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Okay, now I think I really do have it. In the Render Target settings Kernel increase Specular Depth from 5 to 60. Increase Diffuse depth to 8 for good measure. Did that solve it?
Ok this is with specular depth 60 AND I also turned on fake shadows in the specular node and got this. Without fake shadows on it was still a dull grayish brown, was fake shaows supposed to be on originally as well? but now there is also a pink ring around the eyes
Wow! Great work! You've solved it for yourself. Excellent. Now if I could only figure out how to do this exact same thing in Iray. The ring around the eyes could be due to the lack of geometry to enclose the back side of the eye mesh, allowing light in from behind. I've not experimented with closing off the eye mesh from behind so I cannot verify that this is indeed the problem. There is a flap of sorts along the inner eye where the polygons are very close together and might perhaps be creating a screening effect. Fake Shadows are not intended to be engaged, but the setting clearly has helped in this case. I'm not sure if there is an issue with the plug-in or if there is more to my Render Target than meets the eye. But I'm glad we're at least getting there.
He's a bit too shiny, obviously. I'd mayeb reduce Reflection from 5 to about 2. But I must say again the way the light penetrates the skin feels very natural to me. Surprisingly good. Please do post more experiments and findings. Thanks for taking the time to try this out.
I want to thank you so much for helping me out with this. It makes me want to redo all the images in my gallery lol. So much more realistic than the shaders I have been buying.
Sorel,
My thanks goes to you. I knew the shader had potential but I'd never seen what other people would do with it. The skin in this latest render of yours looks as good as any I've seen from CG rendering. You've done a great job.
I probably could make this shader for sale, but I suspect before long the secret would be out anyhow. I'm just glad to know it works.
But maybe you're the guy to help me out with something I've been vexed by for weeks. One thing you might help me with is Iray. I've been trying to reproduce these exact same fleshy skin effects in Iray but the way the DS/Iray shader system is laid out leaves me confused. For example, I have no idea what purpose Top Coat would serve for human skin when as you can see we can get plausible looking reflections and highlights without resorting to Top Coat in Octane (because there is no top coat option in Octane). That's just one of the issues.
These are the snags I've run into trying to reproduce this effect in Iray. For one thing, Octane has a 5 separate materal node types including a Specular only node which has to be combined with a Glossy node via Mix material to produce the desired effect. But Iray only has 3 material node types including a Specular/Glossy node. This is fine in a sense because the Octane version is technically a combo of Specular and Glossy, but the difference is that the Specular effect needs to outweight the glossy significantly which the Mix material in Octane allows easily with the Amount slider. So one of my first questions is how does one create a bias toward the specular aspects of the material and away from the glossy aspects until the desired proportion of 90/10 is reached?
Also, Iray uses "weight" sliders that I have yet to make any real sense of. Octane's approach is very different so I have no equavlent item to compare the weight sliders to. But on the other end, Iray seems to lack Gamma controls for each image file. So for the Glossy material Diffuse input, the gamma needs to be altered significantly for the result to be as expected. So, how do I accomplish this in Iray? I suspect the weight sliders might be equivalent to the Gamma sliders...but I'm not sure. Maybe weight in Iray is similar to Power in Octane. See, totally confused.
If you could play around with it and let me know what you find I'll be very pleased indeed. Thanks for your time.
I actually have not touched iRay at all. I never felt the need to since I have octane, and like you, iRay's layout seems alien to me, more than what octane's setup was when I first started using it. I plan on trying to release characters here ats ome point, and only then will I have to actually learn iray, so perhaps then I will play around with the settings.
Sorel, that looks incredible. Rashad, your skin shader work here is absolutely tremendous. I'm trying to experiment and replicate what you've done using Octane for Carrara, so should be a simply step by step but I'm getting very similar results to what Sorel was getting at first in Studio, except of course I never use Studio :) I can see that PhilW was immediately able to get a very nice effect, wonder what I'm doing wrong.
By the way, you could absolutely sell this in the store, I almost feel bad getting something this excellent without recompensing you in some way. Simply incredible skin work, I'm not sure why I'm unable to replicate it but I'll keep tinkering and rechecking my settings.
IBL test in Maxwell Render.
Used Maxwell Render Plugin for Daz Studio, Daz Studio 4.8.0.59, Maxwell Render 3.2.0.
Great work guys. I have just discovered your post having spent ages trying to get a skin I was happy with. I have been working with a simple mix of the tonysculptor r20 shader and a simple glossy material. Here's my gallery, most of the latter ones are with this shader - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/105592
I have been happy with them, but havn't really understood what I was doing with them, so this thread will be of great interest to me
That skin looks great! Nice job.
Jonstark,
Much thanks for the very kind words. I might indeed decide to include this skin rendering method with a package of some sort sometime in the near future, so I suggest downloading all of the materials needed now in case I was to change my mind about it being public. For now it remain public.
For you and my fellow OR4C users I have included the items you will need. Simply replace the included bump and color maps with those of your chosen fair skinned texture and render away. Make sure you load the Render Target into the OR4C for the exact results. Please report back your findings.
Here's the link:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4IpzCJ1fXpeNzlSb0p5ak9tRVE&usp=sharing
Sainsy,
That tonysculptor r20 skin looks awesome. It is apparently a mix where both nodes are specular. Very compelling. If I might make a simple request of you for curiosity sake? The shot of her back; could would you be willing to test render my set-up using the exact same scene and model? I have included above all the tools needed to make this happen in Octane. The Render target settings might disagree with the mood of the scene, I'm sure you can find ways to compensate. This backlit scenario is just the perfect place for comparing different approaches. But I'd say the two approaches dont really differ all that much. Just that tonysculptor is based on real world understanding, and my own is based on too many hours of testing and good luck. I look forward to any insights you might provide.
Rashad - no problem. I will have a look and see what I can do :-)
Thanks!!
I'm actually getting the exact same result using your .cbr file as I was when I set up the step by step, so I think the difference must lie in the 'Render Target' you mention, though I have no idea what that is or how to set it up. Although the share file you set up doesn't allow me to download the render target file, I still was able to open it, copied all the text in it, then opened a notepad and pasted the text there, and then saved that as an .ocs file, but I don't really know how to use it or reference it once I have Octane for Carrara open and rendering.
I've updated the folder and included the render target in Carrara format. All you need to do is to select Scene from the Instance List. Scroll to the bottom and you will see Octane Render Target. Load the file there. Please report back with any questions. Thanks for taking the time to work on this with me.
LpProject,
How long has the Maxwell Render for DazStudio Plug-in been around? For some reason I feel like this is the first I;ve heard of it. Nice to see DS reaching out to so many rendering packages. She looks really good to me, I especially like her thighs. I will have to have a look at this plug-in. Deep down I want to own them all but I know that's not possible.
Even with the render target loaded, I'm still getting similar results, can't figure out what it is I'm doing wrong here...
Jonstark,
Actually its working exactly as it should. I can see the mistake both yourself and Sorel may have made to some degree. Don't think of the skin on the face as a muddy brown. You're basing your expectations on the way the other body parts appear under this lighting which is giving a false impression because the rest of the skin is highly overblown. It's an illusion. The face is likely correct, its the rest of him that needs to be brought into the fold. I'm finding generally with unbiased render engines that they do much better when there is plenty of light available. Higher Exposure settings. Higher Gamma settings. Stronger Octane Environment settings. It's safer to err on the side of too much light rather than too little. Try these exact steps.
1. Go ahead and trust the formula and apply the shader to all of the body parts.
2. At this point it will all seem to be a muddy brown, but that is because you need to introduce some sort of a key light source.
3. You can tone down the background considerably so it doesnt seem so bright white.
Report back soon. I'm right next to the computer today so we can go back and forth pretty quickly to find the solution.
Jonstark,
Lower the Octane Environment Power from 1 to 0.600. This should fix the overblown background. It is in the Scene Tab.
Well, shoot I feel a little foolish I went away for a little bit thinking it would be a long while before the thread progressed not realizing you would answer right away :) Thank you for all your effort and follow up on this Rashad. I can see what you mean, but I suppose that means I'll have to rework the other shaders too to match, the eye whites (sclera) look like flashlights, but the rest looks quite good, even though the iris's don't look too bad. I can see that this method means for a bit longer render time. I've just set up a standard 'clamshell' lighting rig with 2 octane emissive lights and the default Octane background, I'm curious about how this will work inside an enclosed scene with Octane emitters, if I have the crank the lights up in intensity I'm worried it will overblow the rest of the scene, but even if I have to alter all the other scene shaders to match, there's now doubt this is a tremendous skin shader you have come up with. I'll try in an enclosed scene next to see, but it may take some time to set one up.
No worries. We've got a good pace going now. The eyebrow reminds me about one additional map that is required for situations where there is hair painted onto the color map, such as eyebrows. Hair is significnaly smoother than skin so a single Roughness color value might not be enough to do it justice. In the Roughness input, instead of using the simple standard grayscale color slider, switch it instead to a grayscale image. You want to create a mask where the image is fully white with the eyebrows as nearly black (not completely black). Load this image into the slot. Naturally, you will assign this image a Power of 0.150. This should create a strong varation in the rflection and specular of the hair strands comapred to the smooth skin around them preventing the eyebrows from turning greyish for too much roughness.
Rashad, Sorel, and Jonstark - Great stuff! THANKS!
Rashad, thanks for sharing your settings, looking forward to playing with them when I get a chance.
I did this image using a specular/glossy combination with the DS plugin almost a couple of years ago. When I upgrade the plugin, I couldn't open the file anymore to see what I did. So the info here will help a lot to reproduce the settings. This render is not as good as what everyone else has posted, but I think I was headed in the right direction.
Looks like the plugin is progressing well - great reander!
Awesome skin shader and render!!
Wow ! this thread never ceases to amaze me. Fabulous renders
I think, In near days I can get public beta link for Maxwell Render Plugin.
Thanks.
Another Maxwell Render Test.
V6 HD, Toulouse Hair, Front Slit Dress for G2F, High Rise Party Dress's shoes.
without postwork
So I was doing some more experiemtns with skin, I used the tonysculptor R15 skin and made some adjustments. I changed the diffuse node to a glossy node, changed the absorbtion color on one of the specular node so I could get more a red for the sss. I feel like the tony sculptor one makes the skin look closer to it's actual texture map color. I do like both though, what do y'all think? Rashad's version on the left, and edited tonysculptor on the right.
Sorel,
One thing is certain, there are a million ways to skin a cat. It's good to play around with the parameters and to find the settings that most appeal to you. I'd say both of these look quite good. I actually do prefer the one on the left for a couple of subtle reasons.
We are not only modeling the skin surface, but the behavior of the flesh beneath it to some degree. The reason for the blue'greenishness of my formula was to draw a greater difference between areas of direct and indirect light. For example, in areas where skin protrudes, such as the ripples of the abdomen muscles or the fingertipe, the SSS becomes redder. But in areas that curve away from the light, the color shifts toward blue/green. The total result means we can literally see the parts lit by strong light "warming up."
I'd say, as a darker skinned person, that it is surprising just how green/blue many paler skinned individuals can be. While everyone strives for the perfect tan, unless they have exactly that, in areas where the skin is the thinnest some amount of blue and green will show forth.
And that brings me to the skin thickness issue. Because of the blue/green to red interplay with light in my forumla, it gives the impression of a thin skin. The image on the right however, has a more uniform redness all over. One of the side effects is that it makes the skin overall seem somewhat thicker, less of the blue blood and blue muscle tissue is visible through the skin.
Along the bridge of the nose is one place where there is a marked difference, The red tinted SSS along the nose on the left image is much thinner than on the image to the right, though its probably too strong on both images. Anyhow. Assuming there is a nostril bone there, the amount of light that should make it to the other side would be lessthan what I am seeing in the right hand image. So I suspect the left hand image is more plausible in that minor regard.
Generally, the one on the left preserves that "raw chicken" appearance, which while not necesarily the most attractive, is quite common and naturalistic amoung paler skinned people. The one on the right looks a bit more like chicken that's been cooked to some degree, which may be more or less attractive depending on the reference. Both solutions are plausible in my view.
I'd say a couple of things
1. The formula I proposed has a good degree of flexibility. You can preserve much more of the original color of the texture simply by increasing the Gamma of the Diffuse within the Glossy Node up from the value 1.4 to a value closer to 2.2. Skin should remain thin looking.
2. Only but so much can be learned about human skin rendering as a subject working with only a narrow range of skin tones. To get to the next level try loading in a much darker skinned character, see how the reds and greens of my and tonysculptor'd recipes interplay beneath the surface, and this will help you get a clearer picture of how choices about these issues affect lighter skin tones as well. If I could credit my progress to any aspect of the study it is that I was searching for universal solutions from the onset, using lots of different skin texture maps. It wasnt enough to make one of them look good, it needed to make all of them look better than they would have otherwise or it wasnt an intrinsic enough solution. Things that made dark skin look better ended up making light skin look better as well, leading me to a more universal solution. Do you have any darker skinned texture maps to play with? Try loaiding up a person from India, notice how much more red you will want compared to a dark skinner person from Africa, where more green will be appropriate. Remember that for darker skin tones the only alteration to the settings you need to make is to increase the Transmission Power up from value 1 to setting sometimes as high as 8. This is because the darker texture images used as Transmission occlude more incoming light so more Transmision Power is needed to compensate. But luckily it works very well with no surprises. If you need a darker skin texture to play with I can send you one I've been developing for M5. It's the one I used for the darker guy in my upload series on the previous page. It isnt a finsihed yet by a long shot, but for study it would do just fine. Let me know.
Fun fun.
I also prefer the left image, the SSS looks more natural to me. But good to have a range of potential options available!
Hello folks,
I started messing around with a marble shader in the Live DB in Octane by Andrey Kozlov for better teeth about 2 weeks ago. It uses just the specular material and I got nice looking teeth. I started playing around with it to see if I could get decent looking skin using just the specular material (no mix). Here is about 2 weeks of fiddling: