Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part II
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Personally, pearbear, I think your skin renders are about as close to real skin as I have ever seen from 3D art. Thank you for sharing your knowledge on the subject. This is the kind of quality I'm using as a target to aim for. I've only just started learning and tinkering with skin settings though, so it'll be a long, long time before I can match something like this.
Excellent renders, everyone.
Here is my try - render of http://www.daz3d.com/starship-cyclone
Environment lighting.
Pear bear: what kind of scattering adjustments? Maps, or just adjusting values?
This was something from Poser 9, "The Loft" I think.
I removed all the poser lights and light the scene with emission shaders on the light bulbs.
using the Monument valley hdr Ibl file from hdri labs to add light through the windows.
All the shaders were auto converted. the only ones touched (besides the emission shaders) where the lampshade on the table lamp
and the couch and chair (orange and too glossy, so changed to iray leather), and the table tops changed to frosted iray glass
My first attempt at translucence-driven skin.
It got super dark... which is fine, I can either change the skins lighter, or start with lighter skin.
The original is provided for contrast.
...in that case, couldn't you simply take the diffuse colour map into a 2D programme, convert it to greyscale and save it with a "bmp" or "spec" label?
No, you can't because that's not how you make a good specular map or bump map, that's how you cheat one. If I COULD do it right, I would. But I don't have the skills or the talent, just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
Aaaah. Did better once I fiddled with the gamma of the skin. heh. (Although I'll keep the dark look in mind for future stuff)
Again, original version vs. translucence version. It's a subtle difference, but I think it's an improvement.
Are you using the base resolution for your character? He looks a little 'blocky'...especially around the ears/finger tips.
Technically, all specular maps are cheats as they should be a result of the surface definition, not a 'map.' As for bump maps, again, they are a stand in for geometry detail that is not defined as actual geometry so a bit of a cheat, though less then the spec map. As for how to get the bump map, anything which produces the missing detail serves it's purpose. There are less accurate and more accurate ways to achieve either result, but one should remember... they are all, technically, cheats.
A side note, the reason for the cheats is that we don't have hardware that can handle billions of polygons (and automatic LOD, and/or standardized nurbs based or beyond*...) with well developed and standardized lighting/pb material definitions that map on a pixel level, all in real time yet.
* I imagine at some point, working with a mesh, based on polys, tri's, etc.. .will seem archaic and objects will be defined by some mathematical definition that would be extrapolated into objects by the device rendering out the object/scene, etc... although trying to texture something like that could be 'challenging.' ;)
Are you using the base resolution for your character? He looks a little 'blocky'...especially around the ears/finger tips.
Yeah. I don't know what the heck is up with that. It's not mesh, I suspect one of the morphs I'm using is doing something bad. It a at subd 3.
Right now I'm mostly experimenting with skin so I haven't worried about it.
In the beta version the genesis is loaded with base resolution , you need to subdivide 2 to get it smooth enough for Iray or you get bad shadows on the surface or weird ears ..
from your renders I see it is the low base resolution and I am 100% sure
Yeah. I don't know what the heck is up with that. It's not mesh, I suspect one of the morphs I'm using is doing something bad. It a at subd 3.
Right now I'm mostly experimenting with skin so I haven't worried about it.
Messing about with reflections, nothing too special.
Basic V4, Texture is one of Maddelirium's using iRay SSS (needs tweaking). The spine is Mihrelle's Nightmare Collection from Rendo with the iRay Titanium preset
.
The environment is Magix's Worldball XT Lushlands w/ a filter forged ground plane + normal map. I turned the dome off and used the Sun-Sky only setting and turned the intensity down to .25.
/edit
Tweaked the grass and changed the spine to solid dispersive glass. I canceled and saved around 14m. It was sitting at 89% and I got impatient. :P
You really need more specular, that more than the translucence is what bring the skin to life. Look at Cath's (mec4d) people...they all have that broad reflectance from the environment (hdri).
Are you using the spec maps that came with the texture? I say ditch 'em... for me they just kill the specular, and I'd rather control it with the layered weight and fresnel
Not all. They should be giving the program information about where the body has higher/lower oil levels. A face maps should have the T zone and the chin more highlighted than the cheeks which would have a slightly higher level than the jaw line, around the mouth and where crows feet start. Across the shoulders has more oil than the lower back and the elbows and knees often are fairly dry areas on the body. Maps that are pretty much the bump map over again are cheats and often don't even have the real information the computer needs to tell where the higher shine parts of the body should be.
Thanks!
I believe it's designed as a 3Delight shader to specifically work with the textures it comes with. It comes with a number of unusual maps and masks that are probably specific to the custom 3Delight shader. I don't use 3Delight, so I haven't even tried the Macro Skin shader out, but I really wanted those 8000 pixel normal maps to use in Iray. I'm pretty sure this is the first time textures of that resolution have been offered for a DAZ figure. It comes with two varieties of color maps too (natural and tan) which are pretty good. I noticed in the Macro Skin thread that an update is supposed to be coming soon with a "no eyebrows" option that should make the textures more versatile.
So I haven't tried the Macro Skin shader. Just bought it for the normal maps to use in my own shader, and it was a purchase I'm very happy with. Hoping there will be more like it in the future.
Yeah, I guess the light need more pixel samples
I used 5000 pixel samples and still not 100%
Yeah, I didn't really pay attention to the glossy/top coat maps that were flattening things.
After experimenting with the translucence-driven thing, I think I'm swinging back to how I was doing things before. The translucence approach is VERY finicky and prone to gamma and lose details -- I would probably have to totally redo every skin.
While I'd like better translucence maps, honestly, for most purposes, just putting 'pink' in and tweaking for appropriate lighting should work.
And son of a monkey's knuckle, yes, it was on base resolution. (kicks something) ((It threw me that I could set Subdivision values even though it was on Base resolution))
I'm not sure why, but I strongly suspect that the resolution resets if you save or something, because I just checked it after setting it to High Resolution and... it's back on Base Resolution.
Oooo k.
Let's try it again, shall we?
(And it occurred to me after a few times that this guy ends up looking a lot like Lee Van Cleef.)
This came out muuuuuuuuuuuch better. (I was WONDERING where all those wrinkles I thought I added went...)
Much better, and yes he does look like Lee Van Cleef.
More glossy layer, less top coat. Need more broad, dim specular and less of the really high tight glossies.
Wow, thanks a lot!
Here's an old thread on the Octane Render forum with TonySculptor debuting his skin and answering peoples' questions about it:
https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=34780&sid=d2211977221c23c75f94f50cffa5ebde
I learned a lot about skin shaders by following that post, there's a lot of good info there. And his skin and sculpting look great. It isn't directly applicable to Iray, since they are talking about Octane, but the concepts are still relevant. They're both unbiased GPU renderers. I'm pretty sure this kind of shader could be built for Iray by a DAZ shader expert. I've never built a DAZ shader from scratch, it's something I've been wanting to start learning about. Still, a lot can be done by applying these techniques as much as you can with the structure of the Iray Uber Base shader.
Well, he DOES look like he's sweating in some cantina... but yeah. ;)
Let's see, my scattering values are currently at Transmitted Measurement Distance 0.50, Transmitted Color 0.65, 0.52, 0.40, SSS Amount 0.30, SSS Direction -0.50. These are something I tweak a lot as I figure out what looks better to me, so they change a lot, this is just where they are now. Definitely worth it to mess around with them and see what they do. I would like to use a map instead of the color values in Transmitted Color, but this feature seems broken in the current beta. At least, it behaves in a way that I don't expect or understand when I plug a map into it (I just get neon yellow skin no matter what color map I use). The reason I'd like to plug a map into here is to make certain areas such as ears have more of a red glow. As it is now, I just use a redder color for Transmitted Color on the Ears Surface, but it's a bit of a kludge. You can use a redder color over the whole body, but it's hard to get pale skin if you do.
Looks like you're on the right track with your experiment in Translucency Color based skin! If you look at the TonySculptor Octane Render thread I linked to a few minutes ago, you'll see other people having the same issue as you of their first attempts coming out too dark because they didn't gamma correct the skin texture. But I see that you figured it out. I do my adjustment in Photoshop using Image-Adjust-Exposure-Gamma Correction: 2.2 This may wash out areas that don't scatter as much such as the eybrows, so you can mask those off in Photoshop before doing the gamma correction to keep them dark.
I went back to doing non-translucence. I think it's clearly a powerful technique, but there are so many hurdles... eenh.
As for transmitted... if you experiment with volumes, one thing I've found is that very transparent objects seem to use the Glossy color as their external 'shell' color, even if gloss is 0.
So from THAT point of view, you might want to experiment with setting color maps in Glossy, set glossy to 0, and carry any desired specular effects through thin film and top coat.
And what is that hair, timmins? I need that.
Yeah, there are a lot of hurdles. I think my next step should be to try to learn to build a shader from scratch (Shader Mixer, or Shader Builder can do this?) so that I can set it up to do just what I want instead of trying to wedge a square peg into a round hole. I don't even know if that's simple or difficult in DAZ. Do we users even have the ability to build Iray shaders in the beta? If anyone has advice on this, I'd love to be more informed about it.
Thank you! I actually made it in LAMH.
The only thing really fancy about it was doing a density map for the hairline, and, honestly, it wasn't THAT hard. And then a lot of judicious Sphereize.
I'm finding LAMH is a great way to quickly do all sorts of basic but nice looking short hairdos (Garibaldi is probably just as good)
Playing with environmental sets
First I made simple tree with translucent shader to mimic the colors of the trees in the HDRI maps
just a test to see how well it blend, tree is shyti in construction but it was about the translucency
second the old 3d monastery used higher pixel filter to blur it off for less perfect picture
just now noticed I forgot to add glass shader to the windows surfaces then it crashed on me ):
LAMH turns the resolution to base whenever you apply it, so that's probably why.
Son of a... thank you! I did not realize that.
Yeah, there are a lot of hurdles. I think my next step should be to try to learn to build a shader from scratch (Shader Mixer, or Shader Builder can do this?) so that I can set it up to do just what I want instead of trying to wedge a square peg into a round hole. I don't even know if that's simple or difficult in DAZ. Do we users even have the ability to build Iray shaders in the beta? If anyone has advice on this, I'd love to be more informed about it.
There's shader mixer, but the Iray blocks are making my head spin, and I'm used to building giant node trees in blender (according to the Daz brass it is the most beta element of the beta).
But yeah, I would love for someone cleverer than me to come up with a nice dedicated 3-layer SSS skin shader.
Here we go... there are a few things I could play around with, but I'm pretty happy where this is, and plan to use what I've learned to help with other project stuff.
Made a few tweaks to make it more Van Cleef. Heh