Photo like renders

Filip5

Hey guys, I am trying to adjust the final renders so they look like a photos. Now these renders are just fine, but there is something odd, that disturbs the feeling that this is a real photo, more like a render. It can be anything, shadows, light, contrast etc. Have a look on the pictures, what would you adjust  so this would look more like photo - real thing ? I ve done some touches in photoshop, but I am not quite sure about it. Still looks like a render to me...

GlowingPotato

To my eyes, looks like a render because the render is "too perfect".... perfect blurry background, no medium between the guitar and the camera lenses. And something about the strings that I don't really know...

But, a very good guitar. congrats.

Edit: I just realized you are rendering with Marmoset. I never used, but this might be the limiting factor? Idk how it features compares to offline renders like Ocatane, vray....

Filip5

Is it better with this kind of blur ?


About the guitar - wouldn't call it that good. I knew the only object I wanted to render was guitar, so I could go super creazy with the polys. So I did. Its quite dense. Not quite sure abou saying in english, but the result justifies the means I guess.

sprunghunt

The first thing that stood out to me is that the grain in the wood is too big. Most guitars the grain in the wood isn't as obvious because the wood fibers are smaller. Also for a guitar the grain seems to usually run along the length. 

Also the frets seem very thick and widely spaced. I'd scale them down and make sure there are enough of them. I think a guitar has between 22 and 24 frets. Guitars also have dots on certain frets so you can easily tell which ones are which. 

And lastly the surface of the body isn't shiny enough. A real guitar is very very reflective. It also has a clear coat on the outside - this might be very hard to do in marmoset as you usually need a special shader to mimic it. 

This seems like a pretty good reference photo that shows all the things I've been mentioning. 

Filip5

I appriciate the feedback. I will rework the frets and maybe side texture. I am not quite sure about how shiny the thing should be thou. Here is a photo of a real one. Also, thoose sides dots got wiped off over time.

Eric Chadwick

Lack of imperfections are usually what tip me off. Dust, micro scratches, fingerprints, small dings and dents. Even the cleanest newest products have small imperfections. Look closely at unretouched photos.

sprunghunt

Filip5 said:

I appriciate the feedback. I will rework the frets and maybe side texture. I am not quite sure about how shiny the thing should be thou. Here is a photo of a real one. Also, thoose sides dots got wiped off over time.

This photo is done using flash photography. So you can't see how shiny the surface is because the light is coming from the front of the camera. All flash photos look a bit flat. 

pior

Well, you could also work backwards and try to recreate your renders using an actual camera. You're probably going to have a very, very, VERY hard time recreating such extreme background blur. So from there : your renders would probably would look more realistic if they didn't have a cheesy blurry fake background *at all*. Try to just cut out the object and put it on a white page, Apple style, and see what it looks like. Chances are, it might become 10x more "realistic" simple because it would become a picture that a camera could actually take.

This won't solve anything regarding level of detail/wear and tear, but at least it would address the elephant in the room. Also, blur/extreme depth of field on the object itself isn't helping either, as it is a dead giveaway of "pressing buttons in a 3d program just because". Same goes for the random HDRI background. If you catch yourself cycling though a bunch of these "until it looks right" then you know that your shot (even virtual) has not been thought through beforehand.

Lastly, product photography is rarely done at "this or that angle, until it looks about right". People and tripods tend to stand straight.

In short ... I'd recommend picking up a DSLR and practicing real photography first and foremost

gnoop

1. Lack of color variation in reflecting environment . Colder tints basically in Fresnel.

2. the texture is shouting  out loudly :  PROCEDURAL .   It's not that you need to recreate lots of texture height details here so a photo would be just ok.

Filip5

I have done some changes:
- Changed the fibers flow, so they now align with the guitar
- Deacresed the fiber height so it is now more subtle
- I added rough channel to add imperfections, such as dust and scratches, altough they are barely visible on render
- Fret dividers got remodelled, they are now placed more accordingly to real model. I also changed material to brass.
- Reflections have been increased slightly
- Contrast has been increased to achieve photo - like levels

- I ve done some renders,  tried one studio lightning setup. These walls are hovewer blocking reflections so imperfections are barely visible. Image with studio setup looks somewhat better to photo quality, but in my opinion looks worse in final image. A bit blank I would say. Feedback is appriciated again .

Eric Chadwick

Pior's feedback about learning how a real camera (and photographer) works is invaluable here. If your aim is photo realism, learn photography first.

Your extreme fov is unrealistic, as is the extreme dof.

pior

Yeah - @Filip5 , at the end of the day it really won't matter how much you tweak these materials. There are just way too many *other* dead giveaways telling right away that these are renders done by "playing around with sliders until it feels right somehow".

Once you'll know more about cameras you'll realize that even your last picture (white BG, arguably the most "realistic" one so far) will never happen IRL. As no one would take product shots with a tiny phone camera/selfie lens as you are seemingly doing here. And, tiny phone selfie lenses just do not have the physical capabilities to produce such extreme depth of field. It's a physical limitation, that's why phone makers now include automatic blur filters to fake portrait bokeh. But since such filters are not actually linked to focal length, the resulting portraits look fake, like here. Also ... a photo studio would have a backdrop with a smooth curve, not a CG box with hard edges.

Just start by *precisely* trying to recreate this. Even the composition (no crazy dynamic angles) contributes to making the shot look tangible.



"I ve done some renders,  tried one studio lightning setup. These walls are hovewer blocking reflections so imperfections are barely visible."

Here too you are just making assumptions based on "thinking CG". In the real world there are many things going on off-camera in a photo shoot. Extra lights, reflectors, light diffusers, and so on. Just because you've selected a given HDRI background image doesn't mean that you're done with the environment setup.

Filip5

Here I tried to do the render. FOV didn't do much. I tried to tweak lights and do some 2 lights setup

gnoop

The guitar neck couldn't be same pitch black as the sound hole. it should show a few colder subtle matte  tints from  roughness  and Fresnel .    I suggest  to try Blender   it's PBR materials doing all this automatically in correctly set  light and environment  intensities  and its  Filmic  tone mapper .

it's pretty much ACES style there only without all that  "scene referenced"   uber wide gamut colors for future monitors bullshit

Eric Chadwick

People can create photo-real renders of wooden objects in Toolbag. It's not the limitations of the tool, it's the accumulated knowledge of the user.

https://marmoset.co/posts/creating-and-rendering-photorealistic-environment-art-in-toolbag/ 



More learning material about lighting:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Lighting

Alex_J

aside from lighting and materials, one thing about real objects is that they are never quite perfect. like in CG you are usually dealing with mathematically perfect curves, and the total accumulation of all these tiny details is that your eye can tell it's not quite real. So i think it you go through your guitar model and tweak some of the vertices so that everything is just almost imperceptibly off, that will make a difference. most notably along the edges.

i have a high quality hunting rifle - very much the definition of precision machined - but i was looking at it real clsoe the other day thinking about this thread and i realized just how imperfect most of its lines really are. it's not even symmetrical.

kanga

Nice work.

You have reduced the scale of the top plate texture which looks a little junky? Maybe good to find a better one, or make one in an app like substance designer. Have you varied the gauge of the strings, they look the same? Have you done the machine heads, or is this just a lower part model? I have never seen a guitar fretboard without markers. Usually markers are inlayed and wouldn't wear off.

Acoustic guitar edge binding: Binding on acoustic guitars serve to protect the edges of the wood from impact and, particularly where end grain would be exposed to moisture damage. I cant see your edge binding on the body.

Grain difference: The body and the neck look similar while in reality the neck and body are usually quite different. The body is made from sound woods and the neck and fretboard from construction woods.

Interesting model!