Not just waxy... Waxy and Wet... (Firefly vs 3Delight)
wancow
Posts: 2,708
I noticed something just now that I hadn't put my finger on before about the Firefly renders we see... Everyone says they look waxy...
But they look wet as well. Or wetter! What I've been seeing in my own work (and that of others who use 3Delight) is that our skin consistently looks very dry...
The question is: is that the key? Is it somehow a specular setting that's going to get us where we want to go?
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For a wetter look, increasing specularity definitely helps to give skin the needed sheen, SSS can help reduce the dry look as well. TheSea posted a couple of images over at rendo with some very detailed information on setup to get great looking skin with SSS (see links below).
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2408276
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2401210
I'm having the opposite problem right now, I keep making the skin look a bit too wet, or maybe I should say it looks like tanning oil was just applied (links to what I'm getting below - warning - nudity). Once you get close, very minor changes to sss and spec seem to make big differences in the resulting image.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2407007
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2306371
It is just the way the two render engines differ in how they handle Specular and SSS. The same could be said in the difference between Carrara and DS or Octane and DS or any other render engine comparisons. Also if you use the UberE that will dry out the skin because of the way 3Delight handles the Ambient Occlusion.
that's all fine and dandy, CypherX. But getting that effect should still be possible. It's the only reason I would ever consider buying Poser again. I haven't had a copy of it since version 5, and have no desire to go back to it except to be able to produce skin materials the way they come out of firefly... I'm certain we can get to that, it's just a matter of how.
If anyone has a good way to get a waxy look out of D/S I would like to talk to you.
I always hated how alot of the sss characters made for poser had that waxy look......but now i have an alien i am working on that could really use that. Unfortunately I am making it for d/s.
(Heck...I would even trade a character set for a good recipe)
Rawn
I'd really like to know how to get the same effect in DS
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/exnem-arianne-character-for-v4/94011/
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2415082§ion_id=1&genre;_id=&page=5&np;
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/edmund/97487/
The Interjection renders on the promos seem to get very close
http://www.daz3d.com/interjection-surface-injections-for-daz-studio
I'd really like to know all the material settings in those images... and lights
I hate the Poser waxy look, but I dunno if any of these looks any waxy to you because of the SSS. None of them have postwork.
If I was trying to do that Probably I'd just mix a strong SSS (I'df forget about SSS maps too) with 2 specular chanels to get a more layered, volumetric feel. One with a wide, soft specular, and the other with a small harder one. Maybe I'd toss translucency. And maybe I'd even do translucency maps to get controled results on where the light will pass through.
I've done Poser renders that looked waxy and others that didn't. I think the quality of the texture has a lot more to do with it than it being a fault of Poser or its render engine. Maybe Poser is just more sensitive to the quality of the texture? I don't know.
This reply is mainly for RawArt, but hopefully it helps all of you. Maybe I am not getting the gyst of the "waxy" effect you want, but I was playing around with the Human Surface Shader a few days ago, trying every setting individually at 10% increments. I found that using the Ambient setting, with a color close to the skin texture you are using (ie, fleshy or peach) yields fairly waxy looking results that look good around 20%. Higher settings with lighter colors give an even more waxlike effect, almost like a candle. The image attached is 3 renders of the Genesis Female with her basic Lana texture. The first figure is no light setup, just basic DS light and basic Human Surface Shader. The second figure is Ambient added with the color RGB 205:154:117 at 20%. The third is the same settings, but with Subsurface activated with a color of RGB 128:0:0. Try playing with these two settings and you can get some nice waxy effects.
To my eyes Interjection looks more like a rubber prosthetic than wax.
I think what Hellboy posted looks a lot more like what Poser achieves than what Interjection does. I am not knocking either though, both are very stylized in their own right. But to believe that 3Delight can do exactly what Firefly can do would require them to both interpolate the same way and they don't. Now you may get close, but exactly the same? I don't see it.
for any related SSS tech recipes you need LIGHTS, moving sliders at desire are useless without a source, or many light sources, remember, SSS is an effect on the surface due to LIGHT.
I would like to post my progress but I hate cropping images due to the forum's rulz.
I hate the Poser waxy look, but I dunno if any of these looks any waxy to you because of the SSS. None of them have postwork.
If I was trying to do that Probably I'd just mix a strong SSS (I'df forget about SSS maps too) with 2 specular chanels to get a more layered, volumetric feel. One with a wide, soft specular, and the other with a small harder one. Maybe I'd toss translucency. And maybe I'd even do translucency maps to get controled results on where the light will pass through.
That first image is probably a good start to get the waxy look I am going for...best I have seen so far for d/s.
Rawn
Very true, but I was hoping to demonstrate that, even without a fancy lighting setup, it is possible to achieve the waxy look. I didn't want to complicate what I was demonstrating by getting into lighting setups. Definitely a must, however, for really nice renders and good skin.:coolsmile:
Completely agree.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/12984/
I was working on it and was proud of my results, in my opinion though, there didn’t seem to be enough people interested in my work.
There were only a few downloads of the samples and few replies to the thread. As a result I stopped working on the project and have been considering sharing all my work, I've just not got around to uploading it all to sharecg. I might try to get around to it this weekend.
I've also been working on a skin shader. I'll offer up the shader free, hoping someone more clever than me can tweak it making it better, in exchange though I need someone to please contribute, I need SSS maps for V4 and M4.
Is someone willing to paint some up and share them?
Settings in the surface tab are the same on both images of the woman, the lights are different though, a specular light brings out the shine.
The frogkin monster, all I did was choose one of my wax settings and, (hold down Ctrl) (Left mouse click) (choose Ignore)
Completely agree.
While speaking about light...
Something that's often overlooked...specular color.
This render the left sphere has a light blue, the middle is grey (rgb 153 153 153) and the right is white...all other settings are the same.
It's pretty easy to achieve looks like that. Your specular area is the area to concentrate on. Set it to like 75 or 65%, use a skin tone that sort of matches the tone of the characters skin and set that 100% to start. To get a slight glow to the skin use the Ambient channel and set that down to about 15% at the most and use the same color you used in the Specular channel. Mess about with the lighting model area. Might want to try the Glossy Plastic. I don't tend to work with the advanced SSS shaders. not bothered with that. Perhaps some day. I stick with the default of what ever is revealed to us natively in the DS Surfaces Advanced tab. Seems to work pretty well for my needs.
The textures and shaders that came with Mr Hyde seem to have all the advanced bells and whistles turned on, SSS, Translucence, Velvet, dual specular channels etc. throw a handful of lights into the mix.. I need to start testing some of these out on other genesis folks and their textures..
Ok. I tried to come with something waxy for Raw AND not-dry for Wancow.
I tweaked the shader on my Hyde image to something more waxy/translucent/alien.
The green tint is all SSS, meaning it looks like normal skin in the viewport and turns green during rendering. There is translucency too.
But as mentioned above, those are effects that react to the current lighting. It’s hard to come with something that will fit most scenarios, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible.
The scene has only one spot light set as “Specular Only” with "No shadows".
The render engine is set to Scripted 3Delight/Point-Based Occlusion, because it’s my favorite.
Holy crap...he looks like carved jade. Not waxy...
HB, that's one of the best damn denim textures I've seen in DS...
And another thing to consider...SSS, translucency and so on will be affected by displacement maps, but not bump/normal. The effects with bump or normal maps will be the same as with no maps. But with displacement maps, they will be different...I'm assuming that at least some of the veins are displacement mapped...and it 'shows' with the translucency and SSS.
Too shiny maybe? :-P
I'm thinking more about an alienish skin for Raw than wax itself. :)
Jade is usually described as having an oily, silky or glassy luster...which is generally 'richer' than waxy...kind of like comparing cream to milk.
Looks really cool Hellboy!!
I think my main problem was I wanted to keep all the cool details in my textures, and get the waxy look...and it seems like you really cannot have the two together.
I was working with something that was getting close, but used more ambient than I liked....but I can justify it that since its an alien they can glow a bit LOL
Rawn
Thanks!
Yeah, that could take a bit of detail, but that’s to be expected so you can always get nice results. :)
Well depending on the lighting and if you're not using translucency maps, you can end with something like ambient.
Hmmm... I have not tried ambient maps. Would be fun to experiment and see what happens. :gulp:
Very cool! Between wax and jade. So you are using the console version of 3Delight? I am never able to get the second specular channel to do much I wonder if it reacts better in the stand alone 3Delight and the Point-Based Occlusion? Extremely well done. :-)
here is where I got so far in keeping the details....but I am still going to push it further
Very cool! Between wax and jade. So you are using the console version of 3Delight? I am never able to get the second specular channel to do much I wonder if it reacts better in the stand alone 3Delight and the Point-Based Occlusion? Extremely well done. :-)
Thank you!!
No, its not the standalone 3Delight... Its the Scripted 3Delight. Its part of DAZ Studio. DAZ Studio have “3Delight” as default engine, you just change it to “Scripted 3Delight” in Render Settings and select the “Point-Based Occlusion” script. I love it.
You just have to make sure the two specular channels don’t have similar settings, otherwise it will be just like having one stronger specular.
What I do is to set one to be subtle and wider, and the other smaller and shinier. I really like how it looks that way.
If you click on the image I just posted, you can see them both, especially on the pecs and abs. It makes things less flat.
Other thing that could be nice to experiment with is the Geometry Shell. It creates a layer on top of the figure, like a skin. So you can have an extra layer of materials on top of the model.
So the added geometry would give the whole object some real [relatively speaking] mass instead of trying to use a strength map for sss? I have used a similar idea here http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17205/P165/#259116 on the cut kiwi but not for subsurface scattering but to give it a translucent outer layer to make it look more slimy. I'll have to try the shell and Scripted 3Delight in DS4.
Very..very cool, many thanks.
Have you tried plugging some variant of the skin texture into the SSS color? That often helps with the loss of detail.
yep..in the sss colour and in the ambient channel....thats how i got it to that level.