Show us your 3Delight renders
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IIRC Amazing Skins is shader mixer. So in theory, you could try and take it apart to see where it can be improved (maybe it also has an opacity map there slowing stuff down, heh). I don't have it because it came out too late, I was already writing RSL stuff =)
I don't know, in 3Delight it's easy to use the Jensen measured values (skinA / skinB, both shader mixer and UberSurface2 have them). Then it's just a matter of finding the right balance between SSS scale (0.1 is _the_ physically correct one because DS default unit is centimeter, while 3Delight's one is millimeter - but the 0.2 scale looks very similar and yet it is more translucent - which means you can use higher SSS shading rates = faster), diffuse coverage (for the 0.2 scale, 40% diffuse seems a good starting point) and specular. Specular is the selling point actually. Fresnel attenuation is indispensable. Mapped roughness also helps a lot. UberSurface2 uses "oldschool" roughness that won't auto-attenuate itself when roughness increases, so it also needs strength maps. Using the bsdf() function (shader mixer has a brick for it; Cook-Torrance is a nice choice - also has built-in Fresnel, you just need to enable it) will give you contemporary physically based roughness that will often look good without strength maps.
The biggest problem with getting the "right look" for skin in DS (any renderer) is that DAZ figures have ears that are five time too thick =) So you can't really judge your SSS settings unless you make a "translucency strength" map for the ears.
A few more of mine. I'll try to point out lights and characters when I remember them. A few are custom setups.
No Weapon Forged Against Me
I think it's a single point light. I'll need to double check.
Wallflower
Deep Shadows over on Rendo. PD Naomi for the skin but it's on Genesis.
Light made with this tutorial: http://www.sharecg.com/v/60195/browse/3/PDF-Tutorial/Simple-Sunshine-SkySphere-a-DAZStudio4-Tutorial
Both of these using the Manami character here:
Distressed
Thank you!
I also think LuxRender has a non-NVIDIA dependent GPU acceleration mode (OpenCL). Not that I have anything against NVIDIA, having used their cards since forever, but it's still nice that people get options.
Yeah, all that stuff about skin and SSS and separate specular lights and so on... just makes my head hurt. It's incredibly complicated and, again, I almost never like the results. I'm half wondering if I should just give up on SSS for skin and have underwhelming skin that's at least fast and doesn't through out strange results.
Let me suggest going about it differently. What characters in 3DL have you seen that you like the renders of? Many of mine are picking one character and then simply copying settings around since there's tons of specifics I don't know either.
I tried that with the haggling picture, but that's a good idea. I should just go through the skins until I get something I like and then copy skins over. It's not perfect (obviously light and dark skins will operate differently) but might make me feel better about it all.
...that is really nice.
...your'e welcome. I've been working with 3DL for about 7 years now. Picked up a lot of tips and learned some tricks along the way.
Here's one I did using both AOA's Advanced Lights and Atmospheric Cameras. Alas the Vignette effect of the Cameras was broken in the 4.7 release (along with the Colour Camera).
Thanks! I still have lots of to learn. Lighting baffles me at times. I got the new freebies LIE make-up and it is not behaving and I have no clue why at this point, except it complains about missing files like character facemaps. *shrugs*:)
I have started to fiddle with iray a bit to see what it will do on this pc and do a comparison of similiar scenes without too much extra work. I am still in the learning stages of Daz, or so I think. I am running Windows 10 home 64 bit with Intel Core i5- 4590 3.3 GHZ 16 GB of ram and a Zotac GeForce GT 730 DirectX 12 4GB 64-Bit DDR3 graphics card. I just upgraded to this pc with a 750 watt power supply my other components (power supply, graphics card, I had Windows XP yet, motherboard beyond help, etc) finally died the first of this year in January. I can add another 16GB when the memory goes on sale, then I am at my limit on memory. I spent about $700 upgrading this system and that was only the motherboard, processor, power supply, graphics, card, ram, and windows 10.).
I like what I create so far without tying up my pc for hours on end. Art work is not the only thing I do on my pc. I do loads of research, reading on 3D, organic/sustainable farming, gardening, herbs, order parts, etc. Sometimes I 'Daz doodle' on the laptop which has 16GB ram. I have no idea what graphics card it has. My partner has a slower machine than mine now and I help him (Windows 10 32 bit with Intel Core i5, 4 GB ram and his graphics card is a 2GB nvidia card). He is more of a plug n play type of guy any extra fiddling or work and he gets frustrated. He says he is too old to have to figure all this out. I keep telling him Daz makes you work to create art. Haha
Nope, I won't jump ship. Arrggghh, the captain stays with the ship!! :P I think I 3DL has it's place for various reasons. It appears that 3DL textures ect can be fixed up easier to work in Iray than the other way around or even work pretty good out of the box. I am still trying to figure that all out. I have an example of that I will post here for comparison.
The first pic is 3DL and the 2nd one is using Iray. I believe I did not change anything. I just went from setting up in 3DL and then rendered in Iray for fun. Of course, it is just a figure and both rendered pretty quickly. Hands down the 3DL was quicker than Iray. I think it depends on what you are looking for as a finished piece of art work.
I set-up a winter scene with character in iray first, then I just rendered in 3DL. 3DL was way quicker done in minutes, lesser quality mostly because I did not switch to 3DL textures. The iray original took just over an hour, but was better quality. I mean for versatility and ease of use in flipping between render engines. I guess I would put my work into 3DL first then experiment in Iray. It seems like less work, but the jury for me is still out on this since I still lack some knowledge and experience. I guess I got a bit windy. :)
Edit: The 2 pics I just made the character, no lights and no camera whatever came with render engine.
Thanks :) I had to adjust her eyes. I think they ended up looking pretty good. I seen where people had mentioned complaints about 3DL causing characters to look like they are staring off into space. It is the poses! This pose the eyes were wonky. I had to adjust (posing) them so they looked more natural. I had to make adjustments to the overall pose to. My winter iray scene the pose caused her eyes to look like she was in a trance, so I had to adjust them too. I need to answer my post on your thread. :)
I really like everyones renders, so many different views of art. It is fun to see. MY head hurts sometimes just trying to learn it all. Of course, sometimes my eyes just glaze over. haha
Part of the problem is that I have never been happy with any skin I've rendered in 3DL. There have been some that look 'less bad,' but they all end up looking like rubber dolls, dry paper, or bizarre stuff like almost completely black or washed out.
What renders from other people have you liked? Also, it might be the lighting. Heard some interesting problems concerning 3DL vs iRay lighting in how they developed.
This render is 3DL...from about 2007/8. I can't remember all the details, as I've long since lost/deleted the scene file. It does involve a little postwork...mostly levels adjustment as the original (posted) is a little dark.
(this is the non-postwork version)
I also no longer have the wider shot showing what she is doing...she's waving at someone off camera. I did the close up because I couldn't quite get rid of the poke through on the bikini she is wearing...
You know, I think, after poking around, my problem is velvet. I often find it way too much and, at least with some quick tests, I like the look way better with velvet off.
You're on the right track =) Velvet is not for skin rendering at all.
But... It's not. You just have convinced yourself that it is.
In Russia, we say "fear has large eyes" - in the sense that whatever you think you are afraid of is "staring right back atcha" (like the Nietzschean abyss LOL), scaring you off doing things. And we also say, "eyes are scared of something, but your hands do it nonetheless" - in the sense of that you need to actually do things even if they look "complicated", and once you manage to do this, you'll know you can.
Just open the shader mixer and put the SSS brick, the BSDF brick and any diffuse brick together. Or you can just copy the one I posted in that IDL scene and build on from there. Click UberSurface2 (you do have it, don't you) upon a random skin and see what you need to change about my recipes from the mega-tutorial to make it better.
Exactly =) "Staring into space" can happen in any render, be it Iray, Lux or whatever.
Mustakettu: The notion that I need to dive into Shader Mixer and muck around with nodes to get skin to render right is exactly what I'm talking about.
Having to do that to get decent skins is FLIPPIN INSANE
All the stuff about having to set up different skins, or 'oh, the code on X lights is wrong' and all that jazz? Yeah, that's complicated and, more importantly, unintuitive.
Iray? Skin. Convert. It has a few qualities that are RELATIVELY straightforward, lots of easy presets, lights act like lights. Done.
I mean, yeah, sometimes Iray skin looks a bit flat, but it doesn't start glowing or some crazy shinola.
As for velvet, that's odd, given almost every commercial skin uses it. But now I know where to look.
So here's Darius, with velvet SHUT OFF, and a little Reflection to give the skin more quality. I really like how it came out and feel better about the prospects of skin in 3DL.
Adding a render with the default skin, for reference.
You just do it once =) Either a shader mixer network, or an UberSurface2 preset, or a whole new RSL shader if need be. Then you just Ctrl-click those onto _any_ texture, adjust stuff a little, and wham!done.
I don't know where all the "different settings for different textures" belief came from.
The only thing about lights is that they should all cast shadows. Even specular-only lights - but those you only need if your scene is lit by diffuse-only: an environment light, or light bounce - and if you aren't using glossy reflections.
"Commercial skins" have never been much of an example to follow in terms of 3Delight shader presets, actually.
If you want commercial examples to follow, get Wowie's stuff for US2. Might be as close to a magic preset as it gets.
I know I need to go back and reread about lights in general and take some notes I can just glance at until It is engrained in my little pee brain. I can understand where some come from when they talk about things getting complicated at least from 'my' newbie perspective. A person's brain can go into overload at times. My policy is if I get stuck or my eyes begin to glaze over it is time to switch gears and do something else, take a break, sleep on it, whatever works and come back at it from a different fresh angle so to speak. I pretty much do this for anything I do. I wished I used more of my brain capacity. What is it like 5 or 10% of our brain is actually used/active? :D
Since most skin textures are based on photos, the thing the velvet is supposed to simulate is 'baked' in already. (Short of doing a whole body wax it's not easy to remove the fine hairs...and there aren't too many models who would be willing to do THAT for a session where it's going to become a resource for texturing...there's just not enough money being paid for it...). So for skin, adding velvet is kind of redundent...which is why it often ends up hard to control/overdone. Using it on cloth/other surfaces is fine and it can add a lot, but for skin it takes a very fine touch and is easy to mess up...and very often is a lot easier to just leave it out.
Now, using it on totally hand painted or procedural skins is a different story. Because of the way they are constructed, they don't have the 'fuzz' baked in like a picture would and it can add a lot to those type textures.
SSS is also to some degree, baked into a photo based texture...which is why sometimes it's so hard to control and seems to be dependent on the lights used. It shouldn't really need tweaking based on lighting...but often does.
Actually, you don't even have to do that. Now you can create a 'mapless' preset that leaves the currently used images alone. Just expand all the check boxes when saving a shader preset and untick 'Image' in everything you want to reuse the currently used image in...Diffuse being the primary one...bump/displacement/normal being the next obvious choice. Conversely, 'blanking' the entry before saving and leaving the check mark in place will 'blank' the corresponding entry when applying it. You will still have the option for ctl (cmd) clicking to replace/ignore, but if the preset is set correctly, it won't be needed.
See my last post before this one...there's too much reliance on photo resources that contain too much information. Especially on older resources (read before PBR became a 'thing'). And depending on exactly how much scatter actually shown in the skins, adding more 'in program' gets very tricky and very light dependent.
And there is another reason...but it's huge can of worms whenever discussed.
LINEAR WORKFLOW...or more precisely, lack of it. All the calculations done by the renderer and shaders are linear math...the non-corrected/non linear workflow textures will throw a big wrench in those caclulations. One result...very, very reliant on very finicky lighting setups.
...I get the same in Iray and because of the more realistic looking settings they stand out a lot more.
..for skin in 3DL one person who really pushed the quality is Rogerbee. His work can be found on the "Realistic Renderes....NOT" thread.
Linky please Kyoto??? I can't find it in search. :(
Fresh out of the renderer, ... well there is a tad of Gimp postwork
Feeling a lot better about 3DL, thanks for all the feedback that got me here. ;)
(Postwork entirely to manage tone map)
And you were going to call it quits on 3Delight Will!!! What an amazing render you poped out there!!!
This is my very first render learning 3Delight lighting and posing.
Here is one I just off the 3Delight presses!!!
X-Mas With The Elves