Digital Art Zone

This is Stephanie 5 mixed with basic child, trying to make a young teen. Used Ethnicity African Morphs and Candace texture.

Gorgeous render.

anikad - 19 November 2012 04:45 PM

Noticed these two on Rendo yesterday, are these already on your list?
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/ira-for-v4/84492/ad
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=83388

Whilte looking for them again today I also noticed
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/rm-tyara/85311
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/rm-kanani/87261
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/minx-for-v4/90756

Thanks.  Several of these I had seen before but forgot to add.  Sorta dislike the arms on Ira but I’m here more as a record keeper than a gatekeeper so she was added.

anikad - 20 November 2012 10:55 PM

Gorgeous render.

Thank you.

Hi all,
I’m a newcomer to the thread and I just wanted to introduce myself. I love this tread. It’s so fantastically wonderful and very needed. I write books and the females main characters are Black and the covers have to be as good as the books. Creating beautiful renders and having this tread is absolutely necessary because I’m much better at writing then rendering. I’m still looking for ways to darken the texture of my morphs to get a better render so having this tread really helps. I’ll try to add some renders as soon as I can figure how why it’s not working. LOL.
Thanks again for this thread, I’m eager for more.

While we’ll need to the images to figure out what difficulties you may be having, my initial guess would be that the problem is either the lighting or the direct diffuse/specularity settings of the skin.  Regardless, it’s great to see when people are getting use out of this.

Thanks Zam

I was thinking more about why I can’t post one of my renders. But I did ask about the tanning or darkening skins tones with a program that I saw a while back that I can’t find anymore. In one of the posts someone stated this.

The title of the thread is:
Tanning or Shading of Skin Texture Maps - HELP Can’t find it.

The post can be found at:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/167160/

227,227,227 > 227.226,198 > 215,227,205 > 227,212,188 > 141,132,117

Each of those RGB colors will darken a Caucasian skin texture, the first
gives a lightly tanned color, each color gets progressively darker with the
last one giving a dark brown skin tone, the middle three also add a “tint”
for Oriental/Arabic etc.

While I may use this some time soon I would love to find that program. Anyway, thanks for the reply.

There’s also a few more skin darkening tips in the first post.  However, I’m curious about where your images sit on the scale of stylized versus realistic.  That does have an affect on how well that method works.  Also, there’s varying freebies to use: http://rendercandy.com/index.php/cPath/25?osCsid=80b67ca460729c53e59253ac70706c21

This is an old render. Some may have seen this before. I’m working on a new one for another cover. I hope to be able to add it and get feebback soon.

This is Cyrus from Rendercandy with several tweeks. And the female is SASE’s Roz on Renderosity with several tweeks as well.

The overall structure of the image actually looks good.  It looks a little flat but that’s purely a lighting problem.  Though if you’re like me, the computer will sometimes complain about the lighting (...crash…) if there’s two human figures.  The depth of field is subtle but it looks good.  A sharper font (beveling? shadows?) would help as well but that’s getting into general composition outside of rendering.

BTW, Daz 3 or 4?

ZamuelNow - 24 November 2012 05:39 PM

There’s also a few more skin darkening tips in the first post.  However, I’m curious about where your images sit on the scale of stylized versus realistic.  That does have an affect on how well that method works.  Also, there’s varying freebies to use: http://rendercandy.com/index.php/cPath/25?osCsid=80b67ca460729c53e59253ac70706c21

I’m not sure what you mean by “stylized versus realistic”. I’m not looking to turn caucasian morphs into ethnic morphs per se. I’m looking to create more “real” looking skin and many of the ethnic characters I’ve found have ashy looking skin that just makes me want to buy some Eucerin Cream. LOL.

What I’ve done recently is use several of Rendercandy’s skin textures and body morphs to get the “right” look on other renders I did for fun. Cyrus’ skin was so good I just couldn’t let my female character have any less for her skin. In fact, I wasn’t happy with just about all of the skin textures I found, free or otherwise. I finally found Elite Texture Natasha for her and it worked well against Light Cyrus

I’m using Daz3d 4 and considering downloading and installing 4.5. It just took me a long while to learn Daz and the screen setup I have I like and can use well. If things change I will be completely lost. As for lighting, you are very right. My biggest problem is lighting. I even purchased Reality 2.0 and that was a mistake. I printed the manual and tried to follow the tutorial and nothing worked the way the program or tutoral lead me to believe. I’ve even asked for help in the Daz forum and from the developer of the program with no really understanding as to what to do. I’ve spend days and days working on the lighting and still I have problems with even getting the shadows I should be getting. I’m going to work on it more when I’m ready to dive into a new cover that I need for the next book.

LJWM - 24 November 2012 06:23 PM

I’m not sure what you mean by “stylized versus realistic”. I’m not looking to turn caucasian morphs into ethnic morphs per se. I’m looking to create more “real” looking skin and many of the ethnic characters I’ve found have ashy looking skin that just makes me want to buy some Eucerin Cream. LOL.

Some skins, regardless of ethnicity, are rather obviously made from photo referenced people.  Others look more like they were “created” with the absolute extreme being toon/anime skins while most hover somewhere in the middle with a look more like many airbrushed magazine covers.  It was noted a while back that several of the black male skin photo references are likely coming from the same exceptionally small number of models and thus the “ashy” skin across many figures is simply a byproduct of that.  Probably also has to do with how the models were initially photographed.

For your image, how is the lighting setup?  As in the types of lights, angle, color, etc.

I completely agree with the ashy skin problem. And yes, I want all my renders to be realitic. As for the lighting I used with the above render, well, it’s been a while but all I can remember is that I tried to do the one light source thing from the orange light that was coming from the back of the figures but each time the render was too dark to even really see the figures. I had to keep adding light until I could see the detail. I added tons of light all over the place which washed out the shadows but there was no other way to get it to even render with any clearity. I worked on it over and over and over again for at least five days. I’m still frustrated by lighting but I will work on it again…someday.

Well, here’s a few free light options.  First image is using Four Lights for Daz Studio 3.  It’s a simple setup using multiple distance lights.  When I use it, I tend to tweak it slightly such as turning the shadows off one or more lights or adjusting the angle slightly.  I feel these are pretty good to experiment with.

Second and third images use Arah3D Subtly Soft Lights For DS Bonus Freebie.  For some kinds of scenes these work really well but note that lights using UberEnvironment take longer to render.

Trying out my new texture for Zamuel with Daz’s African morphs for Genesis and Thorne’s Morph Kits… I like the results:)