How do we make rendered image more similar to preview? What are ways to increase quality of renderin
cemmanuelc_2ea1278e1f
Posts: 17
Hi guys, how do we make the quality of our renders better? Or more similar to the preview? Things like skin texture do not seem to show in the render.
Thank you,
Emmanuel
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The word "quality" does not spring to mind when referring to the "preview", it is a low quality OpenGL viewport designed to let you see what your doing when building a scene.
I agree with Bejaymac, but if you explain what it is you want to achieve we may be able to make suggestions - ideally, post a screenshot of your preview and a render side-by-side. It will also help if you post a screenshot of the Advanced tab of your render settings. And indeed, specify which application you are using - we are assuming DAZ Studio (well, I am for sure).
Thanks Bejaymac and Richard!
I have the screenshots here.
The rendered one looks really strange. Is it because of my light settings? I don't get this issue with OpenGL but the quality is not so good. But not totally crazy like this one where I used 3Delight.
Thank you,
Emmanuel
Here are the settings.
The light won't be helping, certainly, but the specularity needs taming - raise the Glossiness a bit, perhaps, and lower the Specular Strength. It would probably be a good didea to take screenshots of the material settings for the face (in the Surfaces pane) and post them here.
Hi Richard, here are the pictures.
That's her face now because of the problems I am having.
Thank you
Just to add, I think the preview is of a much higher quality than the render. I have a feeling it could be the settings. But I just used the default settings. Do we need to tweak them to have better quality?
Thanks
You need to select a single surface, such as 1_SkinFace, by expanding the entry for Victoria 4.2 at the top-left of the Surfaces pane and clicking on the surface name - as it is several of the properties, including some of those most likely to be at the root of the problem, are just showing multiple values which isn't useful. Which texture set is this?
Hi Richard. I have been trying to reply to this thread but I kept receiving error messages. It says I don't have permission or something. I haven't tried your recommendations yet. The texture i used is the snake girl product from "most digital creations".
Is the issue of the preview looking better than the actual render a common problem? I mean even when I don't have issues like what I am encountering now, I feel that the renders can often be higher quality like what we see on the DAZ site. Sometimes they are of lower quality than the preview.
Thank you,
Emmanuel
The simple answer is yes it is common, especially amongst new users, when you look at the promo images you have to remember that those were done by experts, people that know their way around lighting, cameras and the surface settings better than you know the back of your hand.
What doesn't help new users is that much of the non Genesis content is in Poser format, with Poser material settings, these materials are of no real use in Studio as it can't read most of what's in them, and what it can read don't transfer over all that well, main issue being Specularity, you either get no Specular leaving things dull and flat, high Specular leaving things looking like they were dipped in varnish, or a white out like you have which is caused by low Glossiness, light color and high strength.
DS skins might work better, but the light set is very important when you are rendering: in a scene without lights the camera works like a spotlight, I had the same problems in my first renders and the faces were looking weird.
If you want to render something like you see in the viewport, disable the specular maps (put none) and set its color to black or other dark colors, also set a glossiness of 50%.
Here 2 samples, one with low glossines white spec and other with med glossiness black spec
Good luck
Setting the specular color to black basically turns off the specularity, which isn't good for skin (or anything else for that matter), for skin with the default shader I set the Glossiness to between 60% and 70%, the Strength between 15% and 25%, color depends on having a good specular map or not, with a map I use RGB 200,200,200, without I use RGB 128,128,128, the lighting model depends on your taste, Plastic, Metallic & Skin all work well those settings.
<---thinks he knows what cemmanuelc REELY wants: <a href="http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/">http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/
http://vimeo.com/55032699#
Sure, you`re right.
I gave him just an easy option for rendering without lights in old characters, like those ones made for poser.
I`m still studying the basic DS shader for a "perfect" render, sometimes setting an uber or advanced skin material back to default material in order to change the maps and etc.
Also I faked environment light in the skin via reflection maps and etc, but for a beginner in DS materials think it is good to give an easy recipe.
Working with specular maps and lighting is an unending learning. I`m trying to master it for 3 years while people says it is amazing and I say it is not good enough :(
You might try using Spec Lights. From your posting, it seems you're unaware that all the shaders in DS are RSL shaders (Renderman Shader Language). You would think we'd have access to a whole lot of amazing stuff... I've been experimenting with Lighting quite a bit, which seems to be the key to good skin renders, but the skin shaders have to be comliant with the light... I'm now working mostly with PWShader2 for my own stuff, but before that I was working with this set: http://www.sharecg.com/v/68286/view/21/DAZ-Studio/WC-Soft-Skin-Lights-for-DS-4.5
First, some words of wisdom - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17351/
Like all things, this will take time and does not happen overnight. To get better quality renders will mean learning about the different aspects of the software and what can be done, lighting and surfaces being two of the biggest ones. The built in render engine, 3Delight, is a very powerful, pro level render engine used in Hollywood studios and is based on PrMan from Pixar. There is no easy anything about it but that does not mean you cannot learn. But you will determine how much you learn. Do yourself a favor and reject any notion that this is easy. Except and embrace the creative challenge and enjoy it too.
To start you off and help you learn I would highly recommend this tutorial on lighting - http://digilander.libero.it/maclean/DStutorial.htm
This is the old list of DAZ Studio tutorials - http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=134854 - I do not know where the current one is.
And cemmanuelc, change your shading rate to 0.2 The value you have set is going to kill your render time with no noticable increase in quality
Here is the technical info on the some of the render settings - http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/RenderMan_Controls
Speaking of render settings, for test renders, your settigings are fine, except for the shading rate. For tests, you can change the shading rate to 0.5 or 1.0 for increased speed but a loss of quality. But for a test render, who cares. From my own tests I recommend you increase the bucket size to 32. It seems to be the best for speed according to my tests.
For a final render, and what I am about to suggest will increase render times, I would suggest changing the following:
Raytrace Depth: If there are no refelctions that are important, leave it at 2. If you were doing a scene with lots of reflections between object, such as glass items, you can increase it to 6 or more but this will slow things down while giving you a more realistic result.
Pixel Samples: Increasing this will help give you a very natural blur effect if you use depth of field in the camera.
To give you an example fo what I mean, if you look at the full size image of this render I did - http://mattymanx.deviantart.com/art/Minami-Yaguchi-151295850 - you will see the grain in the image due to the low Pixel sample value.
But in this new one - http://mattymanx.deviantart.com/art/Big-City-Girl-361401732 - you will not see the grain in the blur since I increased it. Was set to 32 for the record.
Shadow samples: Leave it low for tests, I set mine to 32 for final renders.
Speaking of shadows, raytraced shadows will render faster then shadow maps and look more natural. Shadow maps are limited in size.
You might try using Spec Lights. From your posting, it seems you're unaware that all the shaders in DS are RSL shaders (Renderman Shader Language). You would think we'd have access to a whole lot of amazing stuff... I've been experimenting with Lighting quite a bit, which seems to be the key to good skin renders, but the skin shaders have to be comliant with the light... I'm now working mostly with PWShader2 for my own stuff, but before that I was working with this set: http://www.sharecg.com/v/68286/view/21/DAZ-Studio/WC-Soft-Skin-Lights-for-DS-4.5
I disabled the specular maps for that preview lol, it was a simple test for a beginner, just an example.
I use uber lights in my renders and sometimes uber surfaces.