Comparing Skin enhancing products....
Bare with me cause I know this can be exhausting.
The Issue: I want to step my character creation up - with some better skin work. Right now, I'm making many people with FacsGen and facegen makes it's own skin texture based on the face you grab.
I'd like to use the shape from faceGen, but use my own skins...so now I'm on the hunt for what to get to edit/create/enhance skins or materials textures etc ....
The aim is more realistic people (not super-photo-real) just more real than clay-skin and of course consitency across peoples....
While hunting through threads and the store, I came across many products- some haven't been mentioned recently and some are mentioned often.
Here's my list so far. I'm hoping for some suggestions on what to grab next to help with the skins on the peoples.
N.G.S. Anagenessis for Genesis 3
https://www.daz3d.com/n-g-s-anagenessis-for-genesis-3
Looks like the leader so far as Will supports it...and I read good things.....
Beautiful Skin Genesis 3 Bundle (and it's a bundle)
https://www.daz3d.com/beautiful-skin-genesis-3-bundle
This looks promising
EcVh0 Iray Skin Shader for Genesis 3 Female(s)
https://www.daz3d.com/ecvh0-iray-skin-shader-for-genesis-3-female-s
This looks sexy but the pronos are all in the dark so i can't really see the skin so well....
And I didn't see any info on it...
Iray Smart Converter and Advanced Skin Managers for Genesis 3
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-smart-converter-and-advanced-skin-managers-for-genesis-3
This looked a little intimidating but very comprehensive. Plus it's unisex.
Skin Builder 3 for Genesis 3 Female(s)
https://www.daz3d.com/skin-builder-3-for-genesis-3-female-s
This looks like the whole tool-box but not sure if it's overkill (is there such a thing?) I could grow into this one over time.
Any others? What about these?
Comments
I, obviously, highly recommend the first. Although I have NGS Anagenessis 2, which works on almost anything (heck, I've used the manual script to put it on dinosaurs, dragons, horses...) I don't know if there's a difference between it and the one for Genesis 3 other than price.
I also have Skin Builder, and what I really like about it is plugging any gaps you might have of not having the 'right' shader. Also, I find it reasonably good at making male skins (with the ability to put G3F maps on G3M figures). Mind you, you miss a few things like stubble or whatnot, but I've found a lot of good skin detail is often born out by having decent HD morphs. I should do a test of that. Hmm.
I THINK I've used earlier versions of some of the other products, but I tend to get a bit meh about products that are too specific to figure targets.
Honestly I don't really understand how to use them properly.
NGS Anagenessis 2 give less of settings, it removes the suntan of the skin, for example Fujio become pale almost like Kenji 7.
Iray Smart Converter and Advanced Skin Managers gives more of settings, you can set several parameters. I prefer this one because the black skins are better and I can control the glossiness.
Actually I apply NGS Anagenessis 2 to improve the skin and after Iray Smart Converter and Advanced Skin Managers to restore the suntan or black skin and add glossiness
There's a big difference between Anagenessis for Genesis 3 Females and Anagenessis 2. Anagenessis 2 works on just about anything, and only uses the diffuse map where Anagenessis for Gen3F uses all the figure's maps I believe (at least more than the diffuse).
I prefer Anagenessis, and I get better results with it and also better results much more consistently. It typically doesn't change the tone much, generally slightly lighter. I really like the metallic flakes material with it too & I think it does a great job for sweaty skin. It can be used for Genesis 3 males too, but I find that good results are less consistent and needs some tweaking to use on gen maps. Anagenessis 2 I've found can change the tone a lot, and requires a bit more technical how-to (or fiddling around with settings) to get to my liking.
FWIW, I like the Anagenessis for Genesis 3 Females a lot and use it the most, but I don't have the other products listed.
I love the EcVho products. One thing the new Daz Studio brought was the dual lobe attribute which looks so nice with skin; the older shader looks a bit more plastic like. For another thread, I compare products from a single PA showing a G7 character with the traditional iray settings and a G8 character with the dual lobe settings. For example, these two from Raiya:
Have you looked at Biscuit's Skin Tiles over at Rendo? These can be really useful, especially if you have several generations of figures, where you want skin to match, for Studio or Poser, and I suspect they will work in Carrara and Bryce, too.
Like Will, I use Argenesis on other things besides skin, I convert new MDL released figures to Argensis 2; I just prefer how they look - and they look the same under the same lighting conditions. This means that when grouping figures I don't get any surprises... Well fewer of them.
Note: You don't obtain the same thing between the different generations.
Michael 6 HD (Bjorn) textures
Michael 7 textures
NGSA2 + ISCASM (Warm Skin)
Michael 4 (HiRes) textures + NGSA2 (Genesis script) + ISCASM (Generation 4)
(Material preset loaded on Michael 8 figure with Legacy UVs for Genesis 8)
I don't own the other products and I didn't explore all possibilities yet but NGSA2 and ISCASM seem to be complementary, NGSA2 prepares the figure for me and ISCASM lets me to adjust the settings.
NGSA2 is an easy tool which provides 5 major scripts :
ISCASM is an advanced tool which provides several scripts :
...my two "go to" products are Beautiful Skins and Skin Builder Pro/Skin Builder Pro 3. SBP3 is nice in that it has added overlays that are baked into the texture on rendering rather than using the LIE (which can cause long load times for saved characters). True, the one downside of SBP is there is no male counterpart (particularly since G2 divided the genders again).
The nice thing about Skin Builder Pro (both editions) is it works with both Iray and 3DL.
For what its worth. On the left, Michael 8 as loaded, on the right NGS Anagenesis 2 with some minor tweaks. Glossy colour was changed to a lighter blue (0.68 0.90 1.00) so the skin isnt so pale. The top coat bump was changed to normal mapping and i transplanted the orginal normal maps over. A similar result can be achieved by changing the NGS default top coat bump value from +10 to -10. I also turned off the dual lobe specularity, and removed the map as i find the skin far too glossy with it. The main advantage with the NGS2 is the reduction in the ammount of maps used. For distance renders where the Normal maps can be removed only the diffuse map and the included Micros map are needed, and have had 8 G3F characters in one scene on my 8GB 1070 without running out of memory by using the same maps for each, and just making very minor changes to the Glossy Colour value to give them all a slightly different skin tone.
Michael 8 Base textures