I actually probably will go over her tutorial. but not until this weekend. Sadly, my time during the week is very limited to work on what I love, which is one reason why it irritates me to find myself doing the same thing over without getting any closer to rendering a picture.
As it is, I’m having fun with some of the things discussed here. I’m using the Basic Male Genesis figure. Then I loaded in a nice skin texture that I bought someplace else. Next, I fixed all the specular maps, highlight maps, color, reflection, etc to have the correct values. Then I loaded in the Elite M4 Shinymap to get some variation to the skins. Then loaded in the M4 displacement maps, which I’m running at 25% displacement (Multiplier shader with texture map for first node and percentile for second)
Now I’ve loaded in Howie’s asian garden (because I love it so) and imported the model I’ve been working on… and have since been tweaking settings. To cut down on the hotspots I put a translucent white panel between my figure and the sun. To lighten the shadows on his face I’ve added a white plastic panel opposite the figure from the sun. So as you can tell, I have gotten a little bit sidetracked. It is rendering right now.
That’s awesome! You should really have fun during those rare times that one is supposed to have fun!
Just another darn tip you can use or discard at your leisure:
Instead of using the displacement tab, try multiplying that displacement map with your bump map in the bump channel - or just add instead of multiply. Then you need to turn up the bump value in the top shader setting to get them both in there. Just something I’ve been using to save render time, but it doesn’t actually displace then… which might not be what you want. For further cool lighting results, try running a mixer in the highlight channel with your darkened spec map in one mixer channel and your displacement map in the other and mix the disp. map in enough to really show of what the displacement map is performing.
One of these days I’m going to take a day off, and just play for fun!
Oh wow, I never thought to use a multiply on the bump map and use it there. I can even split the two maps again to allow each to have it’s own percentage, which would let me give a heavier weight to one map or the other! Thanks!
And the animation was cool, though I was expecting to see more shapes then just the well endowed girl. I’m still fiddling with my own render here. Luckily, render time I can do at work, though I don’t have access to my renderfarm from there.
Here’s something else, regarding your latest thoughts:
Operations > Mixer, instead of Multiply
Then for the blender, select value 1-100
That value will blend the two, one from the other. 0 = 100% first channel, 100 = 100% second, and 50 = 50/50 split - so you can adjust everywhere in between.
Also, That busty girl is my wife. I use her in nearly all of my creations. Consider me a bit biased that way! lol
Oh wow, I never thought to use a multiply on the bump map and use it there. I can even split the two maps again to allow each to have it’s own percentage, which would let me give a heavier weight to one map or the other! Thanks!
And the animation was cool, though I was expecting to see more shapes then just the well endowed girl. I’m still fiddling with my own render here. Luckily, render time I can do at work, though I don’t have access to my renderfarm from there.
Boojum
I live in the shader room lol I have come up with some pretty scewball ideas just to see if it works, and so far most of them have
Try this. You can light a scene with just a shader, yes a shader. I have a few scenes where the only light in the scene is from the glow channel of a shader. Just turn on indirect lighting and render.
Want lights on your scifi console? Make a glow map. Some times the panel texture in the glow channel is enough.
Bump maps can be used in the displacement channel. Doesn’t replace an actual displacement map, but works great for weathered materials.
How do you get a wet body look? Shine and highlight maps.
Why do you think I love Genetica? Because it can make all these effects maps; plus normal maps, for any texture I make, as well as make mock effect maps for others textures.
ARRRRRGGGG! I did something wrong and now my character has no longer shows in the render, just in the preview. I’ve checked the figure settings to make sure it didn’t get flipped to not visible. I have closed and gone back into Carrara. This is REALLY frustrating now. Oh well, another day before I get anything renered. Time for me to go catch the train again.
And thanks for the welcome back! :D I’m sorry that I’ve been gone for so long, but I got out of the habit of working with carrara when genesis came out and there was no support for it. So I couldn’t play with the new stuff I’d bought.
Thanks for all the input.
I have challenged myself to build a Ready2Render Carrara Character package this weekend, starting with V4.
If it works out, V5 is next.
I’ll probably need to ask a few things, to be continued…
Why do you think I love Genetica? Because it can make all these effects maps; plus normal maps, for any texture I make, as well as make mock effect maps for others textures.
I just got Genetica Basic, but haven’t tried it yet. Normal maps too, eh? Probably not in Basic, but I think even that is pretty potent texture editing/creating software. Looking forward to using it
As for your other shader experiments, I like to just hang out in that room too… see what happens. I really like your idea with indirect light and glow. I’ll have to mess with that
BooJum, the Brown Bunny,
I don’t know what you’re doing, but it ain’t right. This stuff isn’t that darned hard. We need to just sit down and start from scratch one of these days. You’ll smack your little brown, furry forehead and go, ohhhh maaannnn! lol
Don’t worry man, we’ll get this all straightened out for ya.
Ok, I have an acceptable skin for my character Strethem. He was built using a combination of advice here, parts of the M4 Elite Carrara skin, a high quality texture map that I like. A full figured render (Yes he’s wearing pants) can be seen at http://www.alchemicalcreations.com/pictures/StrethemCarrara.png
But I’m attaching a closeup render of what I did here so that people can admire and let me know if they spot things I did wrong. It should be noted that I’m not completely happy with the eyes, I’m still working on them.
Thanks for all the input.
I have challenged myself to build a Ready2Render Carrara Character package this weekend, starting with V4.
If it works out, V5 is next.
I’ll probably need to ask a few things, to be continued…
Well, at half time and I got a new set og V4 Carrara shaders to work with my new textures, but I had to cheat using some bump maps and specular maps from regular V4 packs. Looks like merchant resources don’t ship with bump and specular maps, you have to make them yourself.
No idea how to make good ones though.
Looks like the first character will be the hardest to do, lots of texturing work…
having a few times swapped the Carrara shaders around to match the Genesis order I got to thinking, it should be doable to create a plugin to automate this.
Not just Genesis, any universal shader.
Many universal shaders load in as a parametric layers list, esp on FBX import and change one shading domain in the vertex room and they are all out of whack.
The problem is they all show as one shader and only going into the layers you can find the seperate ones, which I then drag out and reassign to each domain manually.
a plugin that reassigns them back to each shading domain instead of each having “none” would help by itself.
while the order may not be right, it at least is easier than going through the shader tree.
with Genesis having a set order a plugin to reassign the V4 & M4 order to correspond would be extra usefull.
Ok, I have an acceptable skin for my character Strethem. He was built using a combination of advice here, parts of the M4 Elite Carrara skin, a high quality texture map that I like. A full figured render (Yes he’s wearing pants) can be seen at http://www.alchemicalcreations.com/pictures/StrethemCarrara.png
But I’m attaching a closeup render of what I did here so that people can admire and let me know if they spot things I did wrong. It should be noted that I’m not completely happy with the eyes, I’m still working on them.
Boojum
Bravo! Nice work, my friend! Also, I’ve tweaked my Rosie characters eyes for a couple years now, and I still don’t consider them done! lol
I really like what you’ve done with this skin shader. Highlight channel appears to be working really well with the Shininess channel settings, Great texture map, I really like what you’ve done! Great job!
but not until this weekend. Sadly, my time during the week is very limited to work on what I love, which is one reason why it irritates me to find myself doing the same thing over without getting any closer to rendering a picture. 
