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Fiddling with Iray skin settings...

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  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,466
    AndyGrimm said:

    @timmins.william

    i confess that some things which i would say more sensible in my native language come over a little bit to harsh here...

    the point was - that in the beginning there was really a lot of advice how to make renders with 100 mio lumens ...  and a handfull of posters which said otherwise just disapeared in the thread jungle here ...

    and this made people Not use it ...  as ZarconDeeGrissom just told above.

    Nothing personal or so smiley

    I understand... I always take a dreep breath when I read your posts, understanding you speak English better than I speak your native tongue... which is not at all.

    And I have not disappeared. I still can't stand the overblown lights, though I sometimes bow and accept them if I don't feel like re-balancing everything.

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,466
    Khory said:

    My first two iray products were done on a 7 year old computer with no cuda cores. I did hundreds and hundreds of tests. Yes, the product did take longer than a comprable 3dl product would have but not that much longer. Promos too less time than they would have to get similar results because I would have had to use uberenviroment lights. I had plenty of promo images run 12 or 14 hours so for me Iray was notably faster even on the old computer. I think if you stuck to the simplest light set ups then 3dl was much faster, if you branched out though it started to slow dramaticaly.

    I know that movies use excessively bright lighting but I think that us using lights like that has pitfalls. For one thing they use makeup that has a dramatic orange cast to it to keep the faces from going white. I don't think we want to have to do that.

    +1, sometimes you still gotta use tricks from film... it is, after all, the metaphor we are working in.. photorealistic.

  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854
    edited December 2015
    RAMWolff said:
    Khory said:

    Your needs as a texture artist who works on characters is going to be different than most peoples Ramwolf. At least initaly you need a fairly bright uncolored light set up that will give you a super even light without casting much shadow. That set is used to look for seams and other errors. You wouldn't want to use an HDRI that has much going on because of how HDRI lights work and it could lead you to look for false flaws. Nor do you want color initially because your adjustments would be dependent on the color temperature of the image. In other words if you use lights that are warm you may go with a skin tone that is too cool. The same is true of lights that are very cool. You need to avoid to much color shifting from the lights in the beginning.

    If anyone is wondering what I mean about how HDRI lights work the best way to understand is to load a sphere in the center of an empty scene that will be lit only by the HDRI light. Do a render and look at the colors and how they play out on the surface of the sphere. If the sphere is predominanty blue/green then it would be considered cool. If by some qwirk of fate it is more red/yellow then it would be warm. Most HDRI will be very blury on the sphere but occasionally your going to find one that has clear areas where there is dark and light even on the sphere. How the colors and light/dark play on that sphere is how they will act on every figure in the scene.

    Is there a freebie light set I can use to study that will give me a setup like that?  I'd be most interested.  Hell, I'd pay for a light set like that.  I'd use it to study how it's set up but would love a tutorial on HOW to set one up more than anything else. 

    After getting home from work I did edit my original post as there were parts that were rushed in writing them out as I had a clien that just walked in the door.. sorry for any confusing bits!  lol

    Don't say I don't love you special... I've thrown together a quicky HDRI that should serve you reasonably well. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t4ew11o9cojepmh/Thrown Together hdri.zip?dl=0 To use it just go to render settings/ environment and substitute it for what ever environment map you have in there. I don't think it is too bright for seam checking but if you think so you can always decease (or increase for that matter) the light levels. You will note that the old settings for skin are very dark even in this light level. The new ones (I just put the ones I had done for arabella over nina so it is admittedly sloppy) are much lighter and more realistic.

    Light level test.jpg
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    Mina New settings.jpg
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    Mina old settings.jpg
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    Post edited by Khory on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,045

    Velvet is in the OmniShader, which I THINK everyone has access to, not a purchased whatever.
    I've seen fabric effects with Omnishader that actually surpass the realism of Iray. But then everything else, not so much.

     

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412
    Khory said:
    RAMWolff said:
    Khory said:

    Your needs as a texture artist who works on characters is going to be different than most peoples Ramwolf. At least initaly you need a fairly bright uncolored light set up that will give you a super even light without casting much shadow. That set is used to look for seams and other errors. You wouldn't want to use an HDRI that has much going on because of how HDRI lights work and it could lead you to look for false flaws. Nor do you want color initially because your adjustments would be dependent on the color temperature of the image. In other words if you use lights that are warm you may go with a skin tone that is too cool. The same is true of lights that are very cool. You need to avoid to much color shifting from the lights in the beginning.

    If anyone is wondering what I mean about how HDRI lights work the best way to understand is to load a sphere in the center of an empty scene that will be lit only by the HDRI light. Do a render and look at the colors and how they play out on the surface of the sphere. If the sphere is predominanty blue/green then it would be considered cool. If by some qwirk of fate it is more red/yellow then it would be warm. Most HDRI will be very blury on the sphere but occasionally your going to find one that has clear areas where there is dark and light even on the sphere. How the colors and light/dark play on that sphere is how they will act on every figure in the scene.

    Is there a freebie light set I can use to study that will give me a setup like that?  I'd be most interested.  Hell, I'd pay for a light set like that.  I'd use it to study how it's set up but would love a tutorial on HOW to set one up more than anything else. 

    After getting home from work I did edit my original post as there were parts that were rushed in writing them out as I had a clien that just walked in the door.. sorry for any confusing bits!  lol

    Don't say I don't love you special... I've thrown together a quicky HDRI that should serve you reasonably well. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t4ew11o9cojepmh/Thrown Together hdri.zip?dl=0 To use it just go to render settings/ environment and substitute it for what ever environment map you have in there. I don't think it is too bright for seam checking but if you think so you can always decease (or increase for that matter) the light levels. You will note that the old settings for skin are very dark even in this light level. The new ones (I just put the ones I had done for arabella over nina so it is admittedly sloppy) are much lighter and more realistic.

    Thanks!!!!  Yea, hinting at the other thing, lol. keeping the skin setting brightness consistent with other stuff, lol.  So that is a play between light settings and camera settings. So, if I keep the light settings on default, what ballpark tone mapping settings do you suggest for the HDRI, or have 'we' not gotten that far yet?

  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910
    edited December 2015

    the only thing what i do for neutral photometric lights is setting the color to 4.8 - 5k...
    6.5k is used for the standard photometric lights ..... which is a little bit a to cold light...now when we go in a strong sunny HDRi... the light there is more 5k.... if we use standard pohtometric light color to setup our skins then we get a tad to much warm and reddish for Hdris because of this...

    neutral white is around 4.8k - 5k....  

    actually i dont understand why standard lightcolor  in Iray is set to 6500

    colorchart.jpg
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    Post edited by AndyGrimm on
  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412
    AndyGrimm said:

    the only thing what i do for neutral photometric lights is setting the color to 4.8 - 5k...
    6.5k is used for the standard photometric lights ..... which is a little bit a to cold light...now when we go in a strong sunny HDRi... the light there is more 5k.... if we use standard pohtometric light color to setup our skins then we get a tad to much warm and reddish for Hdris because of this...

    neutral white is around 4.8k - 5k....  

    actually i dont understand why standard lightcolor  in Iray is set to 6500

    I think, that is the 'True white' of a sorts, at least for Iray threw Studio? For those of us that want 'Photo neutral' or whatever.

  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854

    Those images are all done with the default everything. It is overall a pretty bright light so lets say it is about as bright as a sunny day. If you want some room to add photometric I would lower the percentage on the intensity. If you do that you may need to adjust tone mapping depending on how far down you turn the intensity down. It was fine with tone mapping set at 200 when the intensity was turned down to .75 and 1 3000 30x30 rectangle. I've done a test of that and another example that shows how colors influence the skin tone. Of course since the planes are between the figure and the light they are also cutting out the white light that would hit the figure and adding the colored reflected light which wouldn't be quite as  bright.

     

    200 tm.jpg
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    red and green test.jpg
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  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910
    edited December 2015

    i come from the advertising and photoindustry....   (i dont say anymore, "thats how it is" here laugh).....  we used over decades for neutral  colors  (photo neutral) 5k.... for Photo and Print..
    5 k is horizontal daylight  5.5k vertical (sky)....   photolamps do usally 4.8 - 5,5k  because of this.

    Post edited by AndyGrimm on
  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854

    Andy when your talking about working on textures you need as little influence as possible color wise so that you can "see" the colors that your working with. I'm not talking about final settings but more "are there odd blotches or texture changes" that need to be dealt with before anything is final. Just as an easy example. If a character creator is piecing together a skin texture they need to see if the texture blends seamlessly, if there are any funky patches caused by cloning to get rid of seams etc. Those stand out more if there is no color going on in the image. I also think its important to be able to see what color something is before it is influenced by different lighting types. If nothing else it gives me a base line to start with color wise.

    I would think that idealy the next color check would be with something that was predominated by your direct sun color. It is a color that we sort of ignore out of habit so it would have the least influence on us visualy.

    The main thing is to stay away from lights that have a strong warm or cool color when your trying to get a base line. If I am working on a character setting that I expect to use in many lighting situations and I have set it all up with a very blue or green light I'm going to be influenced about what I see as "skin color" and want to make stronger adjustments in the sss reflectance tint than might really be nessisary. When I move that character to an outdoor scene there is a good chance that the skin will look too warm because of the earlier influence.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,045

    You know, it's probably just easier to set temp to 0 and use the flat white emission color.

     

  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854

    Depends on the end goal. If your going for a very even all over light you end up with a score of lights that have to be placed just right so you don't get shadowing. Or you can have an HDRI that will do pretty much the same thing in one go.

  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910
    edited December 2015

    @Yes Khory absolutly

    The color for a neutral setup is 5 - 5.5k....  this is where our eyes have the "reference" for seeing the full colorspectrum as neutral as possible...  That's why the standard spotlight color in Daz Iray should be set to 5k... 

    i think this is one of the factors which add to the reddish/non natural skin tone problems on many skin settings - people which dont know about colormanagment - start with wrong color temperatur.. and the result is... to reddish in sunlight - and strange blueish/greenish in a overcast diffuse HDRi...​

    Post edited by AndyGrimm on
  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910

    as far as i know the 6500k in Daz Iray come from the standard whitepoint color on RGB monitors.... ... but does not work anymore as soon as we use HDRi light. /because we simulate reality, a way lower whitepoint)...aka sun at midday has 5k... we know this is WHITE... the difference is 1500k....    

  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910
    edited December 2015

    if we dont use 5k.. for setting up skins.. every HDRi would need a seperatly whitepoint adjustment...

    Post edited by AndyGrimm on
  • thomasbrandy2875019177thomasbrandy2875019177 Posts: 59

    Iray for Maya

    "Also available is the first edition of vMaterials, a free set of digital material offerings verified for accuracy, control and consistency. With vMaterials, designers no longer have to spend time sourcing and creating their own materials."

     

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412

    Khory, I was thinking more for setting up simple Iray surfaces, and wanting them to not be over dark or bright next to other things in other scenes. Tho that bit about adding lights is good to know (especially for displays and such).  That color example is impressive, I remember something about a render engine that did not tint reflected light, I don't remember what one nor dose it matter here. Good to see that is in there.  I was under some odd impression a white sphere of light would illuminate every part of something exactly the same, tho that clearly is not the case (that's good) with your HDRI.

    AndyGrimm, (My slow typing skills, you got it) And in sRGB that would be 1.0 red, 1.0 green, 1.0 blue, Verse the reality of no actual white. That and outside is not exactly 'white' either. Blue is reduced from direct sun by the air, and it is refracted other directions. So the color of the light depends on the angle off from the sun (and the thickness of the atmosphere in that direction).  It was the sRGB white I was referring to, not noon day.  As much as Iray wants to mimic reality, it's still in a computer with that color-space limitation (three colors to make everything else with), lol.

    Keeping in mind, that I'm dealing with Red, green, and blue with this computer. For my use of setting up surfaces, I want to see the color of the surface not the light. And simply plugging 255r 255g 255b in the light is still (or at least was back in beta) tinted by the K setting if it was not on 6500k.

    So I'm kind of itching to finish the current project, so I can look at that HDRI and my Braziers.

     

  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854

    I'm sure your right Andy. I'm going to remember to save a preset for a 5k temp spot. But for now I have to go mix up a batch of ginger bread for cookies.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634

    I would have thought the Iray Sun/Sky was down around the 5 - 5.5K scale becasue when I render the same image with the included low quality HDRI, the skin tone is so much more pink than then when lit with the Sun, sugesting the HDRI has more blue in the light spectrum.

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,466
    Khory said:

    I'm sure your right Andy. I'm going to remember to save a preset for a 5k temp spot. But for now I have to go mix up a batch of ginger bread for cookies.

    Share, please? my favorite :)

  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910
    edited December 2015

    @Szark .. yes.. the sunsky does simulate lightcolor based on daytime...

    this is the reason why i always said - the "brutal" sun sky test at 12 midday.. (where a photographer normaly would NOT take outside portraits).. is the best test for a skin....  the resulting render is NOT a charming one - same as in reality.. but it is colorneutral to HDRis....  if red goes to much saturated there.... the skinsettings are far off.

    Post edited by AndyGrimm on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,254
    Khory said:
    RAMWolff said:
    Khory said:

    Your needs as a texture artist who works on characters is going to be different than most peoples Ramwolf. At least initaly you need a fairly bright uncolored light set up that will give you a super even light without casting much shadow. That set is used to look for seams and other errors. You wouldn't want to use an HDRI that has much going on because of how HDRI lights work and it could lead you to look for false flaws. Nor do you want color initially because your adjustments would be dependent on the color temperature of the image. In other words if you use lights that are warm you may go with a skin tone that is too cool. The same is true of lights that are very cool. You need to avoid to much color shifting from the lights in the beginning.

    If anyone is wondering what I mean about how HDRI lights work the best way to understand is to load a sphere in the center of an empty scene that will be lit only by the HDRI light. Do a render and look at the colors and how they play out on the surface of the sphere. If the sphere is predominanty blue/green then it would be considered cool. If by some qwirk of fate it is more red/yellow then it would be warm. Most HDRI will be very blury on the sphere but occasionally your going to find one that has clear areas where there is dark and light even on the sphere. How the colors and light/dark play on that sphere is how they will act on every figure in the scene.

    Is there a freebie light set I can use to study that will give me a setup like that?  I'd be most interested.  Hell, I'd pay for a light set like that.  I'd use it to study how it's set up but would love a tutorial on HOW to set one up more than anything else. 

    After getting home from work I did edit my original post as there were parts that were rushed in writing them out as I had a clien that just walked in the door.. sorry for any confusing bits!  lol

    Don't say I don't love you special... I've thrown together a quicky HDRI that should serve you reasonably well. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t4ew11o9cojepmh/Thrown Together hdri.zip?dl=0 To use it just go to render settings/ environment and substitute it for what ever environment map you have in there. I don't think it is too bright for seam checking but if you think so you can always decease (or increase for that matter) the light levels. You will note that the old settings for skin are very dark even in this light level. The new ones (I just put the ones I had done for arabella over nina so it is admittedly sloppy) are much lighter and more realistic.

    Thank you so so much.  I have 5 days off after today's very very busy hair day at the salon so I'll be able to look things over.  SO I see this is just the HDRI.  So what sort of light set up should I use to make the most out of it?  Doesn't DAZ Studio just uses the "headlamp" when using the iRay engine but if that's good enough for what I'm looking for that's fine. 

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412
    edited December 2015
    Szark said:

    I would have thought the Iray Sun/Sky was down around the 5 - 5.5K scale because when I render the same image with the included low quality HDRI, the skin tone is so much more pink than then when lit with the Sun, suggesting the HDRI has more blue in the light spectrum.

    And in a way, it appears to make sense. Direct sun per surface area on the planet, vs all the blue refracted from the rest of the sky. Tho I'm not entirely sure that is correct, as total light everywhere on earth. The sun is incredibly bright direct, and the rest of the sky is rather dim in comparison. It dose not entirely add up, something is off somewhere with that Iray sun or "low quality HDRI".

    (EDIT) or as AndyGrimm said, the skin settings.

    Post edited by ZarconDeeGrissom on
  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910
    edited December 2015

    the sunsky does not have a environment - reflections from environment (horizontal) is a big factor (we are not used to see faces whitout that.....   what i am saying is meant for  understanding how to set up a lightcolor-neutral material which react to HDRi like we expect...

    But there are also many HDRis which got postwork and are sligthly off (till very strong off) from the natural whitepoint ...(the one they toke the photo)... 

    Post edited by AndyGrimm on
  • AndyGrimmAndyGrimm Posts: 910

    the very strong neutral direct light at 12 midday... is also the "hardeness" test for SSS and tm distance settings.... because of strongest (natural simulated) light - our TMC color "penetrates deeper) ..(base luminance goes up)... = more red.

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,254

    OK, here is a test render using the default settings in the Render Settings.  There are no added lights to the scene....

     

    DefaultLighting-Khorys HDRI.jpg
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    RenderSettings.jpg
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  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854
    RAMWolff said:
    Khory said:
    RAMWolff said:
    Khory said:

    Your needs as a texture artist who works on characters is going to be different than most peoples Ramwolf. At least initaly you need a fairly bright uncolored light set up that will give you a super even light without casting much shadow. That set is used to look for seams and other errors. You wouldn't want to use an HDRI that has much going on because of how HDRI lights work and it could lead you to look for false flaws. Nor do you want color initially because your adjustments would be dependent on the color temperature of the image. In other words if you use lights that are warm you may go with a skin tone that is too cool. The same is true of lights that are very cool. You need to avoid to much color shifting from the lights in the beginning.

    If anyone is wondering what I mean about how HDRI lights work the best way to understand is to load a sphere in the center of an empty scene that will be lit only by the HDRI light. Do a render and look at the colors and how they play out on the surface of the sphere. If the sphere is predominanty blue/green then it would be considered cool. If by some qwirk of fate it is more red/yellow then it would be warm. Most HDRI will be very blury on the sphere but occasionally your going to find one that has clear areas where there is dark and light even on the sphere. How the colors and light/dark play on that sphere is how they will act on every figure in the scene.

    Is there a freebie light set I can use to study that will give me a setup like that?  I'd be most interested.  Hell, I'd pay for a light set like that.  I'd use it to study how it's set up but would love a tutorial on HOW to set one up more than anything else. 

    After getting home from work I did edit my original post as there were parts that were rushed in writing them out as I had a clien that just walked in the door.. sorry for any confusing bits!  lol

    Don't say I don't love you special... I've thrown together a quicky HDRI that should serve you reasonably well. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t4ew11o9cojepmh/Thrown Together hdri.zip?dl=0 To use it just go to render settings/ environment and substitute it for what ever environment map you have in there. I don't think it is too bright for seam checking but if you think so you can always decease (or increase for that matter) the light levels. You will note that the old settings for skin are very dark even in this light level. The new ones (I just put the ones I had done for arabella over nina so it is admittedly sloppy) are much lighter and more realistic.

    Thank you so so much.  I have 5 days off after today's very very busy hair day at the salon so I'll be able to look things over.  SO I see this is just the HDRI.  So what sort of light set up should I use to make the most out of it?  Doesn't DAZ Studio just uses the "headlamp" when using the iRay engine but if that's good enough for what I'm looking for that's fine. 

    You don't really need to do anything. It will be a fairly bright colorless light that is all around the figure. The only shadowing will be the AO and there is pretty much no way to get around that with Iray. It should be a pretty good light to look for seams and to check that there is no odd blotching or strange blending. The one goal was to let you see all those little funky details clearly.

    evilded777 said:
    Khory said:

    I'm sure your right Andy. I'm going to remember to save a preset for a 5k temp spot. But for now I have to go mix up a batch of ginger bread for cookies.

    Share, please? my favorite :)

    Of course. There will be plenty! But they have to rest in the fridge for 3 hours (groans) before they can be rolled out.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,045

    I often end up, particularly with interior shots, with yellowish lighting (because I shoot for ~4-4.5 k with lamps and other old-fashioned bulbs), and then in post I tweak it.

    What I usually do is, in GIMP, create a second layer with white autobalanced, which is usually too blue/white for my tastes, then set opacity until the balance between that and the original image looks about right.

     

  • ben98120000ben98120000 Posts: 469
    AndyGrimm said:
    ben98120000 said:
    AndyGrimm said:

    @ben98120000

    thank you.. yes i figured out that also...  but it is a very strange kind to set a material such as a grape that way....

    far away from reality.....    i used also IOR of air (1) to make it transparent while still having sss......    well a grape has something between water and skin...  should be a 1.35 - .1.4 but then we see nothing inside of such a material anymore (semeen, kernels)

    and that with glossy color - that's even more strange....  a grape HAS a white glossy color and does actually reflect a lot.... this just doesnt make any sense in a PBR engine....  

    Anyway you confirmed my settings which seem to be the only way how to make it working - thank you....

    I googled some grape pictures. Didnt see anything inside it on any of them and not much shadow coloring going on. But yeah, pretty glossy.wink

    well - here is one... grapes react extrem to light because of their translucency AND transparency... a challenge for IRay smiley

    That green one looks like somebody arranged them on 3 million lumen lamp. smiley

    Perhaps architectural shader will be good for that. It haves translucency, transparency and absorption is named "absorption".wink 

    Clip_5.jpg
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  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854

    Will you could always look at doing the adjusments in studio via the white point there. Not sure it would be any easier of course.

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