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Still a newbie with the camera, render, and environment settings - leaning on HDRI to do most of the heavylifting here. Looking for some tips on how to how to make my renders 'pop' more with PS postwork.
I like the translucent skin. What is the texture you are using? As for me I go with deepsea textures and work from there. Though, lets be honest, translucency can be a blessing or burden depending on the rest of the scene.
We do have a common ground though, which I appreciate.
@kefka I’m not looking for realism, but a blend between hyper realism and fine art-styles - so sort of the “pop” that I mentioned before but not glamour either. The oil filter you used in your latest piece was cool with the thick lines, but that does mean losing some details (which is part of the style you were looking at creating with the noise) - I appreciate the piece you made and the style you were trying to convey.
Perhaps, any other effects that I can try to draw out the figure’s silhouette while keeping the soft translucency and some details.
Maybe I’m trying to achieve something that is akin to mixing water and oil together lol…
My bad, earlier I meant SSS (subsurface Scattering), in conjunction with translucency amount (all found in the surfaces tab). The higher you make it, the more color will be absorbed into the skin (if used on characters) surface. The main issue with this, is that it will absorb the color from anything including hair, outfits, and environment color, basically everything in the scene. You'd have to mess around with those settings based on your preferences, so I can't give you an ideal set-up.
This right away will give you a gummy looking skin texture.
I'm honestly not the person to ask about photoshop. I do very little in photoshop and only when doing ADULT CONTENT stuff. Which until VERY RECENTLY, has been several years since I last made some explicit content.
Perhaps, any other effects that I can try to draw out the figure’s silhouette while keeping the soft translucency and some details.
Not exactly sure what you mean by this but let me see if I interpret this right..
Lighting. That is about all I can say. You'd just have to add emissive lights (create a primitive and make it iray compatible, then in surface tab look for emission colors *anything but black will give the primitive or whatever object you decide to use an emissive glow) or spot lights or one of the other lights that can be found in the top drop down menu called CREATE.
Also another way is to go to Render Settings tab and mess around with the sub-category called Tone Mapping (Burn highlights and crush blacks). Those two will help with overly bright scenes and can help create shadows or get rid of them depending on their settings.
Honestly I've never been able to make my scene pop like some can. I feel that is because I don't use HDRIs and try to make my scenes naturally lit (unless for quick reference shots). It's a restriction I place on myself and one that does come with some draw backs but I'm weird in that way.
Anyway, I hope this helps somewhat.
- Take Care
Hi Kefka, thanks for the tips on SSS and translucency. I'll have to play around with it. If I dial these higher to absorb more of the surrounding colors, will it add to the render times as well (significantly)?
I'm not big on portraits but I love this one so much. Character, lighting, skin all great. Pops bigtime for me Makei, especially the full-size image.
Oh yeah, wow. I was pleasantly surprised with the full sized image.
I should be learning from you, not the other way around.
As for..
will it add to the render times as well (significantly)?
That is something you'll have to figure out for yourself as everyone's computer has different hardware.
IMO I wouldn't worry too much about SSS slowing down a render. If used judiciously it can really improve an image significantly and outweigh longer render times. For scenes where the character/s are more distant you can always set the skin translucency to 0.
It took me about 3 months (casual work) to get this character to look the way it does. It’s definitely more of a 3d anime-stylized character than anything remotely real.
What’s the minimum distance to turn skin translucency on/off?
Also, do lights and hdri work together? Or best to just do one or the other? Also, does SSS work with HDRI?
"What’s the minimum distance to turn skin translucency on/off?" - until you can't see any difference anymore.
"Also, do lights and hdri work together?" - yep they can but I would advise against it because you could stuff up the direction of where the light is coming from.Those are great points. For the environment, I have it turned down to 0.8 as the hdri I have been using can be overpowering - but your reasons for keeping the hdri, using it in moderation is the exact reason I used it because without, for some reason, the textures from my characters were very flat and lacked detail.
However, I am wondering if any of you have some sort of tutorial to help with using lights with hdri. I have the hdri rotated and repositioned in a certain way to get this result, but it casts a shadow that isn’t the most accurate, how would the light rigs do with shadows they cast? My hope is for hdri to provide certain clarity and bring out the colors and details in the textures and to use lights to cast proper shadow and tone effects. My render does have the detail I want but it lacks proper lighting effect I think.
Hi Makei, I'll qualify my previous suggestion not to combine HDRI with other lights as I quite frequently do just that. As @Littlepleasures says it takes a long time testing and tweaking while in Iray preview mode. I made the scene (below) yesterday and as you can see there's a mess of lights to get the effect I wanted.
The HDRI gives ambient light for the room and direct sunlight through the window on the right. The ghostlights just supplement the room lighting. It renders quite fast (about 25 min) but once I add characters it will slow down a lot. I hope this helps.click to enlarge image
@Frank22 oh wow! That’s a beautiful render! I’m not sure if I’ve ever tried to create/load/render such a complicated scene. I find it quite challenging to be building such scenes in Daz3d, hence why I’ve been focused namely on simply portraits or low poly backgrounds.
It’s been a pretty busy festive weekend, hope to give some of the tips/tricks you guys mentioned a try in the coming week.
It’s an old joke. "A fellow goes to New York to attend a concert, but gets lost. He spots another fellow who’s carrying a violin case. “Sir, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” The musician smiles and says, “Practice, practice, practice.”
There's no substitute for that advice.
It's so hot here today I'm too scared to fire up the GPU to render anything... maybe some relief in the next few days.
Direct Link for Full Resolution
I've re-rendered the above (with some slight changes to the camera and pose) with a key, fill and back light, and turned down the HDRI intensity to about 50% and environment to 0.7, and switched from Dome only to Dome and Scene (in order for the new lights to work). Render times went from 14 minutes to about 22 minutes (so approx. 50% more time).
My lights aren't optimized in anyway as this is my first crack at it. The back light appears to be giving me the most effect by adding a bit of color to the right side (see head and neck areas), whereas the key and fill lights are just brightening up my render.
Thoughts?
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