Rendering Skin in the Shadows

OminousAutumn

Hi all, How do I get good renderds of skin in the shadows? Is it a simple matter of longer render time? Can you please suggest render settings just so I have a basis to go by so I know what settings are supposed to yield good skin in the first place? Any help in the matter would be really useful! Thanks :)

Oh rendering in Iray btw...

Hiro Protagonist

I presume you are talking about the very grainy appearance of these areas. Parts of a figure that don't get very much light will be very noisy unless they get sufficient samples, which takes time. Obversely, you will have noticed that areas in bright light render very quickly (unless they use volumetric materials, which is another matter). Actually, the problem is with surfaces in half shadow. I think "crush blacks" takes care of the deep shadow areas (just guessing). This is an issue with all PBR renderers (e.g. Luxrender).

As for getting very good skin in the first place, this is a very big topic—there are 100s, if not 1000s, of posts on it already and there is no easy answer. There are a number of factors which complicate a universal solution: surfaces will look very different according to the lighting strategy; not just intensity, proximity and angle, but lighting type (e.g. photometric point lights, sun/sky, HDRI meshes, HDRI environments). Another one is that the texture maps themselves vary quite a lot—each type will need different shader settings. Also, not everyone agrees on what is a good looking or realistic skin.

I've found that many of the recent G3 Iray skin settings that come with products are pretty good, although I nearly always make tweaks—what to tweak is a matter of experience. There also some skin shader products, such as those of V3Digitimes (Virginie) which give an immense range of options to experiment with. I've found those very useful for G2 products which by and large don't have Iray shaders. And do experiment with lighting, it's extremely important.

 

nonesuch00

I found that increasing the samples to the maximum helped a little, increased allowed render time to the maximum (although my renders don't take close to 3 days, more like 1 1/2 to 2 hours for my simple scenes), and set the convergence to a acceptable render to 99% but the fact remains that even photographs with top of the line equipment have this problem in shadows. It is a property of photography. Changing from 95% to 99% helps the most after flooding your subject matter in the face with bright lights to disperse the shadows but then that gets rid of most of the dramatic effect of photography.  

OminousAutumn

Hiro Protagonist said:

I presume you are talking about the very grainy appearance of these areas. Parts of a figure that don't get very much light will be very noisy unless they get sufficient samples, which takes time. Obversely, you will have noticed that areas in bright light render very quickly (unless they use volumetric materials, which is another matter). Actually, the problem is with surfaces in half shadow. I think "crush blacks" takes care of the deep shadow areas (just guessing). This is an issue with all PBR renderers (e.g. Luxrender).

As for getting very good skin in the first place, this is a very big topic—there are 100s, if not 1000s, of posts on it already and there is no easy answer. There are a number of factors which complicate a universal solution: surfaces will look very different according to the lighting strategy; not just intensity, proximity and angle, but lighting type (e.g. photometric point lights, sun/sky, HDRI meshes, HDRI environments). Another one is that the texture maps themselves vary quite a lot—each type will need different shader settings. Also, not everyone agrees on what is a good looking or realistic skin.

I've found that many of the recent G3 Iray skin settings that come with products are pretty good, although I nearly always make tweaks—what to tweak is a matter of experience. There also some skin shader products, such as those of V3Digitimes (Virginie) which give an immense range of options to experiment with. I've found those very useful for G2 products which by and large don't have Iray shaders. And do experiment with lighting, it's extremely important.

 

 

Hiro Protagonist said:

I presume you are talking about the very grainy appearance of these areas. Parts of a figure that don't get very much light will be very noisy unless they get sufficient samples, which takes time. Obversely, you will have noticed that areas in bright light render very quickly (unless they use volumetric materials, which is another matter). Actually, the problem is with surfaces in half shadow. I think "crush blacks" takes care of the deep shadow areas (just guessing). This is an issue with all PBR renderers (e.g. Luxrender).

As for getting very good skin in the first place, this is a very big topic—there are 100s, if not 1000s, of posts on it already and there is no easy answer. There are a number of factors which complicate a universal solution: surfaces will look very different according to the lighting strategy; not just intensity, proximity and angle, but lighting type (e.g. photometric point lights, sun/sky, HDRI meshes, HDRI environments). Another one is that the texture maps themselves vary quite a lot—each type will need different shader settings. Also, not everyone agrees on what is a good looking or realistic skin.

I've found that many of the recent G3 Iray skin settings that come with products are pretty good, although I nearly always make tweaks—what to tweak is a matter of experience. There also some skin shader products, such as those of V3Digitimes (Virginie) which give an immense range of options to experiment with. I've found those very useful for G2 products which by and large don't have Iray shaders. And do experiment with lighting, it's extremely important.

 

Thank you very much for your imput. Can I just ask an off topic question since it seems you might know the territory. What is the difference (if any) between V4 and Genesis 2? I have bought and succesfully used some G2 products on my G3 models but I am wary about purchasing V4 products to also use in the same way with my G3 models...any imput? Thank you again. 

As for the skin I think I just have a lot of reading to do and in the mean time I don't think it looks like I am making any glaring errors.

 

OminousAutumn

nonesuch00 said:

I found that increasing the samples to the maximum helped a little, increased allowed render time to the maximum (although my renders don't take close to 3 days, more like 1 1/2 to 2 hours for my simple scenes), and set the convergence to a acceptable render to 99% but the fact remains that even photographs with top of the line equipment have this problem in shadows. It is a property of photography. Changing from 95% to 99% helps the most after flooding your subject matter in the face with bright lights to disperse the shadows but then that gets rid of most of the dramatic effect of photography.  

Thank you. My renders do take ages sadly so increasing all those variables will make them take 3 days. However if this is something I can expect than I suppose I will have to adjust my patience accordingly. 

nonesuch00

stillmovingstudios said:

nonesuch00 said:

I found that increasing the samples to the maximum helped a little, increased allowed render time to the maximum (although my renders don't take close to 3 days, more like 1 1/2 to 2 hours for my simple scenes), and set the convergence to a acceptable render to 99% but the fact remains that even photographs with top of the line equipment have this problem in shadows. It is a property of photography. Changing from 95% to 99% helps the most after flooding your subject matter in the face with bright lights to disperse the shadows but then that gets rid of most of the dramatic effect of photography.  

Thank you. My renders do take ages sadly so increasing all those variables will make them take 3 days. However if this is something I can expect than I suppose I will have to adjust my patience accordingly. 

If you are in Windows you can keep the rendering process from seizing your computer by setting CPU affinity for DAZ Studio in the 'Details' tab in the 'Task Manager' 

OminousAutumn

nonesuch00 said:

stillmovingstudios said:

nonesuch00 said:

I found that increasing the samples to the maximum helped a little, increased allowed render time to the maximum (although my renders don't take close to 3 days, more like 1 1/2 to 2 hours for my simple scenes), and set the convergence to a acceptable render to 99% but the fact remains that even photographs with top of the line equipment have this problem in shadows. It is a property of photography. Changing from 95% to 99% helps the most after flooding your subject matter in the face with bright lights to disperse the shadows but then that gets rid of most of the dramatic effect of photography.  

Thank you. My renders do take ages sadly so increasing all those variables will make them take 3 days. However if this is something I can expect than I suppose I will have to adjust my patience accordingly. 

If you are in Windows you can keep the rendering process from seizing your computer by setting CPU affinity for DAZ Studio in the 'Details' tab in the 'Task Manager' 

I'm afraid I use Mac, I don't suppose there is something similar for it?

 

nonesuch00

stillmovingstudios said:

nonesuch00 said:

stillmovingstudios said:

nonesuch00 said:

I found that increasing the samples to the maximum helped a little, increased allowed render time to the maximum (although my renders don't take close to 3 days, more like 1 1/2 to 2 hours for my simple scenes), and set the convergence to a acceptable render to 99% but the fact remains that even photographs with top of the line equipment have this problem in shadows. It is a property of photography. Changing from 95% to 99% helps the most after flooding your subject matter in the face with bright lights to disperse the shadows but then that gets rid of most of the dramatic effect of photography.  

Thank you. My renders do take ages sadly so increasing all those variables will make them take 3 days. However if this is something I can expect than I suppose I will have to adjust my patience accordingly. 

If you are in Windows you can keep the rendering process from seizing your computer by setting CPU affinity for DAZ Studio in the 'Details' tab in the 'Task Manager' 

I'm afraid I use Mac, I don't suppose there is something similar for it?

 

Afraid not.

http://superuser.com/questions/149312/how-to-set-processor-affinity-on-os-x

 

Hiro Protagonist

stillmovingstudios said:

Thank you very much for your imput. Can I just ask an off topic question since it seems you might know the territory. What is the difference (if any) between V4 and Genesis 2? I have bought and succesfully used some G2 products on my G3 models but I am wary about purchasing V4 products to also use in the same way with my G3 models...any imput? Thank you again. 

There is a great deal of difference between V4 (part of "Generation 4") and all Genesis figures. Just about everything is different in terms of how morphs work, how the joints work, how clothing is fitted. There are ways in which you can exchange assets between these generations, for example, you can use the skin texture maps from V4 on Genesis 1 as is. On Genesis 2, I believe you need a product such as this. If you are fairly new to DAZ and have no Generation 4 or older products already personally I don't recommend looking back to Generation 4 (other than for textures, perhaps, bearing in mind the above conditions). You will be facing an entirely new learning curve for what I think are uncertain benefits.