Looking forward to Studio reaching heights like this...

takezo_3001

rrward said:

takezo_3001 said:

We will not get to this level when PAs insist on making textures with projected/drawn breasts/glutes and baked-in highlights..

I first got into rendering in the days of Poser 6 and Victoria 3. I remember having wierd issues with unwanted shadows on the chests of small-breasted female characters. I remember trying different lights, smoothing meshes, etc... only to realize that the PAs had baked the shadows onto the undersides of the breasts, which did help with large-breasted figures and the limitations of Firefly at the time, but ruined the skins for anything else. I've never been a fan of baked highlights and shadows.  

Yep, also the anti-realistic navel/nostril/glute creases are particularly jarring, but I blame the fact that a lot of "realistic" sources for these textures are simply re-fitted HD photos of people rather than seamless textures of various body zones of just the skin such as with the legs/thighs/calves/inner thighs/backs of the thighs/arms/underarms/forearms, tops/bottoms of the hands/feet, etc...

With G8.1 we ARE going that route with the various detail horizontal/verticle sizes, it's just too bad that the bump/normal/spec maps are undermined by having been made from deep creased/HD projected/drawn outlines and details baked into the textures... unfortunately a lot of the texture/character PAs have been using the same, old archaic method ever since the damned poser days and have yet to evolve their methods!

Kudos to those PAs that utilize G8.1 new texturing methods as far as details/AO/etc, but still deserve a bit of criticism for their post-poser diffuse map texturing methods! As far as animation is concerned we are woefully inept in comparison to other programs such as iClone and blender and I hope that DS5 will be a major step away from just static poses only!

 

Bendinggrass

Visuimag said:

Havos said:

PixelSploiting said:

 Well, I am not looking forward to Daz being good mainly for static bust/portrait renders with non-morphing static assets.

This level of realism is achieved with models and textures often made by this particular render. 

Any raytraced renderer can give this result when things are built for a single photo. It's never going to work with premade assets.

I agree with this completely. Comparing the two is rather meaningless.

Meaningless? No. Art forms can be compared even if the results won't be 1:1 to one another. It's a good enough barometer to use when guessing where things could be headed. Premade assets or not DAZ, with its current setup, isn't there. Whether it can be achieved or not remains to be seen, but I'm on the side of "yes". Did we hear anyone say it was meaningless to compare DAZ to MetaHumans? Well, no (at least not that I recall). All of it has its own look, sure, but the comparisons can be made as we're in the same medium with results familiar enough to the eye (maps, composition, lighting, situation). And those are game engine models. Here, we're at least comparing figures designed for offline.

 

@PixelSploiting: In regards to your second sentence, that's basically my point (although that's just part of it). "This particular render" (I'm guessing your talking about the engine) is something I wouldn't mind seeing DAZ go after. I believe Arnold would be a more expensive option, but there's more to it than Iray and I feel like that is one of the big reasons DAZ's renders still fall so short. Your artists could be as good (or better) than Spriggs, but if the tools he/she has to play with aren't quite up to the task, the result won't be as good. 

Now, I'm not saying I expect DAZ to adopt Arnold (though it would be absolutely lovely). Hell, I thought Octane was something they were going to add one day given the connection to DAZ, but when Iray hit the scene, I did what artists do; I played with the tools afforded to me (and greatly appreciated it). But, that was 2015. Things have changed and I'd just like to see, in addition to DAZ's native tools strengthening (ala DAZ 5), them adopt a more robust engine.

I am curious about this, in the sense of the huge amount of material, items, which have been produced for Iray. If a new/different render engine was introduced in DS, how would these items be used in the new engine, a conversion process built into DS? Or would it be a totally new set of otems for the new render engine? What are the most likely possibilities? 

Galaxy

Bendinggrass said:

Visuimag said:

Havos said:

PixelSploiting said:

 Well, I am not looking forward to Daz being good mainly for static bust/portrait renders with non-morphing static assets.

This level of realism is achieved with models and textures often made by this particular render. 

Any raytraced renderer can give this result when things are built for a single photo. It's never going to work with premade assets.

I agree with this completely. Comparing the two is rather meaningless.

Meaningless? No. Art forms can be compared even if the results won't be 1:1 to one another. It's a good enough barometer to use when guessing where things could be headed. Premade assets or not DAZ, with its current setup, isn't there. Whether it can be achieved or not remains to be seen, but I'm on the side of "yes". Did we hear anyone say it was meaningless to compare DAZ to MetaHumans? Well, no (at least not that I recall). All of it has its own look, sure, but the comparisons can be made as we're in the same medium with results familiar enough to the eye (maps, composition, lighting, situation). And those are game engine models. Here, we're at least comparing figures designed for offline.

 

@PixelSploiting: In regards to your second sentence, that's basically my point (although that's just part of it). "This particular render" (I'm guessing your talking about the engine) is something I wouldn't mind seeing DAZ go after. I believe Arnold would be a more expensive option, but there's more to it than Iray and I feel like that is one of the big reasons DAZ's renders still fall so short. Your artists could be as good (or better) than Spriggs, but if the tools he/she has to play with aren't quite up to the task, the result won't be as good. 

Now, I'm not saying I expect DAZ to adopt Arnold (though it would be absolutely lovely). Hell, I thought Octane was something they were going to add one day given the connection to DAZ, but when Iray hit the scene, I did what artists do; I played with the tools afforded to me (and greatly appreciated it). But, that was 2015. Things have changed and I'd just like to see, in addition to DAZ's native tools strengthening (ala DAZ 5), them adopt a more robust engine.

I am curious about this, in the sense of the huge amount of material, items, which have been produced for Iray. If a new/different render engine was introduced in DS, how would these items be used in the new engine, a conversion process built into DS? Or would it be a totally new set of otems for the new render engine? What are the most likely possibilities? 

Now the question is, if a new render engine can do something, when Iray can also do it, then why do we need a new render engine?

TJohn

I didn't see this link given (if you are interested in seeing a larger sampling of Ian Spriggs' work):

https://ianspriggs.artstation.com/

I follow this artist's work on Artstation. I'm always amazed. You can see the programs he uses listed for each item as well. Worth a look. 

PixelSploiting

In theory a model can be converted between different rendering engines as long as it has all the textures needed. In theory a model built and textured for IRay should be simple to convert into any PBR renderer. In theory they all are PBR.

Butch

Why should Daz be responsible for creating the realism that people want?  No one expects a camera to take perfectly lit, posed and cropped photos.  While the OP image is very well done, the artist did a lot of work to get there.

Daz gives us the foundation to use and, hopefully, improve on what the PA's provide.  Poses need to be tweaked (real people slouch).  Expressions need adjusting, unless your character's a silent movie actor.  Clothing/hair - don't get me started. 

The realism, or lack thereof, that people aspire to, needs to be imagined and created - it will never come out of a box.   

Visuimag

Galaxy said:

Bendinggrass said:

Visuimag said:

Havos said:

PixelSploiting said:

 Well, I am not looking forward to Daz being good mainly for static bust/portrait renders with non-morphing static assets.

This level of realism is achieved with models and textures often made by this particular render. 

Any raytraced renderer can give this result when things are built for a single photo. It's never going to work with premade assets.

I agree with this completely. Comparing the two is rather meaningless.

Meaningless? No. Art forms can be compared even if the results won't be 1:1 to one another. It's a good enough barometer to use when guessing where things could be headed. Premade assets or not DAZ, with its current setup, isn't there. Whether it can be achieved or not remains to be seen, but I'm on the side of "yes". Did we hear anyone say it was meaningless to compare DAZ to MetaHumans? Well, no (at least not that I recall). All of it has its own look, sure, but the comparisons can be made as we're in the same medium with results familiar enough to the eye (maps, composition, lighting, situation). And those are game engine models. Here, we're at least comparing figures designed for offline.

 

@PixelSploiting: In regards to your second sentence, that's basically my point (although that's just part of it). "This particular render" (I'm guessing your talking about the engine) is something I wouldn't mind seeing DAZ go after. I believe Arnold would be a more expensive option, but there's more to it than Iray and I feel like that is one of the big reasons DAZ's renders still fall so short. Your artists could be as good (or better) than Spriggs, but if the tools he/she has to play with aren't quite up to the task, the result won't be as good. 

Now, I'm not saying I expect DAZ to adopt Arnold (though it would be absolutely lovely). Hell, I thought Octane was something they were going to add one day given the connection to DAZ, but when Iray hit the scene, I did what artists do; I played with the tools afforded to me (and greatly appreciated it). But, that was 2015. Things have changed and I'd just like to see, in addition to DAZ's native tools strengthening (ala DAZ 5), them adopt a more robust engine.

I am curious about this, in the sense of the huge amount of material, items, which have been produced for Iray. If a new/different render engine was introduced in DS, how would these items be used in the new engine, a conversion process built into DS? Or would it be a totally new set of otems for the new render engine? What are the most likely possibilities? 

Now the question is, if a new render engine can do something, when Iray can also do it, then why do we need a new render engine?

I mean, why did we need Filament? Iray worked just fine. :P 

In all seriousness, and for the sake of not taking this too far off course, it's not being suggested that there is a need for any other engine. The sentiment has always been that it will be nice when the tools mature, and for the few of us that would be happy with another [in addition] engine, it's fine if that doesn't happen. But, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the option.

marble

Butch said:

Why should Daz be responsible for creating the realism that people want?  No one expects a camera to take perfectly lit, posed and cropped photos.  While the OP image is very well done, the artist did a lot of work to get there.

Daz gives us the foundation to use and, hopefully, improve on what the PA's provide.  Poses need to be tweaked (real people slouch).  Expressions need adjusting, unless your character's a silent movie actor.  Clothing/hair - don't get me started. 

The realism, or lack thereof, that people aspire to, needs to be imagined and created - it will never come out of a box.   

I have to slightly disagree here - and also with a lot of posts I have seen suggesting "they-just-want-a-make-art-button". I doubt that many - if anyone - here wants to drop a chatacter into a scene and render. We all want it to look the way we imagine. The only demand on the PA is to provide us with the best quality materials and textures available. The comments above about baked-in creases and shadows are valid and we should be beyond that by now because I was also making similar complaints 10 years ago. Otherwise the main fun in this hobby is doing exactly what you say we need to do - tweak poses, expressions, lighting, etc. But I find that most of my time is spent making morphs for clothes that refuse to fit anything but the base figure. Or trying to get hair to rest on a shoulder naturally. 

None of us are purists because, if we were, we wouldn't be here buying pre-made characters and clothes. I love making pictures but I get frustrated by constantly having to fix poke-through or make a smile morph because the expressions for G8 tend to be awful (I'm told that G8.1 is better but I don't have any 8.1 characters). If there's one "instant" button I wish for it is an instant drape for dForce.

Galaxy

Visuimag said:

Galaxy said:

Bendinggrass said:

Visuimag said:

Havos said:

PixelSploiting said:

 Well, I am not looking forward to Daz being good mainly for static bust/portrait renders with non-morphing static assets.

This level of realism is achieved with models and textures often made by this particular render. 

Any raytraced renderer can give this result when things are built for a single photo. It's never going to work with premade assets.

I agree with this completely. Comparing the two is rather meaningless.

Meaningless? No. Art forms can be compared even if the results won't be 1:1 to one another. It's a good enough barometer to use when guessing where things could be headed. Premade assets or not DAZ, with its current setup, isn't there. Whether it can be achieved or not remains to be seen, but I'm on the side of "yes". Did we hear anyone say it was meaningless to compare DAZ to MetaHumans? Well, no (at least not that I recall). All of it has its own look, sure, but the comparisons can be made as we're in the same medium with results familiar enough to the eye (maps, composition, lighting, situation). And those are game engine models. Here, we're at least comparing figures designed for offline.

 

@PixelSploiting: In regards to your second sentence, that's basically my point (although that's just part of it). "This particular render" (I'm guessing your talking about the engine) is something I wouldn't mind seeing DAZ go after. I believe Arnold would be a more expensive option, but there's more to it than Iray and I feel like that is one of the big reasons DAZ's renders still fall so short. Your artists could be as good (or better) than Spriggs, but if the tools he/she has to play with aren't quite up to the task, the result won't be as good. 

Now, I'm not saying I expect DAZ to adopt Arnold (though it would be absolutely lovely). Hell, I thought Octane was something they were going to add one day given the connection to DAZ, but when Iray hit the scene, I did what artists do; I played with the tools afforded to me (and greatly appreciated it). But, that was 2015. Things have changed and I'd just like to see, in addition to DAZ's native tools strengthening (ala DAZ 5), them adopt a more robust engine.

I am curious about this, in the sense of the huge amount of material, items, which have been produced for Iray. If a new/different render engine was introduced in DS, how would these items be used in the new engine, a conversion process built into DS? Or would it be a totally new set of otems for the new render engine? What are the most likely possibilities? 

Now the question is, if a new render engine can do something, when Iray can also do it, then why do we need a new render engine?

I mean, why did we need Filament? Iray worked just fine. :P 

In all seriousness, and for the sake of not taking this too far off course, it's not being suggested that there is a need for any other engine. The sentiment has always been that it will be nice when the tools mature, and for the few of us that would be happy with another [in addition] engine, it's fine if that doesn't happen. But, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the option.

Well, then I will ask for Cycle because it is the render engine everything is possible with this engine. You have only CPU, it's okey, you have non cuda GPU, it's okey, you have legacy GPU, it's okey, your GPU vram is not sufficient, it's okey, you want denoising, a lot of options are there, you want denoising while using CPU only render, it can handle complex rendering easily and many-many other features.

Also Eevee is another render engine, it is an example of a high-quality realtime render engine. It is almost as excellent as Unreal Engine.

TBorNot

Watching as other companies enter the arena of computing that is not traditional discrete computer, RAM and GPU cards.  Eventually, one will succeed.

kyoto kid

CHWT said:

kyoto kid said:

...also it only has plugins/bridges for 3DS Max, Maya,, Cinema 4D, Houdini, and Katana.

We have DAZ bridges to Maya, Cinema 4D and 3DS Max, Yay !!! … well, as if I had any of these high end softwares lol. So Arnold basically won't have a conversation with me. I am happy with what I already got with DS. Poor lighting kills realism, not matter what rendering engine one is using.

...indeed, many of us cannot afford pro grade software so it would be nice if there was a Daz plugin for it as there already is a bridge for Photoshop.

The Vertex Doctor

marble said:

 baked-in creases and shadows are valid and we should be beyond that by now

This is something I completely agree with. Unless you have your lights set up right, at the right angles, baked in shadows make your renders look off because YOUR shadows don't match baked in ones.

bluejaunte

j cade said:

Since we're talking render engines what specific features do people think iray lacks? No one ever really mentions one. I always see a lot render engine x is "more realistic" or iray "is bad at" whatever but it rarely goes into more detail.

 

Do folks think if you take the exact same maps, geometry etc and plug it in to Arnold it will just look "more real"

 

Random walk SSS, micro displacement?

joseft

While i agree with the sentiments regarding the artist having more effect than the software, i think that something people dont consider is while it may be technically possible to do similar things in studio and iRay, the reason why its not seen is its much easier to do in other software. The tools to achieve it are just better elsewhere. Which makes the people who do this kind of thing gravitate to them. 

That is not to knock Daz in any way, its just the reality. Daz never intended to compete with the alternatives i am talking about, thats not their business model.  

kyoto kid

...⬆this⬆

j cade

bluejaunte said:

j cade said:

Since we're talking render engines what specific features do people think iray lacks? No one ever really mentions one. I always see a lot render engine x is "more realistic" or iray "is bad at" whatever but it rarely goes into more detail.

 

Do folks think if you take the exact same maps, geometry etc and plug it in to Arnold it will just look "more real"

 

Random walk SSS, micro displacement?

 Teeeeechnically speaking random walk sss is merely an approximation of what we have in iray, so it would not improve physical accuracy. from arnolds website

 Unlike the empirical BSSRDF method based on diffusion theory, the randomwalk method actually traces below the surface with a real random walk and makes no assumptions about the geometry being locally flat. This means it can take into account anisotropic scattering like brute-force volume rendering [what we have in Iray]

with that said I would 100% like an alternative to brute force volume rendering, as it would definitely improve ease of use. It would probably be faster to render, and you could do things like blend it with opacity

 

I'd definitely also like a robust system for micro displacement.

 

Similarly, on the technically not more physically accurate but masively improving quality of life: words cannot describe my desire to be able to make surfaces not cast shadows. Its currently almost impossibe to do proper refraction on the eyes because it casts horrible shadows

 

Also Iray still has some issues with shadow terminator errors. I actually asked about that one on the iray dev blog and they are apparently working on it so fingers crossed

Sevrin

Meh.  This stuff is not comparable with what DS is meant to accomplish.  All we see are static poses. Show me these same faces in a variety of lighting scenarios, angles and expressions, and then we can talk about comparisons with DS.

evilded777

Dude is an artist. Pro-level. Studio is hobbyist software. Users are (mostly) hobbyists.

Does anything more really need to be said?

FSMCDesigns

marble said:

Butch said:

Why should Daz be responsible for creating the realism that people want?  No one expects a camera to take perfectly lit, posed and cropped photos.  While the OP image is very well done, the artist did a lot of work to get there.

Daz gives us the foundation to use and, hopefully, improve on what the PA's provide.  Poses need to be tweaked (real people slouch).  Expressions need adjusting, unless your character's a silent movie actor.  Clothing/hair - don't get me started. 

The realism, or lack thereof, that people aspire to, needs to be imagined and created - it will never come out of a box.   

I have to slightly disagree here - and also with a lot of posts I have seen suggesting "they-just-want-a-make-art-button". I doubt that many - if anyone - here wants to drop a chatacter into a scene and render. We all want it to look the way we imagine. The only demand on the PA is to provide us with the best quality materials and textures available. The comments above about baked-in creases and shadows are valid and we should be beyond that by now because I was also making similar complaints 10 years ago. Otherwise the main fun in this hobby is doing exactly what you say we need to do - tweak poses, expressions, lighting, etc. But I find that most of my time is spent making morphs for clothes that refuse to fit anything but the base figure. Or trying to get hair to rest on a shoulder naturally. 

None of us are purists because, if we were, we wouldn't be here buying pre-made characters and clothes. I love making pictures but I get frustrated by constantly having to fix poke-through or make a smile morph because the expressions for G8 tend to be awful (I'm told that G8.1 is better but I don't have any 8.1 characters). If there's one "instant" button I wish for it is an instant drape for dForce.

I bet there are way more here that want just a character to drop into a scene and then render based off tons of forums posts I have seem over the years.(I just replied to another user in another thread that thinks users here should never have to use image editing software to ever edit a texture) Your post is also a good example of users having different uses and needs. I have never made a morph for clothing to fit anything other than the base figure and all my characters I use are custom..

I used to be on the "purists" route before I discovered poser and DAZ. And while highly rewarding, it was always very frustrating since I couldn't create the image in my head the way I wanted. With DAZ and other means we have today, I can and much more efficiently, but not as rewarding for me though.

nonesuch00

I don't know, lots of decent scenes I've rendered without much more than a buy, drag & drop, & render in DAZ Studio. I will never do post work, nothing wrong for those who do though,  because it defeats my wish for a 3D composition program & products that makes professional results for an amateur artist. 

Visuimag

joseft said:

While i agree with the sentiments regarding the artist having more effect than the software, i think that something people dont consider is while it may be technically possible to do similar things in studio and iRay, the reason why its not seen is its much easier to do in other software. The tools to achieve it are just better elsewhere. Which makes the people who do this kind of thing gravitate to them. 

That is not to knock Daz in any way, its just the reality. Daz never intended to compete with the alternatives i am talking about, thats not their business model.  

Exactly. That's all my argument has been. The tools are stronger elsewhere! The good news, I'd say, is that DAZ's tools are maturing and will get there! Of course, the compeitive side is more fun than necessary, which is why I said I look forward to DAZ getting there. It isn't a requirement, but it will get there. Just go back to any pre-2015 renders and compare them to any really reall good ones after. The difference was startospheres apart.