Give more realism to figures (skin tips ?)

HLEET_3D

Hello there, 

I whatched some art on a gallery that was made with daz3D studio, it was impressive ! 
It almost look like the figure was real (like a cosplay of a real person).

I have tried some parameters to help my figure to get less blurry : 
> Filtering > Pixel Filter = set to mitchell with the Pixel filter radius to "1.0"
(it definitly helps to have sharper renders)
And then, I try to do some postwork with nik collection in order to blend the figure and give more details.
But with all of that above it still doesn't reach out to what I saw on this gallery (https://www.deviantart.com/francobel ; (beware not safe for work)).

I know I am missing something here... 

In my first thinking, it should be about the lights, so I try better lights placements, but it still not enough.
So there's only one thing in my mind that could be the problem : SKIN reflection ... or SSS ... or I don't know at all theses parameters in the surface TAB !!! XD
There's so many things on the surface TAB in daz3D ... Help ! Maybe there's some more stuff to look at into the Tone Mapping (Gamma slider ?)
I usually go with G8F figures, should I go only with G8.1F to get what I am looking for ? 

Do you have an idea of what I lack to give more realism to my renders ?

Thanks

PS : Use the deviantart link in my signature to see my galleries if you want to (as mature content are not displayed automaticaly ^^)

nemesis10

I would suggest a few things....

you mention lights.... start with a good HDRI.... in the real world, there is ambient light and just using lights will never replicate that.

next, a good set of lights to provide highlights where you want them is a great help once you have a good hdri.

I like Pixel filter .8 and scale up the whole render (Render Tab > Editor > General > Dimension Preset (global) so that you end up with a bigger render that you can reduce and increase resolution.

Pick a good hair and adjust the textures, pick a good skin,  choose natural looking poses and expressions, add a light to add a highlight to the eye.

There is at least one product to add freckles to skin which helps make the skin less artificial looking; I also reduce the reflectiveness of the skin.

Use depth of field which is really easy to do in Daz Studio, and if you like bloom, bokeh, light flares so it looks like a real photo.

I thought I would show you one of my own renders of a man where I tried to make it slightly more "real"

Ted Berlin

Good quality actors, good lighting and a very good skin material will get you close

nicstt

Make sure you poses interract with the environement.

Feet rest on the floor; a body squishes when it lies on something; a bed (for example) indents when someone lies on it.

If a character is holding an item, use yourself as a reference to see what happens; if it's heavy, the character's frame should reflect that.

Hair (especially but not limited to long hair) adjust with gravity; wind can have an affect, but a morph to move it due to wind doesn't make it look like it is blowing in the wind. Dforce is great here.

Clothes are similar to hair.

Do all parts of the scene behave in the same way?

Light - shadows as an example should be consistent to the lighting present.

Dirt/clutter - adds to realism; if there isn't much, make it consistent - or the story should be why?

Do the items in the scene together make sense?

Depth of Field is a great way of blurring the unimportant - it adds realism  - and it allows you to focus the viewer where you want.

HLEET_3D

@nemesis10 : thanks for the pixel filter 0.8
I don't see a big difference between 1.0 and 0.8 except that the 0.8 has a slightly bigger file. (at least the render time is about the same).
I do 3000x3000 as a resolution, it should be plenty enough. 

For lights, yes I use a lot of HDRi if I can.
Sometime, you want to keep the "hdri still" and you just can't use the "sun-sky-only" as environment mode as it will hide your hdri.
So, I only have the option to add spotlights (I never use distant light ... is there a big difference between use one or another ?)

Yes hair is important for realism, so as the eyes.
Yeah, DOF is really a must in order to make it more blend into the rest of the environment.
Bloom is interesting but needs a lot more render time, so I only use it when there are many "shiny" stuff on my figure.

For the skin ... it might be what I was lacking.
I'm not really into freckles, but this product is interesting  : 
https://www.daz3d.com/perfectly-imperfect-skin-and-merchant-resource-for-genesis-8-female
I like your advice for the reflectiveness of the skin ! 
I think it was the thing that I needed to look at :)

I've made some research on youtube and found out that cool video that explains quite well some of the surface tab parameters :

It seems that there is in the store some kind of "skin detail resource" ! Gonna check theses out.

@tedberlin : Yep, I need to have good skin material, gonna have to dig it more into this.

@nicstt : yes, I agree with you ! I try to look with the perspective view all around the figure in order to have that perfect placement.
I sometime add some "add smooth modifier" onto an object and add the collision item source to my figure. (depends on the collision, it can be bad or not ...).
I tried dforce on hair, it was very messy ... maybe because I have to try only on "d-force" hair.
I usually apply dforce on cloth. For the hair part, I use manual pose to reflect the gravity.

Light - shadows are hard to master. If I can, I only use hdri lights and try to compensate the lack of lights with shutter speed and ISO (just like a photograph).
Other than that, I try to use spotlight with rectangle form to not over shadow things.

The dirt stuff, I use it at the beginning on my renders, but people told me that it was so weird on the figure ! ... lol 
So I stopped using them.

Thanks everyone for your inputs, I have gathered ideas that will help me improve my renders :)

Cheers