So if folks are wondering on how I do this portrait rendering, here follows a quick and dirty run down:
Place to start, is a tutorial I made some time back, it was part of a lightmap tutorial. But this part deals about setting up the render engine and lighting:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/kw7btvf80epzcyp/Lights%26Render.pdf
I'll now list a few extra tweaks, I found that improved the look of the portraits. Since the above mentioned tutorial deals more with lighting an area instead of a character.
A first note/ change, when reading the tutorial, the step where you switch 'on" Global Illumination. Step 2 on the screenshot ;-)
There is a small box called Multiplier, it has a value of 1,0. You can enter 5,0 in there.
Below that is Maximum Photons per sample; this is set to 500. Jack it up to 40.000.
Keep following the instructions about how to setup the lights and other bits. Nothing changes there.
Next use MDLops to compile your model to ASCII. Use NWmax to import.
Now to get a good shot of the character, first, make a big box that surrounds the model. Turn the box into a Edit Poly. Then Chamfer the back ceiling and floor edges.
Then delete front and sides. Select by Element, click on the box. Then use the Flip button. So that all faces, now, face inwards.
With all the faces still select, scroll down to smooting options. Click on autosmooth. Deselect the faces.
Open the Material editor ( M-key). Change any slot, from the Standard material to Arch&Design.
In the options of this material, there is a drop down list. Pick 'Pearl Finish'. Apply this material to the chamfer 'box' background.
Add in some lights. Three to 4 lights works best.
This is how my scene looks like:
View of the material thingy I talked about:
Select any viewport, just click on it. Hit P-key to change it to an Perspective 3D view. Move around the view. Untill you get the shot of the character you want.
Then hit Ctrl+C to create a camera. Next hit Shift+F. This will set the Safe Frame. The view port now has the same size and dimensions as what your rendered image will be.
If that is set at 800x600pix, the view will now look like that. If it is set at 1024x1024 the viewport will now be square. You can further tweak the camera, even move it around in the other viewports. You'll see the changes in the 3D viewport instantly.
For the skins of the character I just use the Standard material. I drop the skin into the Diffuse slot. But also into the Spec Color, Spec level; Glosiness and Bump slots.
I then play around with the specular values and the glosiness. For human skin I mostly go for Spec 55 and gloss 35. Bump I scale back to 15 or 5.
You can play around with the values, it just depends on what you want. Just experiment, do lots of little test renders. Best @ 512x512 for example. Quick to do and you get a good idea on how the end result looks like.
This is just a very quick run down of things. I might create a more noob friendly tutorial later on.