Rate My Render

[NylonBandit]

I discovered Daz3D last week and I've been playing around with it.... A LOT. It's been a blast creating characters, getting a pose right, lighting the scene correctly and playing with render settings.

This isn't my first render. I might put the first 3 renders in post below, but this is the latest and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Any constructive criticism welcome, especially from Daz3D veterans.

Spoiler: Render

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

 

[NylonBandit]

These are the first 3 renders

Spoiler: Renders

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

 

[Guntag]

The first render (before spoiler) is really good. Only minor thing is that her right hand is a little "blurry", maybe because of perspective and/or lighting, or maybe it's on purpose.

From the spoiler, 1st and 3rd are really good too, nothing bad to say ! The 2nd one has a creepy face from my point of view (Chucky/creepy doll style). Not sure if it's the shape of her head, the eyes, the make up, the mouth or a combination of those. And again it could be on purpose. It's not a bad render, it's just that I'm not sure if it's what it's meant to produce. Also, her feet seem bent.

Spoiler

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

 

[Deleted member 609064]

Small breasts are hot!

 

[pat11]

Not bad for a start, few problems but easy to fix (5s), on the 2nd render you just forgot to apply the feet pose after you applied the pose for the char, that's why there are few pokes with the shoes and the pantyhose
There is also a minor problem with the hair, you forgot to increase the Foreead width or deph

I wish you good luck for the future, it's just a start, the road is very long to manage to make very good renders

as you know, it's very easy to pose a character with an HDRI, it becomes harder to do it with an environment and even harder to make him interact with his environment or with other characters, that's it the next steps, esuite, you will have to work on the lights, so that they adapt with the environment and be realistic, then the DOF, then ... but that's another story, you are not not there yet

at each stage of your progress you will encounter small or big problems, which you will have to solve with more or less success, sometimes you will be so fed up that you will want to give up, this is where you will have to succeed in motivating you enough to continue. Tell yourself, that it is when you will encounter big problems and that you will manage to solve them, that you will take a step.
Anyone can manage to do a scene in less than 15 minutes on Daz, but for all the elements to be coherent, it's another story and that's what requires a lot of patience and work

 

[Morgan42]

Not bad for a start, few problems but easy to fix (5s), on the 2nd render you just forgot to apply the feet pose after you applied the pose for the char, that's why there are few pokes with the shoes and the pantyhose
There is also a minor problem with the hair, you forgot to increase the Foreead width or deph

I wish you good luck for the future, it's just a start, the road is very long to manage to make very good renders

as you know, it's very easy to pose a character with an HDRI, it becomes harder to do it with an environment and even harder to make him interact with his environment or with other characters, that's it the next steps, esuite, you will have to work on the lights, so that they adapt with the environment and be realistic, then the DOF, then ... but that's another story, you are not not there yet

at each stage of your progress you will encounter small or big problems, which you will have to solve with more or less success, sometimes you will be so fed up that you will want to give up, this is where you will have to succeed in motivating you enough to continue. Tell yourself, that it is when you will encounter big problems and that you will manage to solve them, that you will take a step.
Anyone can manage to do a scene in less than 15 minutes on Daz, but for all the elements to be coherent, it's another story and that's what requires a lot of patience and work

This is some of the best advice I've ever seen.

Your 2nd render in the second post, I think the issue is the eyes being rolled too far up towards the forehead.

You definitely seem to have a better grasp of lighting than I do already

 

[recreation]

First post: Too much postwork (or denoizer, not sure, but looks like post).
No1. Well not much to say about it. Basically looks like 99% of every other "first render", the lighting is good though.
No2. Not bad at all, the hand is clipping a bit with dress, but that happens to all of us, same goes for the forehead, this is a known iray bug and easy to fix (increase forehead depth of the hair). Feet pose is a bit off.
No3. Same as before, feet pose is off, also the hand is too far away from the torso. It would be good to move the hair a bit to the side, so it fits the pose, I'm sure that hair has some morphs for that.

All in all not bad at all, I've seen a lot worse first time render, and not so many better. Lighting is better than in most first time renders I've seen.
Just don't overdo post, less is more, and the more you work with Daz, the more you'll understand that you actually don't need to do post if you use Daz's tonemapping and some other nice tools it has to offer.
BUT, you'll also notice that Daz has some limitations and some serious problems in some areas, just don't be afraid to look stuff up if you hit a wall, some actually, a lot of people will tell you that "this and that" won't work and that Daz is a shitty program, while they don't even know anything about it.
Also a 100% what pat11 said.

 

[NylonBandit]

The first render (before spoiler) is really good. Only minor thing is that her right hand is a little "blurry", maybe because of perspective and/or lighting, or maybe it's on purpose.

From the spoiler, 1st and 3rd are really good too, nothing bad to say ! The 2nd one has a creepy face from my point of view (Chucky/creepy doll style). Not sure if it's the shape of her head, the eyes, the make up, the mouth or a combination of those. And again it could be on purpose. It's not a bad render, it's just that I'm not sure if it's what it's meant to produce. Also, her feet seem bent.

The blurriness was intentional. I had set depth of field to focus on the eye and shoulder area, everything else further than that begins to get blurry as it gets further away. The intention was to have the face as the focal point.

I think Ashley was the result of the wrong lighting, on the wrong makeup pulling the wrong face. It's usually a very pretty model

Small breasts are hot!

Yes they are You may start noticing a pattern of small breasts, long legs with my characters....

Not bad for a start, few problems but easy to fix (5s), on the 2nd render you just forgot to apply the feet pose after you applied the pose for the char, that's why there are few pokes with the shoes and the pantyhose
There is also a minor problem with the hair, you forgot to increase the Foreead width or deph

I wish you good luck for the future, it's just a start, the road is very long to manage to make very good renders

as you know, it's very easy to pose a character with an HDRI, it becomes harder to do it with an environment and even harder to make him interact with his environment or with other characters, that's it the next steps, esuite, you will have to work on the lights, so that they adapt with the environment and be realistic, then the DOF, then ... but that's another story, you are not not there yet

These are the things I've actually been focused on. Reason there's little hiccups here and there in the posing with the feet and hair and stuff is because it was just a quick set up for testing different rendering and light settings. I have a bit of basic photography knowledge which has been surprisingly helpful, mix that with some YouTube vids and I feel like each render get's better.

at each stage of your progress you will encounter small or big problems, which you will have to solve with more or less success, sometimes you will be so fed up that you will want to give up, this is where you will have to succeed in motivating you enough to continue. Tell yourself, that it is when you will encounter big problems and that you will manage to solve them, that you will take a step.
Anyone can manage to do a scene in less than 15 minutes on Daz, but for all the elements to be coherent, it's another story and that's what requires a lot of patience and work

The biggest problem I have right now is 100% posing hair... and bloody skirt meshes!! However, I've downloaded the 'pull meshes' asset and just need to learn how to use it. I'm hoping that will help with fix some issues. Also for the meshes, I remember seeing a video about exporting to Blender to fix mesh issues... I may have to watch it again.

You definitely seem to have a better grasp of lighting than I do already

I don't I know basic photography, but I feel the lighting in the latest render maybe a bit much. I just need to gradually tone it down until I find settings I'm happy with.

First post: Too much postwork (or denoizer, not sure, but looks like post).

No post work or Denoizer. I posted the image straight from the Daz3D export folder.

All in all not bad at all, I've seen a lot worse first time render, and not so many better. Lighting is better than in most first time renders I've seen.
Just don't overdo post, less is more, and the more you work with Daz, the more you'll understand that you actually don't need to do post if you use Daz's tonemapping and some other nice tools it has to offer.
BUT, you'll also notice that Daz has some limitations and some serious problems in some areas, just don't be afraid to look stuff up if you hit a wall, some actually, a lot of people will tell you that "this and that" won't work and that Daz is a shitty program, while they don't even know anything about it.
Also a 100% what pat11 said.

Tonemapping... I don't fully understand that yet. I'll look into it... thanks!

I'm having a lot of crashes, which is getting annoying... but I wouldn't call it a shitty program. I'm actually blaming it on my 970 and limited 8GB RAM. I've seen some renders that look real. That's the goal. I don't know how much of these renders are done in post and what's done in Daz, but from what I've managed to get out of it I'd say it's more than capable.

I'm guessing the people complaining are the same people who just throw a cheap model in with no bump or diffuse maps, stick a spotlight 2 feet from the face on 100% intensity and hit render without learning the settings and then go, 'This looks like arse. Daz3D is arse' EDIT: Actually, this is kind of what I said after my first render lol. 'This looks like arse. I am arse'.

 

[Deleted member 609064]

Yes they are You may start noticing a pattern of small breasts, long legs with my characters....

Hot AF.

 

[pat11]

Mesh grabber is a good tool to fix pokes or make some cool effects with clothes, like dForce Magnet, i personnaly don't use these tools.

Yes you can use, Blender or even better, zbrush to modify meshes, but keep in mind that if you do not know the other programs, Blender, zbrush and the other programs that the new Bridges allow to transfer models and scenes (maya, etc ...) you will waste a lot of time in understand the basics of these programs, while working directly on Daz would have been much faster.

The best advice I can give you is to definitely not use other programs until you fully understand how all of Daz's features work.
Daz offers a lot of possibilities, you just have to learn to use them and especially to use the right ones at the right time.

I never do postwork, EXCEPT, to do the posters for my comics, add texts etc ... I force myself to do everything in Daz, to learn.
Either way where you will learn the most is by making mistakes AND solving them yourself, without tutorials or help.
It will take longer, but you will understand in depth your mistakes, why and how to solve them and how the tools work.

Each stage of the composition of a scene must become automatic, both in terms of the characters and the environment and to achieve that, no secret, you have to work a lot on Daz

You will make enormous progress in Daz, in a few weeks, months, you just have to work a lot and above all work intelligently.

 

[recreation]

No post work or Denoizer. I posted the image straight from the Daz3D export folder.

okay, it looks so blurry that I thought it was post, denoizer have the same effect to a degree if the render doesn't get enough iterations. I'd suggest to use DOF a little bit less excessive then^^

I'm having a lot of crashes, which is getting annoying... but I wouldn't call it a shitty program. I'm actually blaming it on my 970 and limited 8GB RAM.

you can blame Daz if you use the newest version, the latest update messed a lot of stuff up, and I've read that a lot of people get a lot (more) crashes than usual, but yes, your hardware is far from optimal. IF you use the newest version, I can recommend trying out the fog feature in render settings, I know you can't always use fog for every render, but it speeds up rendering a lot.

I've seen some renders that look real. That's the goal. I don't know how much of these renders are done in post and what's done in Daz, but from what I've managed to get out of it I'd say it's more than capable.

I'm far from being a pro, but I've achieved some really good results and I only use post to fix small errors that I haven't noticed before rendering (poke thru and the iray bug for example). Have a look at my deviantArt if you're interested.

 

[NylonBandit]

you can blame Daz if you use the newest version, the latest update messed a lot of stuff up, and I've read that a lot of people get a lot (more) crashes than usual, but yes, your hardware is far from optimal. IF you use the newest version, I can recommend trying out the fog feature in render settings, I know you can't always use fog for every render, but it speeds up rendering a lot.

Yeahhhh... my hardware may be an issue. Last night I set up an environment with 5 models. Spent hours getting the poses right, and setting up the light... Only for Daz to crash EVERYTIME I went into render preview mode. Looks like, at most, my PC will handle 2 models with no background... Dunno if there's anything I can do to fix that, but I may end up having to set up a scene then render the characters separate from the background, an then put it all together in Photoshop afterwards I'm also rendering in standard HD for the time being to do test renders, then doing a 4K render it turns out OK.

That was very disappointing and could become time consuming...

So I started a new scene and decided to have some 'fun' with the posing...

Spoiler: Last nights work.

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

 

[recreation]

Yeahhhh... my hardware may be an issue. Last night I set up an environment with 5 models. Spent hours getting the poses right, and setting up the light... Only for Daz to crash EVERYTIME I went into render preview mode. Looks like, at most, my PC will handle 2 models with no background... Dunno if there's anything I can do to fix that, but I may end up having to set up a scene then render the characters separate from the background, an then put it all together in Photoshop afterwards I'm also rendering in standard HD for the time being to do test renders, then doing a 4K render it turns out OK.

That was very disappointing and could become time consuming...

So I started a new scene and decided to have some 'fun' with the posing...

Spoiler: Last nights work.

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

I guess you're using gen8? I'd switch to gen3 instead, the're basically the same models, clothes and hair work on both generations, but gen3 is far less hardware demanding.

Poses look okay, but it's hard to judge without any kind of environment, I can see a little poke thru on the last ones foot, and you forgot to give girls some nipples

 

[pat11]

Daz crashes as soon as there is not enough RAM to render or iray preview, you can easily know when Daz will crash, by looking at the% of RAM used by the scene before doing the preview or rendering it, normally Daz crashes as soon as there is more than 75% of RAM used during rendering.
So if you see that your scene is already taking a lot of RAM, you know that if you run the render it will crash

you can use G3 instead of G8, because indeed, G8 requires a lot more resources, but if you absolutely want to use G8, then you have to deactivate a maximum of morphs that you will not use for the scene
to deactivate and activate morphs you have the very good tools
https://f95zone.to/threads/daz3d-manager-tool-0-5-3-31-01-2020.33888/
if you have a not very powerful computer, this tool will save your life

 

[Utily.utily.1312]

Your renders look very good

I use blener. I'll try with Daz3D too