Hi all, I have seen some fabulous renders of highly detailed portraits in Daz Studio, but how do you get to that point, I've played around with Sub D levels to not much effect. Is there anything else that needs adjusting? Thanks in advance

There are a lot of things you can do. I never use HD. I make my own stuff and use normal maps and displacement maps. Also a lot of what yiu see is shader work and good light sources. Material settings can break or make your render.

Shaders and lights are paramount. This character isn't even done but looks good already. And no HD.

Yes lighting is what makes or breaks a great scene. If you can purchase one of Fabiana's Theory of light sets you will be amazed by what they can do to a human figure in a render. While it's not perfect for large scale scene renders they are perhaps one of the best light sets for figure based renders. You can get these on Rendo, Just search for Theory of Light in the market place.

I add Hd to my characters as this goes beyond normal maps and bump maps, bumps dont change the surface, and normal map add a nice skin/pores etc but hd can add more definition and wear to the skin, i tend to use all the tools in my basket, from bump, normal, displacement and Hd with a SubD set to 4. oh and to anyone reading this..... as i didn't know and it's hard to find any info, but you can use the HD morphs from characters in the Daz store on your own skins.

yes you can, but you cant use HD outside daz. I can sculpt a lot of detail, ribs etc into the normal map or displacement map. It is not hard only time consuming.

@shedofjoy thanks for the tip. I wasn't aware of that. Is it mainly adding in pores and stuff. Could you show some images of before and after. I haven't bothered with hd much so far.