Appropriate child skins for growing up morph use?
sapat
Posts: 1,735
Unlike K4 which had lots of skins, I'm finding that using G3M skins on the growing up morph shapes doesn't work the same, and since the G3 figures are the 'be all end all' for human shapes, I need a skin which isn't for an adult. A child with razor stubble just doesn't quite cut it. Aren't there any 'child like' skin textures for G3M that would be appropriate to use for a kid? Remember K4 had rosy cheeks, slightly pink lips, soft looking skin, bright shiny eyes? I don't have any of that for the Genesis 3 figures. And all I see in the store is a MR for skins for the growing up morphs. Is that all we have as an option are these MR?? One is a bundle, but it comes with adult skins too which I'm not interested in. Thanks.
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Zev0 has a great merchant resource; you could make your own with it.
Yes, I bought the MR for growing up boy and girl, but I wished there had been a bundle price for them that didn't include the adult skins. I don't need/want them. I have plenty of adult skins, just looking for kid skins and not necessarily MR since I'm not a vendor. But it is what it is I guess. Money's been spent now.
Well, I don't own many textures but the Snowflake for Aiko 7 is rosy cheeked and 'childlike' if you choose the correct makeup options. Any Genesis 3 Female textures that have an options 'sans makeup' should do well as child textures. Lyoness has female textures for Genesis 3 that are both sans eyebrows and sans makeup. You'll probably want to invest in Slosh's UV Texture Swap for Genesis 3 as well and also the Genesis 3 Cross-Resource Kit.
Perhaps Cayman Studios can be persuaded to create a Legacy UVs version for Kids 4. I assume it would depend on whether or not it would be commercially viable. Between DAZ and other sites, are there a lot of Kids 4 characters? I should think there's a market for it, especially when so few new characters are being released with skin appropriate for a child.
I think it's worth asking him.
I know I'd buy it. I haven't done a lot of kids renders but part of that is a lack of skin choices. (I was trying to do one of a little boy walking along the top of a fence, using Growing Up for G2M... I ended up making it a little girl instead, as none of the male skins I had were devoid of facial and body hair!)
I'd buy it too and any product that made that clothing & hair for Kids 4 available on Genesis 3. It'd cause me to buy a lot of Kids 4 clothing and characters besides the ones I already have.
Start with the Tween Julie and Teen Josie skins and the cross gender kit. If you got the pro bundles on both, that's six skins that will work surprisingly well on male children.
I do have a list of which skins look good on children ("sane" eyebrows, no armpit or bikini area stubble, minimal "baked in" laugh lines, no under-breast shadows (which shouldn't even be there in adult skins: those areas are underpigmented, not hyperpigmented) or deltoid shadows or stretch marks, and minimalist navels). It's mostly genesis 2, I'll have to make a pass through and add some Genesis 3.
There's a lot of skins that simply "fight" physics based lighting even on adult figures. Double shadowed navels and breasts, etc.
Sykler, Ryan and Haley from 3D Universe all come with young skins. Also the Little Ones from the same vendor, but these skins are more simple and "toony".
For males, you can use this one:
http://www.daz3d.com/chase-for-genesis-3-male
Also the following skin comes with a smooth skin option, so should be suitable for male child/teenager
http://www.daz3d.com/jared-for-michael-7
If you have any of Caymen's UV converters for V4 and/or M4 there are a lot of V4 and M4 skins that are largely hairless so would work with younger characters.
Finally any female skin can be adapted for younger characters of either sex if you have both a no make up option, and the plucked eyebrows can be swapped for something more appropriate.
Totally agree with all of that. It's as totally annoying and unnecessary as baked in hair highlights. The whole issue with 90% of skins is that they're too idealised (perfect) and come with red translucency making them too red/brown. Even a child has some skin imperfections and asymmetry, and I question the "made with real skin photographs" claim, because they don't look like the skin of anyone I know.
3D Universe Little Ones use the base male and base female Gen 3 UV maps. They're, of course, more toony than real but you don't have to worry about 5 o'clock shadow on the little boys.
Not looking for toon skins, but I know what you mean. The G3M adult ones all have so many features that make them unsuitable for kids.
I do have those growing up skins now for boys and girls, and yesterday got a HUGE 90% off discount on Tween Ryan Pro Bundle, and there are nice skins in there, so I think I'm set. I didn't buy Tween Julie. Just didn't think there was enough other stuff in there that it was worth the price and I can use many of my G3F skins on a girl since basically you'll just be seeing the face, arms and some of the legs once they're dressed.
I miss K4 skins... Acutaly I miss old skins in general. Side-By-Side V4 and K4 and M4 Mats put G3 mats to shame...
This is not progression.
There is NOOOOOOOOOOO detail in G3 Mats.. none.. Not a single shred of effort put into G3 mats. Probably because they have a computer auto generating skins.. I can tell... Cause the skins look generic.. Cause they are...
Literaly... I can remove the Diffuse MATS from G3F and it almost looks the same only with no eye brow... I have to burn and highlight and do extreame things to G3F mats to get any detail on my renders...
Almost all the new skin.. you cant tell one from the other aside from hue and the shape of the eye brow... its almost like they are selling us the same skin over and over again... They probably arnt but I can tell a computer is generating these skins cause they dont look human...
And I'm not trippin... Just look at the diffrence in quality between Teen 7 and a Elsa K4
This is regression... Which I wouldnt have an issue with.. Accept that they want the same amount of money, or more often then not, more money...
part of the reason is that DAZ PA's are putting more of the details in the mesh itself, instead of relying entirely on the texture maps like they used to do with older content. Add some subdivision and you'll see what I mean.
You can have 10,000 polys... It dont change hues and add viens and pot marks... You dont see this kind of detail anymore in skins. Pay attention to the colors... Theres no depth in skins anymore... And also thats a very noob approch to solving detail issues... lol.. .I'm sorry but I cant buy that... Cause its a hell of a lot easier to place the shadow into the mat its self rather then making the user have to do 4x subD... thats such a HUGE waist of resource.. and unlike the figure.. JPG's can be 10,000 pixels and not crash your computer. Where as SubD4... To get the same deal. Thats unreasonablly foolish.
This figure from starcraft 2. He has way less polys and divistion levels You know how they get away with it? Cause they arnt fools. They put the details in the mats.
Soon, we'll have SB3. Looks like it'll be a merchant resource. I have high hopes for it as I'm generally impressed by Zev0 (and DraagonStorm) products.
I imagine it'll help PAs create better skins, along with helping the customers do their own modifications.
Not saying this is an excuse, but...just something to look forward to.
As for the detail in your attachments, you have a better eye than myself. However I did notice the light blue veins which does make it look more realistic. Will be interesting to see if SB3 can do stuff like that.
However, that skin can only be used in that one game, with that one particular lighting and only with that one particular morph. Hence making things this way makes it way inflexible compared to what we use in our programs.
And, it's a way that's been used for over a decade to deal with massive variations in hardware that the game will be run on.
A lot of us have spent a lot of time complaining about textures with baked-in shading and highlights. That doesn't mean you can't ask for them if you want them, ideally everyone's tastes and workflows should be catered for, but you do need to recognise that your view of what consitutes a good set of textures (which includes the normal, specular, SSS etc. maps where appropriate) is not the only view.
Excuse my uneducated question, but aren't baked-in shading and highlights different from veins and skin blemishes and lots of other things that make the skins unique and interesting? I know I have a few favorite vendors who do really amazing skins that are unique, interesting and beautiful. I don't think they have baked-in shading and highlights, though. I'm not completely sure because I'm not clear on what the baked-in shading and highlights are. While I do use some older skins, I haven't really noticed anything that I consider undesirable in the skin that I would have complained about. Of course, I still have a lot to learn so I just might not be noticing the right things.
Does anyone have an example of the difference between a skin without the baked-in stuff and one without?
A good looking skin texture is ruined by what I assume is meant by "baked-in" details. I'm talking about facial lines, the glute crease, the under-breast shadows, etc., etc. I agree with Richard, these things should be consigned to the past. I'd much rather have a shadow created by polygons and lighting than painted surfaces.
One of the things that seems to be a challenge to even the best PA is texture stretching. Going back to the glute crease, it is fairly obvious that the photo-reference would have left a line there which the artist has painted out. That paint often covers the whole of the inner-thigh/groin area and is often obvious. Anyone with the Cailin skin will be aware of this - and that happens to be, in all other respects, one of my favourite skins.
I'll have to pay more attention to the skins I'm using and see if I notice the differences where shading is concerned. I'm not saying Richard is wrong when I ask, just that I wasn't sure what the big deal was. There are still a lot of things I still need to learn and I've never really looked at skins close enough to see what a skin with baked-in details looked like compared to skins that don't. I was hoping that someone could point out a few really good examples so that I could take a look and compare skins so I educated myself and figure out what everyone was talking about.
When you say the Cailin skin, are you talking about this one? http://www.daz3d.com/cailin-for-victoria-7 I have it, I just have used her yet. I'll have to take a closer look at her. Any links to an older skin that really shows the baked-in details so I can see what they are?
Baked in details can also be due to poor photo references being used in the skin. Given that most skin resources are created from photographs of real people then it is very important that completely even light was present when the photo was taken, otherwise different parts of the skin will be illuminated differently. Photos taken for skin references thus use very different lighting than a glamour photographer would use, and the poses adopted by the models would also be completely different.
Not a fan of baked in shadows/highlights in hair/skin since those seem achievable by lighting/mesh.
However, I'm not sure I agree with you on facial lines and other things Angel mentioned (marks, veins, etc). If these are needed for the figure, then often baking is the only way to achieve them, right?
For example Abel and Opal are older characters so they have baked in facial lines.
I'm not sure the same effect could be achieved with something like an aging morph.
And hd morphs can create veins but they can't make them blueish, so that's another good one to occassionally bake in (not saying for all skins, but maybe the occassional albino character or something). ;)
Indeed, and the reality is for an older person the skin color within the wrinkle is not the same as that in other areas, and this is not only due to the way the light fell on the skin when the photo was taken.
Veins and freckles, fine. I'm for that so long as they are not in places subject to stretching. But I disagree about Opal (I don't have Abel). I started off by welcoming Opal as a great addition to the non-glamour set, until I started using her more often and found that the stretch marks on the body look so painted-on that I stopped using her.
Huh? Well I guess technically there is the possibility that the skin as hidden from sun exposure in the crease of the wrinkle will be somewhat paler but not so noticably.
It can since it has skin overlays now built in as well. The new system allows you to make the veins and other details any colour you want. You can even add purple freckles if you choose lol. You can also flip details horizontally, stack them and apply at any opacity you wish. We wanted to make the new SB as flexible as possible to cater for individual tastes.
oh boy. Hurry up and take my money.
Sure, for close in shots. Most folks that complain about the lack of details don't consider that for distance shots of a character, texture based features aren't very useful, whereas morph based ones are, and probably wouldn't show the colors unless they were highly exaggerated.