Hi, I was wondering if anyone has good advice to render high quality images of realistic CC4 characters for the content store?

Do you use iRay in general or perhaps render your product in another 3D app (Marmoset, Blender, etc.)?
I'm asking because no matter what light or IBL I'm using the iRay renders in CC4 don't look very good. I've seen some other products on the marketplace that have very professional-looking images. What would be your recommendations? I think rendering in an external app means having to deal with getting the shaders right.

Would really appreciate some hints and tips on this!
Thank you!

I don't have a suggestion how to improve the quality of your renders for the Content Store, but I would like to point out that it may backfire if the renders you put up look better than what people who purchase the asset can get out of iClone/CC. So, if you do decide to use another program/render engine besides iClone/CC, you should at least point out that fact in your renders/product descriptions so that people don't have unrealistic expectations. For the same reason, any post processing of the renders done in Photoshop or something similar can be problematic.


My YouTube channel: Animations made with Cinema 4D and Reallusion Products

Thanks for the hint! Actually I would prefer ro render directly with iRay in CC4 but the result never looks anything like the OpenGL render:
The skin is darker
The hair is brighter
The whole render has a plasticy look over it...

So maybe I should ask this in a different way: How do I get the iRay render to look great? I tried a couple more IBLs and some looks suitable (neutral light, no hard shadows) but above issues still apply. This is no doubt because iRay doesn't support the Human Skin/Hair/Eye shaders and so renders it as standard PBR which kind of makes it pointless to render realistic human characters with it in CC4.

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I wouldn't outright dismiss the iClone or CC renderer. Iray is indeed very dated as it does not support the newer shaders. Plus, hardly anybody uses it.

There are still people like myself who use iClone for rendering and I will be able to judge the quality of a character and I want to know what to expect. I have been fooled in the past by props that were shown in Unreal and needed a lot of work to look acceptable in iClone.

However, as Autodidact suggests, the best external renderer (if you want to go that way) would be Omniverse as the shaders do carry over.

Now if you are aiming at a specific market whwre your character is to be used in external applications then you should provide renders so people can judge how the character looks in those applications. By following the threads decicated to those applications, I have learned that there is usually still adjustments need to make the character look good, so be aware of that.

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There are still people like myself who use iClone for rendering and I will be able to judge the quality of a character and I want to know what to expect.

That why I would suggest to include (native) iClone renders in addition to any other render engines (and clearly indicate which is which) to help people know what to expect.

(That being said, I'm not one of those people still using iClone for rendering and I don't use iRay, UE, or omniverse either. So, the preview renders for any iClone/assets on the Content Store or the Marketplace will always only give a me approximation of what the asset will actually look like in my production environment.)


My YouTube channel: Animations made with Cinema 4D and Reallusion Products

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'm going to give Omniverse a try, never actually used it yet!

I wouldn't say hardly anyone uses it. I know several people that use it frequently but can't show off my work because the pro results is being built for film. I took me years to discover ways to optimize Indigo and Iray to render fast. Many users often struggle with the Native render to dial in optimal lighting for their renders. Iray is the same, mostly when people use the day/night & horizon settings etc. I think because it takes a few years to get close to mastering it using all kinds of different scenarios that Reallusion probably wasn't seeing enough significant use/posts and thought it might be better for them to drop it, or maybe it was for other reasons altogether. 

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