An Interest in 3D protraits

W0LFMAN

I've started an Interest in producing 3D Protraits.

There's a whole Boat load of Software out there.

For Simplicity and cost, I've gone with Daz3D.

http://www.daz3d.com/ <-- Free Download for anyone interested.

I've followed a few youtube tutorials and done around 10 hours playing and figuring software out.

Example of progression.

Stage 1 - Create Scene in Daz3D



Stage 2 - Render Scene in Daz3D



Stage 3 - Photoshop Scene



I'm happy with Result so far in only short time learning.

I've hit a brick wall though going further, and not sure whats the next step forward I should take.

Should I go into 3rd Party Render Software like Octane Render/Luxrender and try to improve render realism? like sub surface textures, Studio Lighting Set-ups - RGB's? UV Mapping? or light values,Color and Soft/Hard Shadow Values?

Or Should I move in something like Blender or Maya or other 3D Portrait Software's.

I'm not looking to make money out of this so don't fancy steep learning Curves.

InTheTrees

Interesting. Great results.

I would have said a good renderer is definitely the way to go.

W0LFMAN

There's two Bolt on renders for Daz3D that I can find, Octane and Luxrender.

However the Render in Daz is not too Bad on its own, certainly not professional. but good enough to get stock human anatomy poses, if you were doing Drawings or such.

allfred

Hi there,

I had a look at their website and it seems that Daz3d doesn't include a feature to "model" 3d things like model a person and / or environment. It looks like it's more like a drag and drop and wear clothes and set up a scene.

Even though that feature is not available it seems that the software is still able to produce nice images that otherwise would take ages to produce and a certain amount of skills.

So it boils down to what you want to do and where do you feel limited with the actual software:
+Is it purely about "reality" of the image produced by the software?
+Is it to have more customization of the subject / scene?

I don't know what the given software is capable of but I can tell you that Blender for instance may be a better performer in both render "Reality" and customization of the scene. However it comes with a cost which is to be skilled with whatever product you choose to use.

Here have a look at what Blender is capable of: archive.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/index.html although the workflow probably will be different than Daz3d.

W0LFMAN

After few weeks of playing, I stumble onto KeyShot.

3 evenings of playing with it and looking after a Baby, It found better results than using the Daz3d Inhouse Render engine.

Skin is very Hard to Do. this picture I've just focused on the Skin, getting the Bump/Spec/Normal/UV/SSS/Colour/Trans right.

I'm playing with it by Eye only. no were near professional.

Eyes/Hair/Lips/Make-up will be lessions learn't some other time.

Here is the results.

Render time - 1 hour
Photoshop time - 15 mins.

W0LFMAN

Daz3D(10min)>Keyshot(15min)>photoshop (20 min). 45min total

Simple pose, Persephone Texture Pack - Custom made Spec-Bump-Maps.

2544x1253 Dimensions

[NSFW]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1024x768q90/674/pKQm2f.jpg[/NSFW]

Negitives - (Arm twisted - Could have choosen better Pose, as well as better final decision making in Photoshop.) - but hey its playing about still

going to move away from skin for the moment and try and work on Hair-eyes-and lips.

Also need to work on Camera Effects.

5uspect

Hi W0LFMAN, I removed the IMG tags as that image can be considered NSFW.