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Description
I ended up buying Reality and have been experimenting and reading tutorials for the last few days. There are a few things I don't quite understand, but overall it's a very impressive plugin that's fairly simple to use and gives extremely consistent results.

These are two IBL-lit scenes, each took about an hour to render and I did not make any adjustments to the materials in Reality (which is why the axe blade's material is not good). To get results like these with no adjustments or postwork at all is pretty nice. Even if I were to use Reality only as an IBL/HDRI render, it would be worth the price. Seeing how this silly Blonde Bop test I spent a whole hour making has more viewings and favorites than Smacky images I put weeks of work into, perhaps making more semi-realistic scantily-clad female fighting pics is something I should think about.

Now there are a couple of things about Reality that I haven't quite figured out yet; one being that every light seems to give almost exactly the same results. That could simply be because Reality's primary function is to provide real-world lighting, but no matter what type of light I put in the scene, I end up with this sort of 360 degree, IBL-like lighting. I'm also not sure if it's normal to have to turn every light except IBLs up dramatically because the renders begin with them being extremely faint. Another is how to deal with Genesis 2 subdivision, so far I've been unable to disable it from within Studio and I haven't been able to find any tips on how much subdivision to apply to surfaces in Reality to compensate for it.

I think when Reality 3 for Studio is released, I'll enjoy it a lot more. Reality 2 came about before the latest DAZ figures and Studio updates, and appears to have some issues dealing with displacement and geografting. Development logs say that a lot of effort is being put into supporting and improving Genesis and Genesis 2 materials, and hopefully it will inspire more users to share material settings.

I'm going to take a little time now to examine some famous fantasy artists' work and experiment with normal Studio lighting to see if I can get closer to duplicating it. I'm pretty satisfied with how this 2 AM Smacky Test came out, but I couldn't even begin to tell you how I got that result (because I don't remember myself, it was just a blur of Camera Raw and Curves).

Thanks very much for viewing!

Description
I ended up buying Reality and have been experimenting and reading tutorials for the last few days. There are a few things I don't quite understand, but overall it's a very impressive plugin that's fairly simple to use and gives extremely consistent results.

These are two IBL-lit scenes, each took about an hour to render and I did not make any adjustments to the materials in Reality (which is why the axe blade's material is not good). To get results like these with no adjustments or postwork at all is pretty nice. Even if I were to use Reality only as an IBL/HDRI render, it would be worth the price. Seeing how this silly Blonde Bop test I spent a whole hour making has more viewings and favorites than Smacky images I put weeks of work into, perhaps making more semi-realistic scantily-clad female fighting pics is something I should think about.

Now there are a couple of things about Reality that I haven't quite figured out yet; one being that every light seems to give almost exactly the same results. That could simply be because Reality's primary function is to provide real-world lighting, but no matter what type of light I put in the scene, I end up with this sort of 360 degree, IBL-like lighting. I'm also not sure if it's normal to have to turn every light except IBLs up dramatically because the renders begin with them being extremely faint. Another is how to deal with Genesis 2 subdivision, so far I've been unable to disable it from within Studio and I haven't been able to find any tips on how much subdivision to apply to surfaces in Reality to compensate for it.

I think when Reality 3 for Studio is released, I'll enjoy it a lot more. Reality 2 came about before the latest DAZ figures and Studio updates, and appears to have some issues dealing with displacement and geografting. Development logs say that a lot of effort is being put into supporting and improving Genesis and Genesis 2 materials, and hopefully it will inspire more users to share material settings.

I'm going to take a little time now to examine some famous fantasy artists' work and experiment with normal Studio lighting to see if I can get closer to duplicating it. I'm pretty satisfied with how this 2 AM Smacky Test came out, but I couldn't even begin to tell you how I got that result (because I don't remember myself, it was just a blur of Camera Raw and Curves).

Thanks very much for viewing!