Photo-real characters. A different approach.

Kevin Sanderson

Thanks!

 

3Diva

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

Ahhhh That's awesome! SO COOL! 

One suggestion would be to lower the bump on the lips - other than that it looks really good! :D

3Diva

My latest attempt based on you guys' feedback. I softened the lighting a bit and softened the chin morph some (also thinned up her arms and legs a bit - which can't really be seen in the render). Thanks everyone for the feedback. 

bluejaunte

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

agent unawares

That's freaking fantastic. Something about the eyes isn't doing it for me either (and I also can't pinpoint what), but if I cover the top half of the image I'm pretty sure I wouldn't think twice if this was photographed. I might make the specular just a touch sharper on the lips, personally.

agent unawares

Divamakeup said:

My latest attempt based on you guys' feedback. I softened the lighting a bit and softened the chin morph some (also thinned up her arms and legs a bit - which can't really be seen in the render). Thanks everyone for the feedback.

I have to say I like how all yours have a candid photo look to them. That might be making what you're trying to do even more difficult than the usual supermodel photoshoot deal, where we already expect some level of unrealism.

j cade

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

bluejaunte

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

j cade

@diva the one thing I would say, If you use a photo background the difference between the clear crisp render and the slightly softer edges in the photo really delineate that one is a photo and one is... not If you dont have any DOF i'd add some, and if you do turn it up a smidge you don't have to use enought to turn your background blurriy, just enough that the characters shoulders dont have such a crisp edge

 

 

I'll second the love of the candid camera with flash look too

Gregorius

j cade said:

 

also for teeth (and everything sss-y whil we're at) the trick is high SSS low scattering distance/subsurface scale). Although tbf teeth (like ears) can have the confounding factor of tending to be modeled a bit thicker than they are in the real world

Yeah, that's what I meant.  I seem to recall finding that, if I set the SSS distance/scaling to what I think would've been ideal for translucence purposes, I lost the shadows between the individual teeth.  Maybe it's time I have another go at it, though.

By the way, nice work on that last renderǃ

nonesuch00

Gregorius said:

agent unawares said:

They're the same texture so you may feel safe taking criticisms on one as applying to the other even when you didn't render the examples the same to "compare" properly.

That's what I was getting at.  I found it odd that he/she specified that the female character's eyes and teeth looked too bright rather than making a more general statement (e.g. "the eyes and teeth" instead of "her eyes and teeth), especially since he/she went on to make a different critique specifically regarding the male character.  I wondered if the lighting made any difference.  The arrangement of lights is the same, but the characters are posed differently, so the illumination wouldn't hit them in quite the same way.  If Illucid thought the male's eyes looked fine or at least better, that would've been informative.

While I actually agree about the male character's hair, I'm back and forth on the eyes and, to a lesser extent, the teeth.  On the one hand, they do jump out even at me in certain renders, but on the other hand, I've seen actual photos with comparable lighting (i.e. a 3-point studio setup) where the scleras are actually brighter (example below).  I know this because I sampled a well-lit spot on the eyes in the photo and an analogous spot in the female character render in Photoshop and looked at the HSB values, and the B value from the photo was actually a little higher.  I did the same experiment with the teeth and got similar results.  Of course, a 100% rigorous test would require a precise replication of the lighting rather than just an approximation, but still, I'm not entirely sure if the margin of error is wide enough for that to matter.

 

Photo has been retouched I'm pretty sure.

j cade

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

nonesuch00

Divamakeup said:

My latest attempt based on you guys' feedback. I softened the lighting a bit and softened the chin morph some (also thinned up her arms and legs a bit - which can't really be seen in the render). Thanks everyone for the feedback. 

That's improved and the hair looks verging on real comparatively to how it looked earlier. The only complaint are I see 'unnaturalness in expression' in the face that I know is in the DAZ model and not the way you've used it so I really can't complain about your efforts. The skin is over the top. I think I will buy that product of iRay skin render/material  presets when you release it.

bluejaunte

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

Ah cool, that's not even cheating (if there was such a thing in CG to begin with). It's just acting more like a real camera eh?

Actually it's more like combining multiple exposures into one pseude HDR image right?

Gregorius

My last few renders have all been tone mapped via a makeshift procedure to do for Poser renders what Filmic does for Blender.  I think I've done this before here, but since it's come up again, here's a simple JPG render compared with a tone mapped version.

NORMAL JPG EXPORT FROM SUPERFLY

RAW OUTPUT OF TONE MAPPING VIA FIREFLY RE-RENDER

PHOTOSHOP RE-SHARPENING

MILD CONTRAST ENHANCEMENT IN PHOTOSHOP

I'm beginning to reconsider whether that last step is really necessary, or indeed if it's even a step backwards.  The re-sharpening is definitely a must, at least until I figure out why the FireFly re-render is always blurry.  What do you guys think?

bluejaunte

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

Ah cool, that's not even cheating (if there was such a thing in CG to begin with). It's just acting more like a real camera eh?

Actually it's more like combining multiple exposures into one pseude HDR image right?

Just toying around with this. Do I need anyting between an image and the viewer node? I've set up filmic color management as per instructions but my exr from Iray comes out way white. It's kinda ok with a tonemap node in between.

agent unawares

Gregorius said:

What do you guys think?

You need to finish your textures, or work on your tonemapping and lighting techniques with someone else's finished textures.

j cade

bluejaunte said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

Ah cool, that's not even cheating (if there was such a thing in CG to begin with). It's just acting more like a real camera eh?

Actually it's more like combining multiple exposures into one pseude HDR image right?

Just toying around with this. Do I need anyting between an image and the viewer node? I've set up filmic color management as per instructions but my exr from Iray comes out way white. It's kinda ok with a tonemap node in between.

Iray exports out exrs with the value multipled by 1000 for some inexplicable reason. Add a color mix node set to multiply and set the other color to a grey with a H/S/V 0/0/.001.

Gregorius

agent unawares said:

You need to finish your textures, or work on your tonemapping and lighting techniques with someone else's finished textures.

What exactly do you mean?  They are "finished," or at least I thought they were.  Is your critique the same as J Cade's, or do you have something else to add?

agent unawares

Gregorius said:

agent unawares said:

You need to finish your textures, or work on your tonemapping and lighting techniques with someone else's finished textures.

What exactly do you mean?  They are "finished," or at least I thought they were.  Is your critique the same as J Cade's, or do you have something else to add?

The diffuse is blurry. The sclera has weird pink blotches instead of veins. The teeth kinda look like chalk. The eyebrows don't have hairs, and look like someone filled them in with eyeshadow and then smudged it. It is really difficult to critique minor tonemapping details when things like this stick out prominently. If you try your tonemapping techniques with a photorealistic texture, whether those techniques are making a difference will be easier to tell.

bluejaunte

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

Ah cool, that's not even cheating (if there was such a thing in CG to begin with). It's just acting more like a real camera eh?

Actually it's more like combining multiple exposures into one pseude HDR image right?

Just toying around with this. Do I need anyting between an image and the viewer node? I've set up filmic color management as per instructions but my exr from Iray comes out way white. It's kinda ok with a tonemap node in between.

Iray exports out exrs with the value multipled by 1000 for some inexplicable reason. Add a color mix node set to multiply and set the other color to a grey with a H/S/V 0/0/.001.

Ah yes, thanks! Now if I can only ever figure out how to save an image... 

Gregorius

agent unawares said:

The diffuse is blurry. The sclera has weird pink blotches instead of veins. The teeth kinda look like chalk. The eyebrows don't have hairs, and look like someone filled them in with eyeshadow and then smudged it. It is really difficult to critique minor tonemapping details when things like this stick out prominently. If you try your tonemapping techniques with a photorealistic texture, whether those techniques are making a difference will be easier to tell.

Thanks for the clarification.  It's funny you should say that the blurriness is "prominent," since this seems to come up somewhat less consistently than other recurring critiques.  Anyway, I'm beginning to suspect that depth of field might be at least partly to blame.  I've only recently begun using it, so I'm definitely a novice, and these comments about my textures looking "blurry" only arose shortly after I added DOF to my workflow.  I had to tinker with the camera settings quite a bit to avoid the entire image coming out blurry enough for even me to notice it, so maybe I still didn't quite get it right.  I'm off to experiment.  Stay tuned as I keep trying!  In the meantime, here's a slightly older render with no DOF or tone mapping.  Does this look any better?

agent unawares

Just as a render, no comment on the textures? Yes, it looks better than the comparable ones you posted earlier. Why? Because the eyes, at least one of which should be the main focus, are actually in focus now. There is actual sharpness to the eyelash. So it's quite possible that your camera is not focused correctly for DOF. Unfortunately I do not know how to focus cameras in Poser so I cannot help with that.

However the problems with the texture remain, the diffuse is still blurry, the eyebrows are colored in and smudged with no individual hairs, the lip bump doesn't actually have any of the deeper vertical lines lips tend to have, etcetera. Honestly, you could probably get away with a blurry diffuse texture for the skin if you had a really good bump map with all the right details, but it isn't there.

Gregorius

agent unawares said:

Honestly, you could probably get away with a blurry diffuse texture for the skin if you had a really good bump map with all the right details, but it isn't there.

That is sort of what I'm trying to do.  The maps are the result of me doing my best to take an original texture with bump built in and isolate a pure color map from the pores and other 3D details, which I saved into a separate bump map.  It wasn't perfect, but it seemed to work fine...until just now.  I've been using these textures for a few months now, and this is the first time anyone seems to be noticing anything reliably described as "blurry."

At this point, I have to admit that I don't get it.  I can sort of see where you're coming from about the eyebrows, though to my eye, some individual hairs are discernible at least around the edges.  On the skin, I'm looking at J Cade's excellent render, and aside from the downy hairs, I can't figure out what that character has that mine doesn't.  If anything, J Cade's skin actually looks less detailed and porous than mine.  Maybe one or both of us has just been staring at our own work for too long and it's skewed one or both of our perception.  I've gotten a few critiques on my work on other sites, and while a couple of main isues seem to arise with some consistency, this blurriness is a brand new one to me.  Maybe for others, it's just overshadowed by the stuff that they do comment on.  I don't know.  In any case, wish me luck as I do some experimenting.

 

agent unawares

Gregorius said:

On the skin, I'm looking at J Cade's excellent render, and aside from the downy hairs, I can't figure out what that character has that mine doesn't.

Individual eyebrow hairs and good shaders.

Gregorius said:

If anything, J Cade's skin actually looks less detailed and porous than mine.

You're sort of right, you can see less detail in the skin in j cade's renders than there is in your renders. It isn't lit in a way to see every individual pore, etcetera. The thing is that the details that are visible are close to photorealistic. There aren't any eye veins that look like pink blobs in j cade's render. The bump on the lip has those deep vertical creases and folds, it doesn't just look like the rest of the skin.

If you wanted to go for that, I would suggest backing even further back than your texture work, and just try to make a shader setup that mimics real skin as closely as you can get with no textures at all, only colors. Because that is going to be the key that means your characters still look realistic even when DOF or distance means you can't see small details. Then, once you get that right, add diffuse and bump.

Gregorius said:

Maybe one or both of us has just been staring at our own work for too long and it's skewed one or both of our perception.  I've gotten a few critiques on my work on other sites, and while a couple of main isues seem to arise with some consistency, this blurriness is a brand new one to me.  Maybe for others, it's just overshadowed by the stuff that they do comment on.  I don't know.  In any case, wish me luck as I do some experimenting.

Good luck.

Gregorius

My shader is essentially an attempted adaptation of a Blender shader that yielded impressive results.  It has three layers of SSS and Blinn reflection.

Anyway, I've decided to do this by tackling one issue at a time.  Eyebrows first.  Better, worse, or about the same?

Also, if you want me to start my own thread for this, please just let me know.  I don't want to monopolize anything.

bluejaunte

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

Ah cool, that's not even cheating (if there was such a thing in CG to begin with). It's just acting more like a real camera eh?

Actually it's more like combining multiple exposures into one pseude HDR image right?

Just toying around with this. Do I need anyting between an image and the viewer node? I've set up filmic color management as per instructions but my exr from Iray comes out way white. It's kinda ok with a tonemap node in between.

Iray exports out exrs with the value multipled by 1000 for some inexplicable reason. Add a color mix node set to multiply and set the other color to a grey with a H/S/V 0/0/.001.

Ah yes, thanks! Now if I can only ever figure out how to save an image... 

Ok, figured it out... open the UV view, switch the damn view to the viewer node... with not even 3d model anywhere... why not just give me a damn save button on the viewer node... anyway, there's my little Blender rant.

So yeah the filmic blender look is pretty specific, for portraits anyway. Indeed it feels a bit like a j.cade signature look to me, having seen all these renders of yours. I do kinda like it but I can't say that I had an epiphany moment either. Overall I prefer the straight out of Iray render, which may just be down to having the lighting tuned a lot to whatever the out of the box tone mapping does.

Granted, I didn't actually render in Cycles so that would be an entirely different matter. Could be an interesting experiment to try that sometime. Anyway, cool to have something more to play with. As I also learned, filmic blender isn't really specific to Blender, it's just a OpenColorIO profile that you can theoretically use in any software that supports it. Tried in Photoshop with an OpenColorIO plugin, didn't work because some stuff isn't supported (looks, namely). Natron worked although having never used it I couldn't get my overblown exr fixed and I don't feel like spending more time in there. Nuke should work too from what I read.

j cade

bluejaunte said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

Ah cool, that's not even cheating (if there was such a thing in CG to begin with). It's just acting more like a real camera eh?

Actually it's more like combining multiple exposures into one pseude HDR image right?

Just toying around with this. Do I need anyting between an image and the viewer node? I've set up filmic color management as per instructions but my exr from Iray comes out way white. It's kinda ok with a tonemap node in between.

Iray exports out exrs with the value multipled by 1000 for some inexplicable reason. Add a color mix node set to multiply and set the other color to a grey with a H/S/V 0/0/.001.

Ah yes, thanks! Now if I can only ever figure out how to save an image... 

Ok, figured it out... open the UV view, switch the damn view to the viewer node... with not even 3d model anywhere... why not just give me a damn save button on the viewer node... anyway, there's my little Blender rant.

So yeah the filmic blender look is pretty specific, for portraits anyway. Indeed it feels a bit like a j.cade signature look to me, having seen all these renders of yours. I do kinda like it but I can't say that I had an epiphany moment either. Overall I prefer the straight out of Iray render, which may just be down to having the lighting tuned a lot to whatever the out of the box tone mapping does.

Granted, I didn't actually render in Cycles so that would be an entirely different matter. Could be an interesting experiment to try that sometime. Anyway, cool to have something more to play with. As I also learned, filmic blender isn't really specific to Blender, it's just a OpenColorIO profile that you can theoretically use in any software that supports it. Tried in Photoshop with an OpenColorIO plugin, didn't work because some stuff isn't supported (looks, namely). Natron worked although having never used it I couldn't get my overblown exr fixed and I don't feel like spending more time in there. Nuke should work too from what I read.

Oh yeah using blender as compositor there's more than a couple of weird fiddly things ( mostly down to the program is expecting you to have rendered in it.) I mostly use blender rather than something like Nuke or Natron pretty much because since I use it for other things I'm so used to how to navigate it's nodes that it's worst putting up with some of the more roundabout bits.

I'm going to have to see if I can stick the color profile in other things too (I can definitely see it not working well in Photoshop, PS is generally pretty terrible with 32 bit images in general). It definitely is a part of my look :) especially since one of the main thinis it does is make sure nothing gets blown out in *strong* lighting, and I love me some *strong* lighting. On the other side if you're doing soft neutralish portrait lighting filmic tonemapping isn't really going to make much of a difference.

PhilW

One of the things I like about Octane is that it includes lots of tone mapping profiles which are based on specific film types and their responses. It would be great to have something similar in iRay, you can get variations using the various exposure, white point, etc controls, but having a bunch of presets is very handy for trying different "looks".

bluejaunte

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

bluejaunte said:

 

j cade said:

Okay so I fiddled more with the hair styling... absolutely obsessive hair styling, so much moving around tiny clumps of strands. Then I figured I might as well stick it on an actual character. Technically this is still a test render. Mind you it did take test render level speed. Nine and a half minutes to render, and there's even a bit of DOF too, Cycles is officially kicking Iray's kiester on the speed front. Everytime I finish a render in Cycles I wonder why I ever use anything else, And then I remember thebunches of renders in cycles I never finished because the setup time can suck.

 

Anyone notice anything super off before I render full sized?

That's pretty damn awesome. I'd say maybe the iris is a bit too textured/sharp, usually you don't see that much going on at such a distance. Or maybe it's the eye white, or both. Something slightly bothers me there but not sure what. Peach fuzz looks great, not too strong as is the tendency when doing such things. Lighting is a bit intense maybe? Just from an aesthetic point of view of course.

Lip bump is spot on IMO, if the goal was very dry lips. Many females have such lips.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with the iris sclera transition, personally. The question is: do I fiddle with the shaders or hope I can fix it in post with a bit of blur tool... (I kind of miss the old G3 eyes, I found those way easier to get a good transition on)

 

 

The lighting is strong, but I'm always one to go for drama over pretty (plus without stong lighting its hard to get the under chin bounce rim light. Its a super common thing in baroque portraits and I have a bit of a weird obsession with it) I could turn down the filmic contrast a bit though I was waffling between this and a bit less. heres it with the slightly softer contrast

 

Definitely going for dry cracked lips, my own lips generally fall well on the dry spectrum, (and on the rare occasions when I do wear lipstick I generally go matte)

It's a bit less realistic now IMO. Interesting, what kind of filter is that?

Not a filter but blender's fantastic filmic tonemapping. (how the software interpolates linear information into what we see on the screen... it does a better job at preserving useful information, and it also just looks nice) For instance if you take a photo and over expose it the bright parts become desaturated as well as lighter, this often doesn't hapen when you adjust the exposure for a render, the filmic tonemapping makes this work more like a camera (and helps get rid of blown out highlights in general)

Below is a demonstration image (not by me)

 

At this point even my Iray renders I'll render as exrs and then stick them in blender purely for the tonemapping

Ah cool, that's not even cheating (if there was such a thing in CG to begin with). It's just acting more like a real camera eh?

Actually it's more like combining multiple exposures into one pseude HDR image right?

Just toying around with this. Do I need anyting between an image and the viewer node? I've set up filmic color management as per instructions but my exr from Iray comes out way white. It's kinda ok with a tonemap node in between.

Iray exports out exrs with the value multipled by 1000 for some inexplicable reason. Add a color mix node set to multiply and set the other color to a grey with a H/S/V 0/0/.001.

Ah yes, thanks! Now if I can only ever figure out how to save an image... 

Ok, figured it out... open the UV view, switch the damn view to the viewer node... with not even 3d model anywhere... why not just give me a damn save button on the viewer node... anyway, there's my little Blender rant.

So yeah the filmic blender look is pretty specific, for portraits anyway. Indeed it feels a bit like a j.cade signature look to me, having seen all these renders of yours. I do kinda like it but I can't say that I had an epiphany moment either. Overall I prefer the straight out of Iray render, which may just be down to having the lighting tuned a lot to whatever the out of the box tone mapping does.

Granted, I didn't actually render in Cycles so that would be an entirely different matter. Could be an interesting experiment to try that sometime. Anyway, cool to have something more to play with. As I also learned, filmic blender isn't really specific to Blender, it's just a OpenColorIO profile that you can theoretically use in any software that supports it. Tried in Photoshop with an OpenColorIO plugin, didn't work because some stuff isn't supported (looks, namely). Natron worked although having never used it I couldn't get my overblown exr fixed and I don't feel like spending more time in there. Nuke should work too from what I read.

 

Oh yeah using blender as compositor there's more than a couple of weird fiddly things ( mostly down to the program is expecting you to have rendered in it.) I mostly use blender rather than something like Nuke or Natron pretty much because since I use it for other things I'm so used to how to navigate it's nodes that it's worst putting up with some of the more roundabout bits.

 

I'm going to have to see if I can stick the color profile in other things too (I can definitely see it not working well in Photoshop, PS is generally pretty terrible with 32 bit images in general). It definitely is a part of my look :) especially since one of the main thinis it does is make sure nothing gets blown out in *strong* lighting, and I love me some *strong* lighting. On the other side if you're doing soft neutralish portrait lighting filmic tonemapping isn't really going to make much of a difference.

Yeah it did make quite a difference though, just not in a way that I thought was looking more photographic. Can definitely see it being very useful for intense lighting. It's just a look I may very well desire sometimes, or just use as a base for more postwork. Glad to know it's there as an option.

And sorry for telling instead of showing. There is a certain... individual in that render that should probably not be teased yet.