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Progress?
25 years ago.. simulating a correct light profile of a simple 100 watt bulb was a challenge..... today we take a profile and here it is,,,,
why are there no complete profiles for complexe models such as skin? in a PBR render - we should have "profiles" to load.. that will be then the next step.. but it migh take another 25 years till somebody get it and make it
my wish PBR render engine - takes a full saturated albedo without specular but sss baked in - ask me which profile.. i load : human, caucasian skin.... and the whole rest is pure Math done by the engiine....and that's absolut possible...
@Damsel give it a try and post your render and your settings here....WE are able to make it look good... it's just not possible alone when you first must search 6 months for the needed informations.. and spent your times on wrong informations and test preview renders - instead on your artistic goal - that's my rant above
What did I do?
I don't intend to sell anyone short... but I do feel like there are a lot of PA's who don't do their research, they stick to trends and gimmicks far more than they ferret out stuff like this. I know its not easy, and I laud them on their efforts and wish them much success. But, that said, I am becoming more and more careful with where I choose to apply my monetary support because I may appreciate their artistry, but we are, in the end, talking about a product that I am intend to use; and if I have to re-do a huge amount of work, well then... I'm not paying myself, am I?
Okay, so I've been working on (not sure of the proper term but) front scattering. I was inspired by the Links posted to the digital Emily 2 thing particularly the first 2 here. In particular how soft the shadows still were even when only lit by a very small point of light.
So I attempted the same thing, soft shadows lit with just 1 light with a very small area (1cm or so)
I can do this with relative ease in blender (this is just a very hastily test for the sss I didn't setup spec or bump):
Note the shadow edge and how there's a very noticeable effect of the light bleeding into the skin softening the shadow.
This seems to be much harder to do in studio
For fun here's the The default Karen Iray shader
And here's my edited version witch is much closer:
Tis still not quite what i'd like the area near the light is to dark and the falloff is too big which makes it feel a bit wax-like and will wash out model details.
For the record all of my expiriments have involved no math whatsoever. Unless we're counting guess and check (Hey I learned it in math class)
I like math, I like art. But I prefer to keep them seperate
**Edit I am posting this because I am wondering if anyone has done better in terms of this. And If you have please show me!
Actually Mjc if you look at current ideals for the base map you will see that they are vastly different than the sort of map that is used for 3dl. So different that they really make photoreferences pointless since they are often blured and the colors are altered from the initial resource.
My best suggestion is that you select a female set that you like the settings for and that has similar tone to the M7 skin you want to use. Then apply the v7 settings to M7. You might need to do a bit of jiggling on strengths for bump etc due to differences in maps. That might at least get you in the same ball park as far as them looking like they belong together.
As far as uberiray goes.. Well it was created to be as all purpose as possible and as easy to use as possible. It also had to take into consideration the conversion factors from 3dl. I doubt Daz, or anyone else for that matter, sees it as the end all and be all of Iray shading. It does serve most purposes admirably though. I wish I could say that am able to follow all of this well enough to sort out what needs to be added (and removed) to the uberiray in order to get the sort of properties that your thinking are necessary for MDL proper skin shader. Then at least I could ask around to see if anyone could work one out. But until I've got a list of MDL properties I'm not sure what to even suggest.
@evilded777
your results do not look so much off from reality to my eyes... how strong is the spot? ...
i would set translucency exactly between your results.. glossiness backscattering has also a lot do to with softer shadows in reality.
I think this was meant for the talented j cade, not myself
@andyGrimm
Spot was the default strength with the geometry set to circle and a diameter of 1
The 2 daz renders share almost no sss settings in common. The first (the daz default) actually has its translucency strength set stronger.
And mayby I was selling myself short a bit I really do like my skin settings but I'm finding this specific element hard to fine tune and was wondering if anyone else had been expirimenting in this area with good results.
@j cade i do nearly nothing else then experimnet with settings for shadows and contrast since weeks - the target colors are realtively easy to get (because at the end it is colormixing, multiplying lumninace)... but the perfect soft look with colored shadows and not to hard skinline countoures (your first render).. is difficult...
one thing which affects shadows is glossiness backscatter - but this effects depends on the angle of the light spot to the nose and your camera..... there are always areas i in a face which are brigther then normal but do not reflect specualr highlights because of backsactter.. that's a part of the silky effect of skin.. Missed i think in every daz skin render i saw yet...
it is the effect which you see on modern traffic signs - you dont geht blended by modern traffic signs - the special surface backscatters the light (no strong highlight reflections to you - but diffuse brightness is there.)..
translucency is not just set with transluceny weight... the transmitted color in the sss affects translucency way more ....
if you set a bright transmitted color - translucency goes up too - aka the effect off it.. shine trough nose on your shadow...hiher luminance under the shadow from sss : the shadow is brighter
I'm sooo glad to see the point we have reached in this thread. I've been screaming at my monitor for weeks that many of the approaches being taken seem to be incorrect, while understandable, just not workable. There are a few errors in understanding that have finally been resolved based on recent comments. But there is still one more major misconception that needs to be squashed. Misconception...I sound like Jomamama...anyhow. But first, what we've already discovered.
1. Diffuse Maps are indeed the preferred approach to Translucency Color, just as myself and a couple of other people suggested pages ago.
2. Negative settings for Scattering Direction is totally incorrect. Mec4D suggested it very early in discussions, and with so many parameters to make sense of, it is not surprising this error was made. Positive setting work best in Octane, likely the same is true in Iray
3. Iray is perhaps limited, but it is most certainly convoluted compared to Octane. Why not simply name the Slider Absorption if that is what it does, instead of naming it Transmitted Color? Why not call Scattering what it is instead of naming it....uh oh, I still do not know what the Iray equivalent of Scattering is. Help please? They should rename things in a simpler manner.
Why am I posting this? As I said long ago if something is possible in Octane, then it is probably possible in Iray. That said, over the past few pages you guys are beginning to find the proper slots and the materials you are setting up are begining to look more and more like proper skin set-ups in Octane. So bravo! Assuming this "convergence" will continue, I will make a few predictions and observations of what is yet to come.
Here is what you guys are probably still getting wrong.
1. Do not waste your time trying to model each layer of skin individually. That is quite silly to my thinking as I've seen it done in Octane forums too and the results do not warrant such headache. The simple fact is that the individual layers of skin are so thin... it is perhaps naive to assume that any one effect such as backscatter only occurs at a certain layer of skin. Absorptions and scattering occur at all depths. One needs to average the inputs of the three layers and threat them as a single transmissive substance which has increasing absorption with depth. I will likely explain this more if people are curious.
2. You do not need Geoshells. Sorry, but no way am I doubling my polygon overhead. As much improved as these currect settings from Jag are, they are still missing important elements if geoshells are needed.
3. Okay, this is a BIG one. You do not need to desaturate your diffuse maps. I can see where the idea comes from, but once again the sequence is out of order. Every place I read people are concerend with the "redness" of the skin being contributed by the SSS. But in fact, realistic skin has redness in areas where skin protrudes receiving more light, and greenish/blueness where skin folds inward, away from the light. See the example Octane Render from Sorel to see the point. You guys are noticing that there should be some blueness, so you have desaturated the diffuse map allowing the SSS to replace the missing reds. But this is not quite correct if Octane is any indication.
In Octane, you use the Diffuse map at normal saturation and gamma for both Diffuse Color and Transmission Color. This is what drives your SSS potential. If the diffuse map used as Transmission has no red in it, then you cannot absorb or scatter any redness down the line in your Medium Settings. Thus, most photobased skin images have natural SSS and therefore provide redness potential. Temper that with an Absorption setting that is green/blue tinted, absorbing the blue ranges of the available color from the Transmission map allowing only the available redness to continue onward into the material surface. But to offset that, you need a green/blue tinted Scattering. Why? Because the green/blue scattering draws more contrast to the red glow preventing the red feverish look. And all of this is possible without geoshells.
Conclusion:
We're getting there. And like most things in physics, when you get it right your solutions will be elegant, and robust, and surprising how much complexity can arise from such simplicity.
That said, I have thouroughly enjoyed this thread, and learned a lot. I no longre blame myself for not getting on better with iray, it's not my fault..Iray is just very strange in the manner it does certain things and the Ds interface doesnt make things any easier in my opinion .
I'm off to test more skin in Iray. When I start getting results that rival current results from Octane, I will surely post them and the settings i've used. Until then, please do keep up the testing and discussions. Keep going around in circles and I'll keep yelling at the screen. For all the hair pulling, this is still quite a good bit of fun to discuss and decipher. Don't you agree?
I could not agree more. Photo-references are over-rated. PEople are tricked into thinking that a skin that looks "real" beore rendering will still look realistic after rendering. They are wrong. The fact is the diffuse map shopuld be somewhat incomplete...this leaves room for the render engine to complete the task. If the skin source is already too "realistic from baked in AO, Specular, and other effects, then the rendering engine will only detract from that. Skin should not look "real" until the render has completed.
I think that Iray can definitely do photo realistic human skin, but dont forget that the shader we are using for skin now is very universal.
It lacks attributes that shaders in other renderers that are made specifically to render human skin have, like several layers of SSS (subdermal, epidermal...) and so on.
Feel free to check out Arnolds skin shader for example - https://support.solidangle.com/display/AFMUG/Skin
Cant wait for when someone builds a really great skin shader using MDL : )
This is an example of the overkill potential that I'm talking about. You do not need to model all three layers of skin, so long as the final result looks as it should. You could easily average the weight of the three layers into a single layer and get the same reuslts with much less headache.
The probloem with these highly complex set-ups is that if the end user desires to change anything...he might be daunted as to where to even begin. Three different layers...soo, if its too red which layer do I tweak, or if it's too this or that? Simple is better. Again, nothing against overkill, when one can afford the headache.
@Rashad Carter
Ohh.. why did you not come earlier up with this posting!.. it includes most of my points which i figured out and tried to explain using my tests..
we can not get blue out of pure red... .. the translucency color is best set to a brown/beige (or map) which MUST include R, G and B...
thanks for this conclusion!
Absolutely!
just one thing which needs further tests...
a full saturated albedo - and the same map in translucency seems not to bring best results to me...
i noted that i had best effect of all 3 colors... when i split the luminance range of diffuse map and transluceny map/color...
i think it has to do with irays limitted scatter - more oversampling/clipping = red is dominant... in Iray
you do this with a gamma correction in Octane.. (just noted!)..
how exactly ?
If that's the case then that kinda sucks!! There has to be a way to do this properly. I just cannot accept that Iray is inferior to Octaner and other unbiased engines. The smart guys writing this renderer must have a solution for us somewhere. Thanks for your results, Andy!
Don't know if better but just wanted to give it a try. First image subdermis at -.25, second image subdermis at -.10, third image no subdermis.
you set another gamma for translucency? then you do actually what i am talking about - another luminance..
Which gamma corection are you doing? maybe to low difference for iray?... just useing another gamma for translucency might do the trick too in iray.
And I said specifically PROPER maps are renderer neutral...who said anything about the photoreference maps actually being proper for 3DL any more than they are for Iray?
Well said. Indeed.
Number 1 for me.
@j cade @jag11
the idea is great.... BUT you try now to create a soft shadow whith a light which WILL draw a hard shadiow...
there is no light other then a small flashlight with a very strong LED which can produce this light...
use a normal sized lamp source instead... a photolamp or led pattern.... 10 cm circle.
for best simulation use a IES profile of a real lamp,
And we need to know the distance from the light to the nose.. this has a BIG impact too.
this is a realistic sefup...
model on standard position - standard camera
light: disc, diameter 5 - 1500 lumen standard....
x = 25
y = 50
pointing on the nose
Image 1....
light; same
lumen 10 000 = strong photolamp - pale skin MUST start to clip with normal camera...
image 2....
test reality translucency
sunsky daz standard!
sorry for small renders - but that is my suggestion how we can compear settings... which work everywhere in every lightsituation!
my showed model skin - uses my current settings - react Welll to all lightsituations (i can easy create beautifull renders with her)..but that's not the idea .. if you want soft shadows you change the light..if you want a realistic settup.. and compear skins... expect some ugly and glowing renders
Every made for IRay prodcut should easy make this test - if NOT... well unrealstic skin setup!
PA's don't sell to themselves so they spend a fair bit of time meeting the expectations of the customers. That does not always mean what they produce is "perfect" or "correct" or even realistic. Why? Because people want their expectations and their beliefs met. Look at the sort of flooring that people love best. It is almost always has over the top reflection. The PA may know that reflection is too strong but they also have to be aware of what the customer will perceive as correct because in their head that is the expectation they want met. So "proper" maps may not in fact create a product that will sell. At this point if I said I had carefully hand painted a texture for V7 that looked lovely and natural there is a fairly good chance it would be over looked because hand painting is textures is considered "old school" in this market. Simply put, customers look down their noses at anything not based on photo resources.
Once you are locked into using photo resources by the market then your not going to have the opportunity to do maps that are directly driven by the texture your painting but rather that your going to to have to create all the support maps to match the photo rather than creating them as the skin texture is painted. Is it possible that there are right thinking customers out there who would buy a painted rather than photo based figure? Sure. At least a couple of us would. But I don't know a single character creator who can afford to take risks financially. Going with what most customers would perceive as "old" methodology would be such a risk.
Don't forget that most people will never do any real research themselves as far as PBR rendering. They don't have time, or are not information geeks, or simply wouldn't know where to start looking. And that is alright. We don't all need to be research geeks. Being here just for the art is always an acceptable position to take. Because of that their expectations may not shift away from photo resourced characters for a while. At some point that will start to change I am sure but I don't think we are at that point yet. On top of that learning to paint a full texture in zbrush is going to add education time to any one considering doing characters that way. More over since map creation would be heavily driven by PBR concepts then all the core knowledge for 3dl would also have to be adjusted and tested. Yet more risk for the content creators. And on top of that then everything that the customers know about what will happen when they render a character in 3dl will be subtly shifted. That might or might not be a "thing". But again it holds potential risk for the content creators.
It is always easy for us to armchair quarter back on subjects that we don't have a financial interest in. If you asked my friends who are PA's you would know that I am one of the pickiest most difficult people about well.. details. And I confess that I question surface settings more than any normal person should. In my defense, I almost always question my surface settings at some point after I do the product so I am not just picking on everyone else. But I am also aware that there are many factor that influence how products are created. I'm also aware that there is not really any perfection because people often have a different ideal about what perfection really is.
@Khory... for sure there are customers which WAIT to buy a real Iray model whcih works with camera and light like they should in PBR.. and looking photorealisitc!
do such a test as i just showed.. clearly described right in the product promo... and all FRUSTRATED buyers of the current iray products.. will start to buy again!.... i think i am not the only one which stopped because of dissapointment .. if there is wirtten on it made for iray.. i expect:
the model works to a real camera settup.. stands the test of luminance and translucency .. has a correct glossiness map.. AND a good realistic bump... that's it... and the buyers buy..
glossiness map i cant believe that not ONE is right yet... there is a document from Siggraph 2006... for 15usd.. buy it..paint this easy map and use it in your promo!.