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That is an absolutely horrid looking character. I've rarely seen such anatomically bad work in a figure design, and the promo images look like they were done by an amateur. Even if it's supposed to be considered a "caricature" the rigging and deformation is terrible. That would have looked outdated and laughable ten years ago.
That does not bode well for the future of Poser if that's considered top tier. Who is actually paying for that kind of garbage?
@hfofo CC/iClone is widely used in AAA game production in conjunction with Unreal engine, in my experience, so it really depends where you're focusing your energy
if you just dislike it that's a different story... also if you were predisposed to malign CC/iClone then why did you even bother asking? just trolling?
Daz Studio is entertainment art software that is aimed at entry level users. It lacks numerous industry standard options/features and has extremely limited tools/options for animation or use within a production workflow. This makes it less useful for games/VFX usage except as a character designer (but even that has issues). Daz Studio is barely recognized in the 3D art/design community due to its severe limitations and lack of support for industry standard 3D formats. The user-friendly click-and-go features of Daz Studio (coupled with a mediocre ray-tracing render engine) make it appealing to users who want to quickly render 3D artwork without actually having to learn 3D modeling or other complex features.
Character Creator (and iClone) is more popular for people doing game development and animation and is less "entry level" with more industry standard options and features. It's widely used in the Unreal pipeline and in game design. CC/iClone have render engines but are more widely considered adjuncts to game design as opposed to self-contained "art tools" for rendering images/animations in and of themselves. For example, one would design characters and scenes with CC/iClone but would export them for use in other engines/pipelines.
Comparing them is disingenuous because they are vastly different applications targeting different types of users. It would be like comparing FaceApp and Photoshop. One is a toy the other is a tool. Both can be used for fun but only one is a full-fledged art/design tool.
This site (ZoneGfx) is primarily focused on Daz content so it obviously is more "popular" here but that shouldn't be construed as implying that Daz Studio is widely used or any kind of standard. Daz Studio has a very small niche following and its development has severely stagnated in the past ten years leaving it far behind in terms of capability and usefulness aside from rendering standalone images. It is essentially novelty art software.
Fewer pirate sites exist for CC/iClone largely due to its professional userbase who typically purchase and/or make their own content for commercial release (hence making pirated content immediately problematic).
Just my two cents'-worth on the topic. I may seem dismissive toward Daz Studio but in my opinion it's just looking at it realistically. I use DS daily but am well aware that it's essentially just a toy now, and one that is severely outdated and lacking in features.
It appears to me that the eyebrows have been removed from the diffuse map but whoever did it neglected to remove them from the normals and/or bump maps. You could generate a new normals map with something like the free Nvidia photoshop plugin/app to eliminate that.
The concept of "good lighting" is simply "light which enhances the subjects by providing contrast". Too much light from all angles just washes out details because it lacks shadows.
Do not be afraid of the dark, or the shadows. It may take longer to render but you'll get a much more interesting scene. Use key lights sparingly to focus your subject, use rim lights and snoots to pick out details and highlight texture and form. Looking up examples of low key photography can provide ideas.
Avoid reliance upon ghost lights unless absolutely necessary. When possible use emissive props as lights for natural *in scene* lighting, and spots (with square or disc shape to control shadow softness) for key/rim/snoot lights.
Think about your setting and what kind of lights would naturally be there. In real life there are no ghost lights. Use HDRIs at low values to provide fill lighting and reflections then use your other light sources for artistic appeal. Sometimes less key lighting and more rim lighting can be effective for more intimate or emotionally stirring images (and night scenes).
Also keep in mind the color temperature of your lighting and the hue of the lights themselves, such as using complimentary colors as key and rim to help an image pop.
I know ghost lights are handy and sometimes they help, but if you begin to learn the basics of photographic like *principles* then you'll begin to find that a combination of HDRI and spots works 99% of the time with ghost lights occasionally helping to fill weird edge cases.
@gelstat The "hope" for DS5 was that it would stop using a 15-year-old fork of OpenGL for the interface and move away from the prohibitively slow script-based UI (which prevents a lot of advanced simulation engines)... also that an improved OpenGL interface would allow for a more streamlined animation workflow as well as things like motion blur (which Iray supports but can't work in Daz Studio now due to timeline limitations).
So, there was some genuine interest for legitimate reasons, but the concept was a pipedream given the state of Daz3D.
@frank22 Do you remember when 5 was first announced? So many people here were so excited and I kept saying, "Don't get your hopes up, it'll be years before we see it, if ever..." and everyone said I was too cynical/pessimistic about it...
I hate being right, sometimes.
My advice for render settings would be to render tons of test images and vary settings one at a time. As said above render settings will vary dramatically depending on scene content; rendering a shot filled with mirrors will take far more iterations to converge than a scene of a single character against a matte fabric backdrop.
The number of iterations you'll need to converge an image will depend on A) the scene amount of scene content, B) the shaders being used, C) your GPU. Even comparing core for core an older 10xx or 20xx series will require more iterations due to older compute cores which are less efficient. Test your scene to see what is good enough. Experiment with the denoise filter to see what works for your scene(s).
Render to the size *you specifically need* for a project. Rendering everything at 8K is probably overkill. For wallpapers rendering to 4K is nice, but most 2K renders can be upscaled adequately to make this unnecessary. Unless you're going to print rendering to 2K is usually enough for portraits and square aspect. Also, take full advantage of canvases and spot rendering to speed up complex scenes. With canvases you can render a depth map pass and do your DoF in post which saves an enormous amount of time (and will give you more realistic bokeh and light drop off than Iray can do).
Experiment! That is the key to learning new techniques and finding what works best for your unique workflow. The more you experiment and begin to grasp what various settings do then the better you'll know what specific questions to ask when you have a particular issue. Just asking, "what render settings?" with no scene (or hardware) info is too open-ended to answer specifically.
Someone double majored in melodrama and hyperbole.
I get plenty of "disable your adblock" popups here. It's mildly annoying but overall it's a minor inconvenience when I stop to consider what I'm getting versus what I'm paying. It's not "every two seconds" and at most once every few minutes when loading new pages. A quick refresh and I'm all set for a bit.
1. Figures not posed in a way where their weight looks properly balanced/supported over their center of gravity so they look "caught" in mid movement but without motion blur
2. Too much direct light on the character(s). Either the default camera headlamp or overly strong keylights that kill shadows and make every shot look like flash photography
3. Backgrounds that are overly lit instead of taking advantage of light drop off with spotlights properly set up and angled
4. Characters looking directly into the camera instead of interacting with their environment
Strong light can work fine but it needs to be balanced with backlighting and/or rim lighting to give characters some shape/definition... shadow is what helps showcase light.
Interesting results! I'm not thrilled with what it did to her hands (and to a lesser degree her face) but the overall detail enhancements are nice! With some Photoshop work the hands could be fixed.
I̶s̶ ̶K̶r̶e̶a̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶a̶l̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶e̶b̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶?̶
Update: a quick search and I found it... interesting but extremely slow! Definitely not worth it for my workflow, and not terribly reliable for some shots... taking several minutes per render it seems I'd rather either go local AI or just straight-up rendering
I'm not entirely sure I understand your meaning when you say, "not just a voyeur"...
And I have to concur with Frank on this one. Props will be highly dependent upon a specific theme or the nature of the character. I mostly eschew props when doing portraits, generally being highly focused on the face and especially the eyes. Even when there are some sparse background elements they are typically out of focus. I prefer a very narrow depth of field for portraits with the eyes being the focal point. In this case I would say that lighting is a key element, and especially that which matches the mood/attitude/demeanor of the character. I'm no lighting expert but I do often like having a gentle off-center soft-box key light, a sharper rim light, the occasional hair snoot depending on the character, and a low power point light for eye shines (adds life to the character).
For evil, nefarious (or just other-wordly) characters I sometimes place a primary color emissive plane or spot below the character's face, just out of camera view and set it to just add a touch of color to the character's face and create some conflicting shadows.
I'd do it for my standard 'full scene' commission rate: $150, half up front.
But seriously, a very quick and easy way to do it...
1. spend a few minutes meticulously arranging the items on one table/desk
2. Group those items
3. Create instances of that group (as many times as needed)
4. Maneuver instances into places on the other desksEasy peasy lemon squeezy.
Update: another quick tip for quickly arranging multiple items... select the desk (or whatever surface you're placing items on) then select multiple (or grouped items) then click the align tool. Set X/Z to "align centers and Y to "stack above". All your items now appear on top of the desk and you can just quickly nudge them into place. A very quick/simple way to get everything where you need it rapidly, even if not instancing. Grouping and instances just makes it even quicker and less resource intensive when rendering.
Setting up a scene like this shouldn't take more than 15 or 20 minutes and with a little creativity you can make it look like the instances aren't all copy-cats.
@ethiopia I really have no idea! My knowledge of web design and maintenance is admittedly pretty sparse. I know that sub-domains are often used to present different versions of a site (ie mobile, or various languages) so I just tried to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why they would specifically use 'delorean' as a sub-domain.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the 'delorean' sub-domain was specifically for pre-update backups; literally allowing them to instantly go "back in time" in the event that a pushed update to the store goes wrong or experiences an issue. It would be a little weird but not terribly surprising. The page load would simply temporarily re-direct to the specific 'delorean' sub-domain as the default until the desired update to the site is fixed, thus essentially allowing them to go back to the future.
