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I didn't really seem to see any speed difference with the beta but I am seeing one with this version. Mind you I am using the old computer (regular one is in the shop and I am a sad sad bunny) so no GPU render for me.
The skin didn't look messed up at all?
Nope, skin looks exactly the same actually, just a faster render time....
I actually think that for those who don't like to or are unwilling to work on surfaces the skin right out of the box is better. V7 does not seem to need to be as over lit as she did in the past and the test render I am doing looks much better than it did before.
For your perusal the same exact scene rendered in 4.8 and 4.9
For 4.8 I used the legacy materials and for 4.9 the new version.
I set both renders to render to 200 samples. 4.9 took roughly 5 minutes, whereas 4.8 took about 6. I don't know how it will scale to different scenes or the like, but that is certainly not an insignifigant difference.
I also have done some experimenting comparing how the 2 versions look in different lighting situations, and the 4.9 default settings are objectively better.
Issues with the 4.8 settings are particularly visible when strongly backlit. The entire torso and neck glow hideously, now you may be thinking "but I don't do a bunch of renders lit like that?" but the effect still exists whatever the lighting, its just harder to pinpoint. What it mostly leads to is the face texture looking darker than the rest of the body. Astute viewers may even notice that effect in my previous 4.8 render.
A disclaimer, I still don't think the default settings are great, I'm still going to be using my tweaked settings generally, but these settings are still much better than the previous version.
I pretty much agree with you J Cade. I suspect I will still fuss with the settings. I am quite liking something in the general area of what Andy posted. That may well be because I prefer a paler skin tone most of the time. Very likely because I am nearly paper white any more due to my nocturnal work habits. It is much easier for me to look at me and go "right or wrong" if I am doing a paler skin tone.
yes... but that's because those charts are outdated.... indoor film used a lower white point because of incandesecent light bulbs.. aka 3200k (our old 100 watt bulb as example) was the reference for indoor- "FILM"-- today we have all kind of artifical light sources indoor.... fluorescent, LED daylight 5k.. and so on... and we dont have to pick a film with a white point color balance temperation anymore...digital cameras just filter the image before saving based on the menu settings .. the same as we can do post in photoshop.
..
Nikon professional flashlights using a standard whitebalance color of 5200k /real physical light color!) .. the rest is then just a digital filter setting in the menu (whitebalance for different light situations)...
The 5200k coming from what i posted earlier... daylight, neutral white is 5k and 5.5k... (horizontal and sky).. the middle is 5250k.... that's the most natural white light reference which is possible
I bought some "cheap" 5k LED flood lights some weeks ago and installed them indoor as mainlight sources in the kitchen and living room.. great light! feels very comfortable and relaxing for the eyes... when i walk in other rooms i start to hate the warm light there
Pale Skintones - i compared the reference head from eiko with renders done with other engines and the orginal photo of the model.... DAZ iray is always more warm and darker!.. without adjusting the diffuse texture it is not possible to replicate reference renders from toolbox or unity!... missing about 5- 10% green. in RGB. and the luminance is always also about 5 - 10% darker. (lower)
Nice comparison renders cade!
I think 4.9 looks better, the sickly green tone is gone and her skin looks more uniform : )
here two renders which show how important correct microdetails are...
i use my reference settings and overworked bump maps created from the emily project displacment maps for this examples. resolution for diffuse and bump is 6k 16 bit...
render one only macrodetails....
render two macrodetails and overlayered microdetails.
i really like how the microdetails control the glossiness... - glossiness weight 1 and glossiness 0.9 on both renders!
EDIT: also this results, while i think i come now very close to my photorealism goal -> the skintone is a tad darker then it should be and a little bit green is missing... (compared with the reference original photos).. here the emily project.
Very nice Andy! What character is that? : )
@Toyen...
that's a real headscan ... the emily project... microdetails come from a 16k 32bit map (scan) - unfortunately not as a Daz character available
...
To save memory i created one single bump/normal map in 6k resolution for this head which combines macro and microdetails in the right balance.
Warning: If attempting to use Emily with full sized textures have lots of memory...and be prepared to do a CPU only render.
@mjc1016 m
right... that was my third attempt over 6 months to render her in DAZ... my labtop crashed so many times i nearly gave up on her.... but because the heisko head renders so nice .. i tought why not try the same with Emily and just create bump maps in lower resolution from the displacment. till she fits on my system.
Working on her eyes right now... but i think she renders really good in iray...if i compear my render with others (just google wikihuman emily and check image results in google).. i think that my version and shader settings or let's say DAZiray simplified SSS doing very well !
That is very impressive (chin hits floor).
Andi is there a bump map you can make to overlay on daz bumps to get similar results? Like something tileable or would it still not look right? I feel like I have a good skin setup going in octane (not iray I know, but still trying to achieve photorealistic) but I feel like something is missing still. This is probably one of the more photo realish things I've done.
That is pretty!
Not Andy, but personally,I use a tiling bump in addition to the default normal and bump maps. Its based of some of the reference files here (I made them tile) I think it works pretty well (give me a bit and I'll do a quick comparison)
Another option to tiling bump maps is a procedural bump map, like the one listed in my sig. It's the basis for the skin preset, that has a mildly mottled color and bump that holds up under close scrutiny.
I'll say no, and absolutely no at the render sizes of both this and AndyGrimm's. It's all those hair follicles and pores and wrinkles. When the bump doesn't line up, it becomes noticeable sometimes. The closer and more detail visible, the more drastic it gets. And then things start to show, like hair follicles and pores where they should not be (like that area of skin between the thumb and index finger).
Yea, there small spot renders from setting up a scene, tho I was kind of surprised how good her left hand looked. I tried to get the lights turned to do the same for the rest of her, and just could not quite get it to work.
Tho you will note in these 'Pathetic' 3delight spot renders, that there is a hint of hair on the back of the hand, and not in other areas where it just wouldn't look good. So after all that typing, I'll close with, that is why I don't think a 'tiled' skin shader would look all that good up close.
@Sorel
on daz characters i used what i called a "grid" to get a similar effect.... but tiles wont work for extrem closeups.... to make it really good looking.. i always had to overlay the whole UV and then smooth areas and spots,,,, i work on improving this technics.. this is one of the reasons why i spend a lot of my time with scanned heads right now...
I do belive that it is possible with 2 - 3 different patterns to make a "one fits all" micromap for Daz characters... BUT clearly - i only talk about MICRO structure.. not PORES and wrinkels - those are in the macrodetails map... microstructure is what is needed to get a realistic glossines shine on skin... good to see in my smaller emily renders above. ( with and without microdetails)...
the problem for this effect is resolution.. i tested 4 - 16k resolution on emily.. and 6k is needed to make it look right... bump is limited but brakes the highlights... normals created from bumps wont work in my case for this effect yet... and displacment.. well on a > 32GB system with a >= 6gb video ram card.. and subdivision 6 !...
I currently render some different light tests to find the right balance macro/micro on emily... based on this i will then try to create a 6k map for gen2/3... and see how it works.
Good point on the map sizes as well. 4k appears to be common for many 'Things', tho for people (pauses to think). Even with the UDIM zones on generation 7 and separate maps for different areas, I have noticed some areas do appear to 'Lack' detail. I remember noticing it in one of the braces for G2F threads as well.
I'm also not sure going excessively large on the maps is good for work flow, as it can take an incredibly long time to load and save the files, not to say heard drive space consumed with all the incremental changes when making the maps (assuming you save incrementally as you go).
Normal maps, lol. like bump, the instant the edge is visible looking at it around a curved corner, the illusion breaks and the surface goes flat. Unfortunately Iray can not do extreme detail Displacement maps without the 'Geometry set to that level, unlike 3DL.
This was from some testing. An attempt to use Normal or Bump, to get around the lack of Displacement detail in Iray. As you can probably guess, combining high detail (not-blur) normals with low detail maps didn't quite work out as well as I had hoped.
@ZarconDeeGrissom
yes.. i see bump as a possible compromise until we all have 64gb systems and 12Gb vdeo ram is standard
.
)...
But my results with Emily are really great and convince me that i was on the right track with my bump grids for DAZ.... i can NOT tell the difference between my renders and most others in the net ( .. and they use very complex and hard to set up shaders! (some are documented)...
here is another one in diffuse light.... i have now also the eyes right..(heck that was difficult, toke me 5 hours
Microstructure itself is really NOT to see in 99%... only the effect of it on highlights.. that's why bump seems to work so well....For Daz i use normal for pores and wrinkels and microstructure as bump.. that' way finetuning is always possible.
the above render shows one of the "difficulties" in IRAY.... using diffuse also in transparency results in strains -> darker areas go darker.. brighter get a higher lumininace... i could correct this in the maps.. but did let it.. to have references where the difference actually lies compared to other render engines and original photo texture...
the render above use the original 32 bit diffuse texture... i wll do a pretty one when i am finish with my test serie.
Thank you for the info Andy. yeah I'm kinda just trying to look for a way for the specular to be broken up. In octane I have the roughness set at 0.5 (from a 0-1 scale) and I'd sit there like, man it's kinda waxy looking still.
@Sorel ...
OH you can set the roughness SCALE in octane? that is my most missed function in IRAY ... right after motion blur
.
Skin microsturcture has a direction ... i can reduce it, simplified in 3 different patterns... forhead, cheeks, and a wild "allrounder" one... this is one of the things which we cant simulate with a scale or procedural.
I believe it is a scale yeah lol. It has a slider that just goes from 0-1. Or maybe I should just call it a roughness slider.
The way Iray handles displacement is one big reason I find 3DL might sometimes be 'better' for realism, at least under certain circumstances.
and just to be not missunderstood.... tiles or procedural is better then no microstructure.. J Cade and Will showed some great renders using or testing this methods.
I just discovered Octane has Mix TEXTURE nodes. Man, I need to explore the nodes more in here. So looking at this, It seems I can combine a bump map and octane's turbulance procedural. Going to play around and see what I can do with this.