Help realism

background

I had noticed the bw image of Ruth in you gallery and thought it was particularly good. It looks comparable to a really high quality pencil drawn image to me, probably the soft focus on the wall and floor is reenforcing that for me. Over years I've seen some outstanding realistic images made in DAZ Studio, and a huge number of images where it looks like the creator pulled a bunch of figures/props/lights out of the library and just hit the render button, those later always make me thing the creator is either new to 3D, or is just going for the thrill of 'ooh look I made a nudie picture'. I think you are doing the right thing in aiming for realism and you are producing some really good images., and it's clear you are putting a lot of thought into it.

I tend to like to pull ideas in from other artistic genres, so that would include realistic  model railways ( eg Pendon museum ) and dioramas ( eg Night Shift on youtube ). Both the model railways and dioramas have challenges in creating realism from materials that are different to what they represent, and arranging features to pull the eye back into the scene.

jimread

Hello all,

"The dappled sunlight of the July forest" you reminded me of it @Fishtales thanks for that
https://www.flickr.com/photos/197808381@N07/52748222092/ NSFW *Restricted content*

Majority of the lighting done with Ps.

I hope you don't mind me saying this but I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that I'm on the right track and will continue with renewed vigour.

Cheers - J

jimread

background said:

Hello background

Many thanks for those words they mean a great deal to me, I'm really grateful

Hello @Fishtails,

I used the Hue/Saturation tool on the whole image to take down the blue. Did the same selectivly on the shrub on the left and the one right of centre. With the H/S tool and a couple of selections took down the yellow and the red from the wing mirror and the car internally.

Lastly using the Shadow/Highlight tool and selecting the figure and the cat brought out a little detail in both.

Cheers - J

 

background

jimread said:

 

One of the problems I come up with using using colour is the RED in the renders I have to use the Hue/Saturation tool to get rid of it and Color Balance to put something back.

 

This reminded me of some issues with the red colour sensitivity in some early photography that I came across during my research on railways .Back in the days of privately owned wooden coal wagons the companies which built and painted the wagons would often photograph the completed wagon for documentation purposes. Some of these b/w  photographs survive and often the red is almost black. I'm told this was due to the sensitivity of the photographic chemicals to reds. Happily many of the photographs include a small board alongside the wagon which describes the colours used, so despite a photograph appearing to show a black wagon with white lettering we know the wagon was red. Of course 'red' could be anything from a vermillion red to a red oxide so there is still some uncertainty.

It may also be that particular types of paint gave a different grey response in photography than it would appear to the eye.

background

Jem,

If you are still wanting ideas to try out then you might want to look into 'area lights'. These are basically a 3D object in the scene ( can be as simple as a one polygon square ) which is set to emit light. You can vary the brightness of the light and its colour, and you can also vary the dimensions of the polygon. An area light tends to produce a softer light. I use 'Octane Render' in Studio rather the 3Delight or Iray since I find it faster and less stressful on my graphics card than Iray. The down side to Octane is that some adjustment of Iray materials is often required to get a good result, so it's not as easy to use as Iray. I could tell you how to create an are light in Octane, but for Iray I'm sure if you do a forum search for area light there will be existing threads that explain it. Area light might not be the answer you are looking for, but it's another option that is open to you.

Realism is not an easy thing to master, I don't think I've mastered it and I have been tinkering about with Studio for years. There is no simple set of steps that will give you realism, more that you experiment and document the steps you took, and work towards improving gradually.

jimread

Hello Background,

I downloaded and installed the Octane Render Kit and then the Otoy 'octane render'.
Looked at the how to vid, what the video said would happen and what actually happened on my dektop was entirely different. The Otoy parameter window would only open to about 25% when I docked it. I could not alter the size of the Otoy viewpoint screen it remained at it's default size. I then noticed that the Otoy offering is asking for a subscription after one month, I uninstalled both.

Thanks for the idea though, I'll stick with Iray, this is what you find :-)

Cheers - J

background

Hi Jem,

I'm not sure what happened there. I have had the Otoy Octane render plugin for months and it has never asked for a subscription. Some of the plugins for other applications are not free, but so fas as I know the DAZ plugin is free one you sign up on the site. It is important to have the DAZ Studio Octane Render plugin and not Octane Stand alone, or one of the other plugins, which are intended for other applications.I haven't had any issue that I recall with the Octane parameter window. I can fully understand if you prefer not to use Octane after having a bad experience, but I'm sure similar results are possible in Iray and Octane,  just that some of the detail steps would be different.

This is the webpage where you can sign up for the free Octane plugin if you ever want to give it another try:- https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/demo/#prime

 

jimread

Hello Backround,

Thanks for the messages and very good of you to be so understanding thank you.

Going back to the Iray and the Renders I did another one, over the last few days and failed. As a last resort this afternoon I desaturated the figure and used Color Balance a few times one on top of the other and got this;

https://www.flickr.com/photos/197808381@N07/52802432103/ *NSFW* Restricted Content

Cheers - J

background

Hi Jem,

I took a look at your latest image. I still think the girl is looking like an added item rather than a part of the image, maybe you could try looking at the photoshop histogram for the background image and comparing it to the histogram for the girl, I expect the greens will dominate the background but there may be some way to examine just the b/w component  ( I'm not a Photoshop expert ) , also she looks small compared to the size of the leaves and grasses around her. I guess that's a function of the field of view that's available to photograph, along with the amount of the figure that you want in view. It's your art though so what matters is what you prefer.

lou_harper

I personally prefer movie realism to snapshot realism. I also have a background in photography and the first thing that jumps out at me looking at the snowy scene that the darks are too dark, the man and the dog are practically silhouettes.  You can’t see the man’s face at all.

If it was a scene in a movie they would’ve carefully set up lights to illuminate the area, without making it obvious that there is additional light used. Even for a snapshot I would’ve use fill-flash. With DAZ I would’ve used Ghost Light–probably the dish light prop to make the man’s face visible.

jimread

Hello Background,

Thanks for the message I do agree with you and your suggestion of the Histogram sparked off something else in me

I have in the past used women who posed nude for me to make montages, cutting out figures in Ps is a bit tedious. Every new version they come up with some new tool that they claim will do does not, especially at 100%. The only one that does is the Pen tool and that is akin to cutting out from paper an A3 size figure with nail scissors.

One of the reasons I want to succeed with AZ is being able to save a render as a PNG.

So I will make a montage with a real cut out figure and do my best to match it with a DAZ figure. I stand a good chance of learning more, I hope.

Cheers and thanks -J