NEW! Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 6
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Doing some quickie renders while I am cataloging, nothing fancy just plopping them in. These are Iray renders, but no Iray materials, just out of the box.
Biplane
Snoopy's Sopwith Camel.
ooh, I'm a Snoopy fan!
Here's RobberKook Toon Boat!
The Toon Square may surprise you when you render with Iray. You'll think "Wow, this is going to take awhile," but then it LEAPS into gear (only took a couple minutes) as it went from zero to 22 iterations to 46 to 58, 82 and done! So don't misjudge this and cancel out, when it gets going, it zips right through!
The second one took 7 minutes. The first about 3 minutes. I think you'll really be surprised with the sharpness of detail. I couldn't believe the bricks! (However, the road bricks looked glassy. I didn't do that, it was out of the box. So be aware you'd need to roughen those up a bit on the glossy.)
ok, I NEED that Toon Square. LOL.
Did you play with the settings in iray, or did you just use the daz uber settings?
The toon renders are fun Novica. I find it's a good approach to try Iray renders of 3DL textures without changes at first because many of them come out quite acceptable.
Saw this Dali video today. Would be easy to render a fly-through animation like this in Daz Studio but I don't know how they do the 360 capture into a video.
Didn't touch it. Those are out of the box, whatever surfaces they have, but rendered in Iray. Wait till you see Puddles!
Puddles eyes do not look good in Iray- use the UberBase and "Plastic Glossy." (or keep experimenting.) Also used it on the teeth. Otherwise, these are default materials. This dog has a surprising amount of morphs- the ears and mouth have quite a few options. The upper arm, shoulder, and forearm also have sliders but it's easy to pull and move your favorite pooch. Fun to pose!
Wow, that video was neat! The fluttering birds and the wind were a nice contrast to the stark ground- but when it went past the clock and I saw the towering elephant figures, the first thing I thought of was War of the Worlds! When I saw they were moving, it was creeeeeeepy but the sound effects were perfect.
oh that's cute! I didn't know what Puddles was, so was scratching my head over your "wait till you see Puddles!" Heh.
Also, a very important tip for everyone: when overtaken by a sudden unexpected sneeze, and you turn your head away so as not to get the monitor, try to remember there is a fan on that side. :sigh:
@Novica Noodles does well in Iray, too. I used him in a contest entry and I really liked the results. I did have to play with some surface settings, but it was just easy stuff, nothing too difficult.
I love Noodles! I've showcased him before, but not in Iray. I've got so much cartoon stuff that it isn't funny. All the Toon Generations, etc.
I do have a question with Skye- are there sliders or ways to do expressions? Nothing under Actor, and I went to Head in Scene tab and nothing there either. I wouldn't recommend her or any other toon where you can't even do basic expressions without purchasing another product. I think that's a rip off. You don't buy figures to have a stiff, unyielding face. Did I just miss something?
This is out of the box Iray. She certainly is shiny, so that would have to be tweaked. For poses, I used a Genesis one and the fingers go curvy but otherwise the poses are true to form. I figured Genesis would be the closest generation as to when Skye was released, but I am guessing.
Ya gotta see Sasje's Underwater render! And jakiblue, I have another cartoon render of buildings for you lol. Coming up!
Okay, this isn't right. If the product is not 3 Little Pigs, it shouldn't be called that in the files (Poser Format>Figures, in Content Library.) Faveral apparently named the Bricks, Sticks, and Straw product that, so it was driving me NUTS as there were no pigs, only the buildings!
It only took one minute 13 seconds to render each of these, so if you don't have a zippy computer, keep these in mind as they won't take long to render for you either. I really like the ground texture and the straw is awesome, considering how old this product is and that it is not Iray materials and done in Iray. I didn't show you the stick building, you get the idea. (You know the story, there's three houses, straw, brick, sticks.) It's a cute set and that straw building is excellent for closeup backgrounds! (Like the big tree, the one that isn't meant to look cartoony.)
Weird though- there is a deep circle around the straw building, like it's sitting in a hole cutout. (Look close, that's not a shadow, it's a hole.) You'll need to add grass or something around the perimeter if your camera angle is shooting down from above at all. I just checked the brick house, it's not that way.
Again, this is just me plowing through my products, no special lighting, so imagine what you can do with it if you try to get a good render!
Couldn't resist showing you the great detail of the stone, once I saw it. I will go ahead and check out the stick house and post it here.
I do have a question with Skye- are there sliders or ways to do expressions? Nothing under Actor, and I went to Head in Scene tab and nothing there either. I wouldn't recommend her or any other toon where you can't even do basic expressions without purchasing another product. I think that's a rip off. You don't buy figures to have a stiff, unyielding face. Did I just miss something?
There are morphs for the eyes and mouth. Try looking under Shaping for them.
http://www.daz3d.com/skye
I got sidetracked, sorry! I found them and forgot to post back. The three little piggy thing got me befuddled when the houses were labeled that in Studio and there wasn't a corresponding pig product that had those structures. My bad!
There are sometimes unannounced freebies in the Daz Store. Just sort by low to high prices to see them. I got a couple of things that weren't free the last time I tried it-a sword for G3F and a Genesis riding outfit.
I will be doing a tutorial shortly on the basics of using Iray for a character wearing light clothing. Seeing a lot of folks say they want to use Iray but it's frustrating or they are a bit overwhelmed. So avoiding the technical and just leading some folks through what I've found works quite nicely. See next post and render along- would love to see what you come up with! (You'll be able to light a character like these, they are the exact outcome of what I am taking you through. Nothing fancy.) I did not smooth out the Callidora outfit because I am using those pulled areas to demonstrate the shadows.
Wanna Render?
Mabe you are just starting with Iray and you're not exactly pleased with what you're accomplishing. Perhaps you're not sure what does what, and want a better workflow. Or, you just want to try the basics with someone taking you through it- you don't want to read hundreds of posts on Iray skin, you don't want perfection....you just want to get GOING!
Okay, let's do that. You'll easily be able to do a basic render like this, using the DEFAULT IRAY LIGHTS. You won't have to buy any fancy light setup. We're going to stick with the basics and I'll give you the workflow to tackle a character wearing white, who is in part shadow and part sunlight. I will be showing you what some of the settings do so you can see their impact (even though we won't keep them. You need to know what's available.) If you have Britany, you can load her up, or pick your favorite caucasian character. DO LOAD UP A CHARACTER, you need to try what I'm showing you. Also, choose a very light shirt, that will be challenging to show details. White is best. Many of the renders I am seeing have severe whiteouts (large glaring areas, excessive lack of detail) and we're going to fix that!
And for fun, we'll toss in Depth of Field and you'll be cranking those out in no time flat. I'm going to give you the actual settings of my DOF.
Keep in mind, this is KEEPING IT SIMPLE. I am only using lighten and darken as terms, not "increase sensitivity to light" etc. (If you're a technical person and this upsets you, read no further.) So read this, and keep in mind I will be telling you what to do with all these sliders, this is FYI. But read this first part if you want smooth sailing:
1.) First of all, to all the newbies and a reminder to others- Do not use Perspective View (in the viewport) to do your scene, it does not save that view. Set up a permanent Default Camera by going up to File>Preferences>Scene>Create A Default Camera. Every time you start a scene, you'll have a Default Camera. If you are doing portraits/closeups, select Default Camera (or whatever camera you are using) in Scene, and in Parameters>Camera, set the focal length to between 65 and 100. That will keep your faces from distorting. I use 90.
2. While the Default Camera is selected in Scene and you are in Parameters, go >Headlamp>Off. In Render Settings there's also General>Auto Headlamp>Never. (To turn on the headlamp and see what you're doing, it's CTRL+L)
3. In Render Settings, at the top click Editor and select NIVIDIA Iray. And always go to Progressive and increase the Max Time and Render Samples so your renders won't shut off. While still in Render Settings, to your far left is Environment. Use Dome and Scene, Infinite Sphere (for closeups), Draw Dome Off, Draw Ground Off, and we'll discuss the rest of Environment later.
Still to the far left (Still in Render Settings) is Tone Mapping. This is where I start, every time. (Don't let this section scare you, below it, I will tell you exactly what settings to try for each of these.)
4. First, let's look at Shutter Speed ("Shutter speed, also known as “exposure time”, stands for the length of time a camera shutter is open to expose light into the camera sensor.") Notice it says above the slider "Shutter Speed (1/x)" The slower the shutter speed (think of shutters being pulled shut), the more light is let in, so your lower numbers on the slider means MORE LIGHT. 56 on the slider is really 1/56 and 125 is really 1/125 which means that shutter closes FAST and says "No way light, take a hike." On your slider, think of it this way:
SLOWER TO CLOSE / MORE LIGHT.............FASTER TO CLOSE / LESS LIGHT.
So in the Tone Mapping section, with X being the smaller numbers, here's what happens when you mess with that slider:
Shutter Speed X lighter............darker But wait, you move this slider, and Exposure Value slider moves the same direction. What does Exposure Value do? Fortunately, moving the same direction is okay, because...
5. Exposure Value helps because in photography, having a lot of light areas, or a lot of dark areas, can fool your other settings. "Use Exposure Value Compensation when your scene is all very bright, or all very dark. Use positive numbers (in studio, HIGHER numbers) for bright scenes (it darkens them) and negative numbers (LOWER numbers) for dark scenes." (it lightens them.) So when you have a lower number in Shutter Speed (lighter, letting more light in) then the Exposure Value goes lower, which brightens dark areas. See why it's okay for these two to move together?
Exposure Value X lighter............. darker Move this slider, and Shutter Speed moves the same direction.
Shutter Speed X lighter.............. darker Move this slider, and Exposure Value moves the same direction.
6. What about the F Stop? Well, it's powerful- you want to pull that slider a little at a time. According to Wikipedia, "Each "stop" is marked with its corresponding f-number, and represents a halving of the light intensity from the previous stop." This is my opinion, but if you are starting with Iray, tweaking the other sliders will give you more fine tuning than F Stop- it really makes drastic changes quickly.
F Stop X lighter.............darker Move this slider, Exposure Value moves the same direction. Which is fine, because they both cause the render to go lighter and darker as the sliders are pulled the same direction.
7. Last is my favorite- and the FIRST thing I always tweak. Film ISO or film speed (sensitivity to light) seems to be a very easy slider to use and you can keep your numbers reasonable to avoid noise. I like to use between 100 and 200 ISO, but I haven't done ultra dark renders yet. Notice this one is the OPPOSITE of the first three. The lower numbers for ISO are darker renders as there is less sensitivity to light.
Film ISO X darker........... lighter Move this slider and Exposure Value moves THE SAME DIRECTION. (This has already been discussed in the forums.) What this means to you is when you are pulling the slider to the left (toward X) in ISO, you are going to get darker renders...but Exposure Value slider moves to the left too, which means LIGHTER renders. So we'll discuss how to work with that.
So that's the "somewhat" technical. Here's a summary:
Exposure Value X.......lighter.............> darker Move this slider, and Shutter Speed moves the same direction.
Shutter Speed X.......lighter............>darker Move this slider, and Exposure Value moves the same direction.
F Stop X......lighter...........>darker Move this slider, Exposure Value moves the same direction.
Film ISO X.....darker........... lighter Move this slider and Exposure Value moves the same direction, but does the OPPOSITE. If ISO is lightening, Exposure is darkening (based on the definition, perhaps darkening the glaring areas)
Now let's play!
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If you are just starting with Iray, perhaps try this: (my workflow)
1. Do ISO first. It starts at 100. If you want more light, take the slider to the right to 110 or 125. Yes, the Exposure Value will go to the right to higher numbers (and that is darker) as you increase the ISO to lighten your scene.
2. So, next, go up to Exposure Value and LOWER it to lighten your scene. Shutter Speed moves the same direction, leave it alone.
So get a jumpstart, consider Film ISO then Exposure Value. You'll see you can do a LOT with just those two!
3.) Twiddle with your Exposure Value and ISO, back and forth, keep your Film ISO between 100 and 200 as you learn. Using the default Iray lighting, try 110-130 ISO and get the Exposure Value between 12.00 and 13.50 Here's a tip on how to do that- use a third factor.
4.) Go to Environment and increase/decrease your Environment Intensity. Try .95 or .90 to darken the render slightly, and 1.05 to 1.10 to lighten it. Here are three renders showing you the same render, with only Environment Intensity changed. It is 0.75 (which will be darker, the smaller the number, the less intensity) then 0.85, (which we will use) then 0.95.
So in summary, first try your Film ISO. Then tweak the Exposure Value, go back and forth with those two, then add changes with Environment Intensity. Don't get TOO wrapped up in this, because there are two more settings which will really change your render that are coming up. Just get in the ballpark.
Here's the settings for Britany: (try these on yours. Remember what sliders move together, it's rather like a puzzle!)
Exposure Value: 12.40
Shutter Speed: 59.79
F/Stop: 8.40
Film ISO: 128
Now using the above (do not change any of them) go to Environment and test each of these for "Environment Intensity" Try .75, then .85 (which we will use) and .95 I did not test above 1.0 because she was too light, I wanted to darken her a bit. If you want to really lighten your character, you'd go 1.05, 1.10, etc. Don't jump in big numbers.
Coming up: Dome Orientation, Burn Highlights, Crush Blacks. How you doing so far?
Below: Environment Intensity at .75, .85, and .95 The lower the number, the dimmer your render will be. (Less light.) We are going to use .85 so I can show you how to brighten images, you would normally pick the setting which gives you the best lighting. I kept the crinkly part of the top so we could compare those shadows in different settings. You would normally smooth those.
So far, you started with Film ISO, then Exposure Value (going back and forth and tweaking.) Then you used Environment Intensity to tweak a bit. We are going to use Environment Intensity .85 for our character here. Pick what you think is best for yours, I went a bit darker because I want to show you two other options which really change your lights and darks.
Next, let's tweak Burn Highlights and Crush Blacks. They are in Render Settings > Tone Mapping.
Burn Highlights makes your light areas lighter, but can also create that awful glare. To balance that out a bit, I use Crush Blacks, it is similar to contrast; dark areas go darker. If you have white or light shirts, Crush Blacks is your friend, and you want to reduce the Burn Highlights.
Look at the previous renders. Burn Highlights were 0.16 and Crush Blacks were .35. Look at this first render below. I turned Burn Highlights up to a glaring 30 so you can see what it does. If you have large areas of glare like this, you need to turn your Burn Highlights down and increase Crush Blacks. Let's do that.
(Second image-)Turn your Burn Highlights down to .11 (which is less than the first set of renders, they were .16) and Crush Blacks up to .42 (they were .35 in the first group. That's where I normally have it.) Now, when you reduce Burn Highlights, your character may look flat. Let's add some sheen to help catch the light, since we have highlights reduced. In Scene, select your character. In Surfaces, click on your character and under Surfaces select the skin areas (not anything involving eyes, inside of mouth, toenails, etc. ) There are many ways to change the skin, keeping it simple, look at Specular Glossiness and Specular Strength. Britany's gloss was 70% so I increased it to 73.2% (which tightens the area I believe) and the strength was 20.6 and I increased it to 33.8% Just play with those two and see if you like the results when you increase or decrease them. The higher the number on glossiness, that is how it affects the spread of the sheen (anyone correct me if I'm wrong) so by increasing it, I am making "streaks" or "toned" areas of light instead of it being spread out across the surface.
When you think Specular, think sheen, wetness of skin. (For you folks using 3DL, this post explains it well as to what happens when you increase and decrease Glossiness.) Sickleyield also describes the settings.
To help get the shine going, also look at the Specular Color. Since we've reduced the highlights, we need all the help we can get, so if the Specular Color is a blue, bluish-gray, then lighten it closer to white. Specular Color 2 , repeat what you did with glossiness, strength, and color, but make it a different color. This second render has the Specular Glossiness, Strength, and Color tweaked. So you see a difference in the sheen of the skin which helps with the highlights, (that raised arm is really apparent) and with the Burn Highlights reduced the top retains details and glaring white areas are reduced. Don't worry that the skin is dark, we're still tweaking. We needed to get sheen introduced, and we're deliberately working with a challenging top- white.
So while in Surfaces, let's discuss noise. Think of rough, like little pebbles. So if you have a lot of noise (particles) what does that do to sheen? Would there be more glisten to surfaces like glass, or with pebbles/noise? So we are going to turn down (reduce the number of pebbles) noise in Specular Noise Strength. I reduced it from 70.1 to 64.4 in the second render above.
So we've fiddled with getting a sheen introduced, and now I'm going to show you how to rotate your dome and get different lighting. Then I'll show you a few more things in Surfaces. Go back to Render Settings>Environment to Y Dome Orientation. Let me show you a couple. My character is facing front, so this third render shows you with the Y Dome at 180 degrees. Not a fan, but you can see the sheen, particularly around the cording of the neck and the bent elbow on our left. So fourth render let's go to 210 degrees.
I like that for now, except with the Specular being so light, the face is a bit too splotchy for my tastes. So go back to Surfaces with those surface areas selected and change the specular color from the bluish-white to a light peach. 209 / 173 / 167 is a nice color to jot down and test on your characters. So fifth render, below with Y Dome Orientation still at 210 and the Specular Color changed to peach.
Okay, let's take a break from the skin and address that pesky white outfit. A way to cheat and help with those glaring areas is to slightly change the Diffuse (main) color to a gray. (You knew that, right?) Try 211 / 211 / 211 (or 217's for all three) and darken your white. Then you can go in and tweak your Burn Highlights again if you want, it gives you flexibility. You can do this step at any time, but I like getting my skin where I want it before I change the clothing. Gray Diffuse on the outfit, first render below.
I'm going to digress here a minute and show you a (second render) nice dusk setting (keep in mind, we are using the default Iray lights.) Keeping the Y Dome Orientation at 210 degrees, this is the Exposure Value / Shutter Speed / F Stop / Film ISO settings of 12.40 / 59.79 / 8.40 / 128 then because sliders move when other sliders move, next move the ISO to 122 and the Exposure Value will go to 12.33. Move that to 12.75 and your Shutter Speed will go to 80.16. You HAVE to remember sliders move other sliders, so get in the habit of doing ISO>EXPOSURE VALUE and it will become second nature.
So much for a dusk render, change the Exposure Value to 12.35. Third render. Now it's time to go back and finalize your Environment Intensity, Burn Highlights, and Crush Blacks. Fourth Render: I took the Environment Intensity from .85 to .89, and ended up at .92 This lightened my scene nicely, and because I had the skin darker with the Environment Intensity lowered, the skin held its own when the scene was brightened.
The Burn Highlights were .14 and Crush Blacks .39 I added the set and rotated her around. Final settings are below. Then we'll discuss Depth of Field
Depth of Field has been repeatedly covered, what I'd like to discuss is rotating your character slightly so you aren't doing the same-old-same-old with the background blurred. Notice Britany's hand on our right, and her feet, are both affected by Depth of Field (image above.) In this image, you can see her arm on our right is blurred, and that was simply done by rotation.
For those of you who don't know how to do DOF in Iray, you select your camera in Scene, then in Parameters, select Camera and turn on Depth of Field.
If you'd like to plop your character where mine is (including the rotation) and then practice, put your character exactly in these coordinates (go to Parameters after you select your figure in Scene) and click on the coordinate number so you can simply type them in.)
This is XYZ translation for the character: 0 / 27.16 / -18.83 and rotation 0 / 13.08 / 0
Your DOF camera settings (Again, you're in Parameters after selecting the camera in Scene) are:
Frame Width 57.72 Focal Length 96.39 Focal Distance 106.73 F Stop 49.97
Keep in mind, if you have Default Camera for the viewport, when you move around with DOF on, you are changing those settings! To view your camera and what's bracketed and affected by DOF, keep your camera selected in Scene, but out in the viewport, use PERSPECTIVE view. USE TOP VIEW to start with. You'll see by moving the settings, that you can take your figure in and out of the boxes which are your guides.
This is what it looks like in Perspective View from the side/front. You need to do Top View. (Second one.) I drew it in on the first one, on the second one, I want you to look closely to see the two planes almost on top of each other. That gets maximum blur before and after the planes.
And Perspective View, from the Top.
Hope all this helped in some way. In summary:
Start with your ISO. Then lower Exposure Value if your scene is too dark. Raise it to darken it. Next go to Environment Intensity and lower it to darken, or raise it slightly to brighten your scene (test .95, .85, .75 and in-between. To darken, go 1.05, 1.07, 1.10 to lighten- go slowly) . Next, Burn Highlights (try to stay around .20 to .35 but down to .10 - .20 for white clothing) and Crush Blacks (.20 to .35) to fine tune the shadows and highlights. Then go into Surfaces and play with your character's sheen on the skin if the Burn Highlights has flattened the sheen, or to help it along. You can also lighten the Specular to help the shine show up.
By tweaking ISO, Exposure Value, Environment Intensity, Crush Blacks, Burn Highlights, and Specular Settings, you're off to a good start. If your characters are too red, go in to Surfaces and change the Diffuse, Specular, etc- anything with color, to test and see what it does. Remember that noise is like pebbles / roughness, and by lowering that, the skin will be more receptive to shine. Have fun!
I can't believe the promo art for this product. The face / nose is dented or the lighting makes it look that way. Look at the second thumbnail, first row, the one on the right. (Even the first one on the next row has a dent.) Then look at the third thumbnail, first image- that looks really dimpled, or the lighting is distorting things quite a bit. If anyone gets this, would you test it and let us know if it's really as dented as it looks?
First time I've seen nose cellulite.
LOL!!!! It CAN'T be as bad (horrific) as it looks...can it?
BTW, reading over in Commons about the toll booth being encrypted only. So now instead of automatically getting excited about freebies, it's going to be only "Hmmm. Wonder if...?" But free is free.
Free may be free, but if you have no use for it, or it's not a good product, or it has a caveat on it (such as can only be d/l via 4.9 and connect), then free ain't free.
But I agree with you on the nose there....it's REALLY noticable.
Also sitting here twiddling my thumbs wondering what the hell is going on wiht the "Don't Blink! Sale" newsletter email that was sent out....and there is NOTHING in the store about it.
I looked over those noses as well, only the very long ones weren't dented. All of the short noses were dented. Stuff like that just can't be unseen. I'd always know it was there, even using the figure as background.
Nice tutorial/guide for rendering Novica.
Thank you SO much for taking your time to make it.
Now I just wish it was available as a PDF file
You're welcome, it was a two day event. I typed it on the forum as I went along. I haven't played much with skin surfaces in the past three months because for my book, it's going to be a bit cartoon style so I need to prioritize other things. Those basic things will get folks going. And artists can stop at any time along the way if they like a particular look.