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Getting skin to look more realistic. Maps?

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  • deankutdeankut Posts: 298
    Divamakeup said:
    drzap said:
    Divamakeup said:

    You really don't need an expensive program. The texture maps that Daz creates are often detailed enough. Occasionally they need slight adjustments with Photoshop or Gimp or pretty much any photo editing program - but most of them are detailed enough "out of the box". The problem is their Iray settings are usually pretty bad, imo. You just have to learn how iray settings affect the look of the textures and adjust accordingly.

    It depends on your definition of "detailed enough".   The DAZ tex maps I've seen are jpg (!), so you are already talking about a lot of loss of fidelity from the start.  JPG files are lossy and only 8 bit, so you are already starting out on the low end of the spectrum.  But a good knowledge of how textures work in relation to realistic skin is a must.

    That sounds a bit condescending. I think my definition of "detailed enough" would cover many (most?) people's idea of "detailed enough". 

    This is Victoria 7's textures - with no changes made to the texture maps (click for full size):

    Most people aren't going to need more detail than that. The only things I changed where her Iray settings, added displacement maps, and Duel Lobe Specular bumps.

    And as I said earlier, lighting and render settings can play a big role in adding realism.

     

     

    @DivaMakeup, I'd love to know if there is a clear tutorial on how you adjusted her skin to look so fantastic. I know this post is a bit old, but I'm really trying to learn.

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,287
    edited April 2020
    deankut said:
    Divamakeup said:
    drzap said:
    Divamakeup said:

    You really don't need an expensive program. The texture maps that Daz creates are often detailed enough. Occasionally they need slight adjustments with Photoshop or Gimp or pretty much any photo editing program - but most of them are detailed enough "out of the box". The problem is their Iray settings are usually pretty bad, imo. You just have to learn how iray settings affect the look of the textures and adjust accordingly.

    It depends on your definition of "detailed enough".   The DAZ tex maps I've seen are jpg (!), so you are already talking about a lot of loss of fidelity from the start.  JPG files are lossy and only 8 bit, so you are already starting out on the low end of the spectrum.  But a good knowledge of how textures work in relation to realistic skin is a must.

    That sounds a bit condescending. I think my definition of "detailed enough" would cover many (most?) people's idea of "detailed enough". 

    This is Victoria 7's textures - with no changes made to the texture maps (click for full size):

    Most people aren't going to need more detail than that. The only things I changed where her Iray settings, added displacement maps, and Duel Lobe Specular bumps.

    And as I said earlier, lighting and render settings can play a big role in adding realism.

     

     

    @DivaMakeup, I'd love to know if there is a clear tutorial on how you adjusted her skin to look so fantastic. I know this post is a bit old, but I'm really trying to learn.

    Oh gosh, that was like 2 1/2 years ago, so I'm not sure what all I did. That was probably just testing and experimenting I was doing before making my "Altern8 - Skin Shader System" product. If you have that product of mine I can recommend some Altern8 settings for Victoria 7: Load "HDR B" and then render settings A. Apply "Alexandra 8 - No Maps", "Translucency D - 45", "Sclera 025", and "Skin Shine B - Medium". I also recommend dropping the saturation of the SSS Reflectance Tint color to around 28 and increasing the Normal Map setting to 1.00. 

    Of course, people's skin appearance preferences are all different, so you might tweak it from there to suit your tastes/preferences. :)

    Post edited by 3Diva on
  • deankutdeankut Posts: 298
    Divamakeup said:
    deankut said:
    Divamakeup said:
    drzap said:
    Divamakeup said:
    Oh gosh, that was like 2 1/2 years ago, so I'm not sure what all I did. That was probably just testing and experimenting I was doing before making my "Altern8 - Skin Shader System" product. If you have that product of mine I can recommend some Altern8 settings for Victoria 7: Load "HDR B" and then render settings A. Apply "Alexandra 8 - No Maps", "Translucency D - 45", "Sclera 025", and "Skin Shine B - Medium". I also recommend dropping the saturation of the SSS Reflectance Tint color to around 28 and increasing the Normal Map setting to 1.00. 

    Of course, people's skin appearance preferences are all different, so you might tweak it from there to suit your tastes/preferences. :)

    @Divamakeup, thank you! :)

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,887
    Richard Haseltine said:
    Toonces said:
    j cade said:
    drzap said:

     

    (I will also add that while it is exceedingly useful for hight and normal maps, higher bit depth has marginal benefit for things like diffuse textures and absolutely none for things like glossy maps )

    Interesting. I didn't believe this to be true, but I loaded up a couple of what I considered to be high quality figures. And you're right, they used tiff instead of jpg for normal maps. So I suppose that even though I cannot tell the difference between the maps with my naked eye (jpg vs png/tiff), they must have some impact on making a higher quality final render in which I *would* be able to see a difference...the normal maps at least.

    Vague, hand-wavy thought: each of three colours is used in a normal map to represent a position on one of the three axes of the unit sphere. Measured in degrees between axis and normal vector each axis goes from -180 to 180, which means with an 8 bit image the precision is not quite 1 degree. For fine detail that sounds significant.

    I thought the three components were the components of the vector in cartesian world space. To describe a normal on a unit sphere, like a polar coordinate system, one would only need two angles.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,825
    TheMysteryIsThePoint said:
    Richard Haseltine said:
    Toonces said:
    j cade said:
    drzap said:

     

    (I will also add that while it is exceedingly useful for hight and normal maps, higher bit depth has marginal benefit for things like diffuse textures and absolutely none for things like glossy maps )

    Interesting. I didn't believe this to be true, but I loaded up a couple of what I considered to be high quality figures. And you're right, they used tiff instead of jpg for normal maps. So I suppose that even though I cannot tell the difference between the maps with my naked eye (jpg vs png/tiff), they must have some impact on making a higher quality final render in which I *would* be able to see a difference...the normal maps at least.

    Vague, hand-wavy thought: each of three colours is used in a normal map to represent a position on one of the three axes of the unit sphere. Measured in degrees between axis and normal vector each axis goes from -180 to 180, which means with an 8 bit image the precision is not quite 1 degree. For fine detail that sounds significant.

    I thought the three components were the components of the vector in cartesian world space. To describe a normal on a unit sphere, like a polar coordinate system, one would only need two angles.

    I did say vague, hand-wavey - but yes, as far as I know they are orthogonal components not angles.

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