IRAY Photorealism?

Masterstroke

alex86fire said:

Jeff, your renders look nice but I think that a big part of that are the textures. Which in my mind aren't real textures, just customized for your scene.

It's like taking a big resolution photo and converting it into a texture. A lot of the details are coming off from the texture. That is why they look like photos that are cropped into the images.

If you look closely there are a lot of small shadows on the face that would not belong there with the lighting (are just from the texture).

If with the same texture, you can do different angles and expressions and all look real, than you have, I think, photorealism in your scene and renders.

You can notice something similar in the facetransfer plugin textures. The character does look like what you want with the original textures but if you look at it without textures (or with normal ones) they look nothing like what you would expect because the geometry isn't there.

I am pretty sure, that most textures coming with characters have those embeded shadows. Not perfect, but that's what it is. I just don't know, why some guys here try to prove some kind of fake. Just take your favorite character and set environment to scene only. Take one single spot light and aim it at it. Set light values high up. Render. Now see how it works. Looks already great. Now in combination with the environment files, that have great light presets, it will just look great.

jeff_someone

Masterstroke said:

alex86fire said:

Jeff, your renders look nice but I think that a big part of that are the textures. Which in my mind aren't real textures, just customized for your scene.

It's like taking a big resolution photo and converting it into a texture. A lot of the details are coming off from the texture. That is why they look like photos that are cropped into the images.

If you look closely there are a lot of small shadows on the face that would not belong there with the lighting (are just from the texture).

If with the same texture, you can do different angles and expressions and all look real, than you have, I think, photorealism in your scene and renders.

You can notice something similar in the facetransfer plugin textures. The character does look like what you want with the original textures but if you look at it without textures (or with normal ones) they look nothing like what you would expect because the geometry isn't there.

I am pretty sure, that most textures coming with characters have those embeded shadows. Not perfect, but that's what it is. I just don't know, why some guys here try to prove some kind of fake. Just take your favorite character and set environment to scene only. Take one single spot light and aim it at it. Set light values high up. Render. Now see how it works. Looks already great. Now in combination with the environment files, that have great light presets, it will just look great.

Sigh, yes, I assure alex86fire that my textures are very traditional textures with no embedded shadows... that wouldn't make sense nor look good.  As Masterstroke pointed out, its largely starting with a good realistic texture for the type of scene you're doing (in my case, typically further away... as opposed to super close-up realism) and then use proper lighting and voila!  See below/attached for example from my latest character and texture set I'm working on.  That said, the figures use about 8 different materials (diffuse, specular, bump, transparency, SSS, etc) but I just posted the diffuse map here for an example.  As for starting with a realistic texture based on existing photographic imagery -- yes, that is the very essence of all high-end textures.  Look no further than the gold standard, the TexturingXYZ textures used by very high-end professional character renders (URL: texturing.xyz).  That said, all of those textures and the ones standard in all 3d packages (i.e. fit/morphed to specific UVs that align to the character geometry) including mine, work from all angles as they include no shading information; rather, they just provide material properties.  

Leonides02

Fantastic, Jeff. I don't know why people are trying to poke holes in your techniques when it's exactly what we're all trying to achieve.

Would you ever consider posting your material settings? I'm also curious what they look like in a more traditional scene.

marble

Jeff, I have no doubt that you are creating the images precisely the way you say you are and further, I have no idea what people would consider as cheating. Textures are photo resources after all so why would using photographic images be considered cheating?

What impresses me with your skin textures is the way you have selected for natural looking colouring and imperfections. I remember watching a documentary about Lucien Freud (who then became my all-time favourite artist). If you look at his skin tones he uses colours that you wouldn't think belong on skin but his skin tones look incredibly natural. Looking at your images above, I see areas of greenish-yellow and blue, a little purple and a fair amount of grey. But it all adds to the realism just like Freuds patches of "non-skin tones" created a realistic looking skin tone.

Masterstroke

I only see one clever trick, done by Jeff here: He renders on purpose in low resolution - kind of "bad quality" setting-, in order to cloak that hyper-perfection of a 3d-renderer. All is a little bit blurry and seem to have JPG-artefacts.
You can in fact call that "photo real", opposed to "eye real".

jeff_someone

Masterstroke said:

I only see one clever trick, done by Jeff here: He renders on purpose in low resolution - kind of "bad quality" setting-, in order to cloak that hyper-perfection of a 3d-renderer. All is a little bit blurry and seem to have JPG-artefacts.
You can in fact call that "photo real", opposed to "eye real".

You are totally correct in that I'm going to 'photo real' vice 'eye real'.  Technique-wise, for what it's worth, I render in high-def with Pixel Filter at 1 but then save it off as low-quality JPG in Photoshop.  

 

marble

jeff_someone said:

Masterstroke said:

I only see one clever trick, done by Jeff here: He renders on purpose in low resolution - kind of "bad quality" setting-, in order to cloak that hyper-perfection of a 3d-renderer. All is a little bit blurry and seem to have JPG-artefacts.
You can in fact call that "photo real", opposed to "eye real".

You are totally correct in that I'm going to 'photo real' vice 'eye real'.  Technique-wise, for what it's worth, I render in high-def with Pixel Filter at 1 but then save it off as low-quality JPG in Photoshop.  

 

For similar reasons I sometimes add blur or grain to a render in post. Often the ultra sharp outlines are a certain give-away that we are looking at a cgi render. 

jeff_someone

marble said:

jeff_someone said:

Masterstroke said:

I only see one clever trick, done by Jeff here: He renders on purpose in low resolution - kind of "bad quality" setting-, in order to cloak that hyper-perfection of a 3d-renderer. All is a little bit blurry and seem to have JPG-artefacts.
You can in fact call that "photo real", opposed to "eye real".

You are totally correct in that I'm going to 'photo real' vice 'eye real'.  Technique-wise, for what it's worth, I render in high-def with Pixel Filter at 1 but then save it off as low-quality JPG in Photoshop.  

 

For similar reasons I sometimes add blur or grain to a render in post. Often the ultra sharp outlines are a certain give-away that we are looking at a cgi render. 

Agreed, the sharp lines between elements is something no photograph produces.. there is always some form of blue at the pixel level...

gamesfromlove

jeff_someone said:

marble said:

jeff_someone said:

Masterstroke said:

I only see one clever trick, done by Jeff here: He renders on purpose in low resolution - kind of "bad quality" setting-, in order to cloak that hyper-perfection of a 3d-renderer. All is a little bit blurry and seem to have JPG-artefacts.
You can in fact call that "photo real", opposed to "eye real".

You are totally correct in that I'm going to 'photo real' vice 'eye real'.  Technique-wise, for what it's worth, I render in high-def with Pixel Filter at 1 but then save it off as low-quality JPG in Photoshop.  

 

For similar reasons I sometimes add blur or grain to a render in post. Often the ultra sharp outlines are a certain give-away that we are looking at a cgi render. 

Agreed, the sharp lines between elements is something no photograph produces.. there is always some form of blue at the pixel level...

Jeff, I think you missed some of my questions earlier.

I was asking if you could do some sort of write-up or tutorial. You explained some things earlier and I showed them to friends. They didn't understand either.

My original comment from earlier said "

I don't see a lot of the options in the render menu for what you're telling us to do. 
I would really like to make something similarly nice. Could you be a bit more direct with how you're doing what you're doing?"
 

I just want to make my stuff appear like yours, it would help me out a ton! 

alex86fire

I am in no way saying that Jeff is cheating in any way. I'm sorry if it came across as that. For me, the renders don't look like real photographs of people. They look like cropped up images.

I am not saying that they are that,  I know they are not, it's just how they look for my eyes.

Maybe I just don't have the knowledge to explain what my eyes are seeing and it's not the reason I mentioned before (although I am sure it has to do with the textures) and it is something else I don't know about since I am new to the 3d render world.

 

Siciliano1969

Hey Jeff,

I would love to see your spot light set to point light settings.  You get alot of light for the scene and I just don't seem to get as much light as you do.  Mine looks like a flash with high settings but confined to a smaller area where your settings look like the whole room is illuminated.  Mine looks like you are taking a picture in a dark room in the middle of the night like some weird documentary footage.  LOL  

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

lupus___f6b56869d6

Siciliano1969 said:

Hey Jeff,

I would love to see your spot light set to point light settings.  You get alot of light for the scene and I just don't seem to get as much light as you do.  Mine looks like a flash with high settings but confined to a smaller area where your settings look like the whole room is illuminated.  Mine looks like you are taking a picture in a dark room in the middle of the night like some weird documentary footage.  LOL  

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

sRGB?

Siciliano1969

lupus___f6b56869d6 said:

Siciliano1969 said:

Hey Jeff,

I would love to see your spot light set to point light settings.  You get alot of light for the scene and I just don't seem to get as much light as you do.  Mine looks like a flash with high settings but confined to a smaller area where your settings look like the whole room is illuminated.  Mine looks like you are taking a picture in a dark room in the middle of the night like some weird documentary footage.  LOL  

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

sRGB?

Sorry, I'm not following you....sRGB?

gamesfromlove

Hi folks, can someone give me a step by step guide on how to achieve Jeff_Someone's rendering?
I'm really trying to make mine like his but I just don't understand based on how the information is resented.

If you could do it step-by-step that would be amazing.

jeff_someone

Siciliano1969 said:

Hey Jeff,

I would love to see your spot light set to point light settings.  You get alot of light for the scene and I just don't seem to get as much light as you do.  Mine looks like a flash with high settings but confined to a smaller area where your settings look like the whole room is illuminated.  Mine looks like you are taking a picture in a dark room in the middle of the night like some weird documentary footage.  LOL  

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

I just set the Spread Angle for the Spotlight to some large value (sometimes maxed out at 180 degrees).  Also, you'll need to move the Spotlight back a bit from the scene to allow room for the spread angle to take effect.  Let me know if that helps.  Thx.

jeff_someone

gamesfromlove said:

Hi folks, can someone give me a step by step guide on how to achieve Jeff_Someone's rendering?
I'm really trying to make mine like his but I just don't understand based on how the information is resented.

If you could do it step-by-step that would be amazing.

gamesfromlove, I'll try to do a step by step walkthrough soon.  The basics are pretty straightforward and I can share those...  the bigger challenge is using the right textures/materials, realistic figure shapes (vice the standard out-of-the-box supermodel shapes common to many of the Daz store figures), and also using a realistic pose (vice the 'pin up posing' poses commonly found).  I can give some advice there, too, but in the end its just a lots of tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until you're satisfied that you've achieved the desired effect (in my case, photo-like realism).  Anyhow, will try to get to it soon!  

Thanks, Jeff.

Siciliano1969

jeff_someone said:

Siciliano1969 said:

Hey Jeff,

I would love to see your spot light set to point light settings.  You get alot of light for the scene and I just don't seem to get as much light as you do.  Mine looks like a flash with high settings but confined to a smaller area where your settings look like the whole room is illuminated.  Mine looks like you are taking a picture in a dark room in the middle of the night like some weird documentary footage.  LOL  

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

I just set the Spread Angle for the Spotlight to some large value (sometimes maxed out at 180 degrees).  Also, you'll need to move the Spotlight back a bit from the scene to allow room for the spread angle to take effect.  Let me know if that helps.  Thx.

Excellent Jeff, thanks it works!

davidtriune

Jeff_someone I think if you sold your characters on DAZ store you'd make a lot of money. LOL

jeff_someone

davidtriune said:

Jeff_someone I think if you sold your characters on DAZ store you'd make a lot of money. LOL

:) maybe some day!

davidtriune

I think you can do a lot with g8 base models. they have such high detail maps. out of the box they  aren't shaded very well. so you just need to tweak a lot of things. 

for example, human skin is about 5-10% diffuse and the rest is all SSS. So you need to set the translucency weight to at least 0.9. 

DAZ doesn't really use top coat reflections, but they're so good for emulating the sebum layer of skin (oil). The best way to do this is choose "custom curve" with the default values and change around the weight and roughness.

Single point lights really bring out the detail from sharp reflections, that's probably why they're so good..

Here is an experiment with mei lin 8

 

Lothar Weber

davidtriune said:

I think you can do a lot with g8 base models. they have such high detail maps. out of the box they  aren't shaded very well. so you just need to tweak a lot of things. 

for example, human skin is about 5-10% diffuse and the rest is all SSS. So you need to set the translucency weight to at least 0.9. 

DAZ doesn't really use top coat reflections, but they're so good for emulating the sebum layer of skin (oil). The best way to do this is choose "custom curve" with the default values and change around the weight and roughness.

Single point lights really bring out the detail from sharp reflections, that's probably why they're so good..

Here is an experiment with mei lin 8

 

 

Great!!!

Leonides02

davidtriune said:

I think you can do a lot with g8 base models. they have such high detail maps. out of the box they  aren't shaded very well. so you just need to tweak a lot of things. 

for example, human skin is about 5-10% diffuse and the rest is all SSS. So you need to set the translucency weight to at least 0.9. 

DAZ doesn't really use top coat reflections, but they're so good for emulating the sebum layer of skin (oil). The best way to do this is choose "custom curve" with the default values and change around the weight and roughness.

Single point lights really bring out the detail from sharp reflections, that's probably why they're so good..

Here is an experiment with mei lin 8

Wow! Would you mind posting your settings?

aaráribel caađo

davidtriune said:

I think you can do a lot with g8 base models. they have such high detail maps. out of the box they  aren't shaded very well. so you just need to tweak a lot of things. 

for example, human skin is about 5-10% diffuse and the rest is all SSS. So you need to set the translucency weight to at least 0.9. 

DAZ doesn't really use top coat reflections, but they're so good for emulating the sebum layer of skin (oil). The best way to do this is choose "custom curve" with the default values and change around the weight and roughness.

Single point lights really bring out the detail from sharp reflections, that's probably why they're so good..

Here is an experiment with mei lin 8

This skin is so oily that it's hard to quite tell how good it is generally, but for a women with oil on her face, it's fantastic. 

I'd love to see this thread expand a bit beyond the single spotlight, @jeff_someone appreoach. His work is stunning, but it represents such a small slice of photographic images and what people aspire to do with Iray. Personally, it's not what I'm trying to achieve, but I'd love to get closer to photographic looks (aka, not just "realism"/approximations of what people see, but things talented photographers produce with film and postwork/toning).

davidtriune

Leonides02 said:

davidtriune said:

I think you can do a lot with g8 base models. they have such high detail maps. out of the box they  aren't shaded very well. so you just need to tweak a lot of things. 

for example, human skin is about 5-10% diffuse and the rest is all SSS. So you need to set the translucency weight to at least 0.9. 

DAZ doesn't really use top coat reflections, but they're so good for emulating the sebum layer of skin (oil). The best way to do this is choose "custom curve" with the default values and change around the weight and roughness.

Single point lights really bring out the detail from sharp reflections, that's probably why they're so good..

Here is an experiment with mei lin 8

Wow! Would you mind posting your settings?

Sure I attached the scene file. I toned down the oiliness a bit. have fun!

 

For those without mei lin 8, here's my settings in skin manager:

In render settings, set crush blacks and burn highlights to 0, turn on spectral rendering, and set pixel filter radius to 1.

Leonides02

Thanks so much, davidtriune! Can't wait to try this when I get home tonight. 

davidtriune

Leonides02 said:

Thanks so much, davidtriune! Can't wait to try this when I get home tonight. 

no problem, it might look better with dual specular lobe weight on 1 which was on the original pic, instead of 0.5 ... still testing things :)

 

Leonides02

That's a great pic, too.

Right now our biggest "giveaway" is hair. 

davidtriune

Leonides02 said:

That's a great pic, too.

Right now our biggest "giveaway" is hair. 

true. anyone have suggestions for hair shaders? i desperately need better ones lol.

Leonides02

There are some great ones. These are my favorite:

Backlight

Colorwerks

Hair Lustre

jeff_someone

davidtriune said:

Leonides02 said:

That's a great pic, too.

Right now our biggest "giveaway" is hair. 

true. anyone have suggestions for hair shaders? i desperately need better ones lol.

That hair doesn't actually look too bad, just looks like you need to reduce the Glossy Layer weight and/or the Top Coat weight because the 'shine effect' seems a bit too prominent.  Also hair color doesn't match her eyebrow color, which isnt a big deal, but assuming she's Chinese, then I'd assume very dark/black eye-brows...  

Good stuff though!

Jeff