Is it possible to achieve such levels of realisticity simply with Daz Genesis 8 figure?
tayloranderson2047
Posts: 116
I saw an amazing 3D replication of Audrey Hepburn at Artstation ArtStation - Audrey Hepburn (the author used maya, zbrush, mari, wrap, substance painter, marvelous designer. I personally can hardly tell the difference from the real person actress. They also have other 3d models for various celebrities) and wonder this is achievable simply with Daz Genesis 8 figure plus sculping/texturing in Hexagon/Blender/Zbrush, but no matter what you do in the 3rd party software, the model must keep the mesh and can be imported back to Daz Studio as Genesis 8 figure.
If this is not achievable with Genesis 8 figure, then can someone tell me what the possible limitation with Genesis 8 figure making it fails to be so realistic? Not enough faces and vertices or some other reasons?
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
It's possible.
It's totally possible; even better if you ask me.
I’m not impressed with that Art Station image at all! Looks like a store mannequin and doesn’t even really look like Audrey Hepburn. There are MUCH better and more realistic models here. Check out Mousso’s store! https://www.daz3d.com/mousso
It's hard for me to judge... as someone who's tried to strike up a conversation with many of the celebrities inhabiting Madame Tussauds' at Times Square, apparently I'm easily fooled by real celebrities who ignore me and those made out of wax, so I can only say, I think she looks close enough to the real Audrey Hepburn that she wouldn't call the police if I was pestering her or melt under bright lights, so probably there are lots of DAZ products that are realistic enough to pass for artificial representations of well known celebrities or their wax substitutes... Then again I believe Spuggles looks a lot like a young David Hasselhoff.
She also appears to be a sculpture, rather than a rigged figure, as she has the exact same expression and pose in all renders. The description also uses the word "sculpture", but the creator doesn't seem to be a native English speaker, so take it with a grain of salt.
Some of the celebrity look-alikes by Sangriart on Rendo are extremely good.
Phoenix1966 also has some very realistic characters. I recently purchased https://www.daz3d.com/phx-andie-hd-and-accessories-for-genesis-8-females The character itself is a very “average person” type morph but I used the skin on a more model type character with my own morphs and it looks great!
There are a lot of great skin textures here and if you don’t like the morphs, there are tons of morph packages. The whole fun is creating your own characters with resources here, not just using everything “out of the box.”
There are some pretty good ones in this thread;
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/313401/iray-photorealism/p1
Fixing the topology and proportions of their Genesis models would go a long way;) As would true PBR albedo textures without all the baked in stuff...
If you fix some of the textures and know the nuances of the settings within DS then yes it is very possible and has been done time and again.
I think one of the biggest problems with Daz renders is that the hair provided by Daz vendors leaves a lot to be desired, except for maybe one or two on the store. Not sure an off the shelf solution will work most of the time.
One of our own here has sculpted a pretty nice Audrey H head...
I'd say you can't just dump assets onto your screen and have it look "realistic". Better assets do help to make better Renders, but, what often seperates the good from the excellent, or the decent renders from the "realstic" ones, is not necessarily the program, its what is between the keyboard and the chair.
It looks like Audrey Hepburn's eyebrows, eyelashes, hair, dress, and earrings - but it doesn't look like Audrey Hepburn - Audrey Hepburn's personality is totally missing. I don't think this looks realistic at all. There's a deadness to this figure. There are dozens of DAZ figures that look more lifelike than this.
DAZ can get close, overall, but no, not quite on that level yet. Part of why is the map sizes. Many of the models you see used on Artstation come straight from Zbrush/Maya and have large map files (often 8K). That makes a massive difference, especially for close-ups/portraits. Learned a lot in my Zbrush days and none of my DAZ renders are without some custom work from the program:
That said, DAZ can get close (even better than that with eyes, in fact). With a little patience and the right composition, you can make some pretty realistic stuff with Studio. 8.1 maps are a step in the right direction and I have no doubt that a potential Genesis 9 could reach a satisfiable level of realism that not much else would be needed.
I once created a topic like this and got a few responses saying Studio could already reach that level. The character was a child and I have yet to see anything like him with DAZ models. They're just not quite there yet, but they are getting there. It's actually pretty exciting to watch and we have a fantastic set of artists here that have truly done some stupendous work!
The shading algoritm for skin is also not perfect yet, it does not accurately simulate depth/rate of transmission and light traversal across areas of the body.
But of course Daz can be used for achieving this. If you are willing/skilled to build your own models and textures then import it and render with Daz. Because most of those photorealistic portraits use scratch-built components and often it's an unrigged bust made precisely for this single portrait session.
As far as for using premade assets only? Well... Daz it's not there, but it's quite close.
That's part of what I meant with fixing the topology. The Genesis is an empty shell. No internal organs/skeleton to block light. Why even bother using raytraced SS on such models? And wouldn't it be time to give things like the cornea actual thickness and skip the thin walled non refraction? Not to mention the ears that are 5 times too thick, hence the need of control maps to make plausible bleed through...etc
The figure itself, yes. Not so much with hair and clothing.
Thank you, FINALLY someone else who thinks we actually need black and white SSS maps instead of just a slightly desaturated Diffuse map.
I can't really comment on that, have no insight in how SSS is implemented in IRay, as I'm using RSL shaders with the 3DL pathtracer. But clearly IRay SSS is a volumetric effect? With an SSS refraction index? Aren't you confusing SSS color with SSS strrength here? The SSS color has to derive from somewhere, right?
The shader I use (aweSurface) has a slider to use diffuse with SSS, as much as you need, along with the usual scatter- and absorption- colors. And add dedicated SSS color maps for stuff like veins. It supports SSS strength maps (black and white RGB) but I see those as a last resort if I can't get a good result without them.
Don't want to derail the discussion even further, just adding a quick test I happened to do some days ago, some slightly overdone SSS with a strong rimlight, one with an internal skeleton, one without. SSS refraction index 1.3, as the body is mostly water;) Compare them side by side and you'll see an obvious difference. And yes, the skeleton version added a few secs to the rendertime.
Bottomline: IMO topology comes first, then HQ textures/maps. Goes for anything, not just human models;)
...and maybe another thing to consider:
The DAZ human models are basically low poly models, relying heavily on subdividing to look smooth. That makes it hard for the average user to make morphs that correct the shortcomings of the topology, since we are not allowed to manipulate the SubD cage. This is of course (again, in my opinion) the core of the DAZ sales strategy, and they've managed to find a pretty good balance between quality and ease of use/speed, I'll give them that;) Maybe next gen will blow us all away?
Next gen as in Daz Studio 5? I wouldn't bet on it before the early 2030's myself
Genesis 8+ mesh is on the ancient side. It's G3 after upgrades. It does strike balance between looking good enough and being easy to work with, but it's not going to match what is possible with a mesh custom sculpted for a render. Any step up would require completely new figure.
Sorry Sven, just saw your replies now. I see a slight difference in those two renders, primarily on the hands. I just don't understand why black and white SSS maps are used in higher-end programs and by their users to designate which parts let more light through (like cheeks, ears, parts of hands and feet, etc), but we don't. Iray uses what I find to be an unusually unintuitive method of calcuating SSS and translucency, and while it works very well out of the box, it's not easy to adjust or edit.
I'm still not sure I'm getting what you're saying, In my book black and white maps are always used to drive strength/intensity, not colors. And, in fact, I see SS- and specular strength maps as "hacks", they are needed to overcome the limitations of the mesh, which was the original point I was trying to make:)) Specular strength on real life skin is fairly consistent over the whole body, only roughness changes. Please enlighten me if I'm missing something!
You say we don't use those maps. Isn't there a slot in the IRayUber or PBR shader for controlling SSS- strength? Something like translucency weight or similar? If that's the case, what's stopping you from using them?
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/032/563/135/large/johan-vikstrom-jovi-replicant-compare.jpg?1606817677
Here's a pretty cool image by Johan Vikström where he attempted to replicate a RL light setup. I think he used Digital Emily with reworked topology and textures. (VRay/Maya, postwork in Nuke etc.) Emily on the left...
I think, if I wanted/needed to do hyper realistic stuff, I would have to leave the DAZ ecosystem and look into V-Ray, Arnold and the likes. I've pushed 3Delight 12 as far as I can in terms of realism, and I don't think switching to IRay would change much. Hard work and dedication is key, any which way. At one point in time I hoped that DAZ would introduce 3Delight 13 (that surely would challenge IRay in terms of speed and flexibility), USD support and so on. Today I'm not sure where they're heading? Avatars, chatbots, NFTs? I'm getting too old for this ****
Yes. I think so. Comes close. Answering the base question as stated.
1 part figure detail, 1 part skin texture, 1 part lighting, 1 part rendering engine, 1 part GPU
I rendered this as part of the thumbnails I was making for a new bodyart (here it's the ear tattoo) product I've submitted to Daz3d. That is just one of the Daz3d characters Freja 8 with her own skin texture. I used Paramount Lights that focuses on portrait lighting I believe. Rendered with Iray on a laptop with a RTX 3060 mobile which I think I've read maybe is closer to a desktop RTX 2080.
It could probably look much better than that technically but it works for me for what it needs to be from my point of view. But damn it still looks great.
Yes, I don't know why b/w maps are not included for the translucency settings when not all parts of the human body are translucent (and few parts are really very translucent at all). Having to set transluceny to .5 to .8 for every texture to not be blinding white may work in Studio, but it's a pain in the neck when you try to edit or use that texture anywhere else.
@SnowSultan
I agree with you .
Former poser vendor Syyd Raven used "Scattermasks" for her "vanilla Sky" texures ,for V4 back in the day
I fear that Genesis 9 could have an even lower poly count than 8.1.(and in the wrong places too
) Might run smoother on game engines etc but would be a major game breaker if you're into ultra-realism.
Modern games can have characters well over 100,000 polygons. Base Genesis has 18,000. To be fair, games almost universally use triangles, while Genesis is built on quads. But the new Unreal Engine 5 can handle many millions of polygons, so we should see a bump in this going forward.