Proper translucency maps for Iray skin?
Oso3D
Posts: 15,085
So, reviewing...
Properly speaking, a good Iray translucency has a weight map so that thinner parts of the body, like the ears, have more translucency and thick parts of the body, like the chest, have less, with some logic like 'the top of the nose is less translucent because of bone, for example.
Looking over materials, a lot of skins 'cheat' by putting in the diffuse color as the subsurface color. Now, I'm not 100% sure if there's an excuse to do this with SSS, but when converted to a translucency, it's just wrong.
Of all the female materials I have, ONLY V5 (Bree) has a proper weight map. Not V6 elite, nothing else.
On the male side, the M5 Phillip skin has a proper weight map, too... and that's it.
Now, I'm glad I HAVE a V5/M5 translucency map to choose from, but... what gives?? Among other things, this makes properly masking eyebrows hard, because the only eyebrows properly masked are V5/M5, so if I'm using the map for something else where eyebrows are someWHERE else... (I may have to fiddle with the mask to make eyebrow-less versions)
So... what the heck?
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Hi Will, I have exactly the same predicament - did you ever find a solution to this?
No. ;)
One result I've experimented with is taking one of those dark specular maps, retoning it to be a good range, using that as a translucency weight map. Then using the diffuse map as translucency color map with color set to Red.
Seems to work well, particularly if you devibrance the diffuse map (pulling out the red that should more rightfully be coming from translucency).
To be fair, proper "translucency" ie SSS shouldnt need maps like that. part of what SSS figure out the thin vs thick areas. translucency weight maps were more a hack for shaders without proper SSS.
I would call it a strength map or mask, calling it a weight map will get people very confused.
j cade: Would you say that if you have good SSS, translucency is unnecessary?
well its weird in iray because translucency and sss are weird and interconnected (in both blender and some of the 3delight shaders they are 2 separate things) I think this is where a lot of the confusion comes in. the way I mostly think about it is that if you tick thin walled off the translucency settings in the iray shader become SSS settings.
Surely its still necessary for some form of hack given that we're working with hollow models that don't contain bones, muscles etc?
I've spent hours trying several settings and using various commercial products and still my custom shader using translucency weight maps is the most realistic I can get. Obviously I'd rather not have to rely on weight maps and I've seen a lot of great renders from artists not using them, but often their settings haven't been shared or made clear enough to understand.
I've had good luck with using refraction instead of translucence, but it tends to be way slower. Go figure. ;)
Experimenting with using translucency color -> refraction color and seeing how it works out.
and because that is a spectacularly horrible attempt at a description I'll show a more practical image. Genesis lit with just a spotlight from behind. No maps, no sss leaking through the neck.
That's because Iray does a kind of volumetric SSS...
Yeah, poking at it, refraction ends up looking almost identical, but takes 10x as long. Guess I'll stick with translucency. ;)
What? Have you never shined a flashlight up your nose? It's very translucent.
Anyway, I read recently from on a post from that forum member with the fighter pilot avatar asking if 'Are you are my mommy?' (can't remember the name) that SSS is only for 3DL nor iRay.
Well this is frustrating. When you go out to learn something you want to expect the professional references are correct that you are learning from.
So then, are you saying the Phillip 5 Surfaces materials for iRay (and 3DL / SSS separately) are the only correct set of materials settings? And if so, since Phillip 5 is used on Genesis 2 Male that means your are saying the Genesis Male Jeremy material setting are not correct. And more frustration, the Genesis 3 Male and Female settings aren't correct. Is that right? Or probably I think you don't have Genesis 3 characters but you do have Genesis characters.
However, since I'm trying to learn PBR myself and that I started with Gen 2 Male (Phillip 5) with replaced Logan materials and then iRay Optimized Gen 2 Male materials I think I'll start all over with just Gen 2 Male Base with iRay Optimized Gen 2 Male Materials (Phillip 5) and leave out applying the Logan skin. It will probably only result in a few small settings changing but that's OK. The strength masks I'm trying to create myself so I want to start with a proper set of examples.
+++++
OK, I switched over and the Phillip M5 maps for the Genesis 2 Male are more complete and much better constructed. It uses SSS for translucency but I think the terminology changed for PBR. I know for example in PBR Diffure is called Albedo.
j cade this looks really good :)
Would you be willing to share your full material setup and the skin you used to help with replication?
Any help would be gratefully received :)
Hi, i have model for import into daz, where should i put tranclucency map that comes with it for eyes?
thx
I think you have to research, map, and then use your own translucency & other maps to avoid using DAZ 3D or PA's versions of those maps unless your model is just for you own private use.