Subsurface Shaders... WOW!

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  • MABMAB Posts: 148
    edited December 1969

    Mercedesk said:
    WOW! Something happened! The box popped up, and I chose ignore... uuuhhhh, didn't choose a light set, nor any of those color balls, if I was supposed to, which ones?

    Partials?
    Presets?

    Progress is being made... this is good... I think... better than it was... that's for certain! :)

    Not fully understanding the issues you're getting, but I did forget to mention the need to check which UVs the skin you have applied uses and to be sure to switch it back to those UVs if the shader changes them.

    Hope it all gets figured out. Yeah, my instructions were PC instructions. You on a mac? I can ask a friend what the mac method is, if so.

  • MKeyesMKeyes Posts: 466
    edited December 1969

    MAB said:
    Mercedesk said:
    WOW! Something happened! The box popped up, and I chose ignore... uuuhhhh, didn't choose a light set, nor any of those color balls, if I was supposed to, which ones?

    Partials?
    Presets?

    Progress is being made... this is good... I think... better than it was... that's for certain! :)

    Not fully understanding the issues you're getting, but I did forget to mention the need to check which UVs the skin you have applied uses and to be sure to switch it back to those UVs if the shader changes them.

    Hope it all gets figured out. Yeah, my instructions were PC instructions. You on a mac? I can ask a friend what the mac method is, if so.

    No, it's all good, PC... not a Mac... I'll keep working with it. Thanks!

  • MKeyesMKeyes Posts: 466
    edited May 2013

    Okay, she's a bit too shiny, I agree, especially around the neck to torso... but I may keep doing this to get the right settings, and perhaps workout the realism... thanks for the help!

    Please double click her to get the large zoomed in version.

    SSS1stTRY.jpg
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    Post edited by MKeyes on
  • KinichKinich Posts: 855
    edited December 1969

    In my experience the black colour that some shaders take on when they should be another colour is a combination of Group ID & Shader Scale.

    I did post a few pages back here:- http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/22193/P150/#330938 with a sample picture to help.

    For clothing items a scale of Small or Medium seem to work for me, the Group ID seems to need to be set to avoid clashes with other materials using SSS shaders that use different settings.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,050
    edited December 1969

    More experimentation. This time I lowered the subsurface scatter effect to make it more subtle and bring out the detail in her face. The original settings pretty much annihilated any imperfections and blemishes and gave a more toonish look to her. I think my tweaks came out rather nicely, but what are your thoughts?

    No postwork was used in this image.


    The skin looks nice, but I see some strange shadows (like partial eyelashes?) across the eye surface. More strange shadows from the front hair strand near the scalp and girls left eye. Is this perhaps a shadow bias issue on your light? I like to use shadow bias of 0.1 when I see issues like the broken lash shadow.
  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited December 1969

    This probably comes a bit late but I have a few thoughts that might shed a little light on things.

    One important thing to note is that the !Subsurface Base Shader preset contains no settings. It only loads the base code and attempts to match the settings that were on the surface before the shader was applied. It is better at interpreting the settings of the DS default than it is UberSurface. This is because US has on and off settings for things like reflection.

    For instance, if you load Genesis and apply the "Sample Lana - No Gen" mat preset that comes with Genesis Essentials, you can see that it uses UberSurface as its default skin shader. In those skin surfaces the Reflection Strength is set to 100% but, above it, Reflection Active is set to Off.

    The SSS shader has an internal switch that drops all reflection calculations but only if the Reflection strength is set to 0%. When the SSS shader reads the original surface it sees that reflection should be set to 100% and promptly turns reflections on.

    Similarly, applying over a DS default surface using non-zero ambient strength and ambient maps, the SSS shader will load those settings into the Subsurface color and strength slots. That was a call on my part after discussing it by Dimension Theory. I made that decision based on the fact that ambient works quite a bit differently between the two shaders and because of how many available skin sets there are which use ambient settings to simulate a SSS effect. The Ambient-to-SSS settings may not be ideal after initial application of the SSS base but I figured this might help give a starting point for those wanting to set up SSS based skin.

    So the results you get from just applying the !Subsurface Base Shader preset are bound to not look a bit less than exciting. In some cases you may see no difference at all. Now, depending on how the DS or US original surface was set up, you might double click the SSS base and see something that looks really good.

    Unlike the code-only base shader, when you apply a material preset such as the toon skins, or a shader preset like gummy and plastic, DS will load the SSS shader and apply all the settings as I intended. I expect we will see many new skin sets which use the SSS Shader in the near future.

    The new SSS toolbox from Dimension Theory is loaded with tons of partial presets meaning that they selectively affect certain aspects of the SSS shader settings. These are intended to help people adjust and fine tune the SSS shader settings without the need of hunting down and spinning a lot of dials. Many of them change multiple, complementary parameters at once so you can change things quickly and easily see what is affected by glancing at the icons. I think DT's set will be really helpful in easing the learning curve of the SSS Shader.

    Lastly I want to mention that, although I hope people find it very useful, the base shader is not really meant to be an all or nothing replacement for UberSurface. Each shader has some features that the other doesn't. Omnifreaker did a great job with UberSurface and it is a very useful shader. I'm probably biased, but I like the new SSS shader and intend to use it for all things SSS and also when I need some procedural bump or soft translucency on an item. :) With that said, I know I will still continue to use UberSurface for many other things.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Well that answers a few questions I was about to pose.

    I agree Uber Surface is an excellent resources and has a few functions that are not present in the new shader base so I too will still continue to use it. However with reading the PDF again and getting the Toolbox today I can see the differences in the two straight way.

    What annoys me most is lack of detalled information about US/US2 but this is nor the time or place to moan about that. :)

  • sikotik13sikotik13 Posts: 29
    edited December 1969

    I haven't really messed around with US2, to my knowledge. But I do know that, in general, I have always preferred to mix up different shaders for different surfaces. Kind of like how applying a shader perfect for fabrics is unlikely to get me the same level of detail I want for metals/glass. I do have to say, that I do find US and SSS to be quite complimentary to each other for various objects in scenes (like the one I posted a couple of pages back. The car, in particular, used many textures based on US (Fisty's hardcore utilities, if I remember right for the metals and such), but I LOVE the way the reflections work off of SSS for the "paint job" :cheese:

  • ZamuelNowZamuelNow Posts: 753
    edited December 1969

    Love this new SSS base shader. I specially love the effect on the eyes and teeth. See attached.

    Congratulations AOA!!!!

    What settings did you use on the eyes and teeth for that image?

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401
    edited December 1969

    Greetings,
    This is an out-of-the-blue question, but do these shaders handle light directly behind something partially glowing through?

    So...let's say I set up a lightbulb (a light source of some kind) and surrounded it in a lampshade. Could I apply some variation on a sub-surface shader that showed the glow from the light inside? It strikes me that the classic image of an SSS is the light behind someone's ears shining through redly, which could also work as a lampshade, essentially.

    Thoughts?

    -- Morgan

  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited December 1969

    Cypherfox said:
    Greetings,
    This is an out-of-the-blue question, but do these shaders handle light directly behind something partially glowing through?

    So...let's say I set up a lightbulb (a light source of some kind) and surrounded it in a lampshade. Could I apply some variation on a sub-surface shader that showed the glow from the light inside? It strikes me that the classic image of an SSS is the light behind someone's ears shining through redly, which could also work as a lampshade, essentially.

    Thoughts?

    -- Morgan

    Yes you can. but with a disclaimer...

    SSS really needs a surface for the light to enter and exit. So if you plop a point light inside a single layer cylinder for a lamp shade you won't see any thing or you will see a mess hehe.

    There are 2 solutions. Either use the flip normals switch to turn the SSS calculation inside out which works but is not going to give very accurate results or you can add a second, inside layer to your lamp shade. In that case apply the same shader settings to both the inside and outside surfaces of the lamp shade except make the outside layer flip normals set to 0 and the inside set to 1.

    An easy way to add the layer is to use a geometry shell and off set it slightly.

    I posted an example a while back but can't remember what page it was on.

    SubsurfaceTranslucency.jpg
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  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    barbult said:
    The skin looks nice, but I see some strange shadows (like partial eyelashes?) across the eye surface. More strange shadows from the front hair strand near the scalp and girls left eye. Is this perhaps a shadow bias issue on your light? I like to use shadow bias of 0.1 when I see issues like the broken lash shadow.

    I didn't notice that until you mentioned it. Remedied the problem, and yes you are correct the shadow bias was oddly high for some reason. Thanks for the eagle-eyed observation.
  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,300
    edited December 1969

    Is there any way to turn off Occlusion with this shader?
    I haven't found a way but wondered if there was, my computers not that great and I'm too old to wait for hair to render with Occlusion on.

  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited December 1969

    No. Sorry. I would suggest using UberSurface for hair. It has anisotropic highlights too which look good on hair. That is unless you are doing toon style plastic or gummy hair :) But then I would probably not use transparency maps on that type of hair anyway.

  • shaaeliashaaelia Posts: 613
    edited December 1969

    I'm loving the base shader! Been playing with this image for a while, and here's the (semi) end result...

    Goth girl, using a dial spun Genesis and manupliated Tori V5 skin, with the base shader, skin2 applied.

    Still needs more work, but I'm happy with how it's progressing.

    Goth_Girl7_SSS_w_pw_WEB.jpg
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  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,300
    edited December 1969

    No. Sorry. I would suggest using UberSurface for hair. It has anisotropic highlights too which look good on hair. That is unless you are doing toon style plastic or gummy hair :) But then I would probably not use transparency maps on that type of hair anyway.

    Thanks for the answer, I didn't think it did just wanted to check I wasn't missing something. I do use Uber2 on hair and will stick with that.
    Toon hair is great as it doesn't use transmaps.

  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,300
    edited December 1969

    Woah! That is weird! Off the top of my head I can't think of anything that would cause that. Well... I did think of one thing but, after testing for it, found out that wasn't the cause.

    Thanks for pointing this out. I will look into it and see if there is a way to get the visibility to work. I honestly can't say with any certainty that I will be able to change this though. It is pretty perplexing.

    Have you been able to look into this- I've just realised that it really is a problem, I needed to hide limbs for a render but they are rendering through.
    Thanks

  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited December 1969

    Other than the geometry shell trick no.

    There were some changes to DS and how it handles visibility a while back. I can't remember but it think it was around DS 4.0 maybe DS4.5. From what I recall the change was made to allow for tings like geografting and such.

    I will probably have to work with the DS developers and see if there is something that needs to be changed in the shader mixer plugin or if it is something that can be done in the shader network that I am missing.

    If you want to fill out a bug report that might help DAZ to better track down the source of the issue so they can coordinate with me to resolve it.

    For now all I can suggest is to try saving all of your Genesis settings to a mat file, create a geometry shell (with 0 offset) Hide Genesis then apply your mats to the shell. You should be able to hide parts of the shell that way.

    Alternatively, if it is just a poke through issue you may be able to take the materials to 0% opaque to hide the offending areas.

  • SloshSlosh Posts: 2,391
    edited December 1969

    So sick of losing my posts when hitting submit....

    Anyway, my turn to share some Fun Time with SSS Shaders. This is Ralphling from Netherworks. I had a bit of a chance to use the new Subsurface Toolbox, too. Having my surfaces panel open on the left and the content library with the shaders on the right, I was able to see what each preset did to the settings. Before long, I had a good grasp of what does what.

    AoA, you are brilliant. These shaders are the best money I've spent at Daz so far (except the Genesis character morphs. Love my D5 and A5, and F5).

    I had trouble using the eye settings in the toon shader pack. This character's eye is not like the others. The shader does not apply to the surfaces I had selected (eyewhite, iris, pupil, cornea). I had to apply them to Genesis, then copy and paste to Ralphling. I'm still not so sure they carried over, but I am happy with the end result.

    Ralfling.png
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  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited December 1969

    How fun!

    Yeah, the eye presets in the toon shaders use a custom UV set for Genesis so they are fairly particular.

  • Laticis ImageryLaticis Imagery Posts: 439
    edited December 1969

    Experimenting...a Caramel Troll

    CaramelTroll.jpg
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  • TJohnTJohn Posts: 10,991
    edited December 1969

    Laticis said:
    Experimenting...a Caramel Troll

    That's so sweet and horrible. I wish there was a way to easily duplicate those settings. Great work!
  • WilmapWilmap Posts: 2,917
    edited December 1969

    Laticis said:
    Experimenting...a Caramel Troll

    So good my son thought it was aphoto of a model!:-)

  • Laticis ImageryLaticis Imagery Posts: 439
    edited December 1969

    tjohn said:
    Laticis said:
    Experimenting...a Caramel Troll

    That's so sweet and horrible. I wish there was a way to easily duplicate those settings. Great work!

    LOL - Thanks :)

    Most was preset, I applied the Pink Plastic while holding down CTRL and ignored, the rest trial and error.

    These are the settings.

    CaramelTrollPresets.jpg
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  • Laticis ImageryLaticis Imagery Posts: 439
    edited December 1969

    wilmap said:
    Laticis said:
    Experimenting...a Caramel Troll

    So good my son thought it was aphoto of a model!:-)

    Not a bad idea at all...thanks :)

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Laticis said:
    Experimenting...a Caramel Troll
    LOL Funny and Cool, nicely done and thanks for sharing your settings.
  • Laticis ImageryLaticis Imagery Posts: 439
    edited December 1969

    Szark said:
    Experimenting...a Caramel Troll
    LOL Funny and Cool, nicely done and thanks for sharing your settings.[/quote

    Thanks Szark, no probs at all :) - might do a milk one next.

  • Laticis ImageryLaticis Imagery Posts: 439
    edited June 2013

    Well, here is a new shot.

    This would need a lot more work to get right but more than I am willing to spend over spilt milk :)

    Milk.jpg
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    Post edited by Laticis Imagery on
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    LOL Nope milking a cow isn't like that.

  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,039
    edited December 1969

    When my ss character is against another ss character, there is a glow where the shadow is...almost like somebody used the highlight brush in photoshop on that area. What setting removes it?

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