how to improve my render in DAZ?

[Sealon9]

I couldn't get my renders to look good . What settings should I use or what should I pay attention to in order to achieve great render for AVN ( like Daval3D or Lucius Logan)?

 

[Winterfire]

Your camera angles suck, so you should start from that. For a render to look good, the camera should be placed and capture with purpose, from the right angles, this is very important.
Example:

You must be registered to see the links

but if you play any moderately successful game, you'll see each angle is done with purpose, why do I want to see 80% of the room when the focus should be the 20% of the action? And in one of that 20%, most of the action is covered by the guy's ass. It's a disaster.

After that, you need to take care of the lighting. Currently, it's too plain, and it's clear you haven't given that much thought either. There are many tutorials on youtube regarding light, such as:

You must be registered to see the links

but you can and should look for more as lighting is a complex topic and you'll have a lot to learn (and practice!) before it gets good.

Lastly, there's post processing. Nearly all of the good looking AVNs use post processing in their renders. That's the "finishing touch" that you should apply only after you fixed the previous two points. Applying post processing without taking care of the rest would be like putting a ribbon over a dump, better but not pretty.

-Edit-
Forgot to mention that I'm not sure if Daz3D has an internal way to do post processing, I am 99% sure it does. However, even outside of that, you can further enhance a render by doing Post Processing externally, here's a good tutorial:
https://f95zone.to/threads/wallpapers-and-photoshop-tutorials-thread.134361/

-Edit 2-
Note how even in the tutorial, my points are proven. Even before any post processing is applied, the camera angle isn't random but it has purpose, it captures the exact scene it needs to portray. And even before any post processing is done, the lighting is fairly good.

 

[Impious Monk]

Use reference images. Instead of abstractly trying to put a scene together, find an image on the internet you like. It can be a photo, a movie still, or 2D/3D art. Try to recreate the image as close as you can. Ignore surface details like clothing, wallpaper, etc. but try to duplicate the prop/character placement, framing, depth of field, and lighting of the original image. After you've done that a few times you'll have a better contextual understanding for the tutorial videos you watch.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

Gonna give you the TL;DR, go do some studying on photography. It'll help you way more than any daz tutorial could.

 

[Sealon9]

Your camera angles suck, so you should start from that. For a render to look good, the camera should be placed and capture with purpose, from the right angles, this is very important.
Example:

You must be registered to see the links

but if you play any moderately successful game, you'll see each angle is done with purpose, why do I want to see 80% of the room when the focus should be the 20% of the action? And in one of that 20%, most of the action is covered by the guy's ass. It's a disaster.

After that, you need to take care of the lighting. Currently, it's too plain, and it's clear you haven't given that much thought either. There are many tutorials on youtube regarding light, such as:

You must be registered to see the links

but you can and should look for more as lighting is a complex topic and you'll have a lot to learn (and practice!) before it gets good.

Lastly, there's post processing. Nearly all of the good looking AVNs use post processing in their renders. That's the "finishing touch" that you should apply only after you fixed the previous two points. Applying post processing without taking care of the rest would be like putting a ribbon over a dump, better but not pretty.

-Edit-
Forgot to mention that I'm not sure if Daz3D has an internal way to do post processing, I am 99% sure it does. However, even outside of that, you can further enhance a render by doing Post Processing externally, here's a good tutorial:
https://f95zone.to/threads/wallpapers-and-photoshop-tutorials-thread.134361/

-Edit 2-
Note how even in the tutorial, my points are proven. Even before any post processing is applied, the camera angle isn't random but it has purpose, it captures the exact scene it needs to portray. And even before any post processing is done, the lighting is fairly good.

thanks for your answer I played around with the lighting settings a bit today and the camera angle, but it still doesn't look very high quality, like the comics I gave as examples. This is the last render I tried. I'm still working on the camera angle and so on, as you suggested. Are the examples I posted this smooth because of the lighting, or is it because they were edited in applications like Photoshop afterwards?

 

[Sealon9]

Use reference images. Instead of abstractly trying to put a scene together, find an image on the internet you like. It can be a photo, a movie still, or 2D/3D art. Try to recreate the image as close as you can. Ignore surface details like clothing, wallpaper, etc. but try to duplicate the prop/character placement, framing, depth of field, and lighting of the original image. After you've done that a few times you'll have a better contextual understanding for the tutorial videos you watch.

You're talking about trying to recreate the same photo from scratch( movie etc.), right? To understand the logic until it's exactly the same?

 

[Impious Monk]

You're talking about trying to recreate the same photo from scratch( movie etc.), right? To understand the logic until it's exactly the same?

From scratch, yes. Not exactly the same, but try to put items in the same place, frame it the same, and match the lighting and depth of field. You'll be amazed at how much you can learn about these things by trying to copy someone else. And even experienced artists and animators continue to use reference images/videos throughout their careers.

 

[Sealon9]

From scratch, yes. Not exactly the same, but try to put items in the same place, frame it the same, and match the lighting and depth of field. You'll be amazed at how much you can learn about these things by trying to copy someone else. And even experienced artists and animators continue to use reference images/videos throughout their careers.

Alright, thank you. I'll will try it like that.

 

[Mr.Kin]

From my point of view, looking at these images, I noticed that there seems to be a single, general light source. It would be beneficial for you to learn the basics of lighting a scene.

I recommend you start by learning about the three-point lighting concept, which is a fundamental principle in photography and filming. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube about this, just search for "Three-point lighting Daz Studio".

Three-point lighting consists of:
Key Light: This is your main, brightest light source that illuminates your subject.
Fill Light: This is a secondary light, usually placed on the opposite side of the key light, to fill in and soften the shadows created by the key light.
Backlight (or Rim Light): Placed behind the subject, this light helps to separate them from the background by creating a subtle outline or "rim" of light.

I believe that understanding and applying this will greatly help improve your renders.

Also, it's very important to analyze your entire scene. If there are windows, a TV that's on, or a lamp, you can add corresponding lights to make the scene more realistic. For example, if you have a pink lampshade, you can add a light with a pinkish hue coming from it.

Finally, I recommend you play around with the camera angles and use a depth of field effect. This will leave the background a little out of focus, giving your render a more professional feel.

 

[MeatMarble]

Others advice here is really good, but also wanted to add some points:
* Single point lights create weird shadows so try giving them geometry. (Add Lumens to a object, or larger spotlights.)
*If able try and setup light to bounce around the scene, it looks a lot more natural. Example would be to have a dimmer light, which spans the top of the room (Ghost light if it's in view) just to stop harsh flashbang effects from focused lights, fills gaps from spotlights and more shadows downwards to add depth.

* You might find denoisers good for getting rid of grain/fireflies, but personally I think it destroys quality of clothing, skin textures, eyes and hair etc. to get any results.
My alternative is to render at 2k; do maxrenders, and have convergence around 99.10+ and (controversially) put the quality setting around 2-5 or more, and then downscale to 1080p when it's finished.

It can take a long time *depending on GPU*, but there is no good alternative I've found to just letting it render out the inequalities.

This is a image in 2k, I rendered recently just using a HDRI for light and the settings I said here, for reference.
If you are disheartened/feel stuck try a outdoor scene with a HDRI, and mess with some settings until you find what you think looks good!

If you are finding renders are taking a long time, or not fitting onto GPU memory here:
*Hide parts of the scene, especially body-parts, which aren't seen and/or reflect light.
*If you cannot remove anything, but still need memory space, I suggest a plugin like:
Daz LOD System v1.4 (Better Scene Optimizer)
Just to lower texture resolution (I advise to mainly use it for objects, which are blurred from camera focus)

Good luck!

 

[link2121]

hey man. I really like your poses. they are great. They have something. You can defently build on those.



For my improvement tipp:

i know i know my tipp is lame, its just: "uSe aN oTher eNgIne" hur dur. but id like to make the point, that render engines are way more powerful to make daz renders easy okayish than daz alone. I’m by no means an artist, i just tried to reproduce your pose, loaded in a prop, added 3 lights und slapped it into octane. I’d say its way more easy to produce something okayish in a render engine than to get a good render in daz3d. furthermore I don’t think im the only one that is kinda burned out by all the games that just look the same. So I kinda think its important to find your own style.



some more tipps:

use hdri textures to light your world. It’s a very easy improvement and there is a ton of great hdris. You can download great hdris for free from polyheaven.

play around with the lights: place it near, place it far, place more, place less, just try out what looks best

play around with the F-Stop: everything else is blure, nothing is blure. Just try it!

play around with light temperature: make it cold, make it warm, try out what looks good in your scene

play around with the ratio. Do landscape, to portrait, do 4:3, do 16:9. Do something else and cut it down after wards in ps

you don’t need to make architectural visualizations for you renders, but the scene does need to look a little bit okayish…

play around in photoshop, abuse the raw filters like youre a god damn hipster. example: same render with just 5sec spend in some filters: its a easy way to find your style.



in my render i did not spend any time creating any textures. but in my opinion its a must for great scenes. Like with the hdri, polyheaven have great free textures.

 

[chrisvaltino]

Lighting and post-work. Your raw renders will always look a bit dead. Study 3-point lighting techniques. Then, learn basic color grading and sharpening in an image editor. That's the biggest leap in quality you can make.