Any recommendations to learn how to set up skin materials in Maya?

benniewoodell

Hello! 

So the more and more I'm animating in Maya for my animation class, I am finding I love the program more and more. Now I'm learning all about constraints and I'm like I don't know how I can go back into Daz to animate anymore after learning how powerful constraints are, as well as regular stuff like the better IK and the graph editor. But, even if I click the convert materials to Arnold option when I bring the character over, it looks bad and I'm discovering that unlike Blender, there's as much information on YouTube for every little problem I encounter. Or maybe the terminology is different than what I'm using and I'm not googling the correct words which could 100% be the case. So I'm just wondering if anyone has any good tutorials that they've watched on how to do skin materials, whether it's for toon style or photo realistic as I do both, or is most of the materials done in Zbrush and brought into Maya? I was thinking that might be the case as well. I found stuff about hair on youtube and creating it, so I'm going to try that as well since no hair I transfer over with the bridge looks good either. 

Thanks for any and all help, it's very much appreciated! 

Asari

Arnold is probably the best renderer today if it's about realistic human skin. The quality of your results depend largely on the maps you have, and the shader network you build. There are so many ways to build a human skin shader - and so many non-destructive options if you wish to dive into this. I'm always amazed when I see other artists'shader networks when artists come up with ways I wouldn't have even imagined (like multiplying tertiary displacement details with specular values).

For DAZ characters especially the maps you get if you buy a character will not all work. For example, the specular map the older DAZ characters use cannot be directly used in Arnold. I am not sure whether a simple invert (can be done in Arnold itself or any other app that supports this function) will work, never tried it. I use DAZ characters but besides diffuse maps for the body I create all maps myself so unfortunately I have no experience how to make DAZ Iray maps work in Arnold. Maybe the maps for the new skin shader (all 8.1 characters) would work - never tried it, I don't own any 8.1 character.

For shader setup, best start would be Arvid Schneider tutorials on YouTube. They are free and Arvid works with the Digital Emily model that can be downloaded for free. For creating photorealistic skin in Arnold it is essential to understand the maps that are needed so I highly recommend you start with the Emily assets to follow the tutorial if you are new to shading in Arnold. Otherwise if you start out with DAZ assets you run the risk to be too easily distracted by which maps work and which maps don't. Once you learn what value you need for which parameter you get a better idea which maps you need and which maps don't work.

I have seen some acceptable results with just the diffuse, a base specular value, a dark orange sss radius color and the normal map plugged in. This setup wouldn't look good for close-ups but in animations where you don't see the face close up it might be fine.

Texturing.xyz features numerous tutorials and most artists over there use Arnold. Most tutorials are very helpful and include very good and detailed resources however in my opinion they are quite advanced so if you are a beginner they might be too complex. I find them useful if you have basic experience with the aistandardsurface shader and want to learn how pro artists build their maps or tweak your own setup and maps to perfection. If you are a beginner it's too easy to get lost there with the details.

benniewoodell

Thank you so, so very much @Asari for all of this wonderful information and what I needed to hear! I'm glad to know that the maps we get with Daz characters don't work, I can stop worrying about using those. I just looked up Arvid Schneider on YouTube and have subscribed and will be looking at the videos this coming week. I'm so excited to learn this, I want to soak in as much as I can. I was looking at Texturing.xyz like a year ago and yeah, all of that was way over my head at the time. After I go through Arvid's, maybe then I'll be able to start looking at their stuff. I'll be downloading that Digital Emily model as well to follow along. 

Again, thank you very much for taking the time to answer, it's very much appreciated. Have a great rest of your weekend! 

Asari

No problem you're welcome! One of the advantages of learning Arnold is that you can do almost any realistic materials with the aistandardsurface shader and all parameters are well documented so you don't have to guess which parameter does what. And if you can't find anything in the documentation there is a huge community to ask because Arnold is widely used.

I hope you enjoy learning Arnold! Once I got the ropes of rendering in Arnold I never looked back. I hope you will like Arnold as much as I do.