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Well I'm very glad I got your instructions before you pulled them. I've got a render cooking now with Ivan using your instructions and he's looking mighty fine. In fact, the most realistic I've been able to get him, ever. Maybe in another versiosn of DS Beta, DAZ will have "fixed" that parameter and putting a map in there won't work anymore. But for right now, with 4.9.3.56 installed, I'll keep doing what you recommended! Thank you for posting it.
And that is wrong anyway...weight maps are CONTROL maps and should be black and white/greyscale maps...never should a control map have color information.
The image of Lee still has b/w maps in the translucency weight - it just also has a diffuse color map in the translucency color as well, which I'm told is wrong, but it still looks less wrong than the defaults - at least to me. LOL. *shrug*...testing is never done ;).
Laurie
Eh, I like having color maps in translucency color. It's not always necessary, but it helps dampen a lot of crazy things that can happen otherwise.
It's particularly handy if you have eyebrows in the maps, because then it naturally masks the eyebrow effect.
B/W maps in the Translucency Weight are fine...
Wait ... as I understood it, having color maps in the Translucency COLOR channel was just fine. You need a BW/Grayscale control map in the Translucency STRENGTH channel to tell Studio/Iray how strong the effect should be and where.
Having color maps in the Transmitted Color channel does not work, will not work, never has worked, even though the option existed. According to the 4.9.3.71 beta information that rbtwhiz posted a while back, Iray has never properly read color maps in that channel, even though the original MDL specs that Daz was working from said that having color maps there was just fine; that was a mistake on nVidia's part. For the next release version, they're removing the option to put any maps in that channel until Iray itself can actually read the color maps. (The response to when that will happen, from nVidia, seems to translate to, "Eventually ... whenever we get around to it.")
All color maps in the Transmitted Color channel do now is generate error messages in the log file, where Iray tells people incomprehensibly that it's got an impermissible map in the channel and will therefore be ignoring the input. So if you put a diffuse map in that channel and then leave the color white, because you expected the map to be providing the color, your transmitted color is effectively white, because Iray hasn't got any color information to work with.
Transmitted Color, I'm gathering from the preceding, should be an RGB value (or whatever that decimal number that Iray uses is) that approximates that character's skin tone, or as close as you can get.
I actually would love to have available a standardized scene/lighting environment, (or even a special materials room in DS), that everyone could use to and make/test any materials in for accuracy and consistency. Right now artists are using all manner of strange and wonderful scenes to test materials, and it has led to huge inconsistencies. Even my own work, I try to build a good testing ground but its so difficult to know how correct or incorrect I am. Its so very easy to have under or overblown lighting and not so ideal tone mapping along with it.
Oh, then I stand corrected. I did remove the color map from the transmitted color AND added the character's skin color into the chip in my further testing, which look fine...it was just that removing the translucency color map looked awful. I supposed I misread what Arnold C was saying then ;). Sorry about that.
Laurie
I've been working on my own skin shader settings based on settings and tips from three different 3D artists that I admire Florentmoon, Bestmanpi, and Will Timmins.
That's looking pretty nice, Diva! Maybe slightly greenish/cyan around the perimeter, but that could be the color temp of your lights
Have you experimented with different skin textures or lighting scenarios using the same shader settings? Might you be willing to share your settings at some point after you're happy with them?
Sure! I've been tweaking it for months and still am not quite happy with it but I'd be happy to share what I've got so far. I'll test it tonight with some different skins/textures to see if it's still viable with others. I've been mainly testing it on my custom textures that I made by mixing V7 skin and the base G3F skin. So I haven't tested it to see if it's viable with other skins. Send me a PM to remind me if you still want the settings. :) I have memory issues and might forget otherwise. lol
Yes, too much grey on the back character in such a brightly lit room.
as skin settings are part of the game only this examples say not much if not telling the
lighting, render settings, skin map itself
very nice though Diva
The decimal number is the color in linear space, its range from 0.00 to 1.00 is larger than that for the common RGB from 0 to 255. If you've got both a linear space and RGB value for a color, the linear space one is the one more accurate. DS's color picker tends to round linear space values, so when checking your color in that don't klick on "OK", or you might get slightly changed linear values in the process. Negligible if you receive a linear space value from directly putting in RGB color values.
It's even worse... Even if you have a specific color defined, Iray seems to get confused about to find a texture map where there really shouldn't be one and seems to use the default values instead.
Below a little render example: I removed the face's diffuse map and set Translucency Color and SSS Reflectance Tint to neutral (255-255-255), Glossy Layered Weight to 0.00 and Translucency Weight to 0.98 to get the normally faint transmission more visible.
SSS-1: the figure's color is now only of the color defined in Transmitted Color.
SSS-2: plugging a diffuse texture map into the Transmitted Color texture map slot the figure's color changes to white, since now albedo, translucence and SSS are set to white; for comparision SSS-3 shows the outcome if someone would set the Transmitted Color to 255-255-255 white in the first place.
The "too much grey" is the result of too dark (wrong) Translucency Color, SSS Reflectance Tint and Transmitted Color for the default Genesis 3 Iray materials. Depending on the lighting, the "too much grey" can turn into "too much green". Which would be okay if you'd do a render of Star Trek's Mr. Spock, which's hemoglobin is based on copper instead of iron.
I guess you're talking about those texture maps which carry a "SSS" in their name, which do have those blueish veins painted in. That are no "Weight Maps", that are additional texture maps (some are simple "Mask Maps", which's dark parts are thought to prevent that darker parts of a Diffuse Map (hair, hairstubs, brows...) getting tinted by Translucency Color). And most of them are not B&W, they're RGB color maps. You can't put blueish veins on a greyscale B&W map.
Except for very few exceptions (Victoria/Michael 5's and Genesis 2 Base Female and Male's "Bree" and "Phillip", and Stephanie 5's "Michelle", named texture sets) DAZ's Base Figures and Characters aren't shipped with a special "Translucency Weight" map (carrying a "TL" or "T" in their names) anymore.
What you get with a Genesis 3 figure/character nowadays is Diffuse Maps ("D"), Bump Maps ("B"), Specular Maps ("S"), Translucency (Mask) Maps ("SSS") and normal Maps ("NM"). And some Transparency Maps ("T"/"TR") for eyes and eyelashes. Which are currently created to work in both 3delight and Iray, altough current Diffuse Maps are now free of additional lighting, reflection or shadow content directly painted in. Specular Maps still don't meet PBR requirements (wrong colors, too bright, so they're abused as "Gloss Weight" maps).
A PBR renderer doesn't work very well with "traditional" texture maps, and altough I understand (and stronlgy support) the OP's call for a skin-specific PBR shader, without appropriate Specular, Gloss/Roughness Maps we'd still have to counteract wrong outcomes by tweaking and fiddeling... sometimes including a "primal scream therapy" and/or almost eating your keyboard.
As I was experimenting with surface skin parameters and lighting anyway, I don't usually but thought I should at least try, I thought I would post this image. The left face has the diffuse map in the Transmitted Colour the right side is without. There is no difference that I can see ( I should point out that the right image wasn't left to render as long as the left one).
@Fishtales To me it looks like the right one is slightly lighter/brighter. Buy it's subtle.
...this is exactly what I don't want to get mired down in. I am hoping the forthcoming Skin Builder Pro3 will help simplify some of this so I can create skin presets to use without spending months at it. My aim with all this is to illustrate stories, create works of art, and maybe make a little extra spending money on the side, not spend all my waking hours in experimentation and messing around with all the nuts and bolts.
Everyone has their own settings. Some are great. But.. Lets see what happens when you stick them in a new scene or a real one for that matter. =D
I think it would be best of we do the tests and skin displays in raw iray lighting. (No HDRI) That's the only fair way to compaire it's true value with no fakery. HDRI's while good, because they yield great results, are also misleading, false lights. Does that make sense?
This right here is what Das Studio should be. It may be easier than a number of similar programs out there, but stuff like this is just crazy. And it ultimately causes some people to abandon their dreams because they don't get it fast enough (and thus take their money somewhere else.) This is a niche field, a pretty exclusive field already. Lets not make it any harder than it needs to be. You can argue that maybe we don't need those people who give up and walk away, but those are lost customers. I know I keep pounding on this software's potential and missed opportunities in my posts. But that's how I feel. This is what people want to do with Daz, just make art, and its why we have this store in the first place. Daz needs to bring those barriers down. And DS can be user friendly and still offer all the power features that power users expect. It doesn't have to be dumbed down to accomplish this.
There's nothing wrong with maps in the Translucency (near the top) slots. Maps in the Transmitted Colour (near the bottom for the SSS) slot effectively break the SSS. You've done nothing technically wrong ;) Looks good.
...thank you.
I've been at this for over 8 years and yes it got discouraging at times (particularly when I was still working on a 32 bit system in Daz 3.1 and couldn't even use UE without invoking a render crash), With Iray, what I have been running into is my characters not visually blending in well with the rest of the setting, in some cases looking like a bad case of "photoshopping". I get a lot of comments on how great the setting of my scenes look which is usually followed by how fake looking the characters are in comparison. At least in 3DL there seemed to be tighter sense of "visual continuity". However, with everything pretty much going to just Iray shaders, even rolling back to 3DL has been made more frustrating than it should be.
As I mentioned am really hoping that the new Skin Builder Pro will be the 3d "Rosetta Stone" I am looking for.
People's own perceptions screw them up. For example, Diva's Sept 20 skin post looks fabulous, yet Diva is "still am not quite happy with it". Not sure what would be improved.
Anyway, there are plenty of existing skin textures that are more than good enough for "illustrate stories, create works of art, and maybe make a little extra spending money on the side, not spend all my waking hours in experimentation and messing around with all the nuts and bolts".
A lot of the issues seem to happen when people zoom way in to "pixel peep" like the photography crowd and stop looking at the image as a whole. A second, perhaps bigger issue to me, is that too many folks don't seem to really "get" lighting. This is not an Iray issue, but rather how light works. You can't put an object in a place where it should cast a shadow, eliminate the shadow and not expect that to seem odd. You can't just say it's a fantasy setting either. The fantasy worlds, e.g. Lord of the Rings, work becuase they are internally consistent.
It's also not much good to rely on other folks perceptions of skin detail and color. People see colors differently and their monitor and room lighting scnearios are all different and ALL affect what they see on the screen.
I can't see a difference either, but it's worth noting that the translucency colour also influences the effect of the transmitted colour, and in some circumstances kills it completely. Out of interest, I'd be curious to know what the translucency colour was on this character. I've found testing using rim lights most illuminating for seeing transmitted/translucency colour effects.
I used the diffuse colour map in translucency colour and set colour to white.
...unfortunately until Skin Builder Pro 3 comes out (which I believe will also support SSS), I am pretty much limited to the default G3F, Josie 7 and non image mapped presets in Beautiful Skins with G3. About the only adjustments I make is changing the gamma of the map using the Image Editor to lighten or darken skins.
Cannot afford to drop 100s on a bunch of G3 characters/figures just to get different skin maps and certainly not at all up to manually convert older skins to G3 due to the change in mapping structure.
Studio IS user friendly; it has two integrated render engines that users can use, plus there are plugins available to add others if they want other options. The problem seems to be the "inconsistency" between different vendors Iray material setting and lighting used in promo images.
Even the best texture map under necessary consideration of PBR standards won't get you any significant improvement if important parts of the shader still don't fit.
On the Genesis 3's, change the "DAZ-dark-red" Translucency Color to a more appropriate RGB 217-133-114. That's more towards what a regular bled-through dermis skin layer's color will look like "down below".
Translucency Weight for a Caucasian 0.45 to 0.5, Asian 0.45 - 0.35 and African-descent about 0.25. (The higher melanin fractions and melanin type blends from eumelanin to pheomelanin in Asian and African-descent skin is what make their skin tone darker and their dermis' color less influent).
Load a (no make-up) diffuse map of your character in your prefered image editing software and pick the skin tone from forehead or cheek. Put that RBG color value you got into Transmitted Color [avoid "255" for any! of the RGB color channels] and set Transmitted Measurement Distance to 1.00.
Set your SSS Reflectance Tint to a neutral RGB 255-255-255 (RGB 250-255-255 for a more pale, or RGB 250-240-215 for a more tanned look).
Keep your fingers away from Glossy Color. Human skin is a dielectric, and the color of the reflection of a dielectric is always white. Plain white. Neither grey, nor blue, nor pink... nor anything else. Only someone without the slightest idea about physically based shading would do such thing.
To counter too much glossiness, increase Glossy Roughness (decrease Glossiness). Still too glossy, check if maybe Glossy Reflectivity is set to something above 0.58151 (Glossy Specular to something above RGB 63-63-63). That corresponds to a maximum in vitro measured Refractive Index of 1.55 for the stratum corneum skin layer of a human. If you use Top Coat, the default Reflectivity of 0.5 ( the default Top Coat IOR of 1.5) is appropriate.
Below some render examples [DS 4.9.2.70]:
"Victoria 7" with her default material, and one which's material set-up includes the above described changes ("Neutral SSS RT" means SSS Reflectance Tint RGB 255-255-255). The lighting on both is J.Cade's "Painter's Lights Classical 2R", in combination with the "Painter's Lights Studio Neutral" Render-Settings preset.
For the close-up a neutral Spot Light with "Luminous Flux (Lumen)": 15000.0; "Temperature (K)": 5000.0; "Light Geometry": Disc; "Height (Diameter)": 10.00; "Width": 10.00 tied to a Camera with "Focal Length (mm)": 105.00; "Z Translate": 100.00, "Y Translate": "between the eyes", and an "Aspect Ratio (Global)": W: 2.00 / H: 3.00, as recommended by Andy Grimm.
Victoria 4 can "morph into a man", and Victoria 7 (and any other Genesis 3) can, using some "a bit more physically appropriate" parameter values, "morph from mulatta (mulatto) to caucasian".
This is as close as I got to something I'd feel good using. There's so much goin on in this skin that I'd have to do another image to show you guys how I did it...I used ArnoldC's color in translucency (thanks!) and I'm still using backscatter, but I've changed a LOT of settings from where I originally had them. For instance, most skin is set to have SSS going in a backward direction (negative value in SSS direction). I think it should be scattered forward. Having said that, I still have backscatter on the skin because it adds a "fog layer" that I think should be there to defeat that "gelatinous" look to skin we've been seeing so much of. Light only goes so far thru skin. What I did differently here was to put the diffuse map in the backscatter color, but inverted it (the farther light goes thru skin, the bluer it gets). It seemed to do exactly what I'd hoped for.
I'm done fooling with it for now...I'd rather turn my attentions to something else ;).
Laurie