Let's talk about Holden

3DIO

Ocean said:

3DIO said:

Currently working on a Holden render, although I have to say that OmniShader is on my hate list, big-time!  I much pefer UberShader.  The performance on my system is appaling with OmniShader

There is a PBRSkin shader option included should you need a faster shader.  Including a third option in addition to the two I included seemed unnecessary. 

 Eyebrows and eyelashes are a real problem with this shader since there's no slider for Cutout Opacity!

All hairs included in this product are strand-based hair, not hair cards, and therefore Cutout Opacity is not particularly relevant.

All hair in this product use Daz Studio's standard OmniHair shader for strand-based hair, not a custom shader. 

If you need to use Cutout Opacity then you can easily apply a different shader which includes Cutout Opacity, although I do not understand what is motivating this request.  Daz Studio's standard OmniHair shader does not include Cutout Opacity because it is not relevant for rendering realistic hair strands.  Natural hair translucency is dictated by other properties on the shader. 

If you encounter any issues with glossiness on OmniHair, you may wish to adjust Render Tesselation Sides to 0 instead of 1.

Hey Ocean. thanks for the insight on that!  Yup, I was definitely having a glosiness issue, but wasn't aware of that setting, so I'll look into it for next time.  Still not a fan of OmniShader, although I suppose it could be my lagging old system taking the joy out of using it.

Too late to salvage the current render, but I'll have a try tomorrow in post (it's currently around 2:30am here).

Nice to see a masculine-looking male, by the way.  It's annoying the amount of effeminate-looking males on the store, so it's good to see a character like Holden!

 

Ocean

3DIO said:

Still not a fan of OmniShader, although I suppose it could be my lagging old system taking the joy out of using it.

There are many different unrelated shaders beginning with the prefix Omni, so I would advise to avoid saying "OmniShader" because it is not clear enough which one you are referring to, especially when we are already discussing two different kinds in this conversation now (OmniSkin and OmniHair, which are essentially unrelated to eachother).

I will remark that I only deployed the OCN OmniSkin because I believe the end result is better, but a longer render time is a known drawback, especially notable for those with non Nvidia cards or slower machines, in which case the benefits may not outweight the costs.  There are other issues with the shader, which we have been discussing at length in the OmniSurfaceBase thread on this forum.

When I was preparing the materials for PBRSkin, I tried to ensure that the PBRSkin was very close to the OCN Omniskin material preset, so I would suggest just using the PBRSkin material to avoid any pitfalls with OCN Omniskin presets. It's not like I made one good material preset (OmniSkin) and then phoned in the other (PBRSkin). I made them both look acceptable.

It is possible to get PBRSkin looking close to OmniSkin with much effort (see attached).  The problem when setting up materials with PBRSkin (and Iray Uber had the same exact problem) is that PBRSkin is highly dependent on the Translucency Color map, where even minor changes in color values will lead to drastic changes in the skin appearance. This makes fine tuning the skin on PBRSkin and Iray Uber infuriating. The Translucency Color map used for those two shaders is also necessarily lacking in detail because it has to be washed out/blown out vs the main color map, and this means that the final skin lacks a certain level of detail.  For OmniSkin you can keep all the important detail in the color map because it doesnt use a "Translucency Color" map at all let alone a washed out one, and the maintained detail is borne out in the final result.

Masterstroke

Unlike PBR, Omni Shader does offer a Opacity cutout.
It just needs to be unlocked/activated.
PBR and Omni Shaders both have their flaws. PBR is usually to dark on skins, Omni Shader is to bright.
I fixed it by by darkening the skin textures. 
I copied the the skin textures in Photoshop to a new layer, set the new layer to multiply by 50% and merged the layers to visible. 
It is easier to darken the textures, than brightenen them. By making the skin maps brighter, they are loosing details.
I never liked DAZ PBR skin materials. Omni looks so much better.
Thanks to Ocean for getting me on the Omni-path.

jmucchiello

Masterstroke said:

Unlike PBR, Omni Shader does offer a Opacity cutout.

https://www.daz3d.com/pbr-skin-plus

Masterstroke

jmucchiello said:

Masterstroke said:

Unlike PBR, Omni Shader does offer a Opacity cutout.

https://www.daz3d.com/pbr-skin-plus

At an extra prize to pay. 
Omnisurface Base by Mello is free:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/703161/omni-surface-shader-test/p4?srsltid=AfmBOoqPC88oRxK7U-62Kt5ycbs9gaPJAN3T8mzDFGEyDFu15AkM9Nob

3DIO

Thanks all for the info, and, I think it's fair to say this shader has a new fanboy right here!

That, however, was an absolutely gruelling experience on my machine, so there's no way I could use it until I get a new GPU.  In order to use and get my head around a shader as sophisticated as that, I really need to be able to mess around with sliders and have live visual feedback so that I can learn as I explore it.

Anyway, I've done a render of Holden using a virtual 80mm f/1.2 lens, intententionally underexposed to keep within the TOS, and to keep the ladies guessing!

Click Image for Full Resolution