By the way , my version , which is the 1st pic. was rendered with a P6 IBL light set and i added a Spot light too

I wonder if OcclusionMaster works for more realism,, and if it's fast? I usually just use Default render setting, i never go high. and i don't use Raytracing . and that's how i wanna keep it . So if occlusion master requires raytracing.. i'm out of it. By the way, my renders are all with Raytracing off. and the settings are 2nd line to the right of where the word DRAFT is. in the render settings AUTO tab. Well i used Manual but i copied the auto settings, then in manual i move the Texture size up

This is just the Pre-teen Vicki with the real-skin shader and a 2-light setup (1 lt blue spot and 1 infinite).  The texture on the character is Thorne's Azha.

So where's real skin shader. is that some product? And it only works for certain figures?

Well i kind of guess it has to do with the model and it's texture too. cause miki looks much better than v3 with v3's high quality textures from daz( which i posted in 1st and 3rd pictures here)

Without raytracing you lose a lot of shader compatibility.  I think a good image shouldn't depend on time.  Poser is not for those who are impatient unless you don't want to improve your art with it.

Quote - Well i kind of guess it has to do with the model and it's texture too. cause miki looks much better than v3 with v3's high quality textures from daz( which i posted in 1st and 3rd pictures here)

You may whish to stop by RuntimeDNA's Forums.
Try this one in The Node Cult - http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?forum_id=92

Matmatic Ultra Basic Skin by ** bagginsbill
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?forum_id=92&ShowMessage=305337
**

You'd be surprised how far you can go with realism in Poser.

I am an have been a big fan of face_off's shader products, such as Real Skin Shader. I still use the Apollo Maximus version of it for him.  

But my female model of choice right now is V4 from Daz, and while Real Skin Shader works for her, it find it unecessary....not only is the Hi-Res texture that Daz supplies with V4 extremely fine, IMO, but also: Daz ships skin shaders with V4.

The image above is V4 with mostly Depth Map Shadows, but one Raytrace light as well....and of course I am going for reflection so raytrace is on. Poser 7 Win.

That's V4 with native hi-res texture (modified in 2D to pull out some of the red tones). No postwork.

::::: Opera :::::

Here is another experiment in realism. V4 with Daz hi-res texture, Real Skin Shader by face_off has been applied. No raytrace lights, only depth mapped shadows.

Yes, i am aware the lighting is a little too strong.

::::: Opera :::::

tebop, may I make one suggestion, take it or leave it.

Figure out how to select your camera in the pull down. Look at the parameter dials. The first one is for focal length. For portrait work, the default of 55 is too "wide" according to many people, including real photographers. I use 150.

If you change it, you will have to reposition your camera, but you will avoid the unfortunate distortion called "fish eye" that comes with a human portrait up close with a focal length below 60 mm.

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. I echo mariner's suggestion above to learn from baginsbill about skin, as well as face off.

** tebop - I don't understand why you won't use raytracing & yet you want more realistic results. OK, raytracing usually takes longer in the render, but it's sure worth it.

operaguy - I'm the same as you, I too have focal length at 150, so much better for portraits.**

That is a good tip about focal length, I'm going to give that a try.  In the past I have never touched camera settings, that's a good thing to learn a bout.

Oh wow, that Real skin and Occlusion Master are good. wow, i might get them

Nice one Thromm. I'd say you're right on the edge of AO and granite displacement there. Did you have a struggle to keep the reflections in the eyes given so much AO?

::::: Opera :::::

Thanks Opera!

Actually, this is an older image I did and I didn't quite have the lighting thing figured out yet.  I think her skin looks a bit dry, still, but I haven't really gone down the realism path in my more recent work.

The trick is to have another light plus the AO.

Actually, I haven't used Occlusion Master in a while, but it is truly suprerior to just using an AO light.  It is object based and allows you to choose what has AO and what doesn't.

This is useful especially in scenes where you might have a large set up (say a character on a building over looking street).  You might not need AO on all the little background things, it would take way too long to render and give you very little if no image advantage over traditional shadows.

Opera, I understand that Face_off actually is responsible for the advanced shader set-up that ships with V4.  It is very nice, agreed.

Tebop, I will also echo that for Occlusion Master to work (or any AO), you must have raytracing on.  If you want realism, time is a sacrifice, unfortunately.

Yes, I have Occlusion Master and agree it is better to apply AO with prodedural shader to only the items you want it on. For instance, I have trouble with the Transpond daffodils; they seem to gather AO like buckets and the inside of the yellow flowers turn black!

Thanks for reminding me of the Occlusion Master sequence, that refreshes my memory. I have not been using it for a lot of things in order to leave raytrace off, so I got out of the flow. Now that I am fascinated by floor reflections etc., I am allowing ray trace back on, so will go back into OC master and give it a spin.

I your have, say, a bikini model on V4, do you want the procedural AO on the chest/shoulder actors of V4 or do you want the AO on the swimsuit?

::::: Opera :::::

I can feel M4 winds beginning to stir. He is sure to have the shaders, bet face_off is busy! M4 with great rigging, texture and shaders is the only thing that can dim Apollo in my mind.

The trick is that you need a medium to medium dark complexion, it does'nt run well on Blonde Hair Blue Eyes' Skin.

Excellent! 

now don't tease....reveal your methods!

:: og ::

This is Hi-Res textures for V-4....stock lights that load in Poser 7....Zoomed in on belly and Rendered at almost Hi res over black background. All stock settings......I'm not an expert but with the right light settings it could be almost lifelike.

"I'm not an expert but with the right light settings it could be almost lifelike." Yeah, that's why im' thinking of only Real Skin Shader and i don't need occlusion master. i got great results already with poser 6 lights

Okay....tryed to edit my post and it didn't work.....here's anouther example of my attempts at realism. Just stock settings in Poser 7....rendered over black

partyman, loading the Daz hi-res textures not only attaches an actual .jpg texture file to V4, it deploys a tree of shader nodes on all elements of V4. In effect you are getting from Daz what you'd get from face-off's product. As mentioned above, Paul (face_off) may have designed that system for Daz.

So yes, let's all be happy with V4 (and the upcoming M4 I am sure) because they are great right out of the box.

Now, to get more of an"AO" effect (like for shadows between fingers or toes), you'd have to turn on AO on one of the lights, or go into the Material room (there is a poser wacro for it or learn to implement it by had from Paul or BB) or get face_off's Occlusion Master.

::::: Opera :::::

tebop, since you are "going for realism" may we ask if the light shining through the back of Miki's head and illuminating the back of her mouth aids in you achieving your goal?

:: og ::

yeah no it doesn't but, i don't have that much experience with lighting. not a pro. sorry if that was wrong. Anyways, i got real skin shader. and it's a wesome.

Tebop, if you are using AO_IBL (which you didn't say you were), but no raytracing you will not get the proper shadows. 

Try your exact same image again with a stock AO_IBL and use raytracing.   

Just do it as an experiment.  Do it for me.  Please.  You will be surprised at the difference it makes.  

If you are worried about the time, do it and set it to render just before going to watch a TV show, or going to bed or something.  Just give it a try, post the new image and let us know what you think.

Ok, now i got real skin shader. it's aweesome. What kind of lighting would be best for the most realism using real skin shader?

Thromm arcadia, well i don't have the time for rendering things with raytracing. Actually, i've rendered with raytracing in P6. and yeah, you get exceptional shadows and shading, but besides that it looks just the same as with my IBL light setup( ibl + one spot light) and render with no ray tracing. Really. i've test rendered several pics with ray tracing on.. took like 8 minutes to render one big pic. it was super nice, but what i do now with NO ray tracing is great and it takes lik1 minute. that's way better for me.

So what i'm saying is.. for a hobbyest.. i don't need Ray tracing on. i don't see the point of it. I can create good images just without Ray tracing. And realism can stsill be achieved, especially with the Real skin shader product you guys told me about, and which i now bought

This one is pretty awesome. no ray tracing, 1 minute render. I used a technique that bagginsbill wrote in one trhread. it's awesome. I'm pleased. so, i guess i have nothing more to say. i'll go back to making stuff

Attached Link: Raytrace experiment, filename 5hours.png, size 514K, female topless nudity

Naturally, the logic is upside down. It's the professional, especially the professional animator, who cannot afford long render times and uses every trick in the book to get render time down. The "hobbyist", you'd think, would LOVE the suggestion of getting smashing, spectacular results by leaving his computer on overnight and cranking up the settings.

Myself, I am going in both directions. I have a scheme for animating frames in preview mode as final, which means about 3 seconds each with anti-alias on. This is for professional, release video. Opposing this, each night I am sending a render off into outer space and REALLY starting to learn raytrace for the first time.

The render attached required 5 hours and 41 seconds. It is actually a failure, but I don't care; i can afford to do one every night over the long haul to get craft. (It failed because the AO shadows around the hand are too sharp. I also can't seem to solve the issue of those damn daffodils turning black inside, even though there is no AO on any light, nor on the flower models themselves.)

Attachment is a large file even though a still: suggest download rather than opening into browser for true resolution.

::::: Opera :::::

operaguy, your render, even though you classify it a "failure", is wonderful!

As for the source of this thread, if this is what he wants then so be it.  I'm in the process of learning how to do caustics in Vue and the preview render is a little over 1 hour but that's okay.  I know when I go to render seriously I'll be setting it up to render overnight.  I don't mind long renders in any of my programs if it allows me to learn my craft better.

I've had renders in Poser that took over 4 hours even with my dual core processor.  That's okay, too.  I just let them go overnight and have a good sleep. 

For myself, I can't ever imagine wanting to post an image that I rendered in less than a minute on a low setting.  All of my production renders have custom settings and they all use Raytracing.  I use a lot of shaders and AO and, without raytracing, the results are dismal to say the least.

tebop - Which bagginsbill skin tutorial did you use, was it "Matmatic Ultra Basic Skin?"

Thanks Victoria,

I like your "gathering clouds" as well as Evening in Whitechapel and others like it. As for atmospherics, I may explore it in Poser. For instance, I have to make the perfume atomizer in this render come to life....in an animation....a cloud of perfume mist emitting then falling.

:: og ::

To render a realistic skin, you need to fake subsurface scattering. You would need that as well for realistic milk, orange juice or wax by the way. The real skin shaders try to simulate that, as well as the reflections skin gives. As far as I know the skin shader itself needs no ray tracing.

To get realistic light quite easy, you probably will use Image Based Lighting (IBL). You can set the mood of a scene very easy with that. But since you cannot use shadow maps with IBLs you need ambient occlusion, either on a light or on a material. AO creates a shadow if two surfaces are very close to each other. But Ambient Occlusion needs Ray Tracing.

You can get good results without IBLs, but it is more work. I need many test renders to get the light halfways to my liking, and I do use IBLs in most of my pictures.

Use manual render settings - the automatic stuff is not good. I use seven different render settings regulary - some with shadows, some without, some with ray tracing, some without. Different shading rate ( for most finals I use 0.0), different number of samples.  So I can test most aspects of a picture quite fast. The final render can run overnight - six hours should be long enough for most stuff.

On the other side - I have heard that movie companies mostly work with spot and infinite lights,  and use ray tracing only if absolutely nessesary. If you want to render a movie, short render times are very important, and PRenderman is much faster without GL and ray tracing.
See what works for you.

bantha is correct, in the sense that, Sub Surface Scattering is definately "The" catch phrase for technical success with skin.

What I do'nt understand s why people, not just bantha, mention a need to "Fake" this; with regard to Poser, and/or Face_Off's pythons?  If you look in the P7 Manual's Index; for SubSurface Scattering, you are directed to page 326, which is where the FastScatter node is.  Also I became aquainted with SubSurface Scatting, when researching the HyperREALV3.PY.

Bantha is right (and Opera touched on this as well) we each need to do what is right for us and for the project we are doing.

And, the Real Skin Shader actually comes out nicely, even using the P4 Render engine (but, the displacement maps are ignored, mind you, this is a minor detail).  Back when I was only using P5 I would use the P4 engine for a number of renders if there was no need for raytracing or displacements.  Of course, I wasn't going for super-realism, either.

AO will not work without Raytracing, but if you are doing portraits, you might not always want AO shadows, anyway.

Here is a great lighting Tutorial by Bagginsbill for those who want to skip using AO.

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2577132

Opera, that pic turned out really nice.  I didn't find the shadows on the daffodils destracting, but I don't know how to get around them.

Thromm Arcadia - Dissplacement was new to P5, but what does REAL Skin have to do with the P4 Render Engine?  I always use HyperREALV3 and Firefly.

Thanks for that other bagginsbill link!  There is one more, that I know of, Matmatic Jessi Skin Demo .

tebop - So, which one did you use?

Jeff Spicoli has left the building and now the grad student teachers are having a civilized discussion.

In P7 (maybe earlier) there is a choice when rendering with the P4 engine "ignore shader trees." If you don't ignore, shaders effect the render. I don't think rendering in actual Poser4/PP is the same thing as rendering in Poser7 with the "P4 Render Engine."

::::: Opera :::::

Yeah, that's what I'm refering to.  Using P5 (6 or 7) with the P4 render engine selected, but don't use "ignore shader trees".

The P4 engine will actually use a number of shaders in the material room.  I'm not sure which ones it ignores for sure, but I know that (obviously) anything with Raytracing will be ignored.

Anyway, if you use Face_off's Real Skin Shader (and probably the HyperReal, which I think is basically the same thing) with the P4 render engine you will still get very nice results.

I must point out that I have not done this with P6 or 7's P4 engine, only P5's.  I don't know if they have done any changes since.  I'll post a comparison shortly.