Realism: skin vs clothing

arne207

Hey there,

this is a noobish question I've asked myself a lot as a gamer who later discovered DAZ.

Why is it that DAZ figures often get the skin right so that it looks realistic when that is apparently not easy to do with the way light interacts with it - leading to some DAZ figures looking better than the characters in most video games, I would say - ...

... and at the same time clothing for DAZ figures often seems plasticky or weirdly shiny, so that it looks quite a bit worse than most of the clothing seen in video games?

Is there an easy explanation for this discrepancy I don't see?

Cheers,
Arne

Gordig

This may not actually answer the question, but 3D clothing generally has no thickness, because actual thickness would make rigging (and especially simulating) much more complicated. Real clothing has not just thickness, but often multiple different materials, layers, stitching, etc. Look at a pair of jeans, for example. You've got denim, which is a fairly thick, coarse material, that's layered on top of itself with stitching, rivets, pockets that can actually contain things, and so on. A pair of 3D jeans, by contrast, will generally only be a few texture maps on a pretty smooth mesh. Faithfully reproducing something even as seemingly simple in DS would be quite an undertaking, and that's before we get to reproducing the materials clothes are made of, and the fact that many articles of clothing are not completely opaque.

Gordig

Also, it's more important that skin be realistic than cloth, because the human brain is hardwired to recognize other humans, and will instinctively scrutinize human figures much more closely than inanimate objects. Given a very realistic human with not-quite-there clothing, most people, especially those who aren't as used to looking at 3D figures as we are, will focus on the human to the exclusion of the clothing.

plasma_ring

arne207 said:

Hey there,

this is a noobish question I've asked myself a lot as a gamer who later discovered DAZ.

Why is it that DAZ figures often get the skin right so that it looks realistic when that is apparently not easy to do with the way light interacts with it - leading to some DAZ figures looking better than the characters in most video games, I would say - ...

... and at the same time clothing for DAZ figures often seems plasticky or weirdly shiny, so that it looks quite a bit worse than most of the clothing seen in video games?

Is there an easy explanation for this discrepancy I don't see?

Cheers,
Arne

I'm not an expert, but I mess around with materials on clothing a lot for this reason and I think a lot of it has to do with different materials requiring different effects. If you've set up skin the way you want it, you only really have to do it once. If you've got clothing made out of velvet, leather, and silk, that can be surfaces having to work in three entirely different ways in one item. Shaders can do a lot to give fabric the appearance of weight and thickness, but it often requires a lot of careful tweaking or even custom shader node setups.

My top recommendation for fabric shaders is always Fabiana's Shader Plan sets (sold at another store), and I use them and Half Life's iReal shaders almost exclusively because they create very realistic effects. But if you look at how Fabiana constructs her shader presets, they often use multiple maps so that individual channels have different weights, details like quilting or knitted rows have depth, and fibers appear to catch the light. That's a ton of work to develop, and while I think it's worth it, it's definitely more resource-heavy to use. 

This is an example of an older set with the basic Iray red velvet and leather shaders, and then with Fabiana's velvet and quilted linen shaders. It doesn't quite make up for the fact that the top doesn't have much detail in the shoulders, but because of the way the light falls on the fabric it looks a little heavier. 

The biggest difference between Daz and the way games look is that a game development studio has the ability to control how every single asset is constructed, how the materials are set up, and how those materials look inside the game engine. There can actually be a ton of extra work that goes into modifying premade assets to fit an intended art style, since the baseline for Iray is kind of generic photorealism. Even game studios shooting for graphics that are as realistic as possible have an easier time balancing performance and looks, where in Daz you're picking up stuff designed, modeled and textured by hundreds of different people with different priorities. 

I get a lot of use out of the Thickener plugin for clothing that's super thin. Usually that, some geometry editing to create new material zones if needed, and different shaders can help a lot (not criticizing the creator of this outfit, I just grabbed the first sweater I saw). 

arne207

Interesting! Thanks for the replies!

Timbales

It can be discouraging when you see something that looks pretty good in a promo, but the clothing materials are oddly shiny or the skin looks off. I would suggest taking some time in the program with the free items that are provided to learn how the different settings for translucency and subsurface scattering and gloss and reflective work under different lighting situations so you can adjust them to your liking and get an image you'll be happy with. It will also give you the experience to look at a new product and gauge whether or not you can make it look more like you would want it to.

sunnyjei

plasma_ring said:

arne207 said:

Hey there,

this is a noobish question I've asked myself a lot as a gamer who later discovered DAZ.

Why is it that DAZ figures often get the skin right so that it looks realistic when that is apparently not easy to do with the way light interacts with it - leading to some DAZ figures looking better than the characters in most video games, I would say - ...

... and at the same time clothing for DAZ figures often seems plasticky or weirdly shiny, so that it looks quite a bit worse than most of the clothing seen in video games?

Is there an easy explanation for this discrepancy I don't see?

Cheers,
Arne

I'm not an expert, but I mess around with materials on clothing a lot for this reason and I think a lot of it has to do with different materials requiring different effects. If you've set up skin the way you want it, you only really have to do it once. If you've got clothing made out of velvet, leather, and silk, that can be surfaces having to work in three entirely different ways in one item. Shaders can do a lot to give fabric the appearance of weight and thickness, but it often requires a lot of careful tweaking or even custom shader node setups.

My top recommendation for fabric shaders is always Fabiana's Shader Plan sets (sold at another store), and I use them and Half Life's iReal shaders almost exclusively because they create very realistic effects. But if you look at how Fabiana constructs her shader presets, they often use multiple maps so that individual channels have different weights, details like quilting or knitted rows have depth, and fibers appear to catch the light. That's a ton of work to develop, and while I think it's worth it, it's definitely more resource-heavy to use. 

This is an example of an older set with the basic Iray red velvet and leather shaders, and then with Fabiana's velvet and quilted linen shaders. It doesn't quite make up for the fact that the top doesn't have much detail in the shoulders, but because of the way the light falls on the fabric it looks a little heavier. 

The biggest difference between Daz and the way games look is that a game development studio has the ability to control how every single asset is constructed, how the materials are set up, and how those materials look inside the game engine. There can actually be a ton of extra work that goes into modifying premade assets to fit an intended art style, since the baseline for Iray is kind of generic photorealism. Even game studios shooting for graphics that are as realistic as possible have an easier time balancing performance and looks, where in Daz you're picking up stuff designed, modeled and textured by hundreds of different people with different priorities. 

I get a lot of use out of the Thickener plugin for clothing that's super thin. Usually that, some geometry editing to create new material zones if needed, and different shaders can help a lot (not criticizing the creator of this outfit, I just grabbed the first sweater I saw). 

Thank you for this~! I've seen Half-life's shaders before but wasn't sure how helpful they would be but you've convinced me to pick it up next time it goes on sale. Do you remember what sweater set that is at the bottom it is super cute?? And I seconded all the good things said about Thickener and Fabiana's velvet shader and would toss in support for mesh grabber too to help create some simple wrinkles, fix pokethrus, and more.

nonesuch00

It's because the material shaders for clothing, and the 3D mesh for clothing are treated way too simply, like 2D map projections that get wrapped on the character. If you look at the textiles in your clothing it's a very intricate 3D weave and 3D contruction of the textiles.

I would love to see realistic clothing but it's actually gotten less realistic or maybe it's the higher render resultions exposing how simplified the 3D models are..

MelissaGT

I often struggle a lot with clothing and trying to add life and realism to it with my limited capabilities (meaning I can't take it into another modeling program and rework it). I was just working on a piece yesterday with some tartan cloth and the stock materials that came with the item made it look as if it was made from bathing suit material...and no amount of shader tweaks could get it to look like wool or even cotton. Thankfully I found a tiled shader that I could sub in. But sometimes tiled shaders are not an option. A piece that has stitching baked in to its materials will look off once that stitching is lost in the process of going to a tiled shader. In that case, you need to hope you can tweak the shader to make it look good enough with the custom non-tiled materials. 

Another issue is hair. There is some good hair out there (Linday)...but you are dependent upon dForce. If you pose your figure, such as turning their head to any extent, and want to use some rigged conforming hair, even the likes of Windfield just looks all sorts of oofta. Yes, even OOT hair looks like patoo on a character who turns their head sideways. So if you pose your figure away from standing straight, then you are limited to dForce (and I'm not talking about SB dForce hair that looks like straw...ick...I'm talking about cloth-based dForce hair a' la Linday). Some conforming hair can be converted for use with dForce...I've had luck with AprilYSH's stuff...but lots of conforming hair will just NOPE right out (I've had horrible luck with OOT hair). 

Daywalker Designs

nonesuch00 said:

It's because the material shaders for clothing, and the 3D mesh for clothing are treated way too simply, like 2D map projections that get wrapped on the character. If you look at the textiles in your clothing it's a very intricate 3D weave and 3D contruction of the textiles.

I would love to see realistic clothing but it's actually gotten less realistic or maybe it's the higher render resultions exposing how simplified the 3D models are..

I will agree to a point. A lot of the clothing content isn't anywhere near as good as it could be, but there are content creators out there that make some extremely well designed and texture outfits. But at the same time, that improved quality can be a detriment to render times and whether or not a particular scene will render completely on the GPU or drop to CPU.

Richard Haseltine

MelissaGT said:

I often struggle a lot with clothing and trying to add life and realism to it with my limited capabilities (meaning I can't take it into another modeling program and rework it). I was just working on a piece yesterday with some tartan cloth and the stock materials that came with the item made it look as if it was made from bathing suit material...and no amount of shader tweaks could get it to look like wool or even cotton. Thankfully I found a tiled shader that I could sub in. But sometimes tiled shaders are not an option. A piece that has stitching baked in to its materials will look off once that stitching is lost in the process of going to a tiled shader. In that case, you need to hope you can tweak the shader to make it look good enough with the custom non-tiled materials. 

To an extent you can get around that by holding down cmd(Mac)/ctrl(Win) when applying a shader preset - if you then choose the ignore Maps option in the dialogue you can mix the settings from the preset with the maps from the existing materials.

Another issue is hair. There is some good hair out there (Linday)...but you are dependent upon dForce. If you pose your figure, such as turning their head to any extent, and want to use some rigged conforming hair, even the likes of Windfield just looks all sorts of oofta. Yes, even OOT hair looks like patoo on a character who turns their head sideways. So if you pose your figure away from standing straight, then you are limited to dForce (and I'm not talking about SB dForce hair that looks like straw...ick...I'm talking about cloth-based dForce hair a' la Linday). Some conforming hair can be converted for use with dForce...I've had luck with AprilYSH's stuff...but lots of conforming hair will just NOPE right out (I've had horrible luck with OOT hair). 

MelissaGT

Richard Haseltine said:

MelissaGT said:

I often struggle a lot with clothing and trying to add life and realism to it with my limited capabilities (meaning I can't take it into another modeling program and rework it). I was just working on a piece yesterday with some tartan cloth and the stock materials that came with the item made it look as if it was made from bathing suit material...and no amount of shader tweaks could get it to look like wool or even cotton. Thankfully I found a tiled shader that I could sub in. But sometimes tiled shaders are not an option. A piece that has stitching baked in to its materials will look off once that stitching is lost in the process of going to a tiled shader. In that case, you need to hope you can tweak the shader to make it look good enough with the custom non-tiled materials. 

To an extent you can get around that by holding down cmd(Mac)/ctrl(Win) when applying a shader preset - if you then choose the ignore Maps option in the dialogue you can mix the settings from the preset with the maps from the existing materials.

That won't work if you're going from custom materials/uv map to a tiled shader and you need to tile higher than 1...because it will end up tiling the maps you ignored. I believe you can tile individual shaders separately, but if you have a large surface with custom color maps, and then you tile in a normal map, things could go wonky very quickly. 

Cybersox

In the end, it all comes down to this - DAZ Studio is a series of compromises, and the quality of any supporting product is highly subjective (what many people think of as "real" is based on what they see in professional photographs that have usually been postworked and retouched) and restricted by the factors of the price, the amount of time that a PA can put into them and still be profitible, the quality of the materials that the PA has to start with, and the limitations of what can be rendered within a reasonable amount of time on an average computer/GPU combination.  Due to the original texture sources having been filmed under a wide variety of lighting circumstances, it is very unlikely that any DAZ Product will look as good as it can in a single straight render... As a result, I find the best approach to be to follow the same path that most professional photographers and cinematographers take, which is to NOT attempt to get everything perfect in the raw render, but rather to produce an image that follows the philosophy of the RAW mode on most cameras, ie: not crushing the blacks, burning out the whites, or amping out the colors, and then finagle with it in post to optimize the results. 

plasma_ring

sunnyjei said:

Thank you for this~! I've seen Half-life's shaders before but wasn't sure how helpful they would be but you've convinced me to pick it up next time it goes on sale. Do you remember what sweater set that is at the bottom it is super cute?? And I seconded all the good things said about Thickener and Fabiana's velvet shader and would toss in support for mesh grabber too to help create some simple wrinkles, fix pokethrus, and more.

It's this one! :D I find the iReal metal shaders really useful for leather, too--it can make it look like it's an older piece that's been polished or oiled with some adjustment of the microdermabrasion effect. 

PerttiA

I have found myself increasingly using converted game clothing because they look more authentic, not like brand new items taken from the store rack a minute ago.

sunnyjei

plasma_ring said:

sunnyjei said:

Thank you for this~! I've seen Half-life's shaders before but wasn't sure how helpful they would be but you've convinced me to pick it up next time it goes on sale. Do you remember what sweater set that is at the bottom it is super cute?? And I seconded all the good things said about Thickener and Fabiana's velvet shader and would toss in support for mesh grabber too to help create some simple wrinkles, fix pokethrus, and more.

It's this one! :D I find the iReal metal shaders really useful for leather, too--it can make it look like it's an older piece that's been polished or oiled with some adjustment of the microdermabrasion effect. 

Thank you! I haven't made the move to gen9 and so tend to skip if I see it doesn't say it's compatible for gen8/8.1 and completely  missed this set. Bummer cause it's cute too- will definitely keep and eye out for the iReal shaders though :)

chevybabe25

"That won't work if you're going from custom materials/uv map to a tiled shader and you need to tile higher than 1...because it will end up tiling the maps you ignored. I believe you can tile individual shaders separately, but if you have a large surface with custom color maps, and then you tile in a normal map, things could go wonky very quickly. "

If you right click on an image under the surfaces tab, you will see an option labeled "image editor" . when the image editor box comes up you will see to the right "instance tiling" . there you can change the tiling for each individual surface. 

 

Wonderland

chevybabe25 said:

 

If you right click on an image under the surfaces tab, you will see an option labeled "image editor" . when the image editor box comes up you will see to the right "instance tailing" . there you can change the tiling for each individual surface. 
 

'Wow, thanks for that! After all this time there are still so many little tricks I never knew. I really wish someone would create an in-depth manual. I know I'm still only using a small portion of DS's functions.

zombiewhacker

I added chevybabe25's neat little tip to the evergrowing "Features That You Could Slap Yourself For Not Figuring Out Sooner" thread, which definitely needs to be pinned at the top of one of these boards.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/185056/features-that-you-could-slap-yourself-for-not-figuring-out-sooner/p1

AlmightyQUEST

Thank you for the reminder on the instance tiling, I knew I had seen it before but when I went to check yesterday I couldn't find it and thought I was either mistaken or it was an old beta feature that was no longer around. Hopefully I'll remember this now the next time it comes up!

chevybabe25

You are very welcome :)

kraftwerkd

plasma_ring said:

arne207 said:

Hey there,

this is a noobish question I've asked myself a lot as a gamer who later discovered DAZ.

Why is it that DAZ figures often get the skin right so that it looks realistic when that is apparently not easy to do with the way light interacts with it - leading to some DAZ figures looking better than the characters in most video games, I would say - ...

... and at the same time clothing for DAZ figures often seems plasticky or weirdly shiny, so that it looks quite a bit worse than most of the clothing seen in video games?

Is there an easy explanation for this discrepancy I don't see?

Cheers,
Arne

I'm not an expert, but I mess around with materials on clothing a lot for this reason and I think a lot of it has to do with different materials requiring different effects. If you've set up skin the way you want it, you only really have to do it once. If you've got clothing made out of velvet, leather, and silk, that can be surfaces having to work in three entirely different ways in one item. Shaders can do a lot to give fabric the appearance of weight and thickness, but it often requires a lot of careful tweaking or even custom shader node setups.

My top recommendation for fabric shaders is always Fabiana's Shader Plan sets (sold at another store), and I use them and Half Life's iReal shaders almost exclusively because they create very realistic effects. But if you look at how Fabiana constructs her shader presets, they often use multiple maps so that individual channels have different weights, details like quilting or knitted rows have depth, and fibers appear to catch the light. That's a ton of work to develop, and while I think it's worth it, it's definitely more resource-heavy to use. 

This is an example of an older set with the basic Iray red velvet and leather shaders, and then with Fabiana's velvet and quilted linen shaders. It doesn't quite make up for the fact that the top doesn't have much detail in the shoulders, but because of the way the light falls on the fabric it looks a little heavier. 

The biggest difference between Daz and the way games look is that a game development studio has the ability to control how every single asset is constructed, how the materials are set up, and how those materials look inside the game engine. There can actually be a ton of extra work that goes into modifying premade assets to fit an intended art style, since the baseline for Iray is kind of generic photorealism. Even game studios shooting for graphics that are as realistic as possible have an easier time balancing performance and looks, where in Daz you're picking up stuff designed, modeled and textured by hundreds of different people with different priorities. 

I get a lot of use out of the Thickener plugin for clothing that's super thin. Usually that, some geometry editing to create new material zones if needed, and different shaders can help a lot (not criticizing the creator of this outfit, I just grabbed the first sweater I saw). 

WOW thank you for dropping the knowledge! That iReal shader kit is top-notch stuff, can't wait to try it on some vehicle models. That's always been one of my gripes with some shaders, they don't do car paint well and tend to look too flat or too metallic. Even just the promo images give promising results.