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Tired of searching - DAZ spec & sss maps in Blender?

SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,773
in The Commons

I've been looking online for three days and experimenting until my eyes hurt, and my earlier post got buried in the huge Blender thread here, so I'm sorry, but I need to ask in a separate one now. Feel free to merge this thread after it's been answered, but please give me a chance to get an answer and end the frustration.  :)

 

Can someone explain how we're supposed to set up the specular and subsurface scattering maps included with DAZ figures in Blender? Neither type of map seems to behave as expected; specularity maps by themselves are not defining where the skin shines, and the lightly-colored SSS maps would seem to go against the whole idea of black = no sss, white = sss. I'm familar with PBR, so I would probably have figured the specular part out if we had roughness maps, but I cannot find any good examples of these maps being properly set up in Blender and doing their job as they do in Studio. I know Blender doesn't use Iray, but it's not like the maps themselves come in PBR and non-PBR versions.

An example shader or a video recommendation would be great, I either just need to see a node setup and figure out where these things are supposed to go or have someone tell me that those maps do not actually work in Blender so I can stop messing with this and get back to learning something more productive. Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • andya_b341b7c5f5andya_b341b7c5f5 Posts: 694
    edited September 2019
    SnowSultan said:

    I've been looking online for three days and experimenting until my eyes hurt, and my earlier post got buried in the huge Blender thread here, so I'm sorry, but I need to ask in a separate one now. Feel free to merge this thread after it's been answered, but please give me a chance to get an answer and end the frustration.  :)

     

    Can someone explain how we're supposed to set up the specular and subsurface scattering maps included with DAZ figures in Blender? Neither type of map seems to behave as expected; specularity maps by themselves are not defining where the skin shines, and the lightly-colored SSS maps would seem to go against the whole idea of black = no sss, white = sss. I'm familar with PBR, so I would probably have figured the specular part out if we had roughness maps, but I cannot find any good examples of these maps being properly set up in Blender and doing their job as they do in Studio. I know Blender doesn't use Iray, but it's not like the maps themselves come in PBR and non-PBR versions.

    An example shader or a video recommendation would be great, I either just need to see a node setup and figure out where these things are supposed to go or have someone tell me that those maps do not actually work in Blender so I can stop messing with this and get back to learning something more productive. Thanks in advance.

    See attached images.  Hope that helps.

    spec map.jpg
    1920 x 1024 - 320K
    spec map 02.jpg
    1920 x 1024 - 346K
    roughness 01.jpg
    1920 x 1024 - 337K
    SSS.jpg
    1919 x 1023 - 307K
    SSS02.jpg
    1920 x 1024 - 325K
    Post edited by andya_b341b7c5f5 on
  • SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,773
    edited September 2019

    Hm, some of those look like things I've been trying, but I will take a more careful look. Thank you very much, I do appreciate it.

     

    edit: OK, that is exactly what I was doing, so I'm starting to think I was right about these textures just not behaving the same in Blender without some complex node settings. If you just plug a DAZ specular map into the Specular dot, it renders with an oil-like sheen unless you adjust Roughness, and that just uniformly reduces it unrealistically without a specific Roughness map. Plugging the same map into both the Specular and Roughness dots has virtually no effect.

    SSS is the same thing, I did know where to plug it in, but I don't understand why DAZ's SSS maps are not b/w like Specular maps and I think that's why they're not making sense in Blender either.

    Thanks again for your help, but it seems I'm going to have to keep looking for answers. Take care.

    Post edited by SnowSultan on
  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,175
    edited September 2019
    SnowSultan said:

    Hm, some of those look like things I've been trying, but I will take a more careful look. Thank you very much, I do appreciate it.

     

    edit: OK, that is exactly what I was doing, so I'm starting to think I was right about these textures just not behaving the same in Blender without some complex node settings. If you just plug a DAZ specular map into the Specular dot, it renders with an oil-like sheen unless you adjust Roughness, and that just uniformly reduces it unrealistically without a specific Roughness map. Plugging the same map into both the Specular and Roughness dots has virtually no effect.

    SSS is the same thing, I did know where to plug it in, but I don't understand why DAZ's SSS maps are not b/w like Specular maps and I think that's why they're not making sense in Blender either.

    Thanks again for your help, but it seems I'm going to have to keep looking for answers. Take care.

    For those that need more fine tuning, try putting a color ramp node between the texture map and the principled node and play with the black and white sliders. The color ramp is under "Converter".

    Laurie

    Post edited by AllenArt on
  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 3,228

    "specularity maps by themselves are not defining where the skin shines" - They aren't supposed to. Specularity is how reflection varies with the angle of incidence, and can be quite subtle, i.e. the look of the "hotspot" around where the light source reflects directly into the camera. "Shine" itself is the domain of roughness, bumps, and normals.

    "and the lightly-colored SSS maps would seem to go against the whole idea of black = no sss, white = sss" - In this case, I think your suspicion might be correct: Blender is simply different. Blender multiplies each component of the radius by each component of the color. The Subsurface Radius determines how much each color component will scatter. Notice that it is usually used for human skin, and being filled with blood, the R component is much higher than the other components. The Subsurface Color is just that, but it is biased by the Radius value.

    What are you doing, what do you expect to happen, and what is actually happening?

  • Cris PalominoCris Palomino Posts: 12,480
    edited September 2019

    Hopefully it provides clues.

    Post edited by Cris Palomino on
  • Cris PalominoCris Palomino Posts: 12,480

    https://www.blendernation.com/2018/07/27/blender-2-8-pbr-texture-mapper-add-on-simplifies-importing-substance-painter-textures/

  • SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,773

    what do you expect to happen, and what is actually happening?

    The better DAZ specular maps, usually included with their primary character releases, allow shine and highlights that correspond with the skin details of the texture. When these maps are applied in Blender, they don't give the same results; in fact they don't seem to have all that much of an effect at all on the specularity. Iray doesn't have a simple "specular" channel like Cycles, but I could still get that detailed specular look with 3Delight. This is frustrating, not because I haven't taken the time to learn or experiment, but unless I'm missing something big, logically this *should* work.

    Thanks Cris, I'll watch that video although I don't care for Eevee for final renders. Will also give that PBR add on a look. Appreciated.   :)

  • felisfelis Posts: 5,770
    SnowSultan said:

    what do you expect to happen, and what is actually happening?

    The better DAZ specular maps, usually included with their primary character releases, allow shine and highlights that correspond with the skin details of the texture.

    In my understanding, it is actually the roughness map that is intended for that.

  • PadonePadone Posts: 4,014
    edited September 2019
    SnowSultan said:
    Can someone explain how we're supposed to set up the specular and subsurface scattering maps included with DAZ figures in Blender?

    I worked for some time on material conversion for the diffeomorphic plugin and I believe we got quite a good result with specularity. There are some equations involved that you may find useful. My advice though is to use the diffeomorphic plugin then adjust what you don't like. It is much easier this way instead of "reinventing the wheel".

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/134/ultimate-specularity-matching-fresnel
    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/321/dual-lobe-specularity-implementation-and

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/332/specular-fix-for-blender-28

    And this is on translucency and sss, it works quite fine as far as the chromatic mode is not involved.

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/111/better-translucency-also-helps-the-g8f
    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/112/better-translucency-part-2-also-mixing
    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/115/better-translucency-part-3-scatter-only

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/316/no-eyebrows-on-victoria-8

    Post edited by Padone on
  • SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,773

    Felis: That's right, that's why the last few days I've really been wishing skin textures came with Roughness maps.   ;)

    Thanks Padone, I will definitely take a look at that a little later. 

    I figured out one issue, it helps if you add an RGBMix node so you can adjust the specularity in conjunction with roughness and not rely entirely on the specular map to drive the strength. Here's my first half-way decent test with Monique 8, no SSS yet because that's still a mystery I need to get to (and PNG compression to save size softened it a bit). Only thing I really don't like (or quite understand) is the strong reflection of the bikini strap on her shoulder (why *just* there?). Anyway, thanks to everyone for your help so far.

     

     

    skin_simple.png
    1000 x 1500 - 1M
  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,711

    You could try inverting the spec map and plug that into the roughness channel, and use a ramp to adjust it, just a thought.

  • SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,773

    I did try that and it didn't seem to have much of an effect. It's OK though, I'm getting more satisfied with my results and since there are so many different ways to do basically the same thing in Blender, I think I should concentrate on just getting visually pleasing results and not looking for specific values that will likely vary wildly between scene, texture, and lighting.

    Thanks again to everyone for the help so far.

  • epep Posts: 7
    edited September 2019

    .

    Post edited by ep on
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