Some Questions about Daz

[Volta]

So I have a few questions about Daz but before I get into that I’ll do a little explaining.

I’ve been playing with Daz for a little while now, I can’t say I’m a pro by a long way but I know the ropes, a little about scene composition, lights, emissive surfaces VS point or spotlights, character building with sliders that sort of thing, which is great but since I’ve been writing my way through a first draft script for a game I thought I’d better up my Daz skills a bit.

Yes, the game is going to be Daz + Ren’py, nothing hugely revolutionary about that and as such I’d prefer to stand out on quality both of writing and Daz. Focussing on Daz for the moment I’d like to ask a few questions about how people have been getting top quality renders and which methods of lighting, skin shading and post work they have been using.

I’d love to be able to crank out renders that are on par with Lewdlab or ICSTOR, however I don’t find that to be a hard requirement since they are both excellent and my equipment for now isn’t going to match theirs, something more like Big Brother level of quality would be doable I think.

Since my rig is a work in progress it’s pointless to quote specs but I’m working with a GTX 970 6GB at the moment and for practise renders that will not be En Masse this is sufficient.


Firstly, Post work, assuming the use of Photoshop since that seems to be the standard, how much postwork do you people do to get the image as you want it? Is it as simple as a little colour balancing and static removal or is a major time investment needed and if so what do you do?

Now moving on to the Daz stuff, Anagenesis, is it worth it, how much difference does it make and does it increase render times noticeably. I know that Lewdlab uses it in DoD which of course looks great and before I start dabbling I thought I’d ask.

What lighting do you recommend, for outside I tend to use either sun sky or an HDRI, which do you consider more natural, which do you prefer irrelevant of natural light and why?. Indoors is more tricky, I’ve got some practise with the standard three point light system using either (ghost) emissives or standard Daz lights and this has worked well enough up till now, should I be going for realistic light placement in a scene or should I go for a more “studio” approach and have lights coming in from where light may not in reality be coming from simply to improve the picture quality as you would when lighting a scene for a Film or TV studio.

Resolution, how high do I need to go to get it looking good, some have mentioned going to 4K and then downsizing the 4K image, is it worth it? Also while I’m quite comfortable with working at 1080P would I notice a significant difference in quality between the 1080 and 4K on a non 4K monitor?

I’d also like to ask in passing what hair props, skins and morphs have you found to work well in Daz, G8 is preferred but not required for this. In particular I’d love people to mention any underappreciated models and hair since so many games have the old reliable characters and hair these days, stuff like Max from BB and the short ponytail from the older sister in BB are pretty common sights and since they are going to be associated with those characters I’d prefer to use other assets.


That got a little longer than I expected but to summarise:

1 - Post work, how much and what on?

2 - Anagenesis, worth it?

3 - Lighting, what gives best results for you both indoor and outdoor

4 - Resolution, 4K vs 1080

5 - General hair and character recommendations


Thanks and hope this is suitable for the general forum

Volt

 

[MaxCarna]

I'm not a pro too, but maybe we can help a little.

1 - Post work, how much and what on?
I only use to small fix, like overlapping clothes. Is much faster to make this on Photoshop than adjust a dozen of times on Daz. If you ever change the colors of one image on Photoshop, you will be obliged to always made for every new image.

2 - Anagenesis, worth it?
I don't like the final results on dark skins, there are some issues with third party products, specially genitalias from Renderotica. Wet skins too. Only buy if it is part of a great offer, 60% , 70% off.

3 - Lighting, what gives best results for you both indoor and outdoor.
Still making variations, my last settings are the some I like most so far. Ghost like on ceiling, spot geometry light in the 3 lights system.

4 - Resolution, 4K vs 1080
Have in mind the size of download file and that users can have crappy monitors that will not see all the quality.

5 - General hair and character recommendations
About hair in general always read the product details, if they come with many predefined shapes. This usually means that they have more bones to move. Some hairs simply don't move at all, like a rock, they really annoy me. For characters if you want to run from the most famous, you can always try a model from Renderosity that aren't in Daz Marketplace.

 

[Volta]

Good point about the post work, trying to stay uniform is important but what i meant by colour tweaking was mainly for different light levels, things like sunset filters or things like that.

As for the interaction between Anagenesis and genitals i hadn't thought of that, i wonder how Sin from Lewdlab pulls that off?

For resolution i'm more worried about quality than download size, playing around with image formats and compression should cover the size angle.

as for hair noting about highly posable hair is an interesting point and not something i'd thought of, thanks @MaxCarna

 

[thecardinal]

1 - Postwork - I do minimal post-work if I can. I try to optimize my Daz settings so the render itself is the finished product. Sometimes sharpening or an unsharp mask can help your image pop a little better though.

2 - Anagenessis is nice, I don't use it though. I prefer Redspec TGX MK 3 applied over 3delight shaders.

3 - I use here for outdoor scenes, black-body emissions for indoor scenes. I try to use lamps, ceiling lights, and screens as my lights, but sometimes applying an here environment over the whole scene makes it look better.

4 - I render everything at 1920x1080. Ties into the postwork thing sorta. I mess with the settings until I get a result I like, then pump out 20 images for a scene.

5 - Like MaxCarna said about the hair 100 percent. I recommend anything by AprilYSH. As for characters, some people use their own heavily customized ones and some use the Daz models as they are. People have found success with both. I use custom Gen 8 models.

These are really good questions too. Optimizing your render settings is key though, I have a sub-par graphics card too. It took me a long time to figure out a setup that I liked, and using all the info above I can make stuff like this:

 

[Volta]

@carnalcardinal some good points here i think, keeping postwork minimal would be nice, especially if i'm going to be rendering in bulk, we'll see how much static removal i need though.

I've genuinely never heard of Redspec TGX MK 3 and certainly never heard of people using 3Delight seriously anymore, i'm surprised the results come out so well, while i think iray handles reflection better your render does look damn good, certainly something to think about and look into.

as for resolution 1080 does seem to be good enough, though i my experiment with 2K as a happy medium first to see if it gives tangible benifits.

For hair it seems posable means it has the potential to look realistic, thanks for mentioning AprilYSH, i'll look into the back catalogue.

 

[thecardinal]

Luckily most new products coming out still have 3delight options. Some are iray only though.

The hair thing 100 percent. If you disregard the rest, stick to that one. Outoftouch also has some really great looking posable hair, but they generally are more taxing since they are 6x the size of the ones from AprilYSH. Especially if you plan on rendering in bulk like you said.

And if you can't see their feet in a scene, delete the shoes. Just another thing dragging down render speed.

 

[MrSandman69]

Wow, amazing advices, I take note about them.

 

[Akatriel]

I come from a professional modeling and rendering background (Making packaging beauty renders for the next diet pill or whatever for print media) but I only have limited experience with Daz, so I'll try to talk about pipelines and philosophy instead of technical details about Daz.

Final rendering at the highest qualities takes time. This is inevitable, there's no getting away from it. You want a quality image at a high resolution with no artifacts, it's gonna take time on any hardware.

The ideal situation is that you prep well and only have to do a final render once. No having to go back and tweak something and double your render time. The more edits you can do in Post (Photoshop / Nuke), the less you have to go back and re-render.

So your pipeline should be to maximize your post-editing potential. So you should be building the image in post from many render outputs.

If you can, render out as many render passes as possible.

Diffuse Shading (Total) + Transparent Shading + Reflection Shading + Specular Shading + Subsurface Shading + Luminous Shading = Final Color, where each successive layer is added to the layer below in the composition (also called linear dodge). Rendering each layer at a gamma of 1.0 and then combining them and adding the gamma back to the fully composed layers produce the best results.

Now if you have an inconsistency with say lighting levels throughout a scene, or need to tweak colour, you can fix it in post without ever having to re-render. That's how the professionals do it... cut for the edit.

 

[Volta]

I come from a professional modeling and rendering background (Making packaging beauty renders for the next diet pill or whatever for print media) but I only have limited experience with Daz, so I'll try to talk about pipelines and philosophy instead of technical details about Daz.

Final rendering at the highest qualities takes time. This is inevitable, there's no getting away from it. You want a quality image at a high resolution with no artifacts, it's gonna take time on any hardware.

The ideal situation is that you prep well and only have to do a final render once. No having to go back and tweak something and double your render time. The more edits you can do in Post (Photoshop / Nuke), the less you have to go back and re-render.

So your pipeline should be to maximize your post-editing potential. So you should be building the image in post from many render outputs.

If you can, render out as many render passes as possible.

Diffuse Shading (Total) + Transparent Shading + Reflection Shading + Specular Shading + Subsurface Shading + Luminous Shading = Final Color, where each successive layer is added to the layer below in the composition (also called linear dodge). Rendering each layer at a gamma of 1.0 and then combining them and adding the gamma back to the fully composed layers produce the best results.

Now if you have an inconsistency with say lighting levels throughout a scene, or need to tweak colour, you can fix it in post without ever having to re-render. That's how the professionals do it... cut for the edit.

Interesting, i had intended to layer in some cases, especially in scenes where i would use a quite intensive background and then superimpose small changes like characters with different expressions over the top, but i hadn't considered this level of layering, i imagine that this would be incredibly time intensive but like you say good results take time, perhaps i'll try a few promo's with that level of layering and see what i get. Thanks for the tips.

 

[Akatriel]

Just did a little digging and there are multi-pass scripts for Daz,

You must be registered to see the links

Incredibly time intensive? No this method is to reduce time by minimizing re-rendering. Rendering time is exactly the same (The renderer just gives you multiple images instead of merging them) and you can make a Photoshop macro that will order, set mode to linear dodge and to re-set the image gamma. Record yourself doing it once, save the macro, and then every time you make a render, 1 click and it's all set up.

The beauty of this method, is that you have far more control of the image in Photoshop. Say it takes 20 minutes to render your image. With multi-pass, you can now go into photoshop and make massive changes to the image in 2 seconds, where usually you'd have to re-render, wasting another 20 minutes.

This method also gives you a small iteration window. Say you are not sure how much ambient light you need for a particular scene. Instead of making 5 renders with slightly different light values. (Which would take an hour in the previous example) You can render once, go into photoshop and play with the indirect and direct light layers and perfect the scene. Short iteration times gives you more opportunity to experiment and perfect.

It sounds complicated, but you always want to give yourself more options at the end of your pipeline. That's why artists make drawings at twice the resolution than needed, and photographers save everything using lossless formats until the very last step. It gives you options to make last minute changes without having to go back to the start of the pipeline.

 

[Volta]

Just did a little digging and there are multi-pass scripts for Daz,

You must be registered to see the links

Incredibly time intensive? No this method is to reduce time by minimizing re-rendering. Rendering time is exactly the same (The renderer just gives you multiple images instead of merging them) and you can make a Photoshop macro that will order, set mode to linear dodge and to re-set the image gamma. Record yourself doing it once, save the macro, and then every time you make a render, 1 click and it's all set up.

The beauty of this method, is that you have far more control of the image in Photoshop. Say it takes 20 minutes to render your image. With multi-pass, you can now go into photoshop and make massive changes to the image in 2 seconds, where usually you'd have to re-render, wasting another 20 minutes.

This method also gives you a small iteration window. Say you are not sure how much ambient light you need for a particular scene. Instead of making 5 renders with slightly different light values. (Which would take an hour in the previous example) You can render once, go into photoshop and play with the indirect and direct light layers and perfect the scene. Short iteration times gives you more opportunity to experiment and perfect.

It sounds complicated, but you always want to give yourself more options at the end of your pipeline. That's why artists make drawings at twice the resolution than needed, and photographers save everything using lossless formats until the very last step. It gives you options to make last minute changes without having to go back to the start of the pipeline.

I hadn't considered using a multipass script, my inexperience showing no doubt, i'll see if i can find one that is compatible with Daz 4.10, give it a couple of runs and see what i get, thanks for the idea.

 

[thecardinal]

Even more important than multipass and postwork is learning how to texture within Daz. And sometimes just rip the roof off and say 'fuck realistic lighting.'

The less scripts and postwork you make for yourself, the easier your life will be. Use camera responses within Daz to highlight the scene.

There are ways to get items reflective without having to resort to a multipass script.

 

[Volta]

Even more important than multipass and postwork is learning how to texture within Daz. And sometimes just rip the roof off and say 'fuck realistic lighting.'

The less scripts and postwork you make for yourself, the easier your life will be. Use camera responses within Daz to highlight the scene.

There are ways to get items reflective without having to resort to a multipass script.

There does seem to be two schools of thought on that one, minimal postwork and heavy emphasis on lighting and composition, a measure twice cut once type of approach or a more generalistic form of lighting and balancing that light in post work, more of a shave it down till it fits style. Both no doubt have merit, the later is certainly better for promo shots and the like but if it will be worth it in a game with x 100 images i wonder, though i'm definitely going to try both.

 

[Akatriel]

Yeah absolutely, experiment and find a solution that works for you. Rendering multi-pass to tweak everything in post is a more general 3D technique, you are going to have to jump through more hoops to get it working in Daz as it's not a standard feature, and as carnalcardinal has shown, doing everything in Daz doesn't mean lower quality, just a different approach. If your renders don't take long, then tweaking and re-rendering all inside Daz is fine. If you're waiting hours to re-render something that could be fixed in Photoshop, than maybe Multi-pass would suit you better.

 

[Volta]

Yeah absolutely, experiment and find a solution that works for you. Rendering multi-pass to tweak everything in post is a more general 3D technique, you are going to have to jump through more hoops to get it working in Daz as it's not a standard feature, and as carnalcardinal has shown, doing everything in Daz doesn't mean lower quality, just a different approach. If your renders don't take long, then tweaking and re-rendering all inside Daz is fine. If you're waiting hours to re-render something that could be fixed in Photoshop, than maybe Multi-pass would suit you better.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here, there will be a sweet spot somewhere along the line and it will be dependant on my hardware which is changing gradually as well as my personal preference, however i think the multipass method will be something that i will use heavily in promo's if nothing else.