I know this is a little late. I have been busy and just got a chance to sit down and read thru the threads.

Crystan, if you use and IBL and sunlight you have turn off the sky and turn the sun down in luxrender to get it to work right. Depending on the scene too you might have to go into Reality and lower the sun before you send it to luxrender. A lot of my work was done this way.

I have been reading thru the threads discussing Reality 3. There have been a lot of comparing it with other products and a lot of focus on the time it takes to do a render.

I don't think anyone is dead wrong and should keep their views to themselves.

Just remember that there are no two artist alike. What fits for one person may not fit another. For me Reality provides me with the right tool for what I want to do with my work.

As for comparing Reality with other products. For the price and the end results? Hands down Reality provides more bang for the buck...so to speak. You can spend a lot money on other products and end up with great results or spend less than a $100.00 and get really great results.

As for having the tools you need to learn Reality? I learned more from Reality forums and Paolo's videos than I did with learning Daz or Poser. Artist tend to keep secrets to themselves...I don't though.

I do commish work and I don't charge any extra for my work created with Reality, its up to the artist what he wants to charge for his work.

I keep saying proof is in the pudding...and I am not a well known artist or even a published one...but I do believe you can see what you can do with Reality from my gallery.

Quote - Bob.. I considered it.  But, I chalked it up to lessen learned and will be working with the softness of my shadows more in the future.  The reason I didn't postwork them out is that I didn't want to detract from the quality of the skin texture on her.  Blurring, cloning or smudging would have ruined her skin in a few places.

Can't say for sure how to fix the jagged edges in Poser, I just know how to fix it in Reality 2.5.

I usually raise the subdivide on the parts of the skin and it takes care of the jagged edges. Works too on outfits.

Normally in the morning I sit sipping my coffee while reading posts and looking over the new pictures posted by artists, but today I have spent my morning reading up on Reality 3.

Being a Reality 2.5 for Daz Studio user I have been curious how much better Reality 3 will be. I will be a happy camper when it comes out for Daz

I have toyed around with just about every render engine out there. I stick with Reality because compared to the others the price is right and once you learn how the lighting and material settings work, it is a lot easier to use than most programs out there. I did try a very popular render engine out...I won't mention the name...and it drove me nuts just trying to get the skin right. I gave up on it and went back to Reality.

I will throw out a couple things to think about.

With Reality it exports to luxrender. I have a Quad core AMD with 8GBs of RAM and a NVida card. I usually have one picture rendering while setting up another one and repeatedly testing different settings. Meaning at times I have 2 renders running at the same time. It does slow down render times (I don't worry about the render times because I am never in a rush to do a picture) but it doesn't bog down my computer unless I have increased the subdivision on some of the the material settings.

I usually spend a lot of time throwing out the bump maps for each material and changing them to normal maps. Normal maps are easier for me to use than bump maps and give me the results I want a lot faster. I like the preview screen in Reality because it does help me with getting the settings right for each material. All this is time comsuming but once it is done I can save the ACSEL and the next time I use the same prop or outfit, it automatically loads the settings I saved, so I don't have to spend time with the settings again.

As for lighting.....as the saying goes...the proof is in the pudding. If you would like to see what the lighting is like just take a look at my gallery. I have used just about every type of lighting available for Reality...softbox, mesh lights, spot lights, IBL's/HDRI's and sunlight.  Just remember that depending on the lighting you might have to make slight adjustments to the material to make them look right.

There are some things that are tough to figure out at first but once you understand how Reality reads the different materials it is easy to use and the results are great. It takes some trial and error.

Just thought I would throw this stuff out for those that are thinking about purchasing Reality 3 and wanted some more info on it.

Quote - I'm in serious trouble with Reality.... my computer just bogs down with it.  Even after restarting to log out all other users, only having Daz and the render going it takes aaaaggggeeeessss.....

I know it's my current computer spec.  I'm only running a Dual core (3.2ghz) with 3 Gb ram.... 

So, if you're happy with your render times, do you want to shout out your spec?  I'm looking to get a new motherboard/processor bundle, but not sure what yet.  (Though it's heading towards AMD, Intel chips are coo costly for the performance comparison IMO)

Look forward to finding out more from you guys!

 

Cheers!

Mike

I do love AMD processors a lot better than Intel chips.

I have an AMD quad core with 8GBs of RAM (I am going to upgrade to 16GBs soon). I'm using an Gigabyte motherboard and NVidia graphics card.....It replaced my Radeon graphics card a few months ago. I did see an improvement in render times switching to a better graphic cards too.

Normally I have one render running...firefox open....daz studio and crazybump open ....and I can still watch a movie without anything lagging.

I have a render running right now with Urban future 4 and 3 robots using an HDRI for lighting and it should be done in about a total of 6 hours. Which is a lot better than my old system. I think I set a record with one Reality render taking about 98 hours

Quote -  

I am looking for some help.  I have no idea what I did.  After adding some additional props and tweaking settings I hit render for like the 9th time.  Only this time her eyes are white.  They were rendering just fine.  I didn't change my lighting.   I've reloaded the eyes themselves, moved the eyes around, changed the pose, unchecked architectural since creating the screenshots.  I don't know why her eyes are white.

In the screenshot is an image rendered in Daz showing the placement of the eyes.  Then a very fuzzy iamge in Reality, and then the Cornea setting. The model is London by Danae

Any help would be appriecated I'm sure I'm missing something simple.

try changing the thin film thickness and the thin film IOR to 0.00

I just lowered the amount and radius until it looked right.

Quote - > Quote - I just finished looking at the luxus thread. I did look carefully at the the 3 renders used for comparsion. I don't see anything there that would make me want to stop using Reality. Ever since I started using Reality I have loved it and have learned a lot about using it.

The only difference I see between the two is that Luxus makes it changes in Daz. I never have touched a single setting in Daz before rendering, I do all that in Reality.

There are some friends of mine in DA that did purchase it and boy are they upset they did.

LOL I see what you mean also setting up materials seem more complicated.. I just hope we keep getting support for DS I dont know poser and have no interest in it.

I don't know anything really about using Poser but I do know that I am not good at waiting for new toys to play with....lol. So as soon as Paolo releases Reality 3 for Poser I am going to ask my friend over at DA to teach me about Poser and I maybe switching lol.

I just finished looking at the luxus thread. I did look carefully at the the 3 renders used for comparsion. I don't see anything there that would make me want to stop using Reality. Ever since I started using Reality I have loved it and have learned a lot about using it.

The only difference I see between the two is that Luxus makes it changes in Daz. I never have touched a single setting in Daz before rendering, I do all that in Reality.

There are some friends of mine in DA that did purchase it and boy are they upset they did.

Quote - Mustang, that set doesn't use standard Studio shaders, it uses 3Delight scrited shaders. They can't be converted, they inly work with 3Delight.

That's a real shame....I wanted to do those scenes with Reality but at least I can do the others with Reality.

Quote - two diffuse maps?  sounds like a job for MLIE to me

Leave it to stonemason to come up with two diffuse maps for one thing.

I am working on a graphic novel and that is perfect for some of the scenes I am going to do. I hate to have to do it in Daz I really want to use Reality.

I'm working with stonemason's Winter Kingdom and I can't figure out how to get the snow to come out the same in Reality as I get in Daz.

The picture on the left is done with Reality and the one on the right was rendered with 3Delight.

It has two diffuse textures (Snow and rock map) listed in Daz along with a snow blend selection.

How do I get the snow and rock to blend together in Reality? I tried the alpha channel and I can't get it come out right.

Does anyone know how I can do this so I get the same type of results in Reality as I do with 3Delight?

I tried out the new installer yesterday and I have to admit it does make it easier to install new items. It did suggest I delete everyhing and re-install it thru the installer but I didn't do that, I just installed the ones that I have been missing since I lost my hard drive.

I just wish the would come up with better way of loading the files. Instead of loading outfits in figures, MAT's into Pose, and props, well.... into props why not put all the items for that outfit together. That is how I have mine arranged so I don't have to keep hunting for what I want.