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I hope you don't mind my comments nor see them as criticisms of your skills in any way.
Firstly, the skin is much closer to what I would be hoping for - no suggestion of plastic there :) The hair is a problem in that it doesn't really look like hair - it looks like what it is: strips and layers of flat ribbons with a texture painted on. I've no doubt that has a lot to do with the hair object itself and not the way you have rendered it but I would like to ask whether Ubersurface2 shaders would help? Also, even with Luxrendered hair, I spend a little time in postwork, using the blur and noise filters.
Lastly, sorry again but the swimsuit looks like it was made by General Motors - more like sheet metal than fabric.
By the way, 35 minutes for 1000x1200 is getting close to Luxrender time for a single figure. Oh dear, I do sound picky don't I?
Here's some more tutorial links. Marmoset is as biased as they come, being a realtime renderer but with a physically based workflow and an experienced artists, you could have some great looking images.
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-theory
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice
Some lighting tutorial that should be applicable to any app/renderer.
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-lighting
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/lighting
Bookmarked :)
This illustrates the confusion I have about terms. Until now, I thought Physically Based Render was what Luxrender does, not what biased renderers like 3Delight do. I stand corrected.
I've never heard of Marmoset either - it looks impressive (the images in their gallery are breathtaking). Do you use it or are you showing examples of a biased render engine producing physically realistic images? I guess it doesn't have a direct way of working with DAZ Studio though, right?
I don't use it, well not for the shots shown here anyway. Technically, you can export any model from DAZ and import them into any app or renderer. That;s essentially what bridges like Reality, Luxus and the Octane plugin do, while at the same time doing some behind-the-scenes task as making sure the materials, lights are setup properly
Marmoset is a very nice example that you can have realistically looking materials and objects, even with all the hacks and cheats necessary to have it render interactively. But there's a lot more advanced, real time rendering engines in the market nowadays. Realtime subsurface scattering is already possible but actual refractions/reflections and indirect lighting obviously needs to be faked.
My first attempt with a 3-point light setup. I used 3 Uber Spot lights (Key/Fill/Back) but I'm a bit clueless as to how to set the shadows etc. I switched on Raytracing for all three lights. It only took about 5 minutes to render and most of that was time stuck on the hair by the look of the progress.
No surface modifications - just skin as it comes default (Jenny HD) so it would probably improve with Ubersurface2, right?
Anyhow, I'm quite pleased for a first attempt (click image for full size).
Who is "Jenny HD", if you don't mind me asking?
Who is "Jenny HD", if you don't mind me asking?
Sorry - my bad spelling ...
http://www.daz3d.com/fw-jennie-hd-for-belle-6
Wow! My renders in Lux are measured in hours, not minutes. Of course typically all my renders are measured in hours, except for those done in Octane which are measured in minutes (though 30 minutes is a good time for a final Octane render). Sometimes even my Octane renders run for 2-4 hours depending on scene complexity and materials used (occasionally longer), of course I'm doing all this on a laptop, with with a 2.3gHz quad core i7 and my GPU is equivalent to a old Nvidia GT 560 (a bit slower), so it's not a rendering power house. I must just need to improve my skills a lot to get great 30 min. renders in Lux.
OK, just for fun, here is a comparison of a Reality4/Lux render done from the same scene for the render I posted earlier, along with a repost of that render (since it's now on a different page). I did the Reality/Lux render with a minimalist approach just like the 3Delight Render. I edited the Cornea materials (they were black), the ear rings (they looked really bad), and made a slight adjustment to the swimsuit mats (looked much worse that the 3Delight version due to excessive bump and odd specular colors). The hair and skin shaders were not altered and are exactly as they were setup by Reality 4. The light set up for the Reality 4/Lux render is a simple 3 point light setup with the lights placed in similar locations as the Key, Fill, and Back (rim) lights in the 3Delight render. The image was rendered to 600 s/p and took 5.5 hours to render.
The idea here was to do a simple render with minimal shader adjustments, not the best render possible, just as a quick and dirty comparison of the results a new user of either program might get/expect with either 3Delight or Reality 4/Lux.
My iMac has similar specs (and probably the same GPU). 30 mins in Luxrender for a single figure with no architecture props, etc. would produce something slightly grainy but at 1000x1200 it would be fairly good. With a room and two people and their clothes I usually render for 3 hours at 1600x1200. If I network the render, it will look good in 2 hours. But then I keep lights to a minimum in Luxrender - often only a single mesh light but usually two.
The image I did in 3Delight above only took 5 minutes for 1200x1000.
Sorry to pick on parts of your render that you clearly had not set up. The skin does look good though in that lighting setup.
[EDIT] - Just seen your follow-up post - really useful to have that kind of comparison, thank you.
Very nice Reality render you have there dustrider!
Looks certainly better than 3Delight although 3Delight can look very nice too with uber enviroment and uber lights.
Did u only use regular DS lights?
This is just a very quick and dirty setup with UberSurface. There's no SSS, no fresnel since the shader doesn't apply it to the specular channels. The materials is setup with as much hacks and cheats to mimic the look I've gotten with UberSurface2. Texture is the G2F version of Bree, which is included with DS, though I did not use the skin specular maps.
Render time 31.2 seconds (on a Core i7 4770K, built in 3delight, progressive rendering enabled).
For comparison, the US2 version is below. Render time is 1 min 1.48 seconds.
rendering should not be a race but knowing your hardware and how to optimize a scene for a render should be high on your list of things your aware of.
that being said this render was just over an hour to render with Reality to Lux. It has 3 mesh lights, it was done on a 6 year old Mac
Was there supposed to be an attachment?[Edit] Ah - there they are :)
I did buy UberSurface2 today. I tried to apply it to a character but hit some problems which I described in another thread. I clearly need to practise more but I have been wondering why undo the work of the vendor who spent time setting up the skin shaders? In the case of the character I tried, she used AoA_Subsurface shaders which seems common for G2F based characters.
I can generally think of one reason - most do not make the materials with gamma correction enabled and a target gamma of 2.2.
Same setup, but lights are now using 4 Uber Area lights instead of UE2. Render time is 1 min 40 secs.
Maybe a 6 year old but it shows 16 threads. My 2012 iMac can only manage 8.
It isn't a matter of racing, it is a matter - for me - of workflow. I like to do a series of images, 20 or more, per project. With a full scene that does take hours in Lux (sometimes overnight). The reason I'm looking again at 3Delight is to see what the trade off in quality for speed is like.
I can generally think of one reason - most do not make the materials with gamma correction enabled and a target gamma of 2.2.
So what prevents us from enabling GC 2.2 with the product shaders? In my experiments it doesn't seem to have a detrimental effect so far.
By the way, do you remove the specular maps (if any) and adjust the overall specularity/gloss accordingly?
Nice renders wowie and dragon!
Looks like the ubersurface 2 shader looks nice although a bit oily for my taste in the second picture.
Dragon, what character is that? She looks pretty realistic! : ) Very nice render.
That's just mainly a matter of personal taste. You can play around with the specular and fresnel to achieve a less oily look, a wet look or just plain dry skin.
A setup of Uber Area lights generally is slower than UE2, but you get a lot more control of how you light your scene. I used 4 Uber Area light planes and render time was 43 sec.
LOL! No problem, it's always good to get another point of view, or 2, or 3, or ......
I was going to put the additional information about the shaders being mostly "out of the box" - but as usual I got distracted and forgot :roll:
The idea of doing the second image came to me while posting the first one - that's probably why I got distracted and didn't fully explain the setup (or lack of setup).
Oh - nice render, especially for a 5 min. render - looks like the lighting training may have paid off.
Thank you again :)
I'm still experimenting. I don't like specular that much but a little is needed which was the reason I asked Wowie about removing the Spec Maps. He's right - they do look lifeless with the specular maps applied. I'm just trying to get a nice balance between a little sheen and enough of a bumpy surface to avoid the plastic look.
I notice there is a parameter for "Specular Noise" but it doesn't seem to have any effect on my test images.
If I remember correctly, that's a feature of Subsurface shader. It adds a little bit of grain to specular, so the highlights don't look extremely smooth.
UberSurface 2 has a lot more controls over your specular because it can apply fresnel to it (rather than just applying it to reflections ala UberSurface and Human Surface shaders). That means you can dim the highlights when the surface you're looking at is facing the camera and have it become more pronounced when its viewed at grazing angles. This is a more accurate model of how real world surfaces react to light.
Subsurface scattering component also has much more controls and you can mix 2 diffuse together, which I find essential for skin and fabric.
If you're using UberSurface 2 with specular maps, you should always set the strength to 100% and the color as close to white as possible. Enable fresnel and control the amount of highlights with fresnel strength (the higher the strength, the less the specular strength when a surface is viewed facing directly.
Now, to me, this is what I'm hoping to emulate:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/22193/P420/#342697
As Hellboy said in the following post - "perfect".
thank you.
the base is V4 Mai Lin from rendo, but modified with some aftermarket morphs the skin is Liu from Daz3d which appears to be retired!
the hair is Laura hair from Rendo and the teeth and interior mouth have a different set of textures as well, I think from Rendo as well.
This is getting closer, I think. This is the same figure with the V6 Anna skin at 50% SSS. I had to up the Specular to 140 but I'm encouraged by the result.
Getting better, yes?
With vertex hair you're always going to get that painted strand look. There are things to do to minimize it, but since I use Carrara, my goto for hair is Carrara's dynamic hair.
Either your hair is set not to cast shadows, or one of your lights is. Either way it is quitenoticeable.
In terms of the render you posted as an example, between the soft shadows and the fact that it was rendered by dimention theory, I am 99.9 % sure it is lit using environment lighting. Upping the shadow softness of your lights should capture some of the effect without switching to hdr lighting (or using mesh lights) both of which take much longer to render.
Thanks!
I used Inane Glory's Photo Studio Lights (mesh lights), as I recall, IG's Photo Studio uses uber light's, but I'm a bit fuzzy on it. Maybe I should try enabling UE2 to see what happens.
Sorry. This is directed at....?