I was wondering if someone could give me a little advice on obtaining a more photo realistic look and feel to my renders.

Below you see a render I did in Poser 9 that will be part of a series of extreme close-up of various body parts; “hands, legs, feet, and so forth".

My problem is that in this exorcise I’m trying for a very photo realistic look and feel to my renders.

Please if anyone can give me some help with this it will be very much appreciated.

Thanks much

Steel  

In my opinion to achieve a closeup photo realistic look renders you need an extreme high resolution skin texture and as I know there are not so many in Poser characters only few vendors make photo realistic skin textures one of them is Danae like the metropolitan collection London character and maybe some other vendors make high resolution skin textures. The second issue is you have to use more light and shadows in your renders like the hand holding the parfum bottle there are no shadows, if you put some more shadows by applying some lights the hands will look as if she is holding the bottle, at present render you have done her hands looks like in the air and far away from the bottle, the blue ring on her finger has no shadows as well. As nothing is perfect in this world if you have some photoshop skills you can make some minor retouches by using the Liquify tool in photoshop to correct the uneven fingers position. In my renders using several light with shadows are must as well as photoshop corrections. In my opinion a poser render will never look photo realistic unless you use special lights, for me the most difficult part in poser renders are to play with lights, you have to experiment a lot of time with lights and I am sure you can get it as you like if you spend more time. Good luck!!!!!!

Also, you need an enclosed room or environment dome with an image to get the best effect from IDL.

As awadissk notes, texture is extremely important.  The wood floor texture in this render is fine for a normal shot, but obviously not up to snuff for a closeup.

Finally, subsurface scattering is available in Poser 9, which is easily applied to skin via the free EZSkin script...

Quote - Hello all and hope your week is going well.

I was wondering if someone could give me a little advice on obtaining a more photo realistic look and feel to my renders.

Below you see a render I did in Poser 9 that will be part of a series of extreme close-up of various body parts; “hands, legs, feet, and so forth".

My problem is that in this exorcise I’m trying for a very photo realistic look and feel to my renders.

Please if anyone can give me some help with this it will be very much appreciated.

Thanks much

Steel  

It looks to me like there are lights with shadows disabled in your scene. Either remove those lights or let them cast shadows (IBLs should use AO, not shadows). 

She is probably wondering who activated the force fields while she was out. :p

Are the ceiling lights an actual fixture in the dome, or just lights positioned at the ceiling?

Quote - She is probably wondering who activated the force fields while she was out. :p

Are the ceiling lights an actual fixture in the dome, or just lights positioned at the ceiling?

There is a spot light just below each modeled fixture, (8, IIRC) and I cranked up the ambient on the covers to show a nice glow.  I need to hang a chandelier in that vaulted area, as there isn't quite enough light in the center of the room, even with the cans set overbright..

In your example image it would appear that you don't have any bump or displacement maps for the skin texture (or possibly the lighting is very "flat" - comming from the front and not the sides). As noted earlier bump and displacement maps will go a long way toward the illusion of realism.

Also, as noted above, the bottle, and the jewel in the ring, are also problematic. Anything that has caustic lighting effects in real life, like glass and jewels, will be difficult to create the needed realistic effects or illusions in Poser. For this reason, I would recommend against using any jewel or glass props in your images, because it is so difficult to fake the proper effects using Poser/Firefly. If you really want to use these props, then you should investigate using an external renderer. Reality 3/LuxRender or Octane Render might be your best solutions for caustic effects.

A very good understanding of lighting and materials/shaders is very important when trying to achieve photo realism in a 3D render. If the lighting isn't very good, then you end up with flat renders that simply don't look real. Materials and shaders that are even slightly off will leave the viewer in uncanny valley, where things are very close, but just don't "feel" right.

So, IMVHO, Lighting and mats/shaders are where you should focus your efforts to begin with.

I have to totally agree with that statement, along with the realisation that the real world is full of imperfection and lack of symmetry.

This quickie pic has no postwork and is rendered at very low settings but demos what I mean. Click to enlarge.

She come with Carlotta Love Default Skin + SSS (Head and Body) – I must say that I really don’t understand exactly what SSS means or what it does, but I did apply to her arm and legs, and to be honest I think the skin had more of a photo realistic look to them when I used the default skin mats.

I will try checking all my lights to see which ones are casting shadows.   My other problem is I don’t want the scene to be to bright; that has always been a problem for me.  I do like lots of dramatic lighting with deep shadows like the ones that make good black & white photos.   

Anyway here below is another in the series featuring her legs. I know getting realism in the dog is out of the question and I can live with that, but the main focal point in the render is her legs anyway.  

If anyone is following this thread please the more feed back the better.

Thanks again

Steel

None of these look like photographs, they look like cg renders trying to emulate real world phenomena. If your going to try to make something that looks like a photograph, take a photograph and save yourself the headaches. And your trying to do this with Poser and Poser pre-made figures?

Commence booing and hissing. :)

... advice, render inanimate objects and skip the figures. It ain't happening with figures in Poser, or just about any other available renderer. If you think the best of the best state of the art photorealism attempts with CG look like the real thing then you've been looking at CG for too long (ok, the Emily project is pretty sophisticated but that's using capture and all kinds of fancy whatnot...).

Not to mention how real is a photograph to begin with?

"Always with the negative waves, Moriarty!" :biggrin:

The 'SSS' shaders with that product simulate subsurface scattering, which occurs when light reflects off a translucent surface, such as skin.  However, Poser 9 has this built in to its shader system.  The easiest way to apply it is via EZSkin2, which is available free here...

http://www.snarlygribbly.org/3d/forum/viewforum.php?f=27

It comes with a nice guide by Basicwiz; read it.  I personally don't bother with the Fresnel setting, and tell it to use bump map if available, but some textures have crappy bump maps, so you might want to try the procedural bump too and compare.  You can even use it to improve the dog; you can apply a SSS hair shader to the dog's coat with this tool.

Snarly also has free EZMetals, which is a collection of metal shaders..

http://www.snarlygribbly.org/3d/forum/viewforum.php?f=10

As far as lighting goes, I went down to my kitchen, which is lit with cans and a fixture over the table, and is is not an environment of dramatic shadows; if you want hard shadows in my kitchen, you would need either someone doing arc welding on the other side of the room, or have windows admiting direct sunlight, which it does in the late afternoon.  This can be provided by an infinite light.

I don't notice any ambient occusion on the ankle bracelet; what is your lighting setup?  Are you using IDL?

If you have time, here's a nice Webinar video on Poser lighting... 

http://my.smithmicro.com/webinars/poser/lighting-your-3d-scenes/index.html

{Are you using IDL}  I really don't understand IDL lighting or what it does.  As for what Ive done here Im just useing reg. Poser lights.

Learn about IDL...

http://www.poserbydesign.com/news/index.php/29-tutorials/lighting-tutorials/73-indirect-lighting-for-beginners.

Learn about render settings...

http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/renderer.html

IDL is basically real global illumination, something users used to hack in Poser by using 50,000 lights all set to very low values. IDL is really only effective when used in conjunction with some kind of enclosing environment that bounces the light around the scene. I'm not going to get any more technical in my description as that'll just cause someone to tear me a new one.

You should definitely give IDL a shot, I think it's the most significant advance that's happened within Poser and is useful for any style of render... But in particular for what your trying to achieve. Download Bagginsbill's environment sphere, read the accompanying documentation on the site, dump ambient occlusion (IDL is superior), and read up on IDL...

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere

Woops, cross-post with WandW... had a feeling that was going to happen.

Oh, yeah... the download button for the environment sphere is the tiny little blue arrow at the right hand bottom of the page.

One more thing; try some of this stuff out using simple scenes and the Poser primitive props or Andy the mannequin rather than human figures, as they will render much faster and you can interpret your results more easily...

If it hasn't been mentioned, DOF (depth of field) needs to be applied.

So much to learn

But let me get this stright  One of the things I need to do is place her in a room of some sort as well.... Is that correct?

Quote - If it hasn't been mentioned, DOF (depth of field) needs to be applied.

Don't worry about depth of field right now; work on lighting.

If you are using IDL, it works best in an enclosed space because IDL is due to reflection from the envronment.  The enclosed space for an outdoor render could be BB's Envirodome, mentioned above, or the room I used in my Renders above (DAZ' Dream House Great Room) for an indoor render....

Ok Wand Im going to be working on IDL lighting thing tonight

Thanks and thanks everyone for following this one and giving feed back

Quote - Ok the figure I’m using is Carlotta Love V4  http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/carlotta-love/94431/

She come with Carlotta Love Default Skin + SSS (Head and Body) – I must say that I really don’t understand exactly what SSS means or what it does, but I did apply to her arm and legs, and to be honest I think the skin had more of a photo realistic look to them when I used the default skin mats.

I will try checking all my lights to see which ones are casting shadows.   My other problem is I don’t want the scene to be to bright; that has always been a problem for me.  I do like lots of dramatic lighting with deep shadows like the ones that make good black & white photos.   

Anyway here below is another in the series featuring her legs. I know getting realism in the dog is out of the question and I can live with that, but the main focal point in the render is her legs anyway.  

If anyone is following this thread please the more feed back the better.

Thanks again

Steel

When using SSS, one thing to keep in mind is that it tends to blow out the details in your texture map. This is a universal issue with SSS, not just in Poser, but moderation in the SSS settings will help a lot.

It's hard to say just exactly what the cause of the loss of "realism" on the skin is. I looked at the renders on the product page you linked to (I like Rhiannon's stuff), and it appears that she has good detail in the skin texture. So my guess here, and it is simply a true WAG, is that your lights are washing out a lot of the detail, and SSS is doing the rest. You might try using the IDL lights that came with the character and the IDL SSS texture set (at least from the product description I surmise that these are all a part of the package) to see what kind of results you get.

In general, the legs/feet in the image look kind of like plastic, almost like a department store manikin (which is perfectly OK if that is the look you want, but not for "photoreal"). The feet would have more wrinkles/folds in the skin, especially on the back of the foot near the heal, where a large protion of the load from supporting the body will force the heal down and forward along the inclined plane of the shoes. There should also be a bit more indication of where the tendons are on the top of the foot. There are other subtle surface imperfections that aren't present that go a long way toward a more photorealistic effect, but the ones I listed are good starting points.

The fur/fuzz in the shoes is great!!! But again, the rest of the shoe looks more like plastic and is lacking detail. The plastic effect can be addressed by reducing highlight/specular a bit. I'm guessing the shoes themselves are probably missing the needed texture/modeling detail to get "photorealism", though it could be a lighting/texture/shader issue too. If you are looking for some great, incredibly detailed shoes for V4, Idler168 over at DAZ is one of my favorites.

With respect to lighting, many of the Poser lights sets are very complicated, and seem to have a lot more going on than what really needs to be there, and often make getting the results I want difficult. I've always had issues with lighting in Poser. For me, and this is really a personal thing, good lighting in Poser has alway been difficult, while lighting in DS, Carrara, Lux, C4D seems quite straight forward. I can't stress enough just how important good lighting is - the most realistic and detailed model, with the most realistic and detailed textures/shaders, will look very much less than realistic with a poor light set up. As others have sugested, IDL is a great way to go for realistic lighting. I wish I could be more help with the lighting, unfortunately I'm simply incompetent with Poser lighting.

I tend to try more for realistic 3D in my renders, rather than photo realism. What I mean by realistic 3D is that the viewer gets the true illusion or feeling of 3D in the image, but the image is typically obviously not a photograph of ..... say .... a real person.  It's simply an image of a 3D figure, possibly even a photograph of a realistic 3D figure(s). I bring this up because achieving true photo realism in any 3D software typically involves having good skills in sculpting and/or texturing (i.e. zBrush), where realistic 3D is much more forgiving and easier to achieve.

As a side note and OT for this thread - Thanks Steeleyes for your comments in my gallery (Vixen Girl is one of my favorites as well)!!

The character/detail morphs for the Bridget WIP render are actually all "dial spins", but they did take many many hours of tweaking to get her looking the way I wanted. The detail in the legs (and other muscles) comes from a combination of the muscle morphs for Genesis, and detail/fitness morphs. There is also some additional enhancement with Flexions enabled (automatic compresion/extension of the muscles when the joints are moved), which gives a very similar effect to the true compression of the calf muscles when someone is wearing pumps. The image titled "Bridget's Got Back" is essentially the same figure, and is a good example of what the calf muscles look like when not compressed, with the feet flat on the floor.

I hope what I've said helps in some way. I'm not the best at realism myself, but I sure do think about it a lot.

Thanks much for your feed back DustRider.

I must admit that alot of what you talked of is a bit over my head but I will look them up, do some reading, follow some tut's, and run some test renders.    

You said; "I tend to try more for realistic 3D in my renders, rather than photo realism". I think maybe that is a more accurate discription of what Im trying to archive and just did not correctly express myself.

Anyway would you please look at the links below and tell me if you think I came close with these renders?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2376393&user_id=234433&page=2&member&np   I love the way her lips came out and also skin around the breast area.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1730568&user_id=234433&page=6&member&np  I dont know, but I think this one and the aover are as close as I have ever come to the effect Im looking for, and it was just a hit or miss thing

Thanks again

Steel

Hissssssss booooooooooo! :-)

Quote - None of these look like photographs, they look like cg renders trying to emulate real world phenomena. If your going to try to make something that looks like a photograph, take a photograph and save yourself the headaches. And your trying to do this with Poser and Poser pre-made figures?

Commence booing and hissing. :)

Quote - When using SSS, one thing to keep in mind is that it tends to blow out the details in your texture map. This is a universal issue with SSS, not just in Poser, but moderation in the SSS settings will help a lot.

It's a fairly old product, and the "SSS" trextures are fake Poser 7 SSS.  Since he has Poser 9 he's better off using EZSkin to get real SSS...

 poser is for scenes that one can't photograph, like "better than life" in red dwarf.  artificial reality IMVHO.

Well said Miss Nancy...

Quote - Thanks much for your feed back DustRider.

I must admit that alot of what you talked of is a bit over my head but I will look them up, do some reading, follow some tut's, and run some test renders.    

You said; "I tend to try more for realistic 3D in my renders, rather than photo realism". I think maybe that is a more accurate discription of what Im trying to archive and just did not correctly express myself.

Anyway would you please look at the links below and tell me if you think I came close with these renders?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2376393&user_id=234433&page=2&member&np   I love the way her lips came out and also skin around the breast area.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1730568&user_id=234433&page=6&member&np  I dont know, but I think this one and the aover are as close as I have ever come to the effect Im looking for, and it was just a hit or miss thing

Thanks again

Steel

I'll try to give some constructive thoughts on your images. I typically shy away from constructive crticism because my idea of what is "art", or right/wrong with an image may be completely wrong because I don't know exatly what the artist is trying to achieve. Plus, I just do 3D for fun, I have no formal art training, and I can see serious short comings in my own renders. With that in mind, and knowing that you have looked and my gallery and possibly want to achieve similar results, I'll do what I can to help you in that direction.

The lighting and shaders/mats on the figure in the first image look very good, and seems to be getting the effects I think you want. Where the image begins to drop off into the uncanny valley is the shirt/blouse she is wearing. Part of the problem with the clothing is that the sleeves are unaturally smooth, and have a sort of balloon effect going on (not your fault - just the way the clothing is made). The transparency of the shirt actually enhances this balloon like effect. I looks like air is blowing into the sleves and causing the material to stretch smooth and stand off the skin, even where it should be touching the model. In this image, the 3D realism of the figure is very good,  I really like the skin highlights and details. The realism of the clothing does not match V4, causing a bit of confusion in the brain.

This is a very common problem with poser content. The realism of the clothing, props, and human figures not matching. This makes creating images that don't cause instinctive conflicts of unmatched realism between the different elements in a render very difficult. People kind of joke about all the nude renders being done because it's so hard to fit the cloths properly to the figure, but actually there is a lot of truth in that "theory". It's much easier to match the realism of simple bits of clothing and a photo studio type background with a realistic human figure and maintain realism continuity throughout the image.

The second render has a much better continuity of realism throughout the image (but I like the skin in the first one better). I think the lighting could use a bit more work, or more likely, the shaders need to be slightly tweaked to work better with the lights. Her hair doesn't show the details I would like to see (personal preference), increasing light intensities would help, but that might create to much light in the image for the mood you want. Black hair is difficult in any lighting situation, but even more so in low light conditions. Adjusting the hair shaders to be more responsive to light would probably do the trick.

Looking through your gallery, and reading what you have posted here, I get the feeling you are getting very close to the level of realism you desire. Learning more about shaders and lighting will get you much closer. You can almost count on the fact that any two products from any two different vendors will have shaders/mats that were optimised for different light rigs. The only way to optimise  these material for the lighting you want to use is to be able to change them yourself (or only buy from a select few vendors). Regardless of the program you use to render, the interplay of materials with a geven lighting set up is key to the realism of the scene.

A bit more focus on the details in your renders could help a lot as well. Often the most minor detail can be the difference between a good and an outstanding image. For instance, I really like "Aries" in your gallery, but there is something that doesn't quite feel right with the lip ring. I think it's a combination of no shadow, the highlights don't give it a feeling of 3D "roundness", and the placement doesn't seem to be quite right (but that is with the caveat that I'm an old fart, so what do I know about lip rings), and there is no indication that there is a piercing in the skin (this last element no-doubt would have to be added in an image processing program after rendering, or as a part of a bump/displacement map). Don't let my comments take away from your image, as it is beautiful. It's just a very good one to use as an example of how very minor details can make a difference (plus it was an opportunity to mention how much I liked it).

Sorry for the way to long post!! Hopefully you will find something a value in my ramblings.

Thanks Dusty R.   Also from time to time I will be asking about your renders when I coment.  I feel that if I learn as much as I can about what an artist did in their work I can try to dup it as a sort of learning experiance.

Thanks again

Steel

Steel

Your most welcome! Feel free to ask any time. Getting inspiration from and trying to duplicate what others have done is a great way to learn - especially for people like me who are left brain dominant and from time to time don't have an artistic creative thought anywhere in their head.

probably not helpful, but meant as so...as close as hands are in 1st pic, there hair should be...woman's not as visible, but maybe there is something that can add?

I do not know much about poser as i do not have the new ones , just a old one that do not work on the new windows lol. 

but look like you got a lot of help here 

I think most versions of Poser work on Windows 7, Jocko500, as long as you install versions prior to Poser 8 outside of Program files, in something like C:Poser...

no all i have is one of the first posers and never went highter. same with brcye 5. i never went highter. I had other ideas in art. but it ok