Advice Concerning Render(s)

[venuskay]

I would appreciate any feedback or thoughts. I'm looking to develop an interactive VN by the end of the year and a UE, 3D game in roughly five years' time. I love Daz3D for a plethora of reasons but I wanted to launch a Patreon based around surrealism and realistic artwork (adult-only) and tips on how to get the most realistic feel when using Daz3D + PS 2020 would be great. The main issues (for me) are lighting and camera functioning. I've watched plenty of tutorials and examined a lot of realistic work, but P2P feedback would be greatly appreciated. I use my husband's desktop - all I know is that it uses Nvidia and he constantly says the graphics card is blergh.

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] tips on how to get the most realistic feel when using Daz3D + PS 2020 would be great.

I still suck at realistic renders, but from what I get reading others talk about Daz3D, most of the magic come from the lighting, then the experience. Limit the number of light sources, avoid direct lighting every time it's possible, and fail a lot while learning from each failure (personally I'm still at this step).
To this I'll add "do not use out of the box assets". Each material have a lot of parameters (translucency, glossiness, refraction, etc.) and they all play a role in the level of realism you'll achieve ; eyes without enough glossiness/refraction will looks dead, walls with too much translucency will looks fake, skins with the wrong diffuse color will looks sick, and so on. I can be wrong, but from my point of view, you should start there. Once you'll have characters, furniture, and all that looks realistic, it should be easier to find the right camera setting and lighting for the whole scene to also look realistic.
It's a long and laborious works, but with the time you'll learn what each parameter imply and start to have an intuitive feeling regarding what is wrong and where to looks to correct it.

As for Unreal, it will need a lot more of skills if you want the 3D to be real time. But hopefully, while not being directly usable, what you'll learn with Daz3D should help you understand where to looks for solution with Unreal.

 

[-L-L-MJ-]

As someone who just recently started to play around with Daz I found this video fantastic;


EDIT **** If i press play it says video unavailable here is the

You must be registered to see the links

****

Really in depth with a lot of useful information. It's a long video but absolutely worth a watch in my opinion.

From your scene I love the added tree's, creates depth and the fern? I guess in the bottom right also helps the composition.
Did you use a HDRI image? the backdrop of the forest clearly shows shadow plays with opening in the canopy above and in your final image all that is gone. Now I get the whitewash effect can have it's appeal, personally I feel like the lighting is unnatural and shadows or contrast is gone where I would expect sun rays to filter through the leaves of the canopy..

I guess the setup of the scene would have lend it self perfectly for having a patch of light ( god rays shine ) down to accentuate part of your scene while keeping other details. ( but this also might be artistic choice )

Anyhow, would love to see more and goodluck!

 

[Madmanator99]

Your plan is good, VN, then 3d, but, depending on the time you are ready to spend, you can do both, as they are quite different.

As for realism, you probably already know, but use big textures for your characters, including normals/bumps, also if you use backgrounds/hdris or rooms/buildings/props/etc, make sure they have big textures too (in particular for closer renders). After that it's the lighting, but the final step is the editing in photoshop/gimp/etc. Playing with levels/hue saturation/highlights/filters(noise/sharpen/etc) can add to the realism.
I don't know if there is a magic formula, as the post-work depends on the render, but a render alone is not enought to achieve the "best" realism imo, unless you spend a Long long time tweaking your scene, and it would be considerably more time compared to rendering and editing in photoshop/gimp/etc.

One of my favorite lighting assets is :
https://f95zone.to/threads/summer-light-for-iray.14290/
It's a simple two light sources asset, but it got me started (the Light F in particular I still use alot, with some editing), and it is realy great for outdoor scenes. You can tweak the light sources, analyse them, select them as your View and move them, see the effect, etc.

Also, there are some assets that can help with fog if that was your goal, such as:
https://f95zone.to/threads/iray-distance-fog.34925/
And there are many others.

I like your render, it is Realy good imo, just a bit too whitewashed for my taste as -L-L-MJ- said, but playing with the levels in photoshop can increase the constrast, and running it through the nvidia/intel denoiser can counter the noise. (https://f95zone.to/threads/nvidia-ai-denoiser-2-4.35677/)

Spoiler: Example Result

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I tried to attach a short video (23meg) showing what I did to get this result from your render but it said it was too big, so I put it on my youtube on link only.


Back to the subject thou, it is up to you what result you want to achieve, this is just my personal take on your render, which is already pretty good (your render that is)! A little too green, but I didn't mess with the hue, I did what the video shows, so playing with the hue can give different results, warmer/colder colors, etc. The main point is that it can all be done in post-work, and it saves rendering time.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

To this I'll add "do not use out of the box assets".

Nope, I think it's quite a bad adage imo. It's also mostly the lottery tho. Some skins/environement gonna be almost near 'perfect' (in what Iray uber shader allow), some gonna need really heavy tweaks. It's all depend on the CG artists shader knowledge and textures quality.

and running it through the nvidia/intel denoiser can counter the noise.

Most of bad noise can be dealt with lightnening and surfaces tweaking. I think we already reach point of absurdity in most Daz/Iray rendered VN with denoisers imo. Reminder skins use 'natural' noise (not limited to skins but a lot of different surfaces too), may it be by how it was painted or by a random noise tile in the top coat or whatever. Not even talking about normal, disp map or HD morphs. Closer you gonna get, the more washed it gonna be. If realism, or maybe more photorealism is your goal run away from it lol.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Nope, I think it's quite a bad adage imo. It's also mostly the lottery tho. Some skins/environement gonna be almost near 'perfect' (in what Iray uber shader allow), some gonna need really heavy tweaks. It's all depend on the CG artists shader knowledge and textures quality.

I'm really confused here. You're telling that me saying to not use out of the box assets is a bad advice, then explaining that people should not limit to out of the box assets because some need a lot of tweaking.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I'm really confused here. You're telling that me saying to not use out of the box assets is a bad advice, then explaining that people should not limit to out of the box assets because some need a lot of tweaking.

Ay, I'm quite terrible at this damn. Some assets are very correct. Some are outrigth terrible. "Out the box" mean nothing most of the time.

 

[anne O'nymous]

"Out the box" mean nothing most of the time.

It mean that you use the asset as it come ; so without tweaking. And as you said, while some are already pretty good, too many are pretty bad and will never give a realistic result when used like that.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

It mean that you use the asset as it come ; so without tweaking. And as you said, while some are already pretty good, too many are pretty bad and will never give a realistic result when used like that.

Indeed, bluejaunte skins or Dekogon Studios env. are top notch, or even Rogue one iirc. Hard to push further. In other hand lot of terrible assest tho.

 

[MoolahMilk]

Hey the render looks really nice. But I think it could be enhanced greatly with some post production work. At the moment it looks kinda flat and I'm not sure but perhaps you are going for a more hazy look? I think doing just abit of color correction in post will make the scene colors pop out more and highlight the depth of the scene. Slapping on the right hazy/mist overlays would give the forest haze effect I think you're trying to achieve. Good luck with your game!