How to make renders look like DmD or DfD?

[osanaiko]

I'd really like to know about what is process is being used to get the almost "cartoony" look in the renders in "Dating my Daughter" and "Daughter for Dessert"?

I'm growing more comfortable with Daz itself... but the output always looks like "Daz style".

I guess there are some specific filters or image curve mappings in Photoshop/Gimp etc, but I don't have a lot of experience in those areas...

Anyone have any suggestions where I can learn more?

 

[TearStar]

I'm not sure what you are getting at but I understand the goal. If you can share us some of your result so far (doesn't have to be rendered, a printscreen would do) because we can see what you are getting at.

Lighting can do a real difference by the way.

 

[Rich]

It isn't necessarily post-work (although in some cases it can be). Much of it can potentially break down into either lighting or materials. In particular, you can create some very different effects by making small changes to the material settings on characters. Either tune them up so they're even more realistic than some of the Daz stuff (@celtic1138 is a wizard at tweaking skins, and has posted some astonishingly realistic looking renders on Discord) or go the other direction - make them look somewhat more "stylized."

 

[f95zoneuser463]

I'd say 99% of people underestimate light and all that comes with it. DAZ is a bad program to start with.
This is for Blender but the principle is the same:
The 'filmic color management'-thing he is talking about in the video basically equals using DAZ with i-ray and tone-mapping. I'd recommend watching some of the videos on his channel even for DAZ users, for example:

Understanding Color:

Understanding Composition:

I avoid post-work, I want my image to be rendered as ready and usable as possible. If a problem can be fixed in the 3D software I fix it there.

 

[osanaiko]

Thanks, these are the sorts of things I was hoping for, I'll do some more research.

 

[Dr PinkCake]

It most definitely is the lighting. Have you checked out MrDots second game Melody. The latest update was fucking unbelievable in terms of lighting. He really nailed the lighting in several scenes, such as the dinner scene with Rebecca.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

SO true and Lewdlabs use of DOF and lighting is just gobsmackingly good.

Also do not under estimate camera angles and use of DOF.

It most definitely is the lighting. Have you checked out MrDots second game Melody. The latest update was fucking unbelievable in terms of lighting. He really nailed the lighting in several scenes, such as the dinner scene with Rebecca.

 

[Aeilion]

SO true and Lewdlabs use of DOF and lighting is just gobsmackingly good.

No...

 

[evoR]

DAZ is a bad program to start with.

@f95zoneuser463 Could you elaborate why? Thanks for the resources.

 

[FlipTopBin]

Getting lighting right is a nightmare. The standard 3 point system requires quite some work to get right but ghostlights/light panels are a quick and easy way to light a scene and get good results.

A lot of the best games have a very bright look to the entire scene but have very few shadows which is the hallmark of ghostlights. Look carefull at any render you admire and look at the shadows to try and work out where the lights were placed and their relative brightness. If you can't see any obvious or defined shadows then the chances are there is one massive ghostlight covering the ceiling and thats all.

 

[Rich]

Getting lighting right is a nightmare.

No question that it's one of the biggest challenges to getting good renders in Daz. But, that goes for photos and film as well - lighting makes or breaks any image. Inside lighting is, of course, the toughest to get looking right and also rendering in a decent amount of time.

If you can't see any obvious or defined shadows then the chances are there is one massive ghostlight covering the ceiling and thats all.

And that's one of the reasons that 3D images sometimes look subtly "wrong," yet you can't identify why. Shadows abound in everyday life, and our brains tend to unconsciously pick up when they're missing. At the same time, areas of the scene with less light cause Daz to take longer to render, and sometimes leave noise behind. So, "light everything brightly" does make the render converge more quickly, even if it doesn't look 100% realistic.

 

[Ronoc19]

A good way to start is with a photography lighting guide. There's millions free on the net, they detail light set ups used in photography. Daz3D scenes and people should be lit the same way if you want the shadows and depth to look as good as they do in photo's. Foxy3d has a basic photo studio for Daz3D, its a great way to practice the basic principles in lighting a person. So look up some Portrait lighting set ups for photography, open Foxy3d's studio in Daz3d and put what those guides say into practise. You'll start to understand how light creates shadows that lift an image from being flat and lifeless to being three dimensional and realistic to the eye.

 

[Jackboo1]

It's complicated talking about lighting. But DAZ Studio is the most descomplicated to working on this.

Start by creating a Point Light (or many) in the scenes. Keep testing different positions ... and on Parameters always change the Light Geometry option to Sphere. Also, choose between different color temperatures (3000 to 6000) and Lumen

I recommend using Point Light with other tools like Iray Ghost Light Kit

BTW... I only use Iray for my fun times with DAZ

 

[2Shy]

I'm sorry, and at the risk of sounding like a total snob, I can't believe people think those images are good. I assumed they used lower quality material and lighting settings so that the animations wouldn't take forever to render and they had to use the same settings on the stills so that they'd match. I mean, why would anyone do erotica, with all that skin, and not even use sub surface scattering? And DMD and Melody are all store bought preset characters, same for Big brother and almost all the games I've seen. I recognised them right away. Anyways, sorry for the arrogant rant.

 

[OhWee]

There are those of us that participate in various fan art and art assets threads that will disagree with you. I've yet to find a character that is a 100% match for the Daughter in Dating My Daughter in the various stores that sell Daz products. About the only thing that is a relatively easy match is her skin texture and hair (and clothing of course), but yeah her body has a lot of custom work done to it...

Elena is close to a 'base' Daz character, but she's been tweaked a bit as well. Same for Jennifer. Georgina is a bit more involved, and so far no one has found a close match for Olivia. Graham is Russel though, pretty much straight out of the box.

But, by all means, if you can point out the close or exact matches for these characters, I'm sure a LOT of people here want to know what they are! The fan art peeps will appreciate this!

As for most of the setpieces, well OF COURSE they are store bought assets! Time is money, and Mr. Dots obviously would rather crank out a bunch of renders instead of spend a bunch of time building a custom set. I can't blame him either.

As for the 'artistic style' that Mr. Dots chose for his renders, I'm sure some of that was for practicality/speed of render purposes. Or perhaps to fit inside of the graphics card memory of the system he had when he first started DMD. The SSS thing can be rather system intensive.

Anyways, back to the OP's question:

As others have said, yeah lighting can be tricky, so it's good to practice with different light setups until you find the one you like. I like emissive planes + HDRI myself, but the point + spot recommendations are being made for a reason.

 

[2Shy]

There are those of us that participate in various fan art and art assets threads that will disagree with you. I've yet to find a character that is a 100% match for the Daughter in Dating My Daughter in the various stores that sell Daz products. About the only thing that is a relatively easy match is her skin texture and hair (and clothing of course), but yeah her body has a lot of custom work done to it...

Elena is close to a 'base' Daz character, but she's been tweaked a bit as well. Same for Jennifer. Georgina is a bit more involved, and so far no one has found a close match for Olivia. Graham is Russel though, pretty much straight out of the box.

But, by all means, if you can point out the close or exact matches for these characters, I'm sure a LOT of people here want to know what they are! The fan art peeps will appreciate this!

As for most of the setpieces, well OF COURSE they are store bought assets! Time is money, and Mr. Dots obviously would rather crank out a bunch of renders instead of spend a bunch of time building a custom set. I can't blame him either.

As for the 'artistic style' that Mr. Dots chose for his renders, I'm sure some of that was for practicality/speed of render purposes. Or perhaps to fit inside of the graphics card memory of the system he had when he first started DMD. The SSS thing can be rather system intensive.

Anyways, back to the OP's question:

As others have said, yeah lighting can be tricky, so it's good to practice with different light setups until you find the one you like. I like emissive planes + HDRI myself, but the point + spot recommendations are being made for a reason.

I must apologies for my rant, I hope I didn't offend anyone. I was just a little disappointed that the games weren't all out photo realistic. I didn't consider that these were being done by independent artists without the use of a render farm. BTW I will go through my rather large (250GB) runtime to look for those characters. Thank God for "smart content", it's the only reason I even have Daz studio installed.