Skin tones - why isn't there a baseline?
DrGonzo62
Posts: 382
You buy a new character, load it into your scene - and it looks like he or she died months ago.
Pale, bluish skin tones. Not matching any other asset in your shot.
How is this possible???
And why do I have to delve into the myriads of iRay surface settings to make this thing not looking dead?
Where is the baseline for skin tones when a new G8 character is being sold at the DAZ store?
As in - put it next to the basic DAZ G8 character and see if the skin tone is even close to match.
I already got my hands full writing a good story, scripting the thing in a game engine, maybe doing some animations and visualizing it in DAZ.
Lighting, posing, compositing the shots. You know what I'm talking about.
The last thing I need is having to spend extra time tweaking a new assets skin tones to fit into a scene.
How come that the stringent DAZ QC department doesn't reject assets that look like Frankenstein next to a Michael 8 or Victoria 8?
Unless it's that kind of asset of course. :)
Anyone else here being annoyed by this?
I honestly prefer spending my time creating something new, rather than tweaking existing stuff that's out of whack for some reason.
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Comments
Doesn't bother me in the least. tweaking things is part of the creative process IMO. Not everyoner in real life looks the same, why should it be that way in DS.
You also have to take into account that every PA has their own way of developing and what they think looks good. If all the PA characters followed a baseline it would get pretty boring real fast.
I actually don't care for the default v8 or M8 default skins, they are flat and boring to me.
Also lighting plays a huge part in how a character looks in a scene. i can load the same figure with the same skin into many different scenes with different lighting in each and they will all look differently.
+1
Take a look at people in the street and you'll see a whole range of skin colours. If you have a really good look, a good portion of redheads actually have a blue-ish skin tone.
+1
With so many different taste preferences when it comes to skin, lighting, render settings products, and hundreds of PAs making characters it would be really difficult to do some kind of "base line" I would think. These things are highly subjective to personal tastes and people's personal preferences when it comes to their favorite render settings, lighting sets, etc. Some of us PAs have released skin shaders and skin settings products to help bring all the scene characters more harmony - and even those provide very different looks from each other which is good as it accommodates a wider variety of tastes. :) You just have to find the settings that you enjoy the most. If you really like Michael 8's and Victoria 8's settings you can easily set up a Materials Preset (tell it to "ignore maps") to apply those skin settings to all your characters.
What is a baseline skintone?
Something that looks reaistic. Actually my problem is the opposite to the OP. Far too many characters with such an orange/red tone that you'de be thinking they lived under a sunlamp. And don't get me started on makeup that looks like it's been applied with a trowel.
So aside from the whole, there isn't a "correct" thing, skin tones range from warm to cool, etc. etc... there was literally just a product released of someone creating matching skin tones for all the DAZ figures... less than 24 hours ago.
There is no baseline skintone, but there is a baseline light. Its 5600k and its perceived as neutral “white” light. Less and you get warm light, more and you get blueish tones. If you are really strict , you should also calibrate your monitor and your environment for this if you want to judge colours fairly.
I am little annoyed at that too. I think PAs need some standardized lighting environment, and couple of promo images should be taken there, so we have something to compare to.
That would be a good idea yes. Maybe with a tagline "Rendered in 5600k" or something like that.
Because if you want figures to match you could then render your own character in 5600k and see how it works out.
Look up humanae pantone a photographer took hundreds of photos of people and pantone have put together rgb swatches to correspond with the skin colours of the photographs .
Have a look at fiddling with iray skin srttings thread i think page 86 ? read Arnold c posts on a basic skin colour. But like others I have read around the subject taken on board what i have read on various threads on the forum here and elsewhere! But for me i load up a photo with a skin colour i am trying to achieve in a photo editing program or such like and take the rgb colours and transfer the rgb settings to the transmisson colour and tweak the other settings and dont forget the white balance you can almost change the tango G8 skin into something more realistic just by the white balance
Various skin tones and there RGB settings.
http://www.photokaboom.com/photography/learn/Photoshop_Elements/color_correction/skin_tone/1_skin_tone_samples_chart.htm
Those are skin tones? Even the super bright red ones and the gray one at the end? I don't think I've seen a human being with those skin tones...
+1
I suggest the OP creates their own base-line; I do. All characters I own are adjusted regardless of who created them; I use the same light setup to compare them before I save out said converted character.
What might be useful for those new to Daz (and/or the less skilled or those in a hurry) if characters were released, with just one setup that recreates one of the promo images; not specifically relating to props, but the pose and light setup.
That would create a more useful baselin.
The idea behind them.
http://www.photokaboom.com/photography/learn/Photoshop_Elements/color_correction/skin_tone/1_skin_tone_correction_guidelines.htm
How they look will also depend on your monitor calibration.
Indeed. I doubt most bother, and to be fair; most folks monitors, whilst calibration would help to an extent, the monitor is likely to have insufficient range to be accurate.
I do have some sympathy as it can be very hard, looking at promos, to decide how a character skin will look alongside others. And soem of us have wonky colour vision, which limits our ability to make adjustments (I'ma lways convinced I'm going to end up with a Martian or Vulcan by mistake). The idea of including a render with a standard, stated colour-temperature light has much to commend it - though we should bear in mind that we are dealing with a zero-thickness surface with properties and maps designed to fake the look of flesh, so there will always be variations between artists in how they try to get the skin to look right and so in how it will behave under different lights; simply aiming for a standard 5,600K set-up or whatever is not going to be a final answer for all purposes.
@Richard
Thanks Richard!
And just to clarify - I have been working with DAZ for over 7 years. Rendering on a dual 1080 rig for a while now.
For the VN I am currently writing I will literally need hundreds of images to illustrate it. 5 renders a week with all the time in the world to fiddle around with the transmitted color and SSS values is just not my workflow. My characters are rarely just by themselves, so not only do the skin tones have to look OK, but a Caucasian male and female standing next to each other also have to look at least reasonably close.
I'm not after tweaking a single promo image for hours, with the character standing in a room by him or herself.
Instead, I will be rendering dozens and dozens of images with multiple characters in the shot - and all of a sudden there is very little time for lots of tweaking.
So even if M8 or V8 skin tones don't look good to someone, at least everyone has them and you can get an idea on what to expect from a character right next to it.
@AlmightyQUEST
Would you be able to point me to that product? Thanks!
Yeah, I have that problem as well. Some characters look like they have been spending the last year out on the beach all day.
And then you find yourself adjusting and adjusting - until you finally went from bad to less bad.
Anyone who thinks skin shouldn't be pale needs to come to Chicago in Feb. I'm Scots-Irish so I start off pale but after 3 months of next to sunlight I'm surprised priests don't fling holy water at me when they see me.
Would you not need a separate "baseline" for Non European/caucasions ?
How would that work??
I would agree with those who accept the reality that you will have to tweak
The skin Mats yourself if you are seeking a specific tone.
Most Black DAZ Character sets are stereotypically Dark Subsaharan African.
(I get it, black people do not contract with 3DSK and other resource sites apparently)
Us light skinned Black people have to Make do with whatever
"Lightly toasted" Caucasian textures we can find and tweak from there.
I used the Old "Sol" for Mike4 for "my" skin on my CG self Avatar
along with a little photoshop work to add my Moles and freckles.
The project is called Humane- a work in progress by Angélica Das.... I spotted the two shades that Divamakeup had never seen in seconds!
What I do is buy certain characters specifically for the skin colour/texture, and certain characters for the modelling of the caracter, then apply the skin I like to the character model I like. Some people like sun lamp baked skin color, and some people like artificial plastic skin color. Makeup comes down to the "taste" of the artist who is creating it.
I read the request not as a desire to standardise skins to a single colour but as a desire to have predictable relationship between the store images and the actual tone in renders.
It's really hard to have the store images match renders because it's a fact of skin (and 3D skin as well) that lighting changes skin color and relectivity, among other things. Any deviation in lighting from a store image will make the skin look slightly different. I think it's sort of an impossible task.
Laurie
Wow! What are the odds! :)
I'll definitely give this a try.
Thanks!
See, I'm not talking about slightly different skin tones here. I'm talking about loading 2 characters into the scene and one of them is clearly an alien, judging by his or her skin tone.
Lighting does not come into play here.
What is wrong with me asking for a reference render with the new asset next to G8, which everybody owns already?
I am starting to wonder if I'm the only one here who's putting several characters in a shot, with much too noticeable differences in their skin tones?
But then again, some people seem to feel the same regarding too much inconsistencies between characters, or there probably wouldn't be a product like "IDG Iray Essentials for Genesis 8" hitting the store.
As someone who has been described as a "redbone" who would probably count as looking like an alien from your point of view, I actually welcome a wide variety of skin tones. I live in an area which has a wide variety of skin tones (San Francisco bay area) and prety much never see any situation where everyone's skin tones match closely. May I ask you to look at the Human link I placed above and tell me which two people standing next to each other looks wrong?
I see .
That is Mission impossible then.
Far too many variables.