture on the default G8F or V8 model so I am more readily able to see and compare your method to something I am more familiar with.
Thanks for your reply Rashad Carter . That render is a little different than the previous ones I've done. An experiement with light color and saturation to fool the eye, and make the brain finish the render. Just something I've tried recently, and this thread seemed the correct place to post. Thanks!!
I agree with gederix here. Not sure what your goal here is. Realistic cartoon? The cape, the hair, the character model doesn't look realistic.
The character models look like something between realistic and a 3D animation like Shrek. Looks like someone who had a really bad plastic surgery to look like their stars. Looks weird.
Something about her eyes is bothering me, but I can't quite put my finger on what. (Sorry I can't be more helpful.)
For real? I guess I'm farther away than I thought I was. lol Oh well, we try. :)
It looks good. Just needs better lighting. Looks like a studio photo shoot but someone forgot to turn on the photo studio lights. Don't like her stank face she is giving me though.
lol In the first render of her I was aiming for a look that says "I'm annoyed and uncomfortable", but "stank face" pretty much sums it up nicely. :P
Thank you for the feedback - I appreciate it. :) I'll try and aim for better lighting.
Well, here's a first stab at putting some more detail into the geometry, using some morphs by RareStone. I added some lower eyelid crease, some nasiolabial folds, some marionette lines, and some very subtle forehead wrinkles. Magnumdaz, stay tuned for a test render or two of V8 using my textures/shaders.
I've been playing with Eevee quite a lot lately, and while my shaders are still a work in progress, I think skin is starting to look quite good. Hair obviously still needs lots of work, but what do you think about rest of the shaders? Constructive criticism is welcome.
Model is default V7 and I'm using V7 diffuse and specular maps here
I really like how clear your eye shaders are. I can even see the small veins there. Eye reflections might be a bit too sharp/clear for my taste, but other than that, I like really like how you made the eyes. I think skin shader has nice specular/bump micro details, and diffuse looks nice too.... but like others have said, the model itself does look little weird. It's hard to pinpoint, but there's something off. Maybe using some default Daz character is easier for showing skin shaders, so observers' eyes don't get caught on the model instead of shaders.
Thanks, Mendoman! As for your render, my honest opinion is that your first priority should be adding some freckles or other imperfections to your skin and then adding a bit more bump. Right now, frankly, the skin looks too homogenous and flat. I do like the iris and lip textures, though!
Returning to my own work, here I have two renders. The first is Victoria 8 with just Cornea Bulge set to 1 and my textures/shaders applied. The second one is just like the first except that I added some subtle details to the morph around the eyes, nose, and mouth. Both are subdivided twice over. Thoughts?
Gregorius...the trouble when making your own textures is that you end up looking specifically at the details you are trying to add, and when you see them in your render you think "great, I have done something real good"...but the trouble there is that you stop looking at the texture/character as a whole. You are so caught up and proud of your details, that as a whole, no one else really sees. You know they are there, but no one else does, because they are looking at the whole, and those little things mean nothing.
This happens all the time to texture makers.
The tones on your characters do not look very natural, the sss gives it a bit of a waxy look where it makes the sss look redder in parts than would naturally occur in a human. The bump maps on the skin surface are nice, but way too uniform and don't give any hint of pores or subtle body wrinkles. Also, alot of your morphs have a toonish quality to them, like your superman and elvis, that does not help your quest to realism at all. They are more like caricatures.
You may want to take a step back and look at your attempts with fresh eyes, ignore the details and look at them as a whole compared to an actual photo if realism is your goal.
Just started reading this thread - it's interesting to read/see all of the different thoughts and perspectives. My main interest is in NPR (Non-Photorealistic Rendering), but I have dipped my toes into the photorealistic water a couple of times.
The following image started as a lighting test of a so-called "fake" HDRI created from a regular 8-bit panorama. I ended up spending as much, if not more, time playing around with a different approach to handling SSS/Translucency:
Looking back at it again now, I wish I hadn't been so lazy and taken the time make a trans map for her lips and fixed the veins in her left eye. A bigger problem which I did try to fix but wasn't successful, was the fringing caused by the custom curves for the top coat and the intense backlight.
Overall, I like how the image turned out and freely admit my preference for a sort of hyper-detailed flavor.
- Greg
That was a wonderful render Greg, congrats!
You are doing fine, your work is quite impressive. Your eye and skin settings are excellent (your spec/gloss combo is spot on imho), I do not agree with the dull and lifeless assessment at all, quite the opposite as characters need to able to hold up under a wide range of lighting situations and I think you are there. Maybe a catch light to pop the face but even so, just keep doing what you are doing.
This is awesome.
Thanks, RawArt! I actually have at least tried to look at my renders as overall wholes, and I'm not sure I see the "waxy" quality you mention. Maybe it would help if you could point out some specific areas where it's too red or too translucent. I have also looked at actual photos for comparison. I think one recent find might make for a good benchmark.
I must confess to being a bit hesitant to mess with my skin shader, since it seems to be my strongest area right now, judging from the compliments I've gotten elsewhere and how very few criticisms have lately highlighted that aspect. Even those who have recently called my characters "toonish" seem to agree that the texturing contributes relatively little if anything to the problem and that the geometry makes up most or all of the trouble.
You really can't see the pores illuminated on Victoria's left (from the viewer's perspective) cheek? If I recall correctly, that wasn't even an area that I particularly focused on when creating the maps, so it's less likely that feelings of pride are overemphasizing them for me. Granted, you may have to actually be looking for them, but then again, I don't think the average person actively looks for pores when gazing at a portrait, least of all when looking at it as a whole, as you recommend.
I wish someone had told me that my Elvis and Superman morphs looked caricature-ish while I was still working on them. Maybe my textures/shaders, though perhaps not totally convincing yet, are finally getting just good enough that their flaws are no longer sufficient to overshadow those in the geometry, which would explain why the criticisms of shape seem to have arisen quite suddenly.
Algovincian, I totally agree with the praise you've earned on your render! Excellent work, sir! How is it that someone whose primary focus is apparently non-photorealism manages to stand toe-to-toe with or outright outdo the best of those on this thread?
Anyway, I think it might be time for me to take a break from this, maybe play some Civilization 6 to freshen up my eyes, as RawArt might put it.
No one has ever grown from listening to praise, the critiques are what will help you see where you need to grow...if you take the time to look.
No argument there. It's like I once said to my driving instructor: "Criticism is improvement waiting to happen."
Yes I wouldnt be too quick to equate "texturing contributes relatively little if anything to the problem" with "texturing is perfect". Keep in mind, a forum like this is one of the rare places in the internets where everyone is trying to be very cool with each other, everyone knows everyone else is at different levels of experience/skill, so critiques have to be looked at as a relative assessment, not an absolute thing. People are being polite. Maybe you want a harsh critique but you are pushing back at everyone who suggests that your work has shortcomings. You are filtering, discarding where you think people are simply wrong.
Regardless, if you are approaching realism from the aspect of tinkering with textures to try to make them 'better', its not that people also do not think your models look like toons, its that that is not what you were asking about. In fact I was kind of assuming that part was intentional, surreal valley kind of thing. Maybe you have seen where someone creates for ex Popeye but with realistic textures? Hence the suggestions to try putting your textures on a known entity, for ex any common daz figure.
Also, I am not sure what you thought to demonstrate withh the mila kunis image, she does not look like she was molded from wax or plastic, just a pretty girl wearing makeup, with a wash of light down the side of her face. She looks real.
I dunno, I think quite honestly you should take a deep breath, go back and reread all the comments and try to understand what people are saying. Some of the people here offering you insight do really really excellent work. Rawart for ex, might want to pay attention to that person, products are excellent, artwork, also excellent, and thats but one example, some people in here have some serious talent is what Im saying. I mean, seriously, you dont think - textures aside - that your models look like cartoons? How is that possible? Do you objective much bro?
Thats all I got, please dont bother explaining away why my comments have no merit (if thats what you were going to do), good luck in your quest!
G