I made some renders using my default base material settings (in our freebies, but P5+) and my basic lighting, just for comparison in approach :)
This is P7 firefly, but no raytracing, mapped shadows, like P4. There's slight ambient on the material but just a bit. It smooths out the shadows.
To the left standard Posette wearing a texture by 3Dream, the only available ones, that keep up to nowaday's standards.
To the middle we see Xaa's unimesh mapped prototype, that I got for beta testing way back.
She's wearing some V3 texture I had laying around. The Eyes tex are by 3Dream here, On Posy's own eyes
To the right, same as above, but with a separate eye character featuring V3 material like transparency.

 

The eye textures are too big on the two V3 mapped models. In our freebies we got "DeepEyes" props by Rayera. They are V3 mapped, too, and fit Posette/Dork better in size. Good looking eyes are important to make a char come alive, I think.

p.s.: No morphs here

____________
:koo:

Interesting. Tastes as well as intended styles and usage vary of course, but I'd say the best of the three is actually the standard/default Posette. Yet that might change if she were depicted in some larger scene. I think the most important composition point is usually that everything present in any particular image/scene matches in overall style and technique, with no one detail sharply contrasting the rest in overall aesthetic. Texture selection/construction is just as much a part of Poser art as choosing and mixing paints for a traditional painter.

Between the other two, I think the one on the far right is better, worth the effort of applying an extra prop; the one in the middle looks strange, as you said because the irises are too large. In Poser 4, one would just turn off the texture to the eyeball and pupil as a partial countermeasure to that issue (thereby falling back onto direct object coloring), but I don't know how that P7 material room works.

On the larger point of Posette's (or Dork's) eyes, I have a few points that anyone working with the P4 models may find helpful:

1) Assuming for the sake of argument we take some or another notion of 'realism' as our goal in a particular image, there are different ways in which an image might make use of realism, or playfully contrast cg realism with cg uncanniness. In my own characters, for example, I haven't much interest in photorealism, but I do have some interest in the sort of alternate realism style probably most well known from the canvas airbrush paintings of Hajime Sorayama (not the content, but the overall appearance and style of presentation). Therefore a good goal for me is to make the level of realism on the eyes of my Posettes match the overall 'realism' of their face and body (which is a sort of 'comic realism'). This principle holds true regardless of your style-- what's important is internal consistency in the image, so nothing stands out as 'which one of these things is not like the others.'

2) Another useful tool for P4NW's eyes is an old freebie prop called 'Moist Eyes' by Momodot, though I don't know where it might be found (if anywhere) these days. The small and simple prop adds a thin transparency layer to the iris and pupil (but not the eyeball). It's not a major effect, instantly turning Posette's eyes into V3's eyes, but the effect is readily noticeable at render time.

3) A smidge of simple postwork can also help Posette compete with V3 (or later high poly models). In the Image below is a side by side comparison using a render of my Iris character. On the left was the standard result. On the right, in two minutes I selected the eyes only, and made them into two additional layers. One was blended by a Dodge effect, the other by a Multiply effect (that's what they're called in PSP) is a bitmap graphics editor for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system that was originally published by Minneapolis-based Jasc Software. In October 2004, Corel Corporation bought out Jasc software">paint shop pro, photoshop is probably something similar). In any case, we can see that this minor and easy change really makes the eyes pop out in clarity, and adds a bit of glisten as well.


 

4) We haven't considered here using reflection maps on Posette's eyes. I don't do it, but it's a common and accepted technique many others used back in Poser 4 days, and reflection maps are part of the larger texturing puzzle as well. Just be careful and use a light touch, as reflection maps have dramatic effects upon output in Poser 4. The proper way to use them in P4 (which is unfortunately obscure) is make sure the 'multiply through lights' and 'multiply through texture' options are selected after choosing a reflection map; otherwise, you'll be like 'that's dumb, it didn't do anything!'

After discussing Staale's textures above, there's another P4-era caucasian texture that I think is quite good both for distance shots and close-ups. It was called 'Etosha' by Gonmag. I'm not sure where you'd get it these days (it was a freebie once upon a time), but it's good quality (painted) and high-resolution (3000px). In the sample image here, I made use of the same model/lighting/set as my previous considerations of Staale's Vickybuster. Etosha also avoids a major problem that plagued almost all of Staale's hi-res textures, namely the appearance of stark tan lines on the texture (resulting from his use of photographic references in texture construction), which make those textures unsuitable for many artistic purposes in my opinion.

On another general point, I'd say that any good texture for Posette will readily demonstrate the differing effects of different external lighting interactions in a given scene. In other words, if we change the lighting in a Poser scene, what we should see as a result is how the texture maps we're using react to this change in lighting. If we have to adjust the texture or material settings after changing our external lighting, then we're not using a texture well-suited to cg work in general or to the particular image we're making at the moment.

For example, this was a major problem with almost all of the old Happyworldland textures from the P4 era, and also with many (though to a much lesser degree) of the Anton Kisiel textures from that same time period. Happyworldland typically used photo references (leading to wild disparities in hue and saturation), while Anton used painting, but both had the same underlying problems with lighting highlights often painted directly onto the texture maps. That was fine if Posette was placed in a scene whose lighting corresponded to whatever lighting had an imaginary effect upon the texture map, but otherwise you tended to get something that just didn't look very good. Rather than getting or making better textures, many Poser users incorrectly concluded that Posette herself had incorrigible problems, and they migrated to V3 (etc) instead, as a drastic overreaction.  :shocked!:

Twenty years ago friend pangor  :friends: started this discussion, which was meant to be about the relation of realism and textures in Poser work. I hope I haven't unfairly put words into his mouth, all these years later, by supposing that by 'realism' he meant 'photographic realism,' because after all, there are also other kinds of realism in visual art. Maybe he was talking about something else entirely.

But the odd thing about photographs is that if we set aside special purpose photos taken by scientists or advertising agencies to specially study some subject, the truth is that most photographs are quite bad at depicting physical texture. Even totally average photographs typically capture brightness and contrast well, and can be quite vivid in depicting color saturation (though less so in regard to hue). But even a well composed photo is usually quite poor in capturing texture, because of course the average photo cannot take advantage of the carefully arranged studio or professional lighting needed to capture such details on film. The average photograph is really quite blurry, compared to the crispness and minute detail which we regularly output in our Poser images.

When speaking of Poser models, our definition of the word 'texture' rolls physical grain and color hue together in the form of a texture map, so that's always going to be a little confusing when we compare Poser images to the appearance of photographs.

Thus I think we might be better off subverting the original thesis of this thread, and say that at the end of the day, texture maps have rather little to contribute to photorealism in Poser art. We'd have to keep in mind that a bad texture can definitely detract from or ruin efforts at depicting realism in Poser images, but if the texture is even just average and decent (as opposed to spectacular), then it makes its humble contribution to the image and needn't be further considered. The main compositional techniques or factors which will contribute most to realism in our Poser images are good models and good lighting, rather than excellent textures.

What do we mean by realism, anyway? Here's a portrait of my Iris character, a nearly antique P4NW with a relatively low resolution texture and bump map (each only 1200px). Those textures were both painted, rather than made from photographic references. She's also been rendered in ancient Poser 4 (since that's all I ever use). Furthermore, Iris was specifically developed to be a comic-book style character in most visual aesthetics. As a result of these challenges, I did a little postwork here on the render to counteract all that, but we should note that the object of most of that postwork was to make the original render less rather than more realistic  (such as making the image much more blurry and less color-saturated, which is another way to say, obscuring the texture and bump maps used by the model).


 

Do we think this image is realistic? If so, which features are realistic and why? Surely it can't be confused for a photograph of a real person, however. Maybe if it was an oil painting on canvas, we'd say the painter had good technical skills and brushwork. What particular details, then, are lacking realism or contrary to photorealism in the image? If we carefully consider these topics from this alternate angle, I think we'll see that very little of what we have to say concerns the use of texture maps in the image. And since I think if we could still ask pangor, we'd find he was probably more interested in 'realism' (of whatever variety) than in textures, we're at last, all these years later, getting into territory more helpful in identifying and addressing the underlying issues that really interest people asking these kinds of questions.

***

Edited/Added later the same evening:

From curiosity, I went over to deviantart and did a basic search for the term 'Poser' to see what the big $$ spenders are getting up to these days. Certainly, I saw many lovely images with various forms of artistic merit and appeal. But from another perspective what I mostly saw was that in addition to making the same old mistakes people were making at the turn of the century in Poser 4 days, we've also come up with all kinds of new ways to make jarring visual uncanniness that reminds us we're not looking at an authentic image of anything that actually exists in the real world.

I had to go many pages deep into the search before I came across an image that struck me as actually (almost) indistinguishable from a genuine photograph of a real person, and therefore something relevant to our discussion here.

Emilia 12291904

So great job on that one, 3drenders.  :notworthy: In relation to what we've discussed here, does consideration of that image change our ideas any further on the relevance of texturing (compared to other facets of composition such as model used and lighting) to realism in Poser art?

Whenever we think about texturing in Poser, we should always keep in mind what texture maps do, and what they do not do. We don't want to make the mistake of thinking a texture map is good/helpful or bad/ugly when in reality we may be using good or bad lighting, or a lousy model poorly posed, etc. This may seem like a basic idea too simple to mention, but I think those who get caught up in textures and the high resolutions of today may sometimes lose sight of this principle.

 

In this example image we have the classic P4NW 'Lara Croft' by Phil Hokusai, a freebie made in the late 1990s. At the top, we have this figure in her original state (as she arrived in the downloaded file). She 100 percent uses direct object coloring on every aspect, and the singular texture map used by default on anything is the standard P4 Nude Woman texture that comes with Poser 4 (applied to Lara's body).

In the bottom examples, I applied some generic texture and bump maps to the figure and her props. I also changed out the shirt prop (which was not a poseable clothing item and was therefore unmanageable when posing the figure) for the standard P4 Women's Vest. Apart from that, in both examples the models are standing in the same spot in the same studio with the same lighting used (a standard key/fill lighting setup).

I think in the top long shot, most would agree Lara looks okay, despite her lack of texture maps. Maybe she looks a little more 'realistic' from a distance in the bottom example, but the effect is minor. On the closeups of the face, however, we really get an education on the effect of texture maps. Though in both examples we're clearly looking at a comic-style figure, if our concern is 'realism,' then the close-up using texture maps will almost certainly be closer to our artistic objective in that case.

Direct object coloring and a texture map have the same basic purpose: to manage the innate coloration of a model. The final presentation (the output render) will then feature coloration which is a blend of model coloring and lighting applied to the model. If our image depicts a long-distance shot of all the models present, we may not really even need texture maps, as Lara demonstrates in the examples. On any close-up, however, we will probably prefer the increased flexibility and control offered by use of a texture map, as direct object coloring reduces our control of color saturation to only the model's interaction with the lighting in the scene, or a natural scintillation of the model's geometry.

The job of a bump map is to add further detail and simulated physical texturing to the model. This again is something we may not need, or may not be noticeable, on a distance view, but can be very important in close-ups. For example, notice Lara's fingers and backpack in the bottom close-up. If we're after 'realism,' we might in this case say that the bump map contributed far more to that goal than the texture map.

Yet we hardly ever see anyone discussing bump maps, and many Poser artists are content to throw any old generic or default bump map (if they use anything at all  :sad: ) on everything without giving the matter the consideration it deserves, as the example here clearly shows. Thus in relation to the original questions of this discussion, we might all profit more (at least on occasion) by considering hyper-realism in bump mapping, rather than hyper-realism in texture mapping. I think this is called Diffusion in current versions of Poser, but as I noted, I know of naught but Poser 4, so maybe that's not correct.

I did a little more fiddling with the classic P4 Lara Croft figure. In her halcyon days, this figure inspired countless renders in turn of the century Poser galleries (though in many of those, poor Lara somehow managed to lose all her clothing  :dontknow: ). This example again compares the original figure (top) against my modifications (lower).

 

To reiterate the details, in the upper two images Lara and her props have no texture maps, and instead use direct object lighting to depict hue. The only exception is that Lara herself uses the default Posette texture map which was packaged with Poser 4; she has no bump map. The figure uses a smidge (RGB 35) of ambient lighting, and the whole scene is lit with the droll sort of 360 degree lighting that was very popular in Poser 4 and cg artwork around the same time this Lara model was popular.

As with the previous example, we see again that despite all those handicaps, Lara looks okay from a distance. The close-up, on the other hand, reveals all the shortcomings of a poorly lit scene combined with a model bearing poor texturing, as well as utilizing uncanny ambient object light. Overall, the particular aesthetic expressed by the upper images was a common look of hobbyist Poser art in the Poser 4 era.

In the bottom two images, I've updated the figure by revising the material settings and giving texture maps and bump maps to Lara and all her props. Yet these are all only medium resolution and general purpose textures that I had laying around. I would not call any of them high resolution nor particularly high quality, nor were any of them specifically designed with enhancement of this particular model in mind. I also updated the model itself in minor ways:

--by changing the shirt and the boots to better P4-era options (as both were simple prop objects rather than poseable clothing items in the original figure)

--by moving and rescaling the backpack slightly

--by making Posette's head a smidge larger

--by applying a slight bit of body buff and shaping (morphs from a Posette 'She-Hulk' character), as Lara's character is an action-adventure heroine, presumably in top physical condition from all that running, jumping, dinosaur fighting, and giant rock pushing.

The final difference in the lower two images is that I used a different lighting scheme, a simple key/fill system such as one might find in a photographer's studio. As for the model herself and her props, everything is wholly illuminated by the external lighting in the studio and no ambient object lighting is used anywhere.

Beyond that, these images all depict the same figure and props, in the same pose, in the same studio. I mentioned earlier that compared to Poser output renders, real photographs of real subjects are quite blurry, and therefore in postwork I applied a simple blur filter to all four of the images used in the example. Aside from that blurring, these are all raw output renders of nearly-antique Poser 4 without further manipulation.

To what then may we attribute the differences between the top and bottom examples here? Certainly the replacement of direct object lighting with texture maps made a positive contribution toward realism (albeit realism of a comic variety). The few minor improvements I made in the model itself are noticeable as well, if one studies the image closely. Finally and most importantly, the dramatic change in the lighting scheme used in the studio contributed a great deal to the difference in end results.

In Poser 4 days, there was a vicious circle: hardly any artists working in the medium understood sound principles of good studio lighting, and without good lighting, texture maps are rather useless. As a result, few understood how to make good texture maps, and direct object coloring was therefore the most popular method of 'texturing.' Direct object coloring is more forgiving of poor lighting, so there was little incentive to improve on that count. Et cetera, et cetera.

Without all three aspects of a good image working together in synergy-- a good model bearing good textures in good lighting-- realism of any sort (whether of photographic or comic varieties) is nearly impossible without extensive postworking. If we were determined and had a quality image editor, we could indubitably postwork the distance shot of revised Lara into something closely resembling a photograph. With yet more effort, the same could probably be done with the close-up of the revised model. I didn't feel like taking the time to do either of those tasks here, especially as our discussion is meant to concern use of textures rather than postworking techniques.

The bottom line in these examples is that an increase in the resolution and quality of texture maps and bump maps used in my revisions of Lara would offer only marginal improvement in the final imagery. In my opinion the result would not be worth the time required to create such maps. As I've depicted revised Lara in what is likely the best studio lighting for her (at least for the P4 renderer used to make the images), the only reasonable and remaining conclusion must be that the fundamental limit on 'realism' here is the model and props themselves.

The iconic hair model Lara wears, for example, is difficult to work with. Notice the displayed texture running the wrong direction (perpendicular) on the bangs, because the UV coordinates of the hair model were set from top and bottom planes (but those bangs are front facing). There's simply no way for a texture map to address that issue, unless the hair model was entirely remapped with new UV coordinates. For the same reasons, any attempt to make a realism-enhancing transparency map for this hair model would be an almost hopeless task, not likely to turn out well. To remap the hair model with the UV Mapper program would not be difficult, but when the time required to do that is added to the time required to make a high resolution hair map, I think the problem could far more efficiently be fixed as standard image postwork, if we really needed the issue solved for some compelling reason.

In noting such deficiencies, I intend no slight at all upon Phil Hokusai's original work on the Lara Croft figure. In her own time, 25 years ago, Phil's freebie Lara figure was amongst the best-looking and highest quality Posette variants the average Poser hobbyist might hope to find. She's simply old now, a relic from another era and less advanced cg tech than we have available to us today.

This P4 Lara is meant to be a comic style figure, and I think we're better off helping her be her best self, rather than trying to wrangle her into undertaking other roles-- so this conclusion isn't anything to much worry about. If nothing else, I think my example revisions with her here show that despite her simplicity and age, Phil's Lara figure can still hold her own today if we accept her for what she is. I'd still feel comfortable using this model today (with my revisions) in any context calling for comic or video-game style artwork.

To summarize the points I've been making in all these examples:

1) Realism is an artistic style (as opposed to impressionism, abstraction, etc), and there are several different varieties of realism. To talk about cg or Poser 'realism' in general is difficult, without knowing precisely what type of realism any particular artist wants to accomplish. Is it photorealism, comic realism, cartoon realism, luminosity realism, or something else?

2) Despite point #1, there is a tripod of three visual elements which all work together in contribution to all realistic Poser and cg styles. These are good (realistic) models, using good (realistic appearing) textures, lit in good (realistic) ways.

Lighting generally includes all factors such as external studio lighting, ambient object lighting, and specularity or reflection. After a good model, use of lighting is most critical in styles striving for realism. Unrealistic lighting (use of ambient object lighting, specularity, and general dullness) will detract from visual realism, despite countless Poser tutorials and gallery after gallery of images at big $$ websites claiming otherwise.

As texture, I've briefly considered all techniques which determine the hue, saturation, and grain of 3d objects, such as direct object coloring, texture maps of various styles, and bump maps. Of the three elements of the realism tripod, texturing is actually the least important contributing factor. I've said that while a bad texture can detract from realism, the positive contributions of texture are subtle, and a superfantabulous high resolution expert texture typically only offers marginal improvement to the final output image when compared to a lower resolution basic competence texture. This is particularly true in the case of our beloved Posette, who simply doesn't have the polygon count to benefit much from texture maps over 2000px. Also, a texture map itself only determines the hue (and a bit of saturation) patterns appearing on the model. We should not overlook the contribution of bump maps to realism, which in my opinion is equal in importance to texture mapping. I've also said that excessive cg resolution is unrealistic, and we can usually enhance the realism of Poser images by blurring the final output to better match what we see in real life with our eyes, or in a real photograph.

****

I haven't visited Renderosity in many years, but I was over there recently in relation to these 'Lemurtek' figures we were examining in other discussions here, so I've been sniffing around there a bit.

On the general topic of realistic styles and what people are currently doing with the latest and greatest softwares, a look through the image galleries of what people have been doing in the last week (as I write this now) reveals to my eyes that the Poser artists are getting thumped hard by the Daz Studio artists in relation to realism and realistic appearance in their imagery. Presumably both groups as a whole are after the same thing these days, which is the most realism and the least uncanniness, with most seeming to favor attempts at photorealism, though large contingents also pursue comic realism. However, many of the Poser people exhibit the realism-sapping techniques I've been discussing, such as excessive use of ambient lighting and specularity, particulary (to make matters worse) in conjunction with extreme overlighting or alternately underlighting of the scene studio. That's nothing new, these same problems have seriously plagued Poser art since the beginning in P3 and P4 days.

On the other hand, I see many of the Daz people have either abandoned those poor practices, or perhaps never used them in the first place. It was really very interesting to look through the two different galleries from a perspective of observing realism techniques. I don't want anyone to think I'm picking on them personally, so I'm going to flat out refuse to cite any examples. However, in general the Daz artists were making great progress from use of sound techniques and principles in their realistically-minded images, and I was impressed by many images I saw. Keeping in mind that I am strictly considering techniques of realism (as opposed to general aesthetics or overall artistic merit), I unfortunately cannot say the same for most of the images I saw in the Poser gallery.

I don't really know anything about the rendering engines used by the latest Poser and Daz. Would current Daz Studio inherently favor techniques and styles of realism in output imagery, or were my observations just a fluke due to small sample size since I only looked at images made in the last week? Another possibility is that the Poser people are stuck in the same old rut as since forever ago, while the Daz people are thinking with new ideas and fewer chronic bad habits. I'm speaking here only as a viewer or audience of final images. On any software itself I don't have a dog in that fight, since I'm sticking with my venerable Poser 4 and have no plans to ever change, so I'm not interested in any pointless internet arguments with anybody over what current $$ software is 'best' in this or that regard.

Does anyone else have ideas on my conclusions, keeping in mind we only really want to discuss here texture in relation to output realism?