I think the title says it all. What do you do, using Poser only, to make your renders look realistic?

It's not something I've ever really tried to do before because frankly, I do do a lot of realism.

So you do do realism, but never try to make your renders look realistic?  I think that is your problem.   :tongue1:

I think it's everything together: textures and materials, figure and morph, lighting, render settings.

Laurie

Unbiased render engines really give a realistic boost to lighting and realism, IMO.

I would say in particular order:

1. Lighting

2. Render Settings/Engine

3. Textures/materials

4. figures

I just went through getting a little more realistic look in a carrara render.  Materials are not that great, and I am not a huge fan of the render engine...but given the correct lighting, it really came out nice!

It would come out even more real in Lux, I believe. 

In lux with really good textures, good lighting...very real

Make the person morph very realistic...now your talkin REAL!

All the above BUT I would have to add posing and expressions to the mix.

I 've seen many renders that would be excellent but the character posing was poor or unpolished or even a canned pose without any changes.

Very few canned pose packages you can buy are great straight out of the box...they're mostly designed to get you close with final adjustments to suit your needs. Expressions are the same. 

IMO, a greatly posed character in a poor render is better then a poorly posed character in a technically good render.

The trick is to do it all right and rarely does it happen quickly. Tweak, render, tweak, render, tweak, render....

...and when you think you're finally done, leave it alone and look at it again the next day and see what you think. Odds are it'll not look quite as good as you remembered.

My 2cents worth. I'm STILL working on getting good with poser!

Some of my biggest gripes about "realistic" Poser renders are the poses - body language should look natural and fluid (but this is also in part due to rigging), lack of carrying an expression through the entire face or the entire body (where appropriate), and the fact that most have the characters looking directly at the camera.   I think if you conquer all three, you're going to be happy with your result.

That said, I don't do any "realistic" rendering in Poser. I like more stylized rendering.

for me, point the eyes somewhere at something, don't have that dead stare straight, instant entry to the bottom of the uncanny valley

i think it goes further, and into your definition of realistic, in another thread some people were saying they wanted realistic shaders to use in surreal style renders, so i think it depends on your defintion of real.

Is it,

a) realistic likeness to real people in real situations, with life like faces, expressions, poses, surroundings, clothing, etc

b) realistic likeness to only certain elements, eg a lifelike skin on the barbie doll fighting the dragon.

It's really in the defintion I guess, and whether or not you are viewing the final render in comparison to other forms of producing lifelike images, eg photography. IMHO it's whatever makes you happy. I think that the moment we try and use the tag line realistic or lifelike in a gallery summary, we open ourselves to sort of critique we wouldn't get if we just rendered what we considered to be lifelike and said nuttin lol.

Happy 1001th post to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :) bugger i must have missed number 1000

I think the little details are a huge part of it, in addition to the shaders and materials.

Hair obeying the laws of gravity.  Earrings and other jewelery hanging realistically.  The grip on the weapon firm.  The bend of the foot in a shoe or boot realistic to how a shoe is constructed (especially in a high-heel boot).  All of those fine details that can be easy to miss or overlook.

It doesn't matter how beautiful the skin is if the hair is going sideways without the use of a giant fan and/or case of hair gel.

For me, priorities are :

Lighting - It has to be realistic. Realistic intensity, fall-off, colour, number of lights, position of lights etc

Scene - A full 3D scene surrounding the medium.  not just behind the figure, but behind the camera too. completely surrounded. this helps with realistic renders and IDL.   The scene that is being rendered need to make sense, scantidly clad V4's standing in a dungeon immediately trigger a warning light in our brain, because it doesnt make sense

Materials - realistic looking materials, with carefully set diffuse, specular, reflections, etc. Materials that match the object they are applied too!

Figures - realistic looking characters, with realistic looking clothes and accessories

Gravity - making everything in the scene appear to be under the effect of gravity.  This is hard but important.  Getting your figure to look like they have weight goes a LONG way to making a realistic image

Render settings - Depth of Field, even if incredibly subtle is a must. IDL is a must, high pixel samples and tone mapping.

Add in dirt, wear scratches, blemishes etc. Real world clutter. Look around at all the things in a real room.

1.  Starts with the mats.  The best lighting in the world won't help you if you've got the wrong mats, the mats aren't gamma corrected, they were designed and tested with certain specific (different) lighting.

2.  Now the lights, they need to match your scene.  This is very important to photograpy, but is slightly less important in poser just because of the nightmare that is all your materials in a complex scene.  They set up your lighting.

3.  Poses, this one is pretty easy to get wrong because it's easy to go from real to this looks nice without noticing it.  While I'm thinking about it, if you are doing dynamics and there's any transition at all, what frame you character stops at is important.  I was using one of Biscuits dynamic outfits and when vicky stopped too soon, her lack of panties soon became appearent.

4.  Expressions.  This needs to be right.

5.  The camera.  I think this is the easiest one for someone to forget about.  Angle and location are important and people often overlook this.  They too often set the scene to the camera instead of putting the camera in the right location for the scene.

6.  World clutter.  This weakness annoys me a lot.  In the real world, there isn't just one or two things, there's a lot of things.  Getting enough stuff in the scene to look right is a challenge.

7.  Render settings, these are the finishing touches so you can have mirrors, IDL, SSS, etc, xyz. 

What winterclaw said -- and when you've got that done, to go to the next level involves color theory. You should have a predominant color throughout the image (as in real life) and try to reach the entire dynamic range to (try to) imitate the true range of real light. ANd resolve yourself that you will always be a student of Poser - there are no masters.

To try an illustrate what I mean by dominate color, her'e one of my renders using a green as dominant:

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/308/b/b/the_beast_of_cloister_hall_by_tonyandrulis-d5jyh8d.png 

Nice image Ajaxx. I'm glad you brought color theory into the mix. I did an informal survey of my favorite Poser renders and saw that the artists all used a strong dominant color. Usually there would be a complementary color as secondary and it would tend to highlight the most important element in the scene. Your image might be improved by adding some shade of red (complements green) maybe as a fill or rim light. Might work on those vertical background elements as well. Cheers!

All of the above as well as realistic bodies.  Most of the cleavage used in poserville is just... fantasy, imo.  It really just depends on what type of realism you're going after.  Realistic textures?  Realistic scene?  Real people?  Looks like a photograph?  All of the above?

If I want realism, I'll use my camera . . .  I create renders that reflect my artistic sensibilities, so for me, all the traditional rules of composition and lighting apply.

Lighting -- though not necessarily natural outdoor lighting. Could be studio style, or Hollywood style too.

Pose -- otherwise the figure will look like a mannikin. I think this is the most difficult thing to master

Hair -- usually glaringly unrealistic

Clothing -- most conformed clothing doesn't drape realistically

Architecture/Environment -- there needs to be consistency in the texture resolutions

Unless it's one of the really low end character sets out there or has truly awful shaders, the skin is probably one of the last things that I'll notice, unless it's a very close up (all face) portrait. After all, I'm used to seeing extremely fake looking skin whenever I pick up a magazine or even watch a movie.

The problem with the extremely close up portraits in Poser is that facial hair is always absent in females. Yet, even in the most airbrushed cosmetics ads using real photographs, the models almost always have some visible facial hair (I don't just mean eyebrows) unless the photo has been filtered and blurred or the lighting blown out. Trouble with many close up Poser renders is that the other features are crisp, and you can see the pores with great precision. If you can see the pores, you should see the fine little hairs, especially on the cheeks and around the jawline.

facial hair, now theres an idea, i winder if tiny translucent hair forced flat by a wind force or two would look good.  hmm ideas!

Laurie

Wow, a poser character with Contrapposto... Good job, Laurie. She's a little GND'd for my preferences in poser dolls, but that's just my taste in morphs. Nice hand poses too.

The pose is one of Danie's I believe ;).

Laurie

People often use "realistic" in a very loose manner.  I think there has to be a word that would better describe what people are often trying to describe.

I prefer images that don't call attention to how they were made, but they don't necessarily need to pass for photos either...  I especially abhor aliasing, clothing poke-through, hair intersecting bodies, objects appearing to float due to lack of ground shadows or occlusion...

There was a lot of discussion in a CGTalk thread about the "realism" of a recent Unreal Engine 4 teaser video.  The problem I had with the discussion was that the trailer took place in a fantasy setting and had a lot of "magical" type effects.  I couldn't help thinking that no level of quality would convince me I was seeing something real, and that the makers of game engines would be better served recreating everyday scenes if they want to convince people of the fidelty their engines can achieve.

I worked with scale models for several years, and I think I rather like the plasticky look I sometimes get with SSS.  It's not accurate, but it fools my eye into thinking I am looking at something physical, rather than virtual.  I remember showing a friend a very simple render I did many, many years ago and he gave me the compliment that it looked like a thing that might actually exist.  This was a render done on an Amiga, but it had nice lighting with at least one shadow light, some textures, and just enough geometry that it looked better than the 3D games of that era.  From then on, my goal was to make sure that every render I did seemed to convey a believeable sense of space and solidity of objects (I use depth of field/fogging a lot), even if the resultant image appears to be of miniatures or mannequins.  I also worry a little bit about falling into the "uncanny valley", so I've never really focused on images that might actually pass for reality.   

There just has to be an alarm in the mind that goes off when something just looks wrong, and it probably relates a lot to the uncanny valley idea.  Paintings and other depictions of the fantastic don't seem to set off that alarm, and I try to be careful my renders don't either.

I think a better word then "real" would be "plausible" ie a render that while not necessarily looking like real life, has enough quality to pass off as 'real' in your imagination (alternate history, time, galaxy far far away etc) This allows enough leeway for everything from hyperreal bathrooms to cat people on floating islands.

As for what makes a render 'plausible' IMO it's not really any one single thing but rather care given to everything from lighting to shading to posing. Viewer expectation also plays a fairly large part (eg people expect to see camera artifacts even in situations where they wouldn't actually be present IRL) as does subject matter. And of course certain subjects like humans need massive amounts of work to look plausible.

A long with everything that's been said
Reflections of a object will tell your brain if it's real or fake.
If the reflection matches the material then your brain will say .real.
If the reflection does not match the material then your brain will say .fake.

In reality

1.we have natures creations. animals,insects,vegetation,water etc etc
practically imposable to render realistically.

2.we have natures creations forged by humans.glass,metals etc etc
realist renders very.

3.we have man made materials. plastic etc etc
fairly easy to render realistically.

Some photo's will look fake.why ?

If you take a photo of a plastic sphere.
It's a real life photo of a man made plastic sphere that we can touch.
So is it real ?

How do we know when where looking at a Real photo of a plastic sphere ?
How do we know when where looking at a Render of a plastic sphere ?

"I think a better word then "real" would be "plausible" 

That's certainly one important aspect. I remember seeing a render of a scratched, scarred battle mech (robot) in an outdoor setting. It looked very real, just like a piece of actual military hardware would. The realism made something clearly unreal look plausible.

As moogal says, the setting can be an important factor as well. I'm not sure that the same mech model in a dining room would have quite the same effect. I agree that every aspect of the image contributes to plausibility or lack thereof. I think we always go back to what we're familiar with. Thus, we expect a dragon to roughly look like reptiles we're familiar with etc.  

Quote - I'm satisfied with what I get most of the time, especially with a little bit of postwork for levels and maybe a photofilter ;).

Laurie

Really great!

What settings do you use in the render? rendering settings  i mean..

Thanks :)

Quote - > Quote - I'm satisfied with what I get most of the time, especially with a little bit of postwork for levels and maybe a photofilter ;).

Laurie

 

Really great!

What settings do you use in the render? rendering settings  i mean..

Thanks :)

For a final render I usually go anywhere from 8 to 10 samples, turn IDL IC off and IDL all the way up ;). No tonemapping. Mileage may vary. Heh.

Thanks :)

My answer is simply "WARTS"

A gratuitous and shameless link to http://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/index.php?contest_id=1321

"My answer is simply "WARTS"

I'd hit it. The face says witch but the dress and the figure say runway model.  

Just some added thoughts:

1. Assymetry - Nothing in the macro-world is symmetrical. Everything is slightly off... (Sometimes, in more ways than one!) Never have a perfectly symmetrical ANYTHING in a render, unless your intent is to render some sort of Platonic object that doesn't exist in the real world. Always shoot for assymetry, ever so slight.

2. For human models, GOOD LOOKING HAIR! Try hard to get the hair as realistic as possible. No amount of awesome texture work on a figure is going to help be convincing if the figure looks like it's wearing a helmet made out of plastic hair. Here, you need excellent transmaps and very good materials to produce realistic transmapped mesh hair. And, if you can stomach Poser's hair room, you can try your hand at making any one of a thousand versions of long straight hair, short straight hair or spiky alien-looking afros. Good luck with getting materials to make any of those look realistic...

3. Lighting - Use only spotlights for anything other than an outer-space shot. Infinite lights are terrible for realism, but they can add good atmosphere, so you have to balance your needs. Use a point light with diffuse set to black and specular on to help pick up specular highlights without washing out the texture map. (Picked that up from a recent thread I read. BB, I think.) Do not overdue the specular, since we're not made of plastic!

4. If you suck at lighting, then the less you use of it, the better your renders will be! :D In other words, don't render out brightly lit conference room scenes with one shadow left by fifty differently oriented lights that wash everything out so it ends up looking like a bad comic strip. The best lighting gets around having to track fifty different shadows and subtle reflected colors. (In the real world, you can't have light without shadows...) Instead of a bajillion lights, use an IBL and maybe one spotlight, oriented appropriately with the IBL and maybe, just maybe, a point light or another spot in there, somewhere, to take care of what's needed without trying to duplicate, by hand, real-world lighting with a bajillion ill-suited fake lighting tools. (I'd give advice with 2012 pro and all its cool nifty rendering stuffs..  But, I'm still learning how to manipulate it.)

5. Staring at Vicky, naked in a temple, holding a sword, for years on end is going to do quite a bit to suspend your disbelief. I'll say this about V4 - I don't care who they think sat for the modeling of that figure and the rest of the figures in DAZ's or Smith Micro's stables. I don't care how realistic they say the accuracy was. In every case, none of those figures look like a real human being. None of them. The proportions are wrong, there are details that are missing that are impossible to model into V4's geometry, five hundred renders of women with the same exact bust size is certainly unrealistic and I've never met any guy that had the ginormous thighs these modelers seem to be in love with. Their "mighty thews" throw any semblence of realism out the window, along with Vicky's DDD bustline and neanderthalian vissage....

Get thee to a modelling program!

In other words, go grab a free modeller, buy Hexagon, buy ZBrush or splurge on 3ds and fix those models some realistic morphs so they look... realistic. Get yourself GIMP or Photoshop and do some custom work on bump and displacement maps. The key here is to start off with a good base from which to create a new and believable character that doesn't look like some Frankenstein of mismatched, ill proportioned morphs. Sure, these premium figures are wonderful! But, realistic? No. Can they be made to look more realistic? Sure! Can you achieve ultimate realism with them, right out of the box, even with standard morph packages? Not really. Instead, you have to put in some sweat-equity.

1. Don't forget Depth of Field! We are not Superman and we aren't The Who - We can't see for miles and miles, without losing any perception. Our focus extends to a very, very narrow part of our vision and, at that, only within a certain range of depths. Use Depth of Field wisely and realistically in order to help produce the best, most realistic, renders.

2. Here's where I talk about materials... There, that was easy - I'm done talking about materials. I can talk about geometry all day, but I know jack-all about upper-level material management and uber-hyper accurate material fixin's. I'll leave that to you guys and marvel at your magic!

Vicky is close to comic book herons ratios "8 heads tall"
Think Posetta was closest to comic book herons ratios.

Autodesk has Mudd there version of zBrush.
a lot of the App's are merging millions high polycount meshes & zBrush like tools into there App's.

You could make all the realistic detail on Vicky in zBrush.
Takes a lot of practice and time to earn the skills to have talent in zBrush.
Anyone that good wouldn't need Poser or Vicky.

If you really want good enough realism for Hollywood movies.
Your need high end app's and the talent to use them.

Quote - 3) Lighting - Use only spotlights for anything other than an outer-space shot. Infinite lights are terrible for realism, but they can add good atmosphere, so you have to balance your needs.

Outside scenes lit by the sun or moon should use an infinite light for obvious reasons (namely, in terms of the scene sunlight is infinite light). Lights from point sources (small bulbs, candles, etc) should use point lights if they are distinct light sources. If there's too many, you usually have to go for some other option.

Quote - Just some added thoughts:

...

1. Don't forget Depth of Field! We are not Superman and we aren't The Who - We can't see for miles and miles, without losing any perception. Our focus extends to a very, very narrow part of our vision and, at that, only within a certain range of depths. Use Depth of Field wisely and realistically in order to help produce the best, most realistic, renders.

I disagree on Depth of Field. DOF is vital to getting photorealism, where it looks like a photo. However, if you are trying to make it look like a real scene, DOF forces our attention to what is in focus. It is true that our eyes have a limited DOF, but when we are looking at a real scene, we can choose what to focus on. When I'm standing by my home office window, I can focus on the window, or on the tree outside, or on the hills in the background. Whichever of those I don't focus on is blurred, but the important thing is that whatever I am concentrating on ends up in focus. Filmmakers exploit this when they change the focal plane from the foreground to the background (for example), or use a camera with a great depth of field in order to "flatten the image".

This, BTW, is a major problem I had with Avatar. Since most of the environment was CGI, I was frustrated by the fact that my attention was constantly being forced to the actors, rather than being allowed to wander to the world. Contrast this to "Monsters Inc.", which didn't use forced DOF.

Looking at a real world scene directly, with our own eyes, is very different from looking at a scene that is pre-filtered for us by photography.

Our eyes don't function like two traditional camera lenses.

Our visual cortex, and various levels of our brains, is what provides focus, really...

...and that focus is generally highly dynamic... and non-linear.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/cameras-vs-human-eye.htm

So I'm with AnAardvark in preferring to avoid too much forced focus, if any, in an image.

Generally, if I try to implement any kind of depth of field effect, it is in post, using blur filters... and it is non-linear... by which I mean, it is not objectively photographic, or physically accurate (relative to how a photographic lens would focus)... but rather, more subjectively applied... and usually with multiple focal points, compiled / contradictory depths of field... etc...

...because the effect I want is something more like you would get from being in the scene directly, in person...

...if that makes sense.

Generally I like to leave plenty space for the viewer to look around and focus, themselves, on each and every element I've taken the time to cram in to the little bubble of made up reality I've portrayed.

For me, that's a more "realistic" end result than if I tried to simply make a facsimile of a photograph.

Great reply monkeycloud. In general the only time I've used DOF is when I deliberately want a photographic look. Which is probably about in about 1/4 of my images.