What I want to achieve here is to give you the ability to set up a simple light rig and basic camera within Octane. I also describe how to add in displacement maps for increased realism.

In this tutorial, I will continue to use the Mei portrait image below as an example. For more on how I created a realistic skin shader, please refer to this tutorial. If you are new to Daz Studio Octane, there is an introduction article here.

How to Set-Up Camera, Lights, & Displacement in Daz Studio Octane

1. Daz Studio Octane Lights

Lighting in Octane can be achieved from the Environment Tab (Octane daylight environment or HDR Texture environment) and through emissive textures.  For my image, I used a single emissive key light and an HDR image (Playa Sunrise) from the fantastic sIBL archive.

Open the Environment Tab, set the image to the Playa Sunrise HDRi and adjust the settings as shown below (making sure the Gamma is set to 1).  That’s all you need to do to set up the environment light.  You can rotate the image using the Translation X setting. This is best done with the render window open and all objects hidden (from within Daz).  I will leave it as it is, because I want the sun in the image as the back light for my subject.

How to set-up HDRi lighting in Daz Studio Octane

Now let’s set up a simple emissive light in the scene.  Most people tend to use a plane primitive for emissive lighting, but I prefer to use a flattened sphere as a key light (I prefer the reflection you get in the eye).  I place the primitive as illustrated below.

Front view of where I place my emissive light.

Top view of where I place my emissive light.

To create the emissive material you need to return to the Octane material tab.  Right click the Sphere primitive and select Create new light source > Simple.

To create the emissive material you need to return to the Octane material tab.

Open the newly created material in the Node editor, right click on the diffuse node and select Smart Unfold.  This breaks down a node into its constituent parts so you can see how it is built.  As you can see, an emissive texture is simply a Blackbody Emission node plugged into a Diffuse node (you cannot have an emissive glossy or specular material).

How our newly created emissive light material looks in the Node Editor after selecting Smart Unfold.

Select the Blackbody node and update the settings as is shown in the left image below. The orange texture colour is from the horizon of the Playa HDR image, selected using the colour picker tool that is available when you edit the colour.  If you like, repeat the process and create a second primitive to the left side of the character as a fill light. This time select the blue colour from the sky in the HDRi (below right).

Set the colour of our key emissive light to the orange from the horizon of the Playa HDR image. Repeat the process and create a second light (fill light) to the left side of the character. Set the colour to the blue from the sky of our HDRi.

Test render after our initial light set-up.

Now, we can fine tune our lights from within the render viewport itself, even when the image is rendering.  Let’s start with the Camera Imager and Post Processing tabs. The following are the settings I used in my Mei portrait:

Camera Imager and Post Processing settings I used in my Mei portrait.

Test render after our new Camera Imager and Post Processing settings.

Choice of settings in the Camera Imager comes down to personal preference.  As I have said previously, I’m a big fan of the Agfachrome, Ektachrome and Kodachrome filters.  I also find adding bloom improves the natural lighting and softens the image.

2. Daz Studio Octane Camera Settings

• Create a camera in Daz and make sure that it’s selected within the Daz viewport.
• Position it so the face is in full portrait view.
• Now open the Octane viewport again.  Use the ‘Autofocus’ tool to select an area of focus (I tend to use the eye or nose as my focal point). This gives us a nice quick DOF effect.

Open the Octane viewport, and use the Autofocus tool to select an area of focus.

Using the eye as my focal point.
• To adjust the degree of focus, you need to select the camera within Daz and open the Cameras pane.  Use the Aperture Diameter setting in that pane. I usually set it between 5-15mm (the f-stop is altered automatically).
   
  I am sure this will probably cause photographers to scream “that’s not how to do it!” – but it works for me 🙂

Setting the Aperture Diameter in the Cameras pane.

3. Daz Studio Octane Displacement Maps

Some of you may have noticed that in the skin tutorial, we only used a diffuse map – no bump, normal or displacement maps.  The reason I leave it to now is that I prefer to use displacement maps, which can slow down render time. Therefore, I wait until I am happy with the scene, then add displacement and tweak as necessary.

I used a displacement map in the Mei portrait.  It needs to be a greyscale image and ideally 4k and above.  In this case I used the standard bump map that came with Mei 7, but in the past have used dedicated displacement maps (though rarely supplied) or have made my own from the diffuse map ( tutorial on making displacement maps ). 

The important thing here is that the black parts of the map are the parts that depress into the object (like pores) and the white bits extrude (like spots or eyebrows).  Ultimately, I find a displacement map produces a much better result as it physically alters the shape of the object, thus giving you subtle shades and shadows.

To add a map to the displacement node, return to the Material pane in Octane and open the face material in the node editor.

Note that there is already a greyscale image node waiting to be filled, which is attached to the displacement node.

You will notice there is already a greyscale image node waiting to be filled. This is attached to the displacement node, which in turn drives the displacement for the combined nodes before being applied to the surface.  If you have a bump map that has white eyebrows and black pores then you should be able to use it here.  Use the grayscale image node to load the bump map.

Next, select the Displacement node and check the level of detail corresponds to the image you have used (normally 4k).  The only other adjustment required is the height.  This is very sensitive, and you wouldn’t want to go beyond a height of 0.12cm. 

The height is very sensitive, and you would not want to go beyond a height of 0.12cm.

The image below shows (from left to right) no displacement, 0.06cm and 0.12cm.

From left to right – no displacement, 0.06cm and 0.12cm.

You will need to go back and update all of your skin materials for torso and arms accordingly, and make sure they are set to the same mid-level and height (but with different image maps). Otherwise, the seams between the UV areas will become visible.

You will need to go back and update all of your skin materials for torso and arms accordingly, otherwise the seams between the UV areas will become visible.

I have found that adding bump or normal maps alongside a displacement map adds very little if anything.  However, displacement maps can be very fiddly and more render intensive.  If you wish to use a bump map then create a new image node (greyscale with a gamma setting below 0.1) or normal map (RGB image node) and attach it to the appropriate connecter on the 3 specular and 1 diffuse nodes.

In the next tutorial I will cover a couple of other node adjustments you may find useful, and then cover briefly the other materials I used in the Mei render.

We will need a working version of the Daz Octane plugin installed (full or demo).  This can be downloaded at www.otoy.com.  Please note – if you are using the demo version then image size is restricted and will be watermarked, and you will not be able to access the material database. If you are not familiar with Daz Studio Octane, this introduction article will give you an overview.

In this tutorial, I will use the Mei portrait image below as an example.

Daz Studio Octane Skin Shader Tutorial

1. Start by downloading this .duf file.
2. Open Daz Studio.  If the plugin is installed correctly, you should have the following icons in your toolbar
3. Make sure the icon on the right is set to ‘Duf’ (click on it to cycle through the options) – this setting will make sure that all Octane settings and materials from the Duf file are loaded (Manual loads no Octane settings, Auto will try and build materials based on the settings within Daz).
    
   The left icon is for the Main Octane Settings, the middle opens the render viewport.
4. Unzip and open the SkinShader.duf file you just downloaded.  You should find a simple scene with a Sphere primitive.  If you open the render viewport the sphere will be rendered, but will be quite dark and not look very much like skin at the moment.
5. Now import a model – I have used Genesis 3 model (Mei Lin 7) in this example but you can use any model you have. Note that the available surfaces will be different for earlier generation models, but the same principles will apply – e.g. Torso in Gen 3 is Head, neck, hips etc. in Gen2.  For best results try and use a model that has a diffuse map that is photo-referenced, and not hand painted – Mei Lin 7, Olympia 7, Michael 7 and Michael 6 are good examples.
6. With your chosen model loaded, open the Octane Settings window, and select the materials tab.

The Materials Tab of the Octane Settings window.

The left part lists all available/used materials, the middle part lists current scene models with their available surfaces. When you select a surface a yellow dot will show you which material is attached.

7. Now apply the skin material to the model – click and drag SkinShader from the left and drop it on the Face surface.  Apply the same material to the Lips and Ears.  You can now delete the sphere from within Daz Studio.  It should now look like this:

After applying the SkinShader material from the left to the Face, Lips, and Ears surfaces.

Now you have the material applied open the render viewport.  It will still look a little dark and not skin like yet.  We need to add a few more  things to the material using the Nodegraph Editor (highlighted with a red rectangle in the image above).

Exploring Our Octane Skin Material

When rendering an object using a PBR (physically based renderer) like Octane, the material needs to replicate its real world equivalent.  With skin this involves creating layers for the deep scatter (blood vessels), hypodermis & dermis (fatty tissue), and epidermis (the outermost layer).  At the very least I feel you need the first and last if you want that lovely red translucency (scattering) in the ears. 

One way is to generate independent layers on the model (each with its own material), but this is cumbersome and from my experience does not add anything.  I prefer to generate all the layers within one material.

I do this by combining different nodes.  Octane has four primary nodes – Diffuse (solid matt surface), Glossy (solid shiny surface) and Specular (clear or transparent surface).  The fourth is a Mix Node where you can combine two or more of these surface nodes.

Node structure of the skin material I used in the Mei portrait.

The above is the node structure of the skin material I used in the Mei portrait.   Nodes 2 & 3 are adapted from the amazing skin material developed by TonySculptor (freely available in the Octane library) . I have added the other nodes around it, and they loosely represent the layers of skin as follows:

1. Specular Material (blood vessels, or deep scatter)
2. Specular Material (skin mid-layer)
3. Specular Material (skin mid-layer)
4. Diffuse Material (skin surface)
5. Displacement map (add texture and definition to the surface)

In isolation, each of the five nodes will look like the following (Figure 6 is all combined):


The five skin layers I am using in my Mei portrait skin. Figure 6 shows all of the layers combined.

The additional nodes in the skin material are:

6. Output node – the item/s that the material is applied to
7. Mix material node – used to combine two material nodes
8. Image node – used to place an image within a marterial
9. Colour node – used to set an RGB/Greyscale setting to a node
10. Scattering node – used to set the scattering parameters for specular or diffuse nodes

Note however, that our current skin material does not contain any texture maps. We will need to put in appropriate texture maps according to the nodes described above.

In particular, there is a Diffuse map in the 4^th picture – let’s go ahead and put that into the skin material.  Select the RGB Image node connected to the Diffuse node. The following settings should appear on the right of the editor:

Settings for the RGB Image node.

It’s all set to receive the diffuse map – simply select the drop down list and either Browse to the diffuse map location, or (if loaded) from the map list that is generated (in this example, the maps available for Mei are offered).  I want the MeiLin7FaceD_1001.jpg image.

Browse to the diffuse map location, or (if loaded) from the map list that is generated .

Now let’s return to the Material tab and generate two more skin materials – one for the torso, and one for the arms.  Right click on the SkinShader material and Copy as new material.

Generate two more skin materials – one for the torso, and one for the arms.

A copy will be created in the unused section (blue – not assigned).  Now drag this material over to the torso surface to assign it.  With the torso selected, open the Nodegraph editor and change the diffuse map we set before to the appropriate Torso diffuse map image.  The RGB node should now look something like this.

RGB image node after applying the appropriate Torso diffuse map image.

Repeat this again for the arms. We can ignore the legs and nails as they will not be visible. Your completed skin material list should look like this:

Completed skin material list.

You can right click each material and rename it if you wish, always useful when scenes get more complicated.  You can also save them as pre-sets so they are available in other projects.

We Are Done!

Congratulations! You have just created a Daz Studio Octane skin material. Open the render viewport again, and the image should start to look more like skin now.

How our Octane skin material looks in the render viewport.

To transform this image to a finished portrait, we will need to work on setting up displacement, lighting the scene and then setting up the camera. We will discuss how to do this in our next Octane tutorial.

Our finished Mei portrait with appropriate camera, scene lighting, and post-work.

This article and all of the images within were created by the very talented Brian Sains. Copyright © Brian Sains. Check out his gallery here.

Why Octane?

Why Octane?

I started using Daz just under a year ago now, with no background in art or design.  I run my own business (along with my wife) that specialises in developing communication skills for people with Autism and Learning Disabilities.  It was through my work that I discovered Daz Studio, and was interested in its educational potential for developing avatars that could represent different emotions, expressions and social situations.  I got to grips with the basics and soon developed some resources that were well received, but they were very plastiky and I wanted a little more realism.

I spent a couple of months working with 3Delight, iRay, Reality (Lux), Indigo (via iClone) and Arnold (via a Cinema4d demo), before discovering Octane. While the render engine does play a role in determining the quality of the render produced – I would place lighting, camera settings, more lighting, shader quality and perhaps even post-work above it in significance. 

Rendered with Daz Studio Octane, with minimal postwork.

However, as far as render engines go, Octane appealed to me – it allowed me to stay within Daz, use all of the assets I had accumulated, and most importantly the node based shader/material interface made complete sense to me.  It is also fast – very fast.  I started tweaking and twiddling skin materials about six months ago, and haven’t really stopped since!

In this article, I will introduce you to using Octane from within Daz Studio, along with the tools and settings you will need.

An Introduction to Daz Studio Octane

Octane Renderer

Octane is, like iRay, a Physically Based Renderer (PBR).  My understanding of this is that the engine accurately simulates the characteristics of light and it’s interaction with a variety of surfaces. In particular, simulated light bounces around a simulated environment hitting simulated surfaces until it hits the lens of a simulated camara.  This article does a great job at explaining the Basic Theory of Physically-Based Rendering.

There are two ways of using Octane with Daz Studio – through the standalone Octane Render Software or the Daz Integrated Plugin.  There is very little to separate them regarding the tools available or the quality of what is produced, but the Daz plugin is infinitely easier to use. You make an adjustment in Daz, it is updated in the render preview in close to real-time.  If you do not have a licence of Octane, a trial version is available for standalone and plugin versions (www.otoy.com).  I use the 3.0.6 beta version, but the tutorial will work just as well with the stable 2.24 version.  In terms of hardware I am using an 8 core i7 5960x, 32gb ram, and dual Titan X GPUs, though it will work quite happily on more modest machines (I started on an old Macbook pro).

Once installed, you can access the plugin from within Daz via the OctaneRender Main link in the Render menu, or use the toolbar icon (see below).

Once installed, you can access the plugin from within Daz via the OctaneRender Main link in the Render menu, or use the toolbar icon.

To get started, you need to be familiar with the Rendersettings, Environment, and Materials tabs.

Octane Render Settings

Dimensions

Set the dimension (in pixels) of the render image.  A number of commonly used ratios are available, and will be familiar to iRay and Reality users.

Set the dimension (in pixels) of the render image.

Kernel Settings

Octane has 4 different Kernel types for processing renders. I tend to always use PMC, though path-tracing is sufficient.  PMC is the most processor intensive, and would normally only be used when things like caustics are involved, but I prefer the result.  I rarely touch the kernel settings except when there is a seam visible between the forehead and scalp – then reducing the value for Ray Epsilon can help.

Max-sample allows you to set the maximum number of samples that will be calculated before the render pauses.

Octane has 4 different Kernel types for processing renders, but I usually use PMC.

Imager settings

A selection of filters that simulate the colour and tone of common cameras.  By default this is set to Linear.  I tend to use linear when I am setting up the scene and then Kodachrome or Agfachrome curves. The contrast they provide helps lift some of the finer details in the skin, such as pores and blemishes.

A selection of filters that simulate the colour and tone of common cameras.

Octane Environment

Here you can choose between the Octane generated daytime environment (left) or HDR texture environment (right).  You can also select to have a greyscale or RGB environment. 

Here you can choose between the Octane generated daytime environment (left) or HDR texture environment (right).

To set up a HDR image make sure RGB image is selected in the dropdown box on the right and then use the browse bar in the middle to locate the desired image.  Do make sure the Gamma is set to one.  Once in place you can transform the image using 2d or 3d controllers.  I will cover this in greater detail in the next tutorial.

Spheres showing the Octane generated daytime environment (left) and the HDR texture environment (right).

Octane Materials

This is where you assign materials (shaders) to your model within Daz.

1. Available materials (Used in this file, saved as presets, or from live database)
2. Selected model and available surfaces (blue – no material, white – material assigned)
3. Selected material properties
4. Nodegraph editor – opens the material editor in node view
5. Open viewport – opens the render window

This is where you assign materials (shaders) to your model within Daz Studio.

To create a new material either:

• Drag it from the used or preset area to the desired surface (you can use the same material on multiple surfaces)
• Right-click the material and copy as new material. The new material will be an instance of the original but can be edited. Then drag the new instance across.  This is very useful when setting materials for skin.
• Search the Live Database (not available in demo) – then drag that over to desired surface. This material will then be downloaded from the internet and applied. Materials from the database can be edited/saved as presets once downloaded
• Right click a surface window (2 in diagram), and select either:
  • Generate as new material > blank – will create a new blank diffuse material.
  • Generate as new material > auto – will take the existing material settings applied within Daz and try to create a suitable material. You will normally need to tweak these auto materials, particularly if they are based on iRay shaders in Daz (though this is improving with newer releases).
  • Generate as new light source – will create a new blank diffuse material set up as a simple, textured, or IES profile light emitter.

To edit a material either;

• Adjust settings in the right hand window (3 in diagram). This is suitable for minor tweaks.
• Select the node-graph editor (4 in diagram).

Below, I show the nodegraph editor (or NGE) with a simple diffuse material.

The nodegraph editor (or NGE) with a simple diffuse material

Next, is the node-graph of a more complex skin material. 

The node-graph of a more complex skin material.

Octane has four primary nodes:

1. Diffuse – solid material surface,
2. Glossy – solid shiny surface,
3. Specular – clear or transparent surface, and
4. Mix node – combines two or more of the previous surface nodes.

Nodes are available from the pull-out list on the left, can be dragged into the main viewport, and then edited on a node-by-node basis on the right.  It may seem a little daunting for anyone unfamiliar with node based systems, but this is by far the easiest way to manipulate materials in Octane (and in my opinion within Daz also). 

Once you become familiar it is very versatile and can lead to a multitude of new ways for generating materials; for example generating a greyscale image using a noise generator, mixing it with a turbulence generator and using the result instead of a bump map for variation on a the skin surface.

Other nodes are available for setting colour, placing images, generating procedurals (like noise), manipulating uv projections, setting displacement, setting emitters and so on.

Once nodes are placed they can be connected using the colour-coded terminals.  This is very useful when new to the NGE, as you can’t plug something in where it can’t be used.

It may also be worth referring to the online manual  for more information.

A finished render of my Daz Studio Octane skin using Olympia 7.

Octane Render Viewport

The final part of the plug-in we will explore is the viewport.  This is where you render the scene, as well as fine-tune some of the settings.  For example, you can:

• Set manual or autofocus
• Limit render to a selected region
• Adjust kernel settings
• Adjust camera settings
• Set post-processing (like bloom)
• Adjust environment settings
• Generate additional render-passes
• Save final image

Again, I will go into a lot more detail with using the viewport in the next tutorial.

I will go into a lot more detail with using the viewport in the next tutorial.

Summary

Now that you are familiar with the core functions and tools within the Octane Plugin, we can move onto setting up a scene based on my Mei image.  In the next tutorial I will set up the scene within Daz Studio and cover lighting, camera, and setting materials.

Check out the wonderful art of Brian Sains.

In the next tutorial I will set up this scene within Daz Studio and cover lighting, camera, and setting materials.