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...save for Blender, the issue with some of the software Daz has bridges to is beyond the budgets of most of us here. Even Iray Server is more than some can afford. What also stops some is the fact so much of the pro software has gone totally over to subscription status. I was excited about Octane 4 until Otoy dropped perpetual licences and then required one to be online throughout the session (as evidenced by the offline dongle they sell for pro level users).
When I am working in Daz, particularly building an test rendering a complex scene, I go offline so as to free up system resources and avoid interruptions.
....there are still hairs that have baked in highlights as well which is why I usually resort to using Slosh's UHT 2 shader kit that has different base shine and translucency settings which can be even more finely adjusted in the surfaces tab.
Daz has too much photorealism as it is. Even their "stylized" stuff looks too photoreal now.
...yeah that's for ome work i stick with Aiko 3.
Everyone to their own some like stylised renders some like toons I personally got into 3d for rendering people and objects scenes as realistic as i can
Hoping Daz 5 will help me to achieve this knowing it will possible not reach vray or arnold renders. but reaching what i have seen being achieved by the marmoset toolbag software i would be happy
...I remember the old Realistic Renders thread where people kept trying to push for realism as much as they could. The best images back then were usually done with MaxwellRender.or rendered in Vue (at the time both were also biased engines, just much more powerful ones).
I also remember as a counter "joke", someone opened a thread titled Realistic Renders....Not. that carried on for several years.
I was pretty much a contributor to the second thread as I knew with the tools, materials, and meshes Daz had at the time "close" was like myself here in the Pacific Northwest calling Guam a "next door neighbour" when it came tp comparing work done in Daz to what the pro grade software like Maya, Cinema 4D, and 3DS was capable of.
This was before Daz introduced both UberEnvironment, which gave 3DL GI, and a bit later, SSS. as well as offering a 64 Bit version of the programme that allowed for applying more than 2 GB of memory to scene building and rendering so UE could actually be used to it's full potential without crashing the programme because the system's memory allotment under 32 bit was exceeded.
Before that GI had to be "faked" with an array of low intensity distant lights like Light Dome Pro did.
LuxRender through Reality was first "photo real" engine available to Daz and Poser users, but render times were on a geologic scale that made even Iray rendering in CPU mode seem fast. Stories of days, even week long renders were not unusual even with multi-core/hyperthreaded CPUs.
Yeah Daz has come a long way since those days but there's still a a bit to go.
So I tried my hand at a portrait stylistically similar to the original post. primarily utilizing assets I already had sitting around for the sake of speed.
Hair - This ended up the most sucessfil element. I do honestly think I've gotten pretty close to, if not real, at least vray level cg hair. The hair geometry is about a full gb of vram so definitely not resource friendly (i do also do suspect that iray can copy textures over to the gpu individually but geometry as a single chunk because at that size my laptop would seize up even though it technically had a 6gb gpu. When I'm talking specificity this is what i mean, I would like Iray to do a beter job of breaking up geometry when it sends it to the processor). I am also using slightly customized hair shaders: I added a teensy bit of opacity at the roots for a better scalp transition and added a texture map for bias to tip gain so the transition from root color to tip color is more uneven and natural. Obviously, I am using the SBH editor formerly known as garibaldi. everyone should use it. Its the best thing ever.
Skin: using Bonnie 8.1's texture. I really like all the 8.1 textures I could not do half as well so I am going to use them. I am once again using customized shader based on the new pbr shader. I added back in backscattering which was dropped from the ubershader=, and switched the detail normals to use triplanar mapping so there's not a transition at the seams. also the vellus hair is done with sbh as well as the size and number of strands world be impossible with traditional geometry, although it still has limitations. the lips might be a bit wrinkly especially in comparison to the original image, but i haven't used chapstick since the pandemic started so im going to say that's just my personal aesthetic.
clothing: I did model this, but in an hour so honestly its pretty janky. Please ignore the quality of the underlying geometry. unless you want 8k textures out the wazoo you are going to want tiling textures for detail, but also retain non tiling textures for things like details around the seams. I do not currently have a custom shader for this, but if you click an image you can manually set its tiling on a per image basis. The normal and height maps are 1x1 the diffuse, roughness, and bump were tiled 5x5. you do really need the combination of micro and macro details a quicker to use node based shader system would be invaluable here. Also the cloth utilizes backscattering, which I use for pretty much all cloth these days
so after this brief exploration the actual limitations that aren't just my own abilities are: SBH is resource intensive. SBH emits from base geometry and so the vellus hair doesn't sit perfectly on the skin. you cannot readily combine tiling, full size and procedural textures. Iray backscattering is actually a retroreflective shader, so less velvet and more that silver material on traffic cones, if your main light and camera are in the same direction it can start to look wonky, I prefer Cycles velvet shader
clothing is definitely the hardest element - though I cannot fully say whether this is software or a personal limitation, as I have spent more time on shaders and hair. Clothing is still more in the learning stage. Dforce is not good at say, simulating small wrinkles unless you want as mesh that takes an hour to simulate and also is absolutely terrible to work with if you do anything else, buuuuuut its not like there's a bunch of other software that can do that either
I was also kind of hitting the limits for 4k maps for the skin. you would only need it for the normal maps, but even there you're reaching a point where the real question is "who really wants this, honestly" even with just normal paps thats 5 8k maps for a single figure and thats way to many resources for what is ultimately a marginal upgrade. I am a firm believer in cost benefit
also before someone comments "but look at all the custom stuff you did thats not a real comparison" we are comparing to someone who made their own everything. If you want to fully get the heights and capabilities of Studio that includes stuff like using the strand based hair editor that comes with it, or thrashing around in shader mixer. otherwise the question you're actually asking is more like "how come this collage I made doesn't look like an oil painting by someone with years of training?"
Definitely a wonderful render. Not quite like the pics I posted, but definitely nice. The one thing that stands out to me specifically about the OP pic is just how little tricks there are, however. It's in your face, barely using much shadowing and trickery. Still, we'll get there and we're not that far.
I've tried doing photorealistic renders in DAZ just based on buy from DAZ Store, drag into scene, and render and until the latest versions of DAZ Studio and the new Genesis 8.1 PBR skin shaders came out I couldn't even get to uncanny valley level. Now in the past couple months I've done what I felt were a couple of uncanny valley renders using PA/DO products I bought that have PBR 8.1 skin materials.
Nothing like the post of those renderings in the OP. I had to look for a few seconds before my "felt" it was a CG render. Closest one yet for me.
Yeah. That boy looks like a photograph. I could easily fool Joe Average.
I don't think that I've ever seen a DAZ Studio render that would pass for real in my eyes - though obviously I would not know if I had seen one and was not aware that it was a DAZ Studio render. The boy in the OP looks so much better than anything I've ever seen posted here or in any DAZ gallery.
That said, I don't do close-ups so I am not really concerned about photo-realism for portraits. What I am more concerned about is realistic hair and clothing. A cloth physics implementation approaching the speed and versatility of Marvelous Designer is needed and I don't see much improvement in the sloth-cloth dForce yet.
I cant quite tell if youre saying i used trickery or not :) I dont think I used much in the way of trickery
My point definitely wasnt to say "I think this is as good as the original image" more some fun seing if I could get something in the spirit andd flex my technical abilities.
If you'll read through the scrawl I wrote, you'll note that I hit very few actual technical limitations the limiting factors were all me :)
Since the initial post was about the technical limitations of the software itself that begs the questions
what difference between the two images are a result of the *software*? Because I'm not sure one can point to any. As such I think its fair to claim that results like the original image are, indeed *theoretically* possible just provided one has the skill of the person who made said original image.
You can get hair with non hard edges, you just need to add subdivision.
This is probably the most realistic portrait I've done. The bristol hair had a lot of hard angles, but after adding subdivision it looked rather nice.
Kind of a moot point you are asking for highly specific and unique assets that also are versatile. Daz has its place in the market and is good at being probably the most photoreal / hour software there is.
Little plug for Jramboo082 in the gallery who produces some of the best Daz photoreal pictures IMHO. https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/6217301674164224#gallery=album6523616
I've noticed this with a lot of clothing. There are a few times I've actually taken an item out of my cart after I've inspected the promo images and noticed the textures were not as high-quality as I thought. I've bought a lot of items that I'd slap on a figure and then realize the textures were almost blurry. In particular, a lot of men's clothing suffers from this. Some renders have gone through multiple wardrobe changes due to some of the products looking like plastic or rubber, rather than cloth. I've had to tweak settings, use shaders, or attempt to make some custom textures to replace them.
In general, I've never aimed for "realism" but more what fits my style and whatever has good detail. Clothing and hair have always been an important part of that. I tried doing a realistic render recently, but I think it's more in line with my style than realistic. And I'm cool with that. I'm more worried about telling a story than making my render look like a photograph.
The combination of dozen subtle details(aka the real details that makes the difference) in these shots are crazy, the old man & mid age men truly captured the human essence
Unfortunately the best chance for DAZ studio to reach this level of realism is not on DAZ themselves, but on really talented PA/groups/companies that makes enchantment products for DAZ. This is just how Daz's eco system works, it’s not geared towards pro market but to casual users who make their own arts
Daz’s eco system = roll out decent stock figures with robust bones & mesh tech and leave the rest to their PA & 3rd party companies to make the enchantment products. For example Hairs, breads or human anatomy products, such as muscle morph, vein, winkles, skin tone for different race and age group. DAZ’s job is not to make these but to encourage their users to create contents for what’s lacking.
As far as young female with clean skin, DAZ won’t be too far behind to reach on this lvl of realism if a PA/group willing to make a enchantment product towards those missing features, this is a shot I slap together in 3 mins with Gen8F skin, not as real, what’s lacking compare to shots in OP you ask? Well, alot, subtle skin uv for different part of the face, hair(obviously since it’s gen 3) lighting (need better raytraced real time AO) and higher def skin texture. if a PA/company is willing to make products towards all lacked features above, and assuming their product is good, then boom! the gap instantly shortened. But guess how many DAZ users will ask for these small/important details?? Just to know that DAZ will NOT making these other than their stock figures, it’s a FREE FOR ALL app
Went to the website and while Arnold is CPU/GPU based, and may sound cool and all the GPU side of it is Nvidia only, so again those with AMD GPU's would be left out again.. https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5ARP/System+Requirements
From the website:
...also it only has plugins/bridges for 3DS Max, Maya,, Cinema 4D, Houdini, and Katana.
A very quick render without proper light
Now the question is "If I use Arnold or similar other render engine then is it automatically optimize render, light and camera settings for realistic render?
The model is a custom model. The artist also told it took a lot of time to create that render https://twitter.com/SpriggsIan/status/1460449619951828992?s=20
Here is my attempt is still a long way off from c jade render but I try :) slightly tweaked skin but only slightly faithful 1964 specular render poly haven 8k hdri . Hdri which is possibly the only main lighting i use now after soo many, light sets being well not so good still learning iso and f/stop change on the first image
the first image I think looks thin no depth around the nose but now You are not getting seam lines when rendering in Secular I can now start to experiment without using the .99 .99 .99 setting in the transmitted colour
And finally ... Iray is more or less Mentalray. There are highly realistic renders on the net made with Mentalray, back then before Autodesk purchased Solid Angle (the company behind Arnold). So ... Iray at least technically can do a lot but not necessarily with pre-made out of the box assets and settings.
Digital Emily and Digital Louise are the most common assets on the net that are free and high quality to test skin shaders of different engines. If someone has the time, these assets can be imported to DAZ studio too and rendered using Iray, and then the renderers can be compared to Arnold, Vray and the rest.