July 2015 New User Contest - Portrait Rendering [WIP Thread]

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  • D.RobinsonD.Robinson Posts: 283
    edited July 2015

    Next WIP. I made changes to the proportions as was suggested. I also experimented a little and changed the angle of the BG plane to give it a little depth. I also still wasnt happy with the lighting so i changed the location and angle of the key light a little so it was lighting more of her face instead of the center of her body. I think this draws the eye more to the subject and not her extremities. I am sure going forward i will be messing with the lights even more this particular subject needs a delicate balance of light since the model is so pale its hard to not wash out her features if the light temps and locations aren't in good locations and rather than cheating by changing the skin tone i prefer to work thru this problem because although i know its not a real person in the real world you just cant change their skin to suit your weakness heh.

    Daniel

     

    Portrait WIP 1_4.jpg
    1000 x 1200 - 863K
    Post edited by D.Robinson on
  • h_habashh_habash Posts: 230

    I've combined Daniel and Dollygirl comments, hoping I did it right.angel

  • GallowsGallows Posts: 95

    Amazon

    Tighter crop and changed the lighting, but not sure about the eyes.  Lux renders have trouble with eyes.  Not sure why.

    Amazon.jpg
    1149 x 1149 - 246K
  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378

    Well today has been one of trials and tribulations when it comes to DAZ. First off, my campfire scene has suddenly decided to instigate memory access violations which causes my EMET protection to flip out and shut it down. But it only does so when I try to render the scene. So I've been trying to cut the scene down to it's most basic elements and render in layers. Which is taking freaking forever! I have two renders, one of the background such as the tent and whatnot, and another just of the character - no armor, no sword, nothing in his hands. Those took over an hour each to render which is not what it was doing before. At the most with everything in it it was taking 20 minutes. So I'm still trying to sort that out.

    Then I decide to wander back to the forums and catch up on some posts. I'm not sure if DAZ suddenly decided that it hates me or what, but for the longest time I was getting a gateway timeout trying to access the forums. I could get to the regular DAZ website and marketplace, even my gallery and account, but no forums. 

    Finally I was able to get the forums to pull up but I'm not seeing any images attached to posts. I see where some folks responded to my comments and suggestions and there seems like there should be new renders attached, but they're not showing up for me. So if I'm the only one - I'm not being rude and ignoring you I promise! lol!

    I'm going to try attaching an image here and see if it works. When my campfire scene started going haywire, I once again fell back on doing some basic testing, thinking it was my emissive lighting that might be the problem. Well, the one good thing about this mess is that I stumbled upon a nice render that would work really nice for the portrait contest. It's a good thing too because if I can't get the campfire scene to cooperate and render correctly, it looks like this will be my entry.

    Well, it looks like I can't post the image. I get "internal error, could not move the file" so maybe it's just new forum software hiccups.

  • h_habashh_habash Posts: 230

    Well today has been one of trials and tribulations when it comes to DAZ. First off, my campfire scene has suddenly decided to instigate memory access violations which causes my EMET protection to flip out and shut it down. But it only does so when I try to render the scene. So I've been trying to cut the scene down to it's most basic elements and render in layers. Which is taking freaking forever! I have two renders, one of the background such as the tent and whatnot, and another just of the character - no armor, no sword, nothing in his hands. Those took over an hour each to render which is not what it was doing before. At the most with everything in it it was taking 20 minutes. So I'm still trying to sort that out.

    Then I decide to wander back to the forums and catch up on some posts. I'm not sure if DAZ suddenly decided that it hates me or what, but for the longest time I was getting a gateway timeout trying to access the forums. I could get to the regular DAZ website and marketplace, even my gallery and account, but no forums. 

    Finally I was able to get the forums to pull up but I'm not seeing any images attached to posts. I see where some folks responded to my comments and suggestions and there seems like there should be new renders attached, but they're not showing up for me. So if I'm the only one - I'm not being rude and ignoring you I promise! lol!

    I'm going to try attaching an image here and see if it works. When my campfire scene started going haywire, I once again fell back on doing some basic testing, thinking it was my emissive lighting that might be the problem. Well, the one good thing about this mess is that I stumbled upon a nice render that would work really nice for the portrait contest. It's a good thing too because if I can't get the campfire scene to cooperate and render correctly, it looks like this will be my entry.

    Well, it looks like I can't post the image. I get "internal error, could not move the file" so maybe it's just new forum software hiccups.

    I have almost the same issue with me, I've uploaded my render, then after around 30 minutes I refreshed the page and nothing was there, nither mine or others, I thought it was just a matter of time then DAZ Forum will recover back to normal and re-appear mine and others scenes, but for the last 3 hours nothing changed here. only text and no attachments.

  • D.RobinsonD.Robinson Posts: 283

    Weirdness here too but maybe a bug in the forums my above post i attached my pic but i had to edit later for spelling error i saw and for some reason when i saved it the attachment was removed.

     

    Daniel

  • D.RobinsonD.Robinson Posts: 283

    Ok i guess something is very wrong i noticed all the attachments from the earlier renders are all gone (Shrug)

     

    Daniel

  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378

    Ah! I'm seeing thumbnails! Here's hoping!

    Alecoutpostgarbportraitcontest2.png
    600 x 780 - 405K
  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378

    Okay I'm seeing some of the attachments - not all.

    Daniel - I can see this most recent one - not any of the ones you posted after the subject of the rule of thirds came up. That's as far back as I went.

    Next WIP. I made changes to the proportions as was suggested. I also experimented a little and changed the angle of the BG plane to give it a little depth. I also still wasnt happy with the lighting so i changed the location and angle of the key light a little so it was lighting more of her face instead of the center of her body. I think this draws the eye more to the subject and not her extremities. I am sure going forward i will be messing with the lights even more this particular subject needs a delicate balance of light since the model is so pale its hard to not wash out her features if the light temps and locations aren't in good locations and rather than cheating by changing the skin tone i prefer to work thru this problem because although i know its not a real person in the real world you just cant change their skin to suit your weakness heh.

    Daniel

     

    I really like how this is looking thus far - the skin on the body looks really nice. I'm a little concerned about the face though as that skin looks different. Now makeup can do this to a certain extent, but back in the day, the make up would only be that different for headshots. Do you have an iray shader on the face? I know you don't want to adjust skin tones and I can understand where you're coming from but it also depends on the mat and the shader too.
  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,130
    edited July 2015

    I'm seeing it as well,,well not seeing it,,the pictures are all gone :(

    So I better get a new one posted :P

    I think this is the best one so far ,, and am considering it for my first entry submission 

    for the curious,,this rendered 9hrs 37min and hit 9641 iterations. the extended time is probably due to the render quality being set to 4 and the min iterations set to 1000.Honestly ,,to my sees I see no difference between my first WIP at 6k iterations and this one at 9k.

     

    EDIT: This is a raw render , no post work

    WIP Portrait 3.png
    1060 x 910 - 1M
    Post edited by IceCrMn on
  • ScavengerScavenger Posts: 2,674

    Hmm.. I might jump back in with this one... I need to try to do a portrait.

  • LyamLyam Posts: 137

    That's strange.  The render I posted this morning disappeared.  I'll post again.

    After-Rain.jpg
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  • h_habashh_habash Posts: 230

    I've combined Daniel and Dollygirl comments, hoping I did it right.angel

    I'm reattaching the file here.

    Family Picnic 9.jpg
    1000 x 705 - 597K
  • D.RobinsonD.Robinson Posts: 283
    edited July 2015

    Okay I'm seeing some of the attachments - not all.

    Daniel - I can see this most recent one - not any of the ones you posted after the subject of the rule of thirds came up. That's as far back as I went.

    Next WIP. I made changes to the proportions as was suggested. I also experimented a little and changed the angle of the BG plane to give it a little depth. I also still wasnt happy with the lighting so i changed the location and angle of the key light a little so it was lighting more of her face instead of the center of her body. I think this draws the eye more to the subject and not her extremities. I am sure going forward i will be messing with the lights even more this particular subject needs a delicate balance of light since the model is so pale its hard to not wash out her features if the light temps and locations aren't in good locations and rather than cheating by changing the skin tone i prefer to work thru this problem because although i know its not a real person in the real world you just cant change their skin to suit your weakness heh.

    Daniel

     

    I really like how this is looking thus far - the skin on the body looks really nice. I'm a little concerned about the face though as that skin looks different. Now makeup can do this to a certain extent, but back in the day, the make up would only be that different for headshots. Do you have an iray shader on the face? I know you don't want to adjust skin tones and I can understand where you're coming from but it also depends on the mat and the shader too.

    This is the problem I am running into with this model in particular I make it a rule to completely set up the model before  (makeup, body tats etc) I convert it all to my iray shader otherwise applying makeup or anything reverts it to the AOA or oMbersurface. I am gonna play around with the Key light temp to see if i can get it to seem more natural. Because like you, to me it seems a little out of place. Just as an aside though if it were a differnt skin or shader you would see the seam in the neck. Which isnt the case here.

    Daniel

    Post edited by D.Robinson on
  • spmwcspmwc Posts: 124

    here is something just started

  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    icecrmn said:

    I'm seeing it as well,,well not seeing it,,the pictures are all gone :(

    So I better get a new one posted :P

    I think this is the best one so far ,, and am considering it for my first entry submission 

    for the curious,,this rendered 9hrs 37min and hit 9641 iterations. the extended time is probably due to the render quality being set to 4 and the min iterations set to 1000.Honestly ,,to my sees I see no difference between my first WIP at 6k iterations and this one at 9k.

     

    EDIT: This is a raw render , no post work

    Hey Ice! I think I might have an idea here. You're rendering in iray, correct? But in one of your posts you said you had a setting at 255 255 255. Okay that's white but not in the Iray MDL, white should register at 1.0 1.0 1.0 - for both black is 0 0 0. Having a mixed bag of shaders will send your processing time through the roof, I know that one from experience! 

    With Iray, I experimented a little but ended up setting all of my render settings back to the default. The only thing I'll tweak is the environment, especially if I'm using emissive lighting where it gets turned off most of the time. This last image I've been working on has two emissives and the environment set to .005 lol! Once you return your rendersettings to default, then go back in and on the surfaces tab hit everything with the DAZ Iray base shader - except for the skin.On that you want the G2 Female Iray skin shader (she is G2 isn't she? I'll have to go back and look if she's G3 hit her with the G3 skin shader). All the Iray base shader does is change your numbers from old shader language to Iray MDL. Your textures are still in place.

     

    After hitting everything with the base and the skin with the appropriate Iray skin shader, then you can add the fun stuff. If you hit her gold earrings for example with the gold iray shader that will wipe out your texture. So before doing that, note what aspects have textures on them - usually Base and Bump. Then go ahead and hit the earrings with a gold shader. After that put your textures back - and tadaa! New iray compatible shaders and a much more efficient rendering time.

    Also make sure under Render Settings the Advanced section has your NVIDIA graphics card selected for GPU rendering. I only have one NVIDIA graphics card so I also have my CPU checked because when the Iray maxes out the GPU it will pull from the CPU. 

    See if that helps your render time and the quality of your renders - especially the skin. 

  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
     

    This is the problem I am running into with this model in particular I make it a rule to completely set up the model before  (makeup, body tats etc) I convert it all to my iray shader otherwise applying makeup or anything reverts it to the AOA or oMbersurface. I am gonna play around with the Key light temp to see if i can get it to seem more natural. Because like you, to me it seems a little out of place. Just as an aside though if it were a differnt skin or shader you would see the seam in the neck. Which isnt the case here.

    Daniel

    The same goes here for what I just posted to Ice. When you add that make up, yes it reverts. If you hit it withwith the Iray skin shader, check and see if it's wiping out your texture file. Go put that back on after hitting it with the iray shader and you will have a compatable shader with the appropriate texture mat and it will look tons better! 

  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,130
    edited July 2015
    icecrmn said:

    I'm seeing it as well,,well not seeing it,,the pictures are all gone :(

    So I better get a new one posted :P

    I think this is the best one so far ,, and am considering it for my first entry submission 

    for the curious,,this rendered 9hrs 37min and hit 9641 iterations. the extended time is probably due to the render quality being set to 4 and the min iterations set to 1000.Honestly ,,to my sees I see no difference between my first WIP at 6k iterations and this one at 9k.

     

    EDIT: This is a raw render , no post work

    Hey Ice! I think I might have an idea here. You're rendering in iray, correct? But in one of your posts you said you had a setting at 255 255 255. Okay that's white but not in the Iray MDL, white should register at 1.0 1.0 1.0 - for both black is 0 0 0. Having a mixed bag of shaders will send your processing time through the roof, I know that one from experience! 

    With Iray, I experimented a little but ended up setting all of my render settings back to the default. The only thing I'll tweak is the environment, especially if I'm using emissive lighting where it gets turned off most of the time. This last image I've been working on has two emissives and the environment set to .005 lol! Once you return your rendersettings to default, then go back in and on the surfaces tab hit everything with the DAZ Iray base shader - except for the skin.On that you want the G2 Female Iray skin shader (she is G2 isn't she? I'll have to go back and look if she's G3 hit her with the G3 skin shader). All the Iray base shader does is change your numbers from old shader language to Iray MDL. Your textures are still in place.

     

    After hitting everything with the base and the skin with the appropriate Iray skin shader, then you can add the fun stuff. If you hit her gold earrings for example with the gold iray shader that will wipe out your texture. So before doing that, note what aspects have textures on them - usually Base and Bump. Then go ahead and hit the earrings with a gold shader. After that put your textures back - and tadaa! New iray compatible shaders and a much more efficient rendering time.

    Also make sure under Render Settings the Advanced section has your NVIDIA graphics card selected for GPU rendering. I only have one NVIDIA graphics card so I also have my CPU checked because when the Iray maxes out the GPU it will pull from the CPU. 

    See if that helps your render time and the quality of your renders - especially the skin. 

    Yeah,,it's G2. I have her converted over to iray.This is actually the character I made following the "Show us your iray renders" thread.I even went into the folder that her textures are in to find the displacement maps for her eyes and other body parts and put them in the proper surfaces.I followed an online tutorial to make the normal maps for the eyes, it was easier then it sounds.It took about 10 mins.You can't really see the effect so much in this render,I'll se if I can put together something a bit different to show off her eyes a bit more.I went through the mats for her outfit as well to convert them all to iray, and to fiddle with the displacement.

    The image is actually fairly clean at around 300 iterations ( about 20-30 min ) I just have a bad habbit of letting them continue to run :) . I don't have an nvidia card, so I'm CPU bound.I don't mind really, Speed isn't important to me.When I mentioned the colors I probably should have used the new iray scale so not to confuse.When you click on the end of the color bar in the surface tab, the pop-up still usees the RGB values and has a slider to change all 3 at once.I like that we can right click and enter values for each,I use that all the time.

    Post edited by IceCrMn on
  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    icecrmn said:

    Yeah,,it's G2. I have her converted over to iray.This is actually the character I made following the "Show us your iray renders" thread.I even went into the folder that her textures are in to find the displacement maps for her eyes and other body parts and put them in the proper surfaces.I followed an online tutorial to make the normal maps for the eyes, it was easier then it sounds.It took about 10 mins.You can't really see the effect so much in this render,I'll se if I can put together something a bit different to show off her eyes a bit more.I went through the mats for her outfit as well to convert them all to iray, and to fiddle with the displacement.

    The image is actually fairly clean at around 300 iterations ( about 20-30 min ) I just have a bad habbit of letting them continue to run :) . I don't have an nvidia card, so I'm CPU bound.I don't mind really, Speed isn't important to me.When I mentioned the colors I probably should have used the new iray scale so not to confuse.When you click on the end of the color bar in the surface tab, the pop-up still usees the RGB values and has a slider to change all 3 at once.I like that we can right click and enter values for each,I use that all the time.

    What I was talking about is far easier than what you just went through. I did some quick screengrabs of my method if anyone needs to see specifics - but I did a partial render of the iray G2 female skin with the makeup mat. It goes glossy but all you have to do is turn down the glossy reflectivity setting. But the results I like best are just hitting the skin with the iray uber base then making sure the mat is in place and the glossy doesn't go haywire. I've attached that one. It's only a 50% render and you can tell I only worked on her face. I left the other parts of the skin as is to demonstrate the difference. I do have to admit I'm spoiled. I've been using Gianni and Hector - those skin mats translate perfectly.
    11irayscreencaprenderiraybase.png
    600 x 600 - 524K
  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378
    edited July 2015

    Oh - I almost forgot! I wanted to post this too, I've been working on my portrait in the meantime. Here's where it stands now. I added a second emissive light on the left side which is actually creating the shadowed appearance because it's a medium blue and he's just catching the edge of the ambient effect.

     

    I think I'll go back and see if I can get my campfire image to cooperate. If not I'm sticking with this one.

    alecportrait3.png
    600 x 780 - 447K
    Post edited by kathrynloch on
  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,130
    icecrmn said:

    Yeah,,it's G2. I have her converted over to iray.This is actually the character I made following the "Show us your iray renders" thread.I even went into the folder that her textures are in to find the displacement maps for her eyes and other body parts and put them in the proper surfaces.I followed an online tutorial to make the normal maps for the eyes, it was easier then it sounds.It took about 10 mins.You can't really see the effect so much in this render,I'll se if I can put together something a bit different to show off her eyes a bit more.I went through the mats for her outfit as well to convert them all to iray, and to fiddle with the displacement.

    The image is actually fairly clean at around 300 iterations ( about 20-30 min ) I just have a bad habbit of letting them continue to run :) . I don't have an nvidia card, so I'm CPU bound.I don't mind really, Speed isn't important to me.When I mentioned the colors I probably should have used the new iray scale so not to confuse.When you click on the end of the color bar in the surface tab, the pop-up still usees the RGB values and has a slider to change all 3 at once.I like that we can right click and enter values for each,I use that all the time.

    What I was talking about is far easier than what you just went through. I did some quick screengrabs of my method if anyone needs to see specifics - but I did a partial render of the iray G2 female skin with the makeup mat. It goes glossy but all you have to do is turn down the glossy reflectivity setting. But the results I like best are just hitting the skin with the iray uber base then making sure the mat is in place and the glossy doesn't go haywire. I've attached that one. It's only a 50% render and you can tell I only worked on her face. I left the other parts of the skin as is to demonstrate the difference. I do have to admit I'm spoiled. I've been using Gianni and Hector - those skin mats translate perfectly.

    Yeah,,that is an easier path than the one I took :) . I haven't gotten Gianni or Hector yet,but I think I'll look into getting them soon.

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,131

    I've edited my post on thirds and re-uploaded the images so they should show up again seeing as someone in the web department deleted all the latest images while fixing something :)

  • GallowsGallows Posts: 95

    Cropped it, but still having difficulty with the eyes.

    Vamp2.jpg
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  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378

    Hey Gallows - try bending his neck just a tad, he's going for the throat but then have his eyes looking up at the camera - I know you're watching. 

  • kathrynlochkathrynloch Posts: 378

    Fishtales - for some reason the "quote" option doesn't appear under your post, but I see where you added the thirds to your image. Unfortunately, I'm getting that same Internal error on attaching images this morn. I hope that doesn't result in more images disappearing.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,956

    I guess I will wait another day before putting my images back up, see if the thing is more stable then.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604

    Things is fine now,  you can put your images back up.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,956
    Chohole said:

    Things is fine now,  you can put your images back up.

    Thanks for the heads up Chohole, then I will do that

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,956
    icecrmn said:

    I'm seeing it as well,,well not seeing it,,the pictures are all gone :(

    So I better get a new one posted :P

    I think this is the best one so far ,, and am considering it for my first entry submission 

    for the curious,,this rendered 9hrs 37min and hit 9641 iterations. the extended time is probably due to the render quality being set to 4 and the min iterations set to 1000.Honestly ,,to my sees I see no difference between my first WIP at 6k iterations and this one at 9k.

     

    EDIT: This is a raw render , no post work

    Love it, the only thing I would change is the highlight in her eyes. I think it should be as light in the tone as the highlights on the lips

  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,130

    I found some fiber mesh eyebrows over at sharecg that were made for genesis.I put them on my G2 gal for a test render.What do you think?
    I was thinking that,for portraits, or other close ups, that the default eyebrows just didn't look "real" enough for me.

    V6 fiber mesh eyebrows.png
    1060 x 910 - 1023K
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