Reality 2 Rendering Guide?
Tsuzura
Posts: 119
Is there a tutorial/guide to rendering models?
I have been trying Reality 2 for a while now and so far they are turning out worse then rendering with just DAZ Studio.
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The users guide that comes with the product is quite handy.
Usual things that go 'wrong' are lighting (too much) and textures (too glossy).
What lighting is best will depend on what you wish to achieve. Outdoor scenes can be done 'simply' with a Distant light added and renamed to 'Sun' in DS - just position and direct it as usual, Reality will copy those setting across to LuxRender and treat the light as the sun.
Materials are often too glossy, which causes a lot of light bounce which can make it take ages for the render to 'settle down'.
Instead of making a statement like "they are coming out worse...", which could be an opinion and not a fact, you should provide a render or two as examples so that the Reality 2 gurus here can help you. It's probably just a matter of getting a better understanding of the differences in lighting.
Also, the official Reality forums are now over at RuntimeDNA (forum rules here prevent a direct link, sorry). There is a lot of good info there, and its also your best place to ask specific questions now, since the creator of Reality is active there.
Reality User Guide definitely worth reading. http://preta3d.com/reality-documentation/
The most important thing to understand about Reality is that light works in a more realistic way than 3Delight does. That is to say it's exceptionally close to real world lighting and behaves as you might expect, by reflecting off objects. A quick example is below. The 3DL image uses a single raytraced shadow light. Notice how the shadow is in complete darkness. This is because the light neither penetrates through the sphere nor is reflected by other objects.
In the Reality version, on the other hand, you'll notice that light is reflected and the shadow is not as dark as a result. Just off-camera to the left is a single flat plane with a glossy texture to reflect light back to the reverse of the sphere. This is a technique also used in cinematography to light scenes so that the cameras can pick it up. And much like in cinema, it's important to light the scene for the camera, not so much as you would for a real world scenario.
Check out the manuals. They do a far better job of explaining this than I do, but feel free to ask questions if you get stuck. There are plenty of experienced individuals who can lend you a hand to get some great work out of Reality and Luxrender.
Sorry to hear that. I myself love Reality and can't wait for 3 to be released. I too struggled with it at first, but like the others said, it's all about lights. I don't use the Studio lights all that often, and if I do it's spot lights. Instead, I use Reality's softbox when lighting "people" and just mesh lights when lighting backgrounds. Usually 2-3 softboxes for the main area. also, the bigger you make the lights, the less intense the light is. I also change materials in Studio 99% of the time. "people", clothes, straps, ect.. I change to "skin" under light model. As said, some things are just too glossy, so adjust that in surfaces in studio. I don't understand all the surface stuff and tech that goes with everything, but this is my model of doing things. sometimes it takes a few attempts to get things right. here is an image with some of the lux settings I use. I found that the pdf that came with reality was a great help, I also bought the learn reality video and that was really helpful.
***for gamma I tend to use agfachrome rsx2 200 and under light groups I change the rgb to Hue: 20 Sat: 57 Val: 209 R:209 G:178 B:162