Skins. Iray. Rednes. *sigh*
akmerlow
Posts: 1,124
in The Commons
While search shows that it's a common question, i still don't see where to read "instructions for dummies" regarding that. So, well, i render and skin is too red. What should i change to reduce that?
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Base color, translucency, and transmitted color will all affect the skin tone for Iray. The first one to look at would be base color, go to surfaces and select your figures skin areas, avoid things like eyes etc, and then use the color ramp to change the tone. If you have SSS on and are using Chromatic there is also an option to play with tone color that is transmitted by the SSS, although SSS as an option from my recollection has always defaulted to mono.
a) Decrease the Transluncency Color in the Surfaces setting for all the skin surfaces for a model to 50% You can even go to less the 50% but the lower percentage you use the more 'plastic' the skin starts to look.
b) Not enough? Change the Tramsmitted Color from the likely orange salmon color to a barely off-white color or extrememly pale peach or extremely pale pink.
That's it that's easy fast & free. I think Genesis 8 textures & surfaces are designed for ultra-bright indoor 3 light professional photography studio renders and so when that sort of lighting isn't used they look somewhat orange.
Go to the Surface Tab and select Skin.
1. Turn on Iray Preview to make sure you can see what your changes are doing.
2. Then the first thing you should check is the "Translucency Weight" - Generally, with most material maps, the setting looks best between 30% and 60%. There are exceptions to that though depending on the map's color and the skin's other settings. But see if the lowering the Translucency Weight gets rid of the redness.
3. If that doesn't help or looks odd, you can then try to lower the Transmitted Measurement Distance. In my experience, it tends to look best between 18% and 50%. But that is subject to taste and preference though, so go with whatever percentage you think looks best.
Between lowering the Translucency Weight and/or lowering the Transmitted Measurement Distance that usually solves any overly red issues I see. But, if you still aren't getting the redness reduced to your liking:
4. The fourth thing you can try is lowering the saturation of the "SSS Reflectance Tint" color and/or the Translucency Color.
Thank you all for advice!
Ok, i tried some things.. Let's see
1-A how it looks initially, a bit orange
1-B - sss tint decreased to 0.85, this is better. If i mess with other things, they either don't do much effect OR give it very yellow (which might be even worse) look instead...
1-C - that's how character looked on promos, some pale creamy skin huh?
Now, let's see how other material behaves...
2-A - this starts very red!
2-B - after altering base colour, looks this
2-C - and this if i also alter translucency weight
Speaking of which, now i see it's in most cases simple way to change brightness? Compare
3-A - this
3-B - tr. weight reduced
...i hope pics works and, again, thanks for help.. still on research (especially with 1st example)
Your lighting or render settings look quite bright and maybe a bit blown out - lighting will affect the look of a character quite a bit.
Are these Genesis 8 characters or older characters? Some of the older characters are going to take quite a bit more work to get to look right in Iray.
Are you rendering with the headlamp turned on? If you are, try turning it off. Which character are you trying to match the promo of?
Well the ad copy is almost certainly using a very bright 3-point light setup. I never bothered to learn how to do that and instead bought a couple of products in the DAZ Store.
Eg https://www.daz3d.com/boss-pro-light-set-for-portraits-promos
My feeling is that the colors & surfaces settings the models are using are mostly correct and the real problem lies in that there is not nearly enough, nor will there ever be nearly enough, direct and ambient "simulated" light rays bouncing around in a render to make a pale person look truly and accurately pale as in real life at least according to how those PBR rules are set up. It's the same for darker skinned models as well but less noticable because the darkness of the skin obscures those other colors from showing though too much.
If you make the model too SSS or too tranlucent then you get light shine through. If you go the other direction it takes on a hard plastic look. Probably the only solution will be better ray tracer approximations that fudge correctly to make up for the lack of consumer level computers being able to generate enough simulations light rays in the renders.
DAZ 3D has started added a 'low translucency' setting for their DAZ Original characters so they are trying to get a more proper correspondance between ad-copy and what the customer expects without special light sets being bought in the store. Given light's importance to a nice render that is probably the one area of improvement that DAZ should add to DAZ Studio is a extensive and comprehensive set of indoor - outdoor iRay lighting rigs & render setting with bokeh, godrays, studio portraiture, the whole kit and 'lighting techniques' caboodle. I mean that is a basic expectation. Otherwise too many customers walk away befuddled and disappointed.
There is also the product 'Painter's Lights' and many others but make sure you buy for iRay light setups since you are iRay rendering.
1st and 2nd example are g8, third is g3. Speaking of older characters, v4 textures would be most randomly thing from what i've seen, but that's for another thread :o
Looks like i have more serious problems regarding iray basics, huh? I even forgot what headlamp is.. Thanks for heads up.
Thanks for commenting on that too. I haven't attempted complex light setups yet (and test shots above are deafult hdri i guess); but when i'll come to that... any recommendations on tutorials? I'm also interested if you really can apply things from IRL photography setups when, to imitate them (like what we see on those diagrams with light positions etc). Speaking of camera, forgot to add that my test shots were perspective view, was that mistake too?
Well almost everything indoors it going to be an alteration of 3 point.
Outdoors ususally the sun overwhelms the render and can look quite boring without some soft a nice saftening shadows casting patterns like leaves from a tree, shadows from lattic work, and so on. One you alter the skin surfaces setting to what you personally prefer you renders will look not so much blown out as natural for pale skins and that's just how they are.
If you want also interesting indoors or outdoors you are going to find you going to have use something interesting to cast shadow otherwise all your renders are going to be done with what looks like the main light source is at 9AM, 12PM, or 3PM for the most part, which is what most portraits do so then...
I had forgotten all about Painter's Lights, but this still appears in the Daz store search box as a suggestion when typing in 'painter' ...BUT.... I cannot see it in the store. Thankfully I bought these around Christmas of 2016, but they appear to be no longer available. All links to the product have sadly gone from my account products page. I also can't remember off-hand who the PA was who made these.
Painter's Lights (which I use all the time!) were by J.Cade - who appears to have gone missing from the store.
Oh what a shame he/she meticulously researched & constructed that product. It's easy to use & light weight. That is a product that needed directly included as a DAZ Studio 'Essential' along with some other light settings.
By the way, i have an idea who the culprit is..
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/175701/genesis-8-and-daz-studio-4-8x
So redness is that "lobster" thing due to difference between 4.9+ settings?
Yet, do what you suggested above truly works as workaround, or there are some things "it couldn't be helped"?
Besides skin redness, i guess other thing i have problems with when i stay on 4.8: no dforce, not advanced version of powerpose; maybe something else
Instead of turning down translucency which can make a character paler, you can instead change the translucency color to something less red saturated. If it's presently white, make it a very pale green.
If Chromatic SSS is on the skin, put red in the color channel for that to remove it. If translucency is already low, put a pale green in the SSS reflectance channel.
Worth chosing a different base skin for G8 perhaps?
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/?item_id=80017&ca ; [Free]
Somewhat better skin for Genesis 8 Female byneversayyourrealname
Makes the color of the Genesis 8 Female (Base Figure) less mustard-ish, and closer to regular skin color, without needing to use light sources that have increased temperature.
Different skins is always an option (as well as using old gen skins through uv), it's just might be helpful to learn more about skin rendering! :) Thanks for pointing, though