There's more than one way to shade a face!

With the addition of IBL and AO to Poser,
everyone, including myself, is agog at the
possibilities for bringing forth realism in our
cool little $249 application.

For this project I put aside IBL and AO, but
not the desire for realism and great shadows.
And so, a return to my affectionate friends,
depth map shadows.

The intention here is the indoor portrait with,
certainly, some diffuse glow in the room, but
also strong source lights, incandescent or
sunlight at an angle.

Once I let go of my animator's instinct for
hyper-short render time, and accepted that
this was an exercise in the single-frame
portrait, things became easier. I started
jackin' up the map size and pushing bias to
nearly zero like a maniac!

I learned many things over the last few
weeks (on and off). Most things I learned
from Paul Kinnane (face_off) who does not
know everything about this stuff, but he
knows a LOT. His site, and interactive email
exchange with me, lead to discoveries and
lessons. Thank you Paul.

Here are the facts:

Poser 6 SR2
Model: Miki
Morphs: Colm Jackson
Texture: default Miki texture,
but severly altererd by myself in 2D
Face: Dials spun up by moi, i did not
attempt to drive all the "miki-ness" out!
Hair: Wild Hair by by DigiCalimero (available
at Polymage) with tweaks to its default shaders
Skin: P6CharacterRealismKit by face_off

Lights: (4) ALL SPOTLIGHTS

1. Main light, above and to her left:
   DepthShadows: blur 4, bias .01, map 3027, intensity 82%
2. Fill near camera,
   DepthShadows: blur 8, bias .01, map 3027, intensity 43%
3. Backlight behind her right ear,
   DepthShadows: blur 3, bias .01, map 3027, intensity 80%
4. Face spot,
   DepthShadows: blur 3, bias .01, map 3027, intensity 33%

Render settings:
Cast shadows (of course!)
Raytrace off
Max shading rate .20
Pixel samples 5
Max Texture size 4096
Use displacement maps, on
Smooth Polygons, On
Texture Filtering, Off

P6CharacterRealismKit:
SS 1.0
Skin Tone 0.0 To offset the red influence of
fastscatter. She has very pale skin.
Brightness .97
Spots .6
Fresnel .15
Skin Highlight Power .75
Skin Highlight Oiliness .10 (an extreme setting)
bump mapping on, .05
granite displacement on, .01
Add fast scatter node, Yes

Tricks:
I used all spots because Paul says they
are more predictable than infinite
with this kind of shadow map.

set "Reuse Shadow Maps" on
That way, you pay the price once to render
the shadow maps, but you can make certain
adjustments without having to
re-render the maps.

If teeth are too dark, give them
some ambient in the material room

Eye highlights: (thanks Paul!)
Place some square props in front of the model.
Change their x or z scales and rotate for variety
Turn on ambient to 1 for them so they glow white
Put a reflection shader into Reflection_color
Set Reflection_value to .2-.5

Now for the price:
Render time: 82 minutes, 13 seconds
AMD 3500+
4Gig Ram
Raptor HDs
Win XP Pro
Nvidia GeForce 5600, 256mb

::::: Opera :::::

addendum: Forgot to give credit for the eye models, blackeyes by blackhearted. and.... for the reflection it should have read: Turn on ambient to 1 for the boxes so they glow white Put a reflection shader into THE EYE'S Reflection_color node and Set Reflection_value to .2-.5

See what can happen when ya know your tool? :D Learn what you have. It'll do more for you than most realize. Not easy, yeah, but always worth the effort. As a community, we had four years to learn our tool without a new version. And what amazing things came out in that period... With P6, we need to learn it like we did P4/PP. Dig into it, pull on the edges and play with new things. Look at what's already come out of the python script arena. Imagine what can come out of others...

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

I agree 100% Ms. Ynsaen! :: og ::

WHOOPS!!!!!!!

I goofed!

THE MAP SIZE SHOULD BE 3072, not 3027, it's late and I dyslexia'd it. I rendered at 3072.

Also,

The description of how to attain great reflections in the eye is great, BUT I TURNED IT OFF BY MISTAKE on the final render! I was doing an experiment.

So....
The attached image is what the eyes SHOULD look like. Notice that the pupil now reflects "something".

YOU MUST TURN RAYTRACE ON to get the reflect shader to work. However, as long as no lights have ratyrace shadows, and hair is invisible to raytrace, this does NOT significantly increase render time.

::::: Opera :::::

Message edited on: 01/31/2006 02:46

Attached Link: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=309158

Good work! You can do a lot without AO/IBL or any other GI technique. If you want some inspiration, the attached thread has dozens of renders of the same scene lit by different people, most of them using only a few spots and directional lights.

bkmrk

Attached Link: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=3205748#post3205748

Thanks stewer!

And thanks for the link. I must be nuts, but I couldn't keep my hands off. I posted an entry. I am in deep trouble with this lighting and shader thing, I am supposed to be animating!

::::: Opera :::::

..

Great render Opera. The skin tone from the light high right is excellent. Maybe the fill light could be brightened a little to match. Her eyes look a little too shadowed at the edges - and I know we've spoken about edge_blends in the past, and I'm sure you've hunted them all down and deleted them. Maybe there is some odd shadowing happening. Maybe email me the scene, and I can try to track it down.

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Oh those are just glorious eyes Face Off. Wow. You guys/gals working in Poser 6 and creating such realism blow my socks off on a regular basis. I don't know how you do it! But you do AND you share what you learn. So from a dumb Poser 6 user (I still do everything in Pro Pack LOL) I say thank you :D

yeah, well, it won't be long, Xena, before you aren't a "dumb" P6 user. Gonna have to keep an eye on you, gal...

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

LOL That could be awhile rolls eyes