Attached Link: http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd275/Akura_/Poser/LifeRender1.jpg

i think this looks very fake.  skin doesnt have any specular or fake SSS.
plus you dont have shadows. shadows and shadows

are you using an old computer that is slow? i need to ask this because a render without shadows like this should take 20 seconds.

try searching for bagginbill's threads. look in the VSS thread about skin. and search for threads about lighting. there is a lot of info. 

I think its a fair start. I would balance your lighting so its more even. I usually turn off shadows for all but 1 light unless its an indoor scene or at night with visible lights.  You have shadows on the figure so that seems ok. To me the blue hair detracts from the reality. 

I dont see enough in this pic to explain a 12 hour render but I dont know the lighting or shader you mentioned.

 The hair intersects the fingers of the left hand. Looks painful.

[edit]  

and the boob too

[/edit]

-.-''' 12 hours >< and no there were so many lights. and my computer is very fast though.

you say so many lights. it looks like you used 2 light max.

Needs gamma correction, badly. You have the classic yellow-pink bloom going. You have a ton of light trying to fill the less-lit areas, resulting in over-lighting the well-lit areas. This is the classic result of failure to recognize gamma correction error. I don't know what the DS Elite shader is supposed to do, but what it ought to do is GC.

Also, to add to what's already been said, The eyes look dead like a doll's.

the light thing has been around forever, and caused the whole gamma correction thing to come up.  Poser and D/S lights just are not that good and you have to use work-arounds to compensate for their short-comings.  It can be done.  Just takes practice.

it would be slow if ya maxxed out all the render settings, e.g. 20 bounces, IC 99, no filter, pix samp 32, bucket size 512, shade rate reset for all matls to 0.001, shadow maps 4096.  preceding is very unlikely, of course.

Hey guys, just incase you  do not know this already, members can post things like this in the critique forum too. :)

Akura_ FWIW this is better than what I've been coming up with lately. :lol:

D.

I like Poser for modelling characters but as for making renderings ... it's a CRAP. Any best shaders and cosmic inventions won't help. It's rendering engine is 10 years behind the competition. For this purpose I import character as .OBJ into 3DMax and use VRay render. I recommend anybody interested in decent quality renderings using other software than Poser. Amen

Them's fightin' words.

That statement is "a CRAP". That's the stupidest thing I see around here, and far too often. Sorry for being blunt, but that was just a major asshole thing to post here.

Novice CG users produce crap even with VRay. It's not the tool. I agree that some tools are more capable, more sophisticated, more efficient, but there's no reason to claim that Poser is crap.

A proper response would be to suggest how to improve - where to learn. It's not like it has to be hard. Yes writing a shader is hard if you don't know how. But I publish hundreds of free shaders and software that makes it truly easy to produce much better renders, such as this one. Yes it's not photo-realistic, but it is just a couple clicks and it's light years better than 90% of what's in the Poser gallery.

Poser is a hobby for most people. They cannot afford $8000 rendering engines. I can, but I choose not to because this is a hobby, not my job. I do happen to own a car that does 200 miles per hour and cost me over $100,000. Does that give me the right to say your are driving an inferior car, and you need to buy a better one so you can corner faster? Hardly. If you're a novice driver, the super car won't really help you.

I see this is your first post. Not a good start.

Art is subjective.  Compared to the great paintings and works of art, anime tends to be very simplistic and is pretty far from realistic, but that doesn't mean you can't like it.  Sometimes things can be nonrealistic and still have a visually appealing quality. 

Quote - Art is subjective.  Compared to the great paintings and works of art, anime tends to be very simplistic and is pretty far from realistic, but that doesn't mean you can't like it.  Sometimes things can be nonrealistic and still have a visually appealing quality. 

Huh? I'm not following you here. Nobody said anything about anime. The original poster said "trying for a life like render". Are you saying that the quality of being "like life" is subjective? I don't think it is. If it looks like a poorly lit CG, anime or donald duck or physically accurate human, then it is not a life like render.

Put it this way, a render of a Donald Duck doll can be realistic or unrealistic, regardless of whether we like Donald or not, and regardless of the fact that a talking duck that wears a sailor suit is - unreal.

If I knew how to make a render in Poser of a Donald Duck doll that fooled you into thinking that it was a photograph of a real Donald Duck doll, I'd be pretty proud of myself. I still don't know how to do that.

Quote - I like Poser for modelling characters but as for making renderings ... it's a CRAP. Any best shaders and cosmic inventions won't help. It's rendering engine is 10 years behind the competition. For this purpose I import character as .OBJ into 3DMax and use VRay render. I recommend anybody interested in decent quality renderings using other software than Poser. Amen

you can not model in poser. only import and pose.

Quote - > Quote - I like Poser for modelling characters but as for making renderings ... it's a CRAP. Any best shaders and cosmic inventions won't help. It's rendering engine is 10 years behind the competition. For this purpose I import character as .OBJ into 3DMax and use VRay render. I recommend anybody interested in decent quality renderings using other software than Poser. Amen

Them's fightin' words.

That statement is "a CRAP". That's the stupidest thing I see around here, and far too often. Sorry for being blunt, but that was just a major asshole thing to post here.

Novice CG users produce crap even with VRay. It's not the tool. I agree that some tools are more capable, more sophisticated, more efficient, but there's no reason to claim that Poser is crap.

A proper response would be to suggest how to improve - where to learn. It's not like it has to be hard. Yes writing a shader is hard if you don't know how. But I publish hundreds of free shaders and software that makes it truly easy to produce much better renders, such as this one. Yes it's not photo-realistic, but it is just a couple clicks and it's light years better than 90% of what's in the Poser gallery.

Poser is a hobby for most people. They cannot afford $8000 rendering engines. I can, but I choose not to because this is a hobby, not my job. I do happen to own a car that does 200 miles per hour and cost me over $100,000. Does that give me the right to say your are driving an inferior car, and you need to buy a better one so you can corner faster? Hardly. If you're a novice driver, the super car won't really help you.

I see this is your first post. Not a good start.

nice post. but the render doesnt fit with the post if i am honest.i know that posing,lighting and a quality render takes time. but this is not the best that poser can do. and lets hope that the guy doesnt think that this is the best.

Quote - I like Poser for modelling characters but as for making renderings ... it's a CRAP. Any best shaders and cosmic inventions won't help. It's rendering engine is 10 years behind the competition. For this purpose I import character as .OBJ into 3DMax and use VRay render. I recommend anybody interested in decent quality renderings using other software than Poser. Amen

You're right, all peoples have money for buying max and vray !!!

you have no shadows from your hair.

I can clearly see there are devoted Poser lovers here. Despite its clear downs.  Sounds like some of them sell it;)
I am amazed how easy some people find to insult me while I just showed my opinion about one feature of Poser... Chill out folks. It's just a software - not religion
I am still at my position as the rendering engine that doesn't have built in indirect illumination ( bouncing light rays ) is a thing of the far PAST. If somebody doesn't see the difference I can't help;) Look at MungoPark's rendering. I like the model and composition but It's clearly not full VRay quality. Because lack of light bounces all corners are too dark -  natural soft reflexes are missing there.
I agree that some unexperienced folks can make worse rendering with VRay than from Poser but let's be honest these are extremes. Just get any tutorial about basics and within shorter time you'll get much more realistic effect. I don't mention how powerful VRay may be in hands of an experienced one...
I think later I'll come with some reference comparisons to show what actually we are talking about.

Ice-Boy : If you're right I have no idea how I have made my Angelina Jolie character;) Please have a look - Poser7/Morphing Tool/Create...

Quote - the render doesnt fit with the post if i am honest.i know that posing,lighting and a quality render takes time. but this is not the best that poser can do. and lets hope that the guy doesnt think that this is the best.

But that is why I took NO time to prepare. The claim I opposed was that the terrible render in the OP was because Poser is crap, and that only experts can get results that are not crap, and only through specialized knowledge and skill.

I set up that render by click to load, click to pose, click to render. I took no time to adjust lights, or shaders. It is not a great render. But it is not a terrible render, either. One has only to learn the most basic principles of lighting to achieve results that are clearly better than the OP image.

If I had spent an hour or more preparing the image to look merely good, then I would be supporting the claim that good results are only achieved with better, more expensive tools.

I agree that you can spend 10 hours in Poser and never achieve state-of-the-art photorealism with the current version of Poser.

Back to the car analogy. Suppose I get in my wife's car and race around a track for an hour and I finish 100 laps. In my car I finish 200 laps.

My wife driver her car on the track and finishes 40 laps. She gets in my car and still does 40 laps.

You cannot conclude that her car is crap just because her results are poor.

If we both race the same cars, I will win every time. That has little to do with whether or not the car is crap.

Same with renderers. If I use Poser and make a good render, and somebody else uses Poser and make a bad render, that does not mean that Poser is crap.

And I agree, I cannot make an excellent render in Poser, even if my skills are up to it. But there are so many Poser users who simply do not have the skills to manage a high-end renderer and get state of the art results. Advising them to get a better renderer, even if they can afford it, is not helpful. They need to learn the CG skills first, and Poser is a fine and inexpensive vehicle for learning those skills.

It is the same with photography. I have a pretty decent camera, but a real Pro would produce better results, regardless of whether he uses my $1200 camera+lens or his $10000 camera+lens. When I ask for help and guidance in a photography forum, no Pro tells me my camera is crap and I should buy the $10,000 camera and lenses he uses. Instead, he tells me the opposite. He says "You're skills are not good enough to use a Nikon D3X and Pro glass. Learn to use the features of the camera you have first." If I get poor results with the D90, I will get poor results with the D3X.

BB, most excellently elaborated post. I salute you.
 

 I did not want to insult anybody - this was done in about 20 min without any tweaks - I just used an old light set and an old pose. But what I see basically in the galleries (even if they use "better" engines) just annoys me - its just postwork nothing else. Ice-boy sees a major Firefly flaw - shadows sometimes get washed out. You can correct this easily with a seperate shadow render.

I am quite for now  - I have to paint the deck - and its huge - what a horror

Quote - I used DAZ studio elete shader and daz light studio for the render trying for a life like render. and yes im aware of how hard it is to get that. what do you all think.

Since it is DS, you may be better off Posting the DS forum here for feedback.

Quote - When I ask for help and guidance in a photography forum, no Pro tells me my camera is crap and I should buy the $10,000 camera and lenses he uses. Instead, he tells me the opposite. He says "You're skills are not good enough to use a Nikon D3X and Pro glass. Learn to use the features of the camera you have first." If I get poor results with the D90, I will get poor results with the D3X.

AMEN!!!  

I'm seriously tired, on a personal level, of App bashing.  First of all, you can never get the same results out of two different applications and/or renderers.  Second, instead of worrying about which high-end renderer will make my XYZ render look SUPER UBER AWESOME, I worry about how to make my skills in what I have available better.  I hear all of this talk about using $1k + programs....and then I'm reminded, Anton modelled Apollo in a free app.  Big Buck Bunny was created in Blender. 
It's not the tools, it's how you use it.  And when someone teaches you how to fake or get a similar effect, rather than saying "Well, you could spend $1k and get the real thing", how about actually trying it?  Not to poo-pooh Lightwave.  It does awesome, AMAZING things.  But, unless I somehow become independently wealthy, I'll never be able to justify its' purchase, LIKE MANY PEOPLE HERE.  Even then, there's another program to learn, and, I don't know about anyone else, but, unless that program also adds another 12 hours onto the standard day for me...I don't have that kind of time in my life.

Oh geez, ratscloset, I totally forgot about that. I meant to put this is in my first response but forgot:

On what basis do we review this DS render, and declare that Poser is crap?

"I do happen to own a car that does 200 miles per hour and cost me over $100,000. Does that give me the right to say your are driving an inferior car, and you need to buy a better one so you can corner faster? Hardly. If you're a novice driver, the super car won't really help you."

I bought my maid a $100K car for her teenage son.  I don't drive junk cars like that. 

That's a Thurston Howell joke, but seriously I wish someone would post a 1, 2, 3 step by step (even if it's 100 steps) guide to making a more realistic image.

Quote - ... but seriously I wish someone would post a 1, 2, 3 step by step (even if it's 100 steps) guide to making a more realistic image.

God point. I'd like to see it as well from Poser experts.