So Bright White?
marble
Posts: 7,500
Perhaps it is the way I have my lighting set up or tonemapping or something but I wonder if I am the only one who constantly needs to go into the Surfaces tab and tone down light colours, especially whites? For some reason many materials are set to 100% white (even if they have a texure image). In my renders these objects stand out like beacons and look very unrealistic so I go in and tone them down to a shade of grey. Also settings like Gloss and Top Coat are often set to 100% white.
Any thoughts?
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The colour and the map are multiplied, 100% white just means you get exactly the colour specified by the map (because 1 * x = x). If the surface is too bright and the map value is reasonable then the issue may be one of the other properties on the surface.
Not sure what you mean by "map value".
The colour of that pixel on the texture
OK - still not sure how it is possible to multiply a colour but I was never any use at mathematics. The point is that reducing the Base Colour white parameters from 100% (1.0 1.0 1.0) to something more grey fixes the bright glare on almost all products so, unless and until I can figure out what other parameters can correctly fix it, I will have to continue with my workaround.
So often it is claimed that the PA has done it right and the user is at fault but I'm not so sure. That's why I asked if I am the only one experiencing this. Perhaps I am just too picky and that glaringly bright surfaces is how others see the world. My world is toned down somewhat.
I've been reducing the Base Colour for years in order to fix the "Bright White". Sometimes I have to reduce it significantly to a mid or deep gray. I don't like doing it this way as I prefer the map at/near 100% (as intended?). Even a simple material with only one map in Base Colour and no other parameters active has this issue.
Would be keen to hear of how others are addressing this too - Gamma reduction, etc.
Well thanks for confirming that I am really not the only one. I suspect a lot of us resort to the shade-of-grey method.
This is a common misconception. Unfortunately some guys invented that "pure white" is not good for pbr and all the white colors are to be grayed down. First the srgb white is not pure white, physically speaking, it's just a mid intensity white that's good as any other color, for a "normal" light source. Then it is true that if light gets very strong it can become an increasingly "pure white" that is "difficult to see" when the linear space is mapped back to srgb to show the rendering. But this is so in real cameras and human eyes too. Try to look at the sun in a bright summer day and you get what I mean. It also happens the same in photography when you shot a windows from inside a room, it will show white dpending on the sensor quality of the camera.
Q. So how do you deal with this white color ?
A. The same as you deal with all the other colors. You use tone mapping to setup a mid white and the contrast and saturation levels. Specifically the "exposure" and "burn highlights" parameters are what's more interesting in this case. Below the same white torus with burn highlights on and off, at the default exposure. It is absolutely wrong to scale down the white to gray in the material to deal with this.
Padone, thank you for that excellent information
Recently, instead of reducing the material colour, I've been reducing Environment Intesity (if using HDRI) or Light parameters (if using spots, etc,). I will now begin looking at your tone mapping info
Much like myself - I do tinker with Environment settings and HDRi but I rarely venture into the Tonemapping settings other than to tweak the EV slightly. Things like White Point, Burn and Crush are settings I don't know anything about and the camera settings (shutter speed, F.Stop, ISO) don't seem to work as I expected from my days pointing an old SLR camera with those dials.
@marble Understanding and using the camera settings and tone mapper is essential to produce realistic renderings. Often people focus only on materials, that are very important indeed, but without proper managing of light through camera settings and tone mapping you won't get a realistic rendering. For example, as odd as it may seem, if you show a 3D application to a professional photographer, the first thing he will reach for is lights and camera settings, then he will probably achieve a realistic rendering in just some hours of experimenting with the software. Because he understands the lights and camera.
I tend to use a white point if 250 which tones down the whites, the only white in nature that is close to pure white, 255, is snow :) I also set Crush Blacks and Burn Whites to 0.96 which is the Contrast, these I sometimes move to either get less or a different contrast between white and balck. I also play with the White Point adding more red to get real white when using a reddish light, say in a room with an electric light bulb, colour temperature 2750 to 3500, which clears the red cast from the image and the colours come true, I do the same with my camera when shooting indoors.
Fishtales, thanks for taking the time to illuminate (ha,ha) this thread further. Appreciate your input on Tone Mapping
Is this just trial and error or do you know where the settings should be for any given scene? I started this thread so I should make the effort to find some explanations somewhere.
@Padone I go back to what I was saying earlier - the camera settings do not seem to relate to real world cameras as I remember them. I'd be interested to hear from your professional photographer on that score because I was just a holiday snapper with an SLR rather than a pocket compact camera.
By the way and by and large I am quite happy with my renders. There are things that I don't like such as these over-bright materials and my methods of dealing with them are probably technically all wrong but when I compare mine to some of the examples posted on these forums, I'd take mine a lot of the time. Of course, there are real artists here who know their stuff and I can't get anywhere near that quality but I'm a hobbyist not an artist. Still, even a hobbyist like me can learn better ways of doing things. Another thing I don't like is the sharpness of outlines, edges and textures. I've tried to introduce a little blur but then I lose detail so I can't find a happy medium. Depth of field also helps sometimes. If there's one thing that screams 3D render to me it is that hardness which is so unlike a real world image.
@marble
I use settings that I would use when taking photographs with my DSLR relating to the scene, lighting and lens used. For outside in the sun ISO 100 and change the F number, you might go from 8 to 16 or in between; speed can be left or set higher and leave the F number alone as that also allows more light into the lens. Indoor scenes I use ISO 200-400 and F 4.5 or lower if the lighting is really low and also lower the speed to 60 or below just to tweak it some more. It is difficult for someone who doesn't do photography to get to grips with all the intricacies used, I do it all automatically, so I wouldn't get bogged down trying to understand it all and do what gets you the results that suits you.
Ok, understood. When I mentioned my old SLR I was talking pre-digital so they were film settings. So I get the impression that the F-Stop in DAZ Studio doesn't relate to what I remember setting on my old camera. Perhaps I'm confusing the F-Stop in Tonemapping to the F-Stop in the Depth of Field settings on the DAZ cameras.
I've just watched a YouTube video which briefly explains most of the tonemapped settings but I need to find better explanations of whitepoint and crushed blacks, etc. That video doesn't really explain them well.
The F-Stop works the same in Studio as it does on any camera whether digital or film. It only works for DOF when set in the Camera Settings but not in Tone Mapping. The F-Stop in Tone Mapping sets the amount of available light which enters the lens, the same as in photography, with 22 letting in less than 1.4 so 22 for very bright sun and 1.4 for very dim light. ISO also lets more or less light into the lens with 100 for sunlight and 800 for nearly no light. The speed setting is the same with 256 for really bright sunlight and 1 for nearly no light. In photography though the speed setting is used to freeze action or cause blurring of fast moving subjects like running water which it doesn't do in studio.
I clicked on the link to your renders - boy they are good. You are obviously one of those artists I mentioned in a previous post. You seem to have found the way to avoid that image hardness I mentioned above so your renders are far more realistic looking than many of the 3D renders I see online (DevArt, etc.)
@marble As for the "sharpness" of pictures, I guess it's probably how you manage the camera focus. In photography it is often used a high aperture and some zoom both to reduce the portrait perspective and to isolate the figure from the environment. For example try with focal lenght 400 mm and f-stop 22 to get what I mean.
I'm no artist just a hobbyist. I try lots of things within Studio that I use in Photography. Everything is there in Studio and I don't use anything else to make them 'better' :)
I have a Default scene that loads at startup with all my default settings and a camera and portrait camera, which is set at 135mm, and then set the f-stop in Tone Mapping and if I want DOF change it in the camera settings.
@Fishtales Thank you so much for sharing your workflow and experience. This is proof enough for me that a photographer can get much better how to deal with the camera and tone mapping.