I did these in ZBrush quite a while ago, but I’ve recently been playing around with them in Keyshot. I’m trying to improve the render and make it look better, so please give as much criticism, feed back and suggestions as you can. What can I do to improve the render?
I’m not really sure it looks pleasing to the eye. 
Thank you for looking. 
What can I do to improve the render?
First of all, those are some nice looking orcses–already great models. However, if you want to improve your render, there are some things you can do.
Obviously, painted and textured models always look nicer. Give those things a coat of paint, and assign them some materials in Keyshot.
If you want the models to look like an unpainted statue or miniature, give them a more appealing surface material like a clay, or a pitted pewter, or a wax or plastic with SSS effects. Get some different render passes, for instance an all white one with heavy ambient occlusion effects, and composite it with the color passes in photoshop, allowing you fine control without having to re-render.
You don’t have to render them with a backdrop, but the grey on grey isn’t the most interesting. Light them with a more interesting environment in Keyshot (remember the lighting environment doesn’t need to be rendered as the backdrop )–something thats gets some different colored light in there-- and pick a backdrop that makes the models pop a bit more. It doesn’t have to be a photographic background–this could be done with simple color contrast, or tonal contrast, or both.
Thanks for the reply. 
I’m glad you like the models.
I’m pretty new to Keyshot. At the moment it is a plastic material, but it doesn’t appear to have any options for SSS effects in it. And I don’t have the bridge so I can’t use those great clay materials everyone is using.
I completely agree with what you say about the background. There’s so much of it and it’s so flat.
I currently use three custom light objects in the scene, with no lighting from the environment. I’m going to be away for a week or two, but I’ll have a play around and post the results when I come back. Thank you so much for your help.
This was my recent post concerning this subject:
This was Etcher-Sketcher’s advice:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?78703-Etcher_Sketcher/page59&highlight=Etcher_Sketcher
You can save out different material renders in Zbrush using BPR renderpass; then load in PS using file/script/load as stack and it will load each picture as a separate layer. This might be easier in Keyshot since you can save camera positions much more easily - this is my list of materials, layer filters and opacity, in the order shown, used in my Adam Warlock render which may prove a good starting point for a dynamic render:
Mask
Pearl Cavity - overlay - 72%
Bright Copper - saturation - 18%
Red Latex - soft light - 12%
Hair0? - soft light - 36%
Titanium - divide - 12%
Boing - color dodge - 36%
Hell’s breath - soft light - 44%
Graphite - color dodge - 48%
Mercury - color dodge - 12%
Droplet - soft light - 12%
Basic Material rim - subtract - 24%
Basic material spot - divide - 24%
Basic material rim & spot - soft light - 18%
BM2 rim & spot - luminosity - 12%
BM2 spot - color dodge - 36%
BM2 rim - lighten - 64%
SSS - divide - 13%
AO - darken - 44%
Shadow - soft light - 12%
Depth - soft light - 36%
Render - 100%
This was done with only two lights; a standard shadow casting sun type set as white at 1.06 strength shining from the upper left, and a radial sun type set as white at 1.24 strength placed near the middle of your figure to give that sweet rim lighting. Admittedly, the lighting only matters when rendering non-matcap materials, but keeping your lights uncolored allows for color adjustment in your 2D compositing software.
Hope this provides somewhat of a stepping off point for your renders.
https://www.keyshot.com/resources/downloads/materials/
https://gumroad.com/d/1133c5185d4dccaab596d83a1899c07f
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLahwMium9Zxy8hHuVni4N_WijdKqq3IzJ
All pertinent links =]
