Help with renders
So this is my latest renders. While it looks good, it is still not relaistic or natural looking. I need to adjsut the eyes but the skin looks blah, the lips are dry and the texture on them is horrible. I tried to tone down teh bump map on the lips to remove that issue, as to me they shouldn't look so bumpy/liny (whatever).
I am using a 3 point light system and have my camer a set and DOF working.
What can I do to improve this?
My image:
https://i.postimg.cc/0QZXR3My/April-blue-eyes.png
This is the look I would like to achieve:
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#gallery=trending&page=1&image=1210947
Nobosdy really lists settings, renders, light examples so it is hard to figure out sometimes.
Any tips would be appreciated.
Thank you
Comments
What lights are you using? I find if I use daz lights on characters, I find they don'tlook real but if I use an emissive plane as my key and fill lights, it's a softer light and makes the character look more realistic.
Or if you want a good set, try this and use I think setting 19 or 21, it's one of the last few and it'll look like the example you shared.
https://www.daz3d.com/hdri-photoshoot
i use this set to test all my characters when I get them as they do look more realistic under these lights.
Ok. Thank you. I just used some spotlights and set them up to be more like Softboxes I use in my studio. I will try your suggestion. Thank you
One, depth of field. Two, brighter light, less filler. Three, raytraced shadows.
The character you're using is toony so she will never look realistic like the one in your example.
Also:
- Use an HD morph and crank up the subD to 5.
- Tighten DOF. Try this set up: https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/85514/freebie-portrait-camera-dof
- More contrast. Your Key Light needs to be brighter, Fill Light and Ambient Lighting might need to be lowered a little.
- Also, your Key Light is pointing right at her hair instead of her face, which is odd.
- Her lips need more gloss. Lower Glossy Roughness and/or increase Glossy Weight.
- Transition from face to lips looks unnaturally sharp. I don't know if this is baked into the texture you're using - in which case there isn't much you can do - or if you adjusted the lips surface settings too much.
- Her brows are too yellow..
- Her eyes are wide open like a doll. Dial in a little bit of blink or squint (G8.1), or eyes closed or eyelids up-down (G8.0).
- Looks like she has no tear. G8.0 has tear as a part of the lashes, make sure opacity is set to 1.0. G8.1 has a separate tear add-on.
- I find that darker eyes sometimes look more alive than bright blue ones.
Good luck!
I'd also suggest adjusting the image size - it doesn't affect most of the things mentioned about, but having the wide, low image aspect is not doing your work any favours.
Holy crap. Thank you for mthe advice. I have never had so much pointers and advice.Thank you. I will maske adjustments.
Her brows were yellowish because I was thinking of trying to match hair color and only had 5 to choose from. lol
The lips have been a issue. I was making adjsutments because the bump map looked horrible as I was adjusting the skin. Just couldn't get it to look right.
I ams til llearning and was trying to get Face Controls to work but every time I clicked it to move the eye lid, it highlighted the face. frustrating but i will get it.
I made camera adjsutments at the end and forgot to fix the lights.
I wil lfix the other issues you pointed out and try again. Thank you
Ok. i will try this as well. Thank you
Ok. I thought my DOf was pretty point on, but will fix it. I was trying to get it to lock onto the eye so used a NULL and placed this on the eye and focused dof camera to it.
Lights are a weak point but practice practice practice.
Raytrace shadows, hmm. i will look up that setting and make sure it is on.
Thank you
Yeah, I come from the film world too and it took me awhile of using the spotlights and not being happy with how it reacted to the skin. Then I watched a video like two years ago somewhere that showed using emissive planes is actually like using softboxes in real life, I tried it and have never gone back. I even have like a premade lowell DP light with the barndoors that I put into scenes so I can really shape the light better.
Oh nice. I sa a few real world Cameras for shotts and seems to have the exact or clsoe to exact settings. i wish Godox or somebody would make lights etc for this to use with IRL settings
this statement is also a part of the issue IMO. You say you only had 5 colors to choose from. If you are using fibermesh brows, you can easily create any color you want in the surfaces tab. same goes for skin and most other surfaces. The way you adjust settings on surfaces plays a HUGE part in how the light interacts with that surface and is very important in the overall scene. if you have any eflective surfaces, like the nose ring, having an HDRI in the scene gives the metal something to reflect.
I just picked up the IG cinematic cameras set 1 the other day when it was on sale because the cameras are now the thing that bugs me the most (besides IK) in Daz. When I'm shooting a film, I know what lens I want and what it'll do but it would take forever to tweak daz cameras to match with focal lengths and f-stops. I love the set, I drop in a prime lens for a 35mm or 16mm camera and it looks how I imagine it right out of the box. You can even set the f stop to like 2.8 and it works how it should. Totally something to look into when it goes on sale, I'm getting set 2 next time for the other lenses.
I appreciate the help and feedback. This was literally my 3rd rendr. only been at this less thsan a week. I have no idea what a fibermesh brow is (i will look it up and study). I have been suing the brows, eyes, skin that came with eahcmodel as i assumed tehy were specific to that character and couldn't be changed. Still a lot to learn.
Yeah seee that could help. I love picking up my camera, throwing my 50mm 1.4 on it and shooting. I know what i am getting. here...different story. I will look into this. i saw a ad for Real Cameras earlier and was gonna look at that. I jsut created my first softbox in here a few mintes ago. Getting better but damn it's tough. one wrong setting and got to start over. i jsut don't know enough about teh settings yet.
Ok... show us what you got now!
Everything that has been said here is good advice, but it does take a lot of time, trial and error and experience to get the sort of image that you are after.Buying products here at Daz3D will never replace talent and experience, but there are some lighting products that can certainly give good results whilst you are learning to create your own setups.
First up is BOSS Pro Light Set for Portraits & Promos. I like this set because it is easy to use and has a lot of good options. You just load this as a new scene, load a preset, load your character, remove the default manniquin once you have your character in the right place and render. If you want to make tweaks then you can use extra lights available.
There is also Render Studio Iray, which is more expensive, and its add-on Render Studio Iray 'Scenes'. The combination of these is expensive, so definitely wait until there is a sale. The "Scenes" add-on isn't necessary, but it does make it a lot easier to get a good setup "out of the box" - you literally just load one of the scenes, add your character and render.
Out of the two, BOSS lights are much easier to use and half the price, whereas Render Studio gives better results in my opinion. Both are great sets and different users have their own preferences.
I would recommend having a look at both sets and the promo images, then wishlist them both and keep an eye out for sales.
.Lights, setting, camera, character, hair, expression, all combine to make a render work. It takes time to learn. There are no shortcuts, you simply need to practice and experiment and try different rendering techniques as you imrove your skills..DS 4.10 GTX980 17minutes
Newest one after a bit of practice. Still not satisfied but a bit better
There you go. What an improvement!
Well done, that is quite some improvement. Nice.
That looks great!
Depends. This can totally be a thing. The key to doing that is a very very well-defined shadow effect from the hair on the skin. Not all hair works well with that and even with hair that does it well it will hit your render times hard.
Wow, such a progress! Great advice here, too!