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@frank22 nice and very complex scene, lots going on to capture the spirit of a dorm. Only suggestion I have in addition to what has already been mentioned is that because the windows are covered by the drapes, then you just need hdri with a low ground shadow intensity because indoor room ceiling lights are typically bright enough to fill the room, resulting in relatively soft or diffused shadows.
@frank22 that’s a great suggestion - even if it might be a reference image in addition to the promo images.
@kefka I think the shadows with the hdri only are sharper and the lighting not overexposed which is allowing the details to be more prominent. I actually like the tone of the first over the second, but overall, the second one is more dramatic owed to the warmer colors and the fill light. Gonna see if I can something in between.
@Lapucelle thanks for the feedback! I kept the character’s impression relatively mild for test rendering purposes (likewise the background was just dropped in for same reasons as well) - I’ll be sure to add some personality into my next render, and to begin working on a purposeful composition. Thanks for providing me with good examples of what you mean - dig it!I’m also working on a light setup with emissives with hdri + dome only - it appears to give me the same effect as the hdri + light setup with dome + scene but has similar rendering times as hdri + dome only.
Thanks for the feedback @kefka and the encouragement. I've had DAZ for about a year, but only really started getting into it over the past summer. I spent way too much time character designing and am only starting to get into the rendering, and all the factors that impacts it (which I am learning a lot by trial and error). It's shocking how the colors and textures are so dependent on the lighting setup. Wish the product vendors would share what their setups are for their promo images as it would help a lot with baselining how something should perform render wise.
If you can rework the lighting that is casting a shadow/band across her eyes in the first version then I would actually prefer the first one as her body tone looks more real. The clavical bone on the second version is far too accentuated and giving it a weird anatomically weird look. But just based purely on skin, without the above adjustments, the second one looks more complete in my eyes.
Sorry for the flip flop feedback 😉
I like your composition a lot! Try adding some depth of field into your camera which should help draw more eyes to your subject and her amazing pose!
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?
@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.
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.
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?
