Better looking /less plastic looking skin in light?

sunnyjei

Not for sure how to go about getting less plastic shiny skin. Does anyone know a good tutorial or have tips on getting better looking skin in renders? (Not sure why the godray turned out so bad either but a different issue for a different day )

TheKD

Taking a wild guess that you didn't adjust the ISO and Fstop in the camera to more realistic settings for indoor before setting up lights?

sunnyjei

Your wild guess isn't so wild :) No I didn't touch any of those. I'm assuming those would help?

AbnerK

Daz Studio works in a very similar way to real cameras so watch some tutorials on Lighting in Photography channels. Personally I leave most Render settings, camera-wise, as they are and adjust the lighting or if the lighting is very complicated I'll adjust the exposure value. You'll need to test render. There's no really hard and fast rule for this. 

sunnyjei

Is there anything else that might make it look really realistic/have better texture? I've seen some mention playing around with subD something or other but it was in passing and I don't really remember as it wasn't related to the topic I was researching at that time. I'll definitely go back and play around with those settings and see if I can find a quick beginner friendly camera guide.

TheKD

Basically, default camera settings are set to what you would use taking a photo outside during a bright sunny day. At those settings, indoor would look very dark. If indoor lights look bright at default settings, they are super bright lights, like a high powered spotlight. Skin looks very shiny in those kinds of lighting conditions. I hope that makes any sense lol.

Subd put to 3 or 4 will help a lot with micro details if using a well made HD morph.

zmk

Use a roughness and a bump/normal map to break up the surface and dampen the reflectivity. Then the skin won't reflect light perfectly like off a plastic mannequin, plus the tiny details wiill scatter angles of reflection of the light.

I hope this is useful to you, let me know if you've got more questions :)

sunnyjei

Thanks all for the info- trying to apply it now. Playing around with the camera settings (I didn't realize there were settings over there too and not just Render!). ZMK not sure how to use a roughness/normal map. I don't think the character is hd as it is one from the Darius Pro pack and I don't think any were...

 

Update edit- I believe I made him worse

Here are my settings:

 

Etheral

Increase the Specular Lobe 1 Roughness and Specular Lobe 2 Roughness. Also don't forget to select the lips surface too.

sunnyjei

Thanks! Those two settings seemed to give him a much more matte look. He's now a bit ashy but I'll continue to play with  him to see if I can get a happy midway point between too shiny and too dull.

nonesuch00

It's going to look like plastic from that distance with that much gloss and that sharp a focus. So will real people.

Lesson the gloss or turn on bloom so that render isn't so focused and it'll look more realistic.

That's one way. If you want very sharp focused realism in DAZ you just about have to to portraits with simple backgrounds and it also helps to zoom in on the face and such. Be very picky about hair, eyebrows, teeth, eyes you choose to use too.

Others can recommend other ways but it mostly involves have the background very blurred and more of the subject of the photo blurred too.

sunnyjei

Took the great advice given (going to have to figure out the sub-d one :)  ) and the skin looks soooo much better imo. Going to continue to play with it so it isn't so rough but this I think is easier to fix in PS than the too shiny version. Thanks again.