I've been wondering this because no matter how good renders of V3, V4 etc made with Poser or DAZ are, they still look like  DOLLS , they don't look real. I don't know what it is but they look like plastic, not alive.

But when i see professional pictures of humans made in 3DMAX/MAYA, they look extremely real. Almost like real people.

The Lux Renderer is changing things little by little but  The default Poser and DAZ renders  even with great lighting don't give me the impression of human characters being realistic and having real skin.

well I'll i'll include ZBrush and others to the list of good programs that do create real human like characters.

Look at this.. Said done in zbrush by Stephen Molyneaux's

mmmm maybe because 3DMAX cost $3000.00 and Poser $300.00 ...
You get what you pay for ... 

More importantly, actual Subsurface Scattering is a first start, as opposed to Poser's FastScater wannabe fudging of it.

 Look OUT! Bagginsbill will mention VSS and gamma correction! I just feel it in my bones!

You can get pretty close to the $3000 programs by using the best render settings, lights and material nodes. It is possible, you just have to work at it. Most people are lazy. :laugh:

Genetics....

It's improper breeding.

Laurie

Quote -  Look OUT! Bagginsbill will mention VSS and gamma correction! I just feel it in my bones!

You can get pretty close to the $3000 programs by using the best render settings, lights and material nodes. It is possible, you just have to work at it. Most people are lazy. :laugh:

True but even BB would no doubt agree Poser needs (and has for some time) a true SSS system.

SSS helps, but in any platform it slows the render down, and it can be a PITA to set up properly. Most of the plastic-looking skin is a result of more than one thing. Specularity set too high (trying to get that 'sheen'), no bump map used, and no luminosity. You wind up with flat, homogeneous, shiny plastic. 

Bagginsbill has figured out human skin better than anyone I've noticed here. His solution is one of the best I've seen, in any program, regardless of cost. CGTalk has seen a few good ones. It's not easy to portray, because we're all so familiar with it. Ever notice a greyscale render is easier to make look real than a color one? 

Quote - I've been wondering this because no matter how good renders of V3, V4 etc made with Poser or DAZ are, they still look like  DOLLS , they don't look real.

Yeah, but have you ever seen a hyper-realistic render of someone that included the entire figure?  I never have.  Every example I've ever seen was nothing more than a portrait.

I'd be willing to bet that the illusion would be completely shattered if someone rendered anything below the collar bone.

Scanmead has mentioned some very valid points, the art of creating skin texture is an intensive art, demanding hours of concentrative effort to generate, not only, image maps, but proper bump, displacement, specular, etc mapping as well.  I read somewhere that the most realistic skin is a product of actual drawing, not patches of photographic images stitched together to create a lifelike model.  Even using Luxrender, if the skin texture sucks, it will be obvious in a real sense.  But would you be willing to pay top dollar for one or two "perfect" skin textures, or accept mass produced packages with little regards to quality craftmanship.  Even BB admits that there is an extreme shortage of great skin textures present in the marketplace.

skin texture and lighting can give yo an excellent result in poser, but for realism there are lots of tiny things , like muscle tone and hair, that just are extremely difficult to look right.

In 3dsmax there were long battles between skin shaders that are probably still going. There is also a situation where the 3dsmax user is a modeller and will make small changes t the figure itself to get the pose and expression exactly right. 

Check out the gallery at cgsociety for some excellent work.

For some reason head shots in Poser seem to look better than pictures including the body. I have never understood why that is .

Wow I was looking at Vue 8.5. wooow. it renders humans awesomely and realistic.
Well i'm sure it has to do with the skin textures too and the great characters. look at this. NOw this is what i would like to see available for us Poser/DAZ users.

But it comes at a price and they **** raised the price. When i bought Vue 5 Infinite it was 800 dollars. now 8.5 is like 1495 dollars. It's like buying a good computer. oh well, i guess it's for PROS only.

I'm going to see if they have a Hobbiest version, i'm sure they do

One thing that helps this render's realism: desaturation. This can be done while texturing or in the dreaded Postwork. This is an extreme version, but give it a try. Dig out a few renders, take them into PS or PSP or the Gimp, and try decreasing the Saturation levels.

I see no obvious SSS in this. What I do see is exceptional lighting skills, and restraint used in specularity.

Lovely render. Who's work is this?  

 josterD, again, do you have permission of the artists to post their images here?

well it was from the Vue 8.5 information page. i can't post that?
ok take it down. i didn't know

Even using MentalRay it's not easy to get good looking skin.  If you are using the fast skin shader, you have to paint subdermal and epidermal maps and adjust the weight and radius.  Easier to fake it :biggrin:

 josterD, if you want to share images  with the forum, please, just link to the page that they're on.  Point out which ones you're talking about.  You can't just post people's artwork without their permission, even if it's just for illustration.

Attached Link: "BVH 1" by Fabrice Delage

Attached Link: http://www.cornucopia3d.com/purchase.php?item_id=8992

If you want a hobbiest version, that can be upgraded when you want to, at the moment they have a special going on on Vue 8 Frontier. It's half price at $49.50, but you would have to be quick, the sale ends end of Sept 14.

I’ve seen Poser renders where the skin looks realistic, but the body fails to convince due to unnatural distortions of the rigging, or the lack of flattening where limbs or feet contact a surface. It’s the little things that count, but that shouldn’t matter if you just like making animations in the preview mode.

The fact is, a program like Maya has so many options, and so much flexibility that it would swamp a casual hobbyist. Its advantages over a program like Poser are voluminous and require extended study. For example, in Maya you can use capsule weights as a starting point and then edit the resulting weight map for more realistic bending: a method where something resembling Poser’s system of falloff capsules is only a "rough sketch" to be perfected.

interesting.

Quote - Wow I was looking at Vue 8.5. wooow. it renders humans awesomely and realistic.
Well i'm sure it has to do with the skin textures too and the great characters. look at this. NOw this is what i would like to see available for us Poser/DAZ users.

But it comes at a price and they **** raised the price. When i bought Vue 5 Infinite it was 800 dollars. now 8.5 is like 1495 dollars. It's like buying a good computer. oh well, i guess it's for PROS only.

I'm going to see if they have a Hobbiest version, i'm sure they do

Out of the box, Vue renders Poser figures almost as good as Poser does.  The figure's skin/shine/sweat/highlights/bump/displacement/fur/SSS has to be tweaked a great deal using plugins and 3rd-party materials before any kind of figure realism can be approached in Vue.  Vue does render landscapes much better than Poser however.

Attached Link: Full size version

The trick though is to get past that Bloomingdales mannequin look though.  It is do-able in Poser 8.

Most Poser users like it that way.

Attached Link: life in plastic is fantastic

Quote JosterD from another thread:

I see people fighting about render engines and programs. Personally i dont even care about  Rendering. So i don't even use rendering.

Maybe good for backgrounds but i dont really care. I use the lowest settings, so that i can render in 1 minute.

Preview mode is the way to go. I mean who cares. I dont care about rendering.

These days Preview mode is better than ever. It's near render quality so why waste time rendering.

You can add shadows by hand painting them later.

Do you really expect people take you serious, when in one thread you said this, and in this thread you are complaining about the quality of poser.
Please get a life!

Bopper.

Quote - Quote JosterD from another thread:

I see people fighting about render engines and programs. Personally i dont even care about  Rendering. So i don't even use rendering.

Maybe good for backgrounds but i dont really care. I use the lowest settings, so that i can render in 1 minute.

Preview mode is the way to go. I mean who cares. I dont care about rendering.

These days Preview mode is better than ever. It's near render quality so why waste time rendering.

You can add shadows by hand painting them later.

Do you really expect people take you serious, when in one thread you said this, and in this thread you are complaining about the quality of poser.
Please get a life!

Bopper.

pwnd!  :D

so he is a troll?

As for the original question- nice, comparing professionals to hobbyists and expecting the latter to always be as good as the former.

For programs like Maya, there's a fairly steep learning curve involved. It takes a while to get a realistic render of anything more than, say, a simple cube. I've worked a bit with Maya, 3DSMAX, and Blender- they're not exactly user-friendly, but they are designed for professionals. I forget where I saw it, but I believe Blender was said to have a two-month learning curve before the average CG artist would be proficient enough to use it in a production environment.

Whereas with Poser, you can render your first "Vicki-in-a-Temple-with-a-Sword" an hour after installing the program for the first time. (Or even faster if she's naked.) Many people, happy with that, don't go further.

Poser can do near-photorealistic renders, but it takes a lot of time and experimentation to get it right.

Quote - so he is a troll?

My honest reply would be an extreme TOS violation.

Quote - > Quote - so he is a troll?

My honest reply would be an extreme TOS violation.

as would mine.

Laurie

Hard work and skill acquired from just hammering away can often overcome the individual weaknesses of any program, whether it costs $300 or $4000.

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6642

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6653

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6726

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6717

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6706

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6662

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6648

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/imagePage?iid=6518

It seems obvious to me that what Poser really needs is the integration of a hair generating module with the capabilities of HairShave or Hairfarm. I've seen renders in the gallery done with nothing but Poser that approach the quality of some of the above linked renders, but the hair, no matter how skillfully worked, always falls short.
Give me hair!
(I'm not kidding; my hair is falling out so fast these days I told my nephew that that big pink zero on the crown of my head is my jersey number from high school football l had the barber shave in.)

Too harsh!

Maybe just an internal disagreement? It's OK to get in arguments with yourself- as long as you don't start punching yourselves!

  Alright I and I am sorry- and am taking I off to have a nice internal dialog! :-)

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - so he is a troll?

My honest reply would be an extreme TOS violation.

as would mine.

Laurie

I've been noticing that just about every model, character, and clothing that I've purchased from DAZ in the last year or so has that shine to it and for each I have to go in a change it under materials because they all look like plastic when rendered.

Is it because there's such a craze for cartoon figures.  I'm into realism in my renders and hate the plastic, cartoon look that everyone seems to like.

I am afraid I have to agree with JosterD, I've yet to see a Poser person render that looks totally realistic.

Quote - I am afraid I have to agree with JosterD, I've yet to see a Poser person render that looks totally realistic.

Maybe so but the point some of us are making is this is the same guy who says it's pointless rendering anyhow.  So why the big deal about realism?

I thought theOP was trollish when I first read it. I've seen Poser renders that looked very good, almost photorealistic, and it's mostly based on  the quality of the texture or people who really put the work into achieving a high quality render. Besides, as already said, it's ridiculous to suggest that one should get the same results from a $300 program as you do from a $3000 one. But Poser can do far better than the OP has suggested.

Quote - I am afraid I have to agree with JosterD, I've yet to see a Poser person render that looks totally realistic.

I think carodan got rather close with this one.
And here's a different view of the same guy.

Well, there's also an important point that "photorealism" is not always good art or what you want, is it? :)
I love Clyde Caldwell's art, he has an odd "cartoonish" quality to his work, but it's gorgeous.

I vary from wanting realism (which isn't possible far as I'm concerned without an unbiased renderer), to wanting "my style" (which isn't realism but worked heavily from decent renders)

I want to do renders that don't scream out "Done in Poser" or "Poser Render" or "Rendered Store-Bought 3D Content".  I want to produce art that makes the viewer interested in the scene and see what the characters in it are doing and how they relate to things and eachother.

But if I come across a render in the gallery of a simple posed figure standing with glazed eyes and a sword bigger that her entire arm, the only think that would interest me about it is if it looks like a photo then.  Because there's nothing else about the render that would hold my interest. 

Quote - I want to do renders that don't scream out "Done in Poser" or "Poser Render" or "Rendered Store-Bought 3D Content".  I want to produce art that makes the viewer interested in the scene and see what the characters in it are doing and how they relate to things and eachother.

But if I come across a render in the gallery of a simple posed figure standing with glazed eyes and a sword bigger that her entire arm, the only think that would interest me about it is if it looks like a photo then.  Because there's nothing else about the render that would hold my interest. 

exactly.

Sam

A new pic? Congrats on the new family member!
I remember the "pointlessness of rendering" posts- and now this one. It seems that the poster is A) Trolling B) has suddenly had an Epiphany.

Quote - > Quote - I am afraid I have to agree with JosterD, I've yet to see a Poser person render that looks totally realistic.

Maybe so but the point some of us are making is this is the same guy who says it's pointless rendering anyhow.  So why the big deal about realism?

I have used Poser, Daz, 3ds Max, C4D, etc.  What I have noticed most about the rendering is that the higher end (ahem, $$$) programs have better render engines.  Firefly is ancient, and although I respect what SM has done to keep it somewhat current ( actually think it is quite a value if you compare render quality vs. dollar to the other programs), I don't think it calculates lighting as in-depth as the other engines.  It was born before global illumination and multi-core home PCs became commonplace.  For example look back through the gallery a couple years.  There are some renders that look so good I couldn't tell if they were CGI at first, and that was before VSS and GI, but they were done with fifteen lights in the scene.  Or play with LuxPose the uber-users have been creating.  Render the same scene in firefly then export it to LuxRender, it will be 10x better.  And take 10x longer.  That's just what I have noticed.  Laurie, you have seen it all.  Any thoughts?

For comparison:
http://bigguns.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Quote - so he is a troll?

Just look at his posting history. It tells the tale.

sigh you see a lot of to-die-for renders at CGTalk. I use Vray, and while it does make your job easier, and it offers a lot more options, not even the best render engine can make an image look good without an awful lot of work on models, shaders, and lighting. If one hits Render without having spent a good amount of time on materials, expect to get a 'canned' look. Very few light sets will give any given image a good solution without a lot of tweaking and fussing.

The primary downfall of most less-than-good images, however, is a cohesive final image. Somewhere along the way, the artist loses the feel or point they set out to convey. Photo-real is great for arch-viz, not so much for a dreamy forest scene.

Bottom line, it doesn't matter if you're using MS Paint, or Maya, you need a clear vision of what you want, and you have to put in the time to achieve the look. And if that means learning how to properly compose an image, or years learning how to control lighting, or asking for help on how to build good shaders, that's what you have to do. This is one hobby (or career) that is definitely hard work.

A scene with a crappy lightning is a crappy scene, even with vray ... Thinking before speaking ...

Yeah, well, my trademark is 'Crappy Scenes R Us'.  Comes from having nothing to say, and boredom half-way through a project.

Ever go for photo-real, and suddenly think it would be a whole lot easier and turn out better if you just grabbed a camera? Sort of makes all that work pointless.  

Rendered scenes are 25% modeling, 25% texturing, and 50% lighting.