Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Realtime mode (the preview window) lacks some features, for the sake of speed. For the most accuracy, you need to do a regular render using Photoreal mode (the default when you click the Render button).
http://www.nvidia-arc.com/products/iray/rendering.html
1. low light - evening sunsky ...just some iterations... a bad gradient in the background to show the glossy better
2. sun - 11 or 12 am or so..(not sure anymore - but definitly a time where a "normal" photographer dont take portraits outside )...
i like the results (extrem light situations).. will continue with my texture process.. more tests..
Yeah, that render came out so dark it looks like a bad preview I know :P lol
It really was rendered though and in photoreal mode. :)
The screenshot I posted was in iray preview mode when I took it to show the settings.
This is when I found out the camera ,for some reason, wasn't working correctly.Changing the focal distance was changing the luminance of the headlamp, and moving the camera on it's z axis was changing that focal distance value.It's not supposed to do that as far I know.So I figured that the camera wasn't working and I deleted that camera and made a new one.That fixed it.
The next renders were much brighter with the same headlamp settings.
Right now I'm fiddling with the new settings Andy posted for the spotlight setup.
Very interesting thread, I'm learning a lot.Thank you all for sharing :)
If you're in the habit of using the mouse on the magnifying icon, like I am, just remember that the left mouse moves the camera closer and farther away, which for this you don't want. Holding down the right mouse button makes the camera zoom.
What we need are memoiry dots for cameras. If you're a Poser user, you know what I mean. Heck of a lot easier than using presets under some menu or in the Content folders.
I lament the lack of memory dots pretty much every time I use studio. I create pose presets, but, as you say, they're just not as convenient.
@pearbear
The renders look great. Some of the best skin I've seen. your settings please? I'm having real trouble following the multitude of changes and don't have any experience of tweaking or creating individual maps,
Thanks fastbike1! My settings for those renders are pretty much just what AndyGrimm laid out starting on page 17 of this thread. I buckled in and followed his step-by-step setup, starting with the way he set his lights up for testing a skin. I've been working on a lot of my own custom displacement, normal, and bump maps in z-brush and photoshop, so I've incorprated those into the mix, but the way AndyGrimm has been describing the creation of a skin MAT is excellent and I'd recommend following that and experimenting with adjusting it as you want. My settings are just like he described, but tweaked a bit when needed to suit my own custom texture maps. Here's a couple of new test renders using my version of his "flash" lighting and the default sky/sun.
@pearbear well thank you - i am glad i could help :-)...
on the renders using my flashligth setup - do you use displacment for the brows? they are good!
@fastbike1 ... there is no map tweaking needed - you can get a good looking result just with base material parameters - just learn to trust your own eyes while going through my example workflow.....
I talk now about maps - because i try to improve what you can see here from me and pearbear - i continue with my own experimental test series.
Thanks! There is a custom displacement and normal map over the whole face exported from a Z-Brush morph, and I made a mask for the eybrows that I placed in the Translucency Color and Glossy Color channels. I made it by taking the color face texture into Photoshop, converting it to black and white, and crushing the values down so that the whole face's skin was pure white and the hairs in the brow were black, to prevent the eyebrows from being shiny and translucent.
Well, I think Andy's advice about the SSS reflectance tint has me going in the right direction again. I think now I'll move her into the studio and use the recommended lighting. Then it's time to work on the glossiness/sheen. She's still too dry right now I think.
@Gr00vus .. looking good now
.... thats a promising start.
Looks good so far. Your Glossy Specular is in the range of the specularity of gemstones, your reflections might turn out to be a bit too strong that way. Try Andy's RGB 51 51 51 or a linear value of 0.0283429 (in each color channel).
Experimenting with Roughness Maps, to control the gloss on different locations on a face or body part (PBR Metallicity/Roughness Mix, for an odd reason glossmaps created by PBR guidelines seem to doesn't work correctly in DAZ's IrayUber PBR Specular/Glossiness Mix; normally Glossiness 1.0 means full gloss... but on the IU a 1.0 get's you the same result as a 0.0. Odd).
The "No_Roughmap" is done using the Andy-Method on Victoria 6 "Belle", Glossy Layered Weight at 1.0, Glossy Roughness at 0.5. No Top Coat, just Base. Bump strength is 2.5 on the body and 5.0 on face, lips, nostrils, ears and head.
The "Roughmap_01" one has the same Glossy Layered Weight, Glossy Roughness at 1.0 with a hand painted roughness map plugged into the texture slot, using different monochrome colors to determine different Glossy Roughness strengths (circa): 0.48 on her nose, 0.50 between the eyebrows, 0.55 on the forehead, 0.60 on cheeks, chin and around the mouth, 0.69 everything else (for starters only on the Template 1 material surfaces).
I guess I'd to raise the cheeks and lips a bit, tune down the gap between upper lip and nose and add a tad more to eyelid gloss.
i noted simular problems with maps - ! "but on the IU a 1.0 get's you the same result as a 0.0. Odd)."...
i'm still testing Iray against my experience and real world values - one of the strange problem i face is higlight clipping (horror of photographers)... i use values which should CLIP but they dont do - like Iray has a make it easy good looking for everybody filter somewhere
.. the face starts to clip using 500k lumen /128 sec.. which means about a > 5MIO lumen flash.. hmmm... the best ones i know bring max 1. Mio lumen1/1250 sec - that's really power!).. and they clip from 1 meter even with 1/500sec . exposure.on a face (overexposed!) Do the math - something is wrong here 
.
if i stay in our flashligth setting and use real world flash values...Lumen up - > 100k/128 sec... i only get clipping in the glossy highligths - but well the half face should start to clip to 255, 255, 255...(specular does not clip? well it should!)
Also i see a extrem GLOSSY differences on MESH densities.. Hmmmm strange`? that's not pbr.... set bump to ZERO.. and check the glossy seems on the head(face/skull seems)!..
If i have so much differences just because of the mesh - well i dont see the point anymore to fiddle between 1-41 or 149
However - i DO like Nvidia iray (i am a junky now:-).. i can make amazing renders and close to real skins (cheating the eye)! BUt it is NOT physically accurate!...far away
"I lament the lack of memory dots pretty much every time I use studio. I create pose presets, but, as you say, they're just not as convenient. "
You can do something very similar using Puppeteer. This tutorial of mine is a few years old, but it might help you understand how it works.
http://snowsultan.deviantart.com/art/Using-Puppeteer-277864776
@AndyGrimm - I'm just guessing, but since highlight clipping is actually a photographic artifact due to the limitations of the dynamic range in analog or digital photography, and not something we generally experience with the naked eye maybe this isn't a bug and just a matter of tonemapper settings? Without a real manual, it's hard to say but it seems like the default tonemapper settings aren't trying to mimic a camera film or sensor profile. But that limited dynamic range can maybe be more accurately simulated by adjusting the gamma and "Burn Highlights" settings in the Iray tonemapper, trying to replicate the profile of a film stock or digital camera sensor. Like how the tonemappers of some unbiased renderers have gamma and color presets for Fuji, Kodak, Agfacolor etc.
"But that limited dynamic range can maybe be more accurately simulated by adjusting the gamma and "Burn Highlights" settings in the Iray tonemapper,"
Oh yes - burn highligths - crush blacks ...here is the "make it looking good" for everybody filter (and the missing contrast in White and Black which i always noted).. standard value is 0.25..... natural would be 1. I overlooked that 0.25 is set there by standard. thx. good iray - smart pearbear
example - BurnHighlights 0.25 - 1
----
Adjusting this values - would make many of the renders posted here looking more "real"! But way harder to control.
Burn Highlights - Adjusts the upper part of the “tone mapping” of the image; how much “over exposure” is allowed. This setting controls exactly how the high dynamic range imagery is adapted to fit into the white-to-black range of a display device. As the value is decreased from 1 towards 0, high intensities will become more and more “compressed” into lower intensities. When the value is 0, an infinite input value maps to white output value; i.e., over-exposure is no longer possible. A good default value is 0.5.
Crush Blacks - Adjusts the lower part of the “tone mapping” of the image. When the upper part of the dynamic range becomes compressed, it naturally loses some of its contrast. This often results in a desire to regain some “punch” in the image by increasing the intensity of the lower range values. When this value is 0, the lower intensity range is linear. When raised towards 1, a strong “toe” region is added to the transfer curve so that low intensities get (softly) pushed more towards black.
for texture tweaking -> to figure out what's wrong in base colors (saturation, black, whites...)... thise values should be set to
BurnHighlights : 1
Crush Blacks: 0
That's for advanced Users - not a advice for my easy skin settings - just saying.
A non compressed render shows more cleary which color and low,mid,high tones should be shifted to black or hue...
example -> i see the problematic red tone range now way better...
Well, then... use simpler meshes with an even density.
Choosing a valid IOR still makes a difference. 
What, just now? Where have you been the past months?
That's why it's called Physically Based Rendering... Iray is made with everyday rendering in mind, and so it uses some very simplifed methods to simulate reality, for Physical Accurate Rendering you'd need a more advanced hardware, like a Piz Daint. That would limit the amount of potential costomers. 
Take absorption for example: I know I can't get it a 100% accurate, since there are some necessary parameters abscent in MDL, like determining layer thickness in cm/mm, etc. That fore I can't avoid that light will shine right through a human figure in any way, but what I can do is limit the amount coming out the other side to an amount that our eyes won't notice that easily. A basic knowledge about physics, and how our PBR renderer tend to fake it, makes me avoid some faux-pas like DAZ did with their 1.0 on the red Transmitted Color RGB channel on their actual Generation 7 characters, or those who use some greys on Glossy Color. You can still use real-world measured data to ease your workflow and spend less time tinkering around. NVIDIA currently work on a database named vMaterials. Unfortunately it doesn't got released yesterday.
Here are some further skin tests using light presets from DimensionTheory's iRadiace Studio HDRs, and also testing out a dude skin setup (where we can get a bit crazier with the skin microdetails).
@Arnold C...."What, just now? Where have you been the past months?" - WELL i spent the last months NOT fiddling with iray skins
..
@pearbear ... Your HDRi set looks as it does what i recommended using 3 - 4 photo lights..
I came a little bit closer to my goal - starting to like what i see ( using now Burn Highlights 0.5 - and Crush Black with 0.1 - that gives me a little bit more contrast in faces (more details= and better control adjusting textures in Photoshop.....
Here some HDRi - standard blue dome plus flash
2. Pixar..dome only
Standard camera
I use White Point set to 0.96 (250), Burn Highlights to 1.0 and Crush Blacks to 0.05 which, on my outdoor scenes, appears to give better contrast. At least to me on my screen it does (which is calibrated
).
@Arnold C.... " I guess I'd to raise the cheeks and lips a bit, tune down the gap between upper lip and nose and add a tad more to eyelid gloss."
yes - the gap between upper lips and nose is always to glossy compearing with photoreference.
@Fishtales ... good to know that i am not the only one which noted that (contrast).
I'm looking for some recommended free HDRi maps (which work out of the box) for skin testing - any suggestions ?
Outside/inside/bluesky/cloudy?
I've used one or two of these and they are reasonable quality.
https://www.hdri-hub.com/hdrishop/freesamples/freehdri
They are free for commercial use too.
yes - a collection mix .. different lightsituations but with a quality which generates enough shadows and working with ISO 100-200 standard settings /128 - F8)... checking your link.
These renders are amazing!! Would love a break-down of your material set-up!! @_@ Love the asymmetrical face too! It adds far more realism to her face.
(I did follow this thread from page 17, but I got a little lost in places...)
Also, LOVE the guy. What a character! :)
It's not free, but if you're looking for a variety collection of HDRIs that are ready to go in Iray out of the box, DimensionTheory's Real World HDRI set is great. Unlike most free HDRIs I've found, the sun makes realistic looking shadows and the DAZ specific settings such as Dome Radius are already set up for you. They are also set up to be used at the default camera settings like you're using.
Here are a few test renders done with the HDRIs from that set.
Thanks! I'm tied up today, but I'll try to post something about my settings and some screen shots in the thread later this week. But it's very similar to AndyGrimm's process!
So I'm starting in with following along with Andy's process. Here's the same skin settings I had in my previous post, but now I've turned off the hdri and put 4 spotlilghts in the scene. Each light is set to a rectangle geometry, 5000K color temperature, 15,000 lumens, 180 degree spread angle, default 10x10 scale. The tone mapping ISO is 200. I know the eyes and fingernails aren't right yet, I just would like some feedback on whether the lighting is suitable for continuing on or if it needs adjusting. Once I get the lighting down, I'll move on to experimenting with the normal/bump strength.
@Gr00vus .... Yes... looking good....
I use different strong lights`- so that i can see the skin also in lowlight...
Mostly just 2 lights are in use... (a keylight and a backlight)... the goal is to have shadows and light in her face.. (we want make sure that shadows break smooth, higlights dont clip to the translucency color, and details are still in the texture.... it is NOT about making a nice photostudio image .... it is about seeing the skin under different light situations using neutral lightcolor 5k in different strengths.
TIP: set your keyligth about 30degrees left to your camera.... use 15k lumen.... your fill-ligth 30degrees to the rigth ...try 6k lumen... your backlights diagonal.. set them on different heights... little bit above the head.
Just post some first renders where you turn on/off lights around her - and i will tell you if i see something which is not right... it sounds more difficult then it is
For testing without shadows (glossy and skin) you use the flashlight!
You can add the flashlight also to this scene....
The hardest Test is switching to sunsky at 12am - if it looks acceptable there you are close to a good skinshader