3DL glossy lips tricks using default Surface settings?

RAMWolff

Having a hell of a time getting a glossy lip effect in 3Delight without having some weird outline around the lips.  Any tricks I can try without resorting to any of the Uber stuff?  Like to keep it simple. 

Thanks!

 

Richard Haseltine

For which figure? The Genesis 3 figures include some of the fae skin in the lips surface, so if you want to adjust the lip glossiness or specularity you will need a greyscale strength map to keep the value on the skin matching the rest of the face.

RAMWolff

Ah, I have a glossy map set up but that doesn't seem to work very well, in fact makes it worse.  I've been playing around with some SSS settings and am having some better luck but really hate all the extra settings, confuses my old brain too much!  lmao You know I develop for the Hive so no, it's not Genesis!  *wink*

Odaa

It looks like the problem is that the lip surface doesn't line up perfectly with where your character's lipstick or lip shape end. It seems like anything you did with a specular map on the lips would require you to make another specular map for the rest of the face, with the values on that outer lipstick smear (mapped to the face surface, not the lip surface) set up to resemble what's on the lips. Tweaking specular color might also help to blend it more with the face skin.

You probably already know about messing with the amounts of both glossiness and specular strength. It seemed like my 3Delight rule of thumb was that skin and hair looked best with both set around 60-70%. Glossiness controls the "spread" of the shiny areas (higher the value, the less ground area the shiny spots cover), and specular strength controls the intensity.

RAMWolff

Thanks.  I think the lip maps are lined up but sometimes when importing into Photoshop, it's a weird bug or feature that I don't care for, the stupid maps come in slightly off center and then dealing with bits like lips that are freefloating can be more troublesome than I care to deal with.  Probably why I really need to sit my ass down and learn to paint in 3D so I can get my maps perfectly laid out to begin with.  I fix seams in 3D programs but not gone full board yet with using ZBrush, Blacksmith or 3DCoat to do a full setup!  *sigh* I need to clone myself and improve my patience!  lol