Iray Material Presets for Jepe's M4 characters (free)

jepegraphicsjepegraphics Posts: 863
edited October 2015 in The Commons

While waiting for G3M I had a bit of time and I decided that it would be a good idea to make Iray Material Presets for my DAZ characters. So when you bought a character of mine in the past, see if he's in the list and you can then download the Iray Presets. All you need for these to work are the original character textures in DAZ Studio Runtime.

The updates only contains Material Presets, no textures or morph files, those are still only in the original product files and should be loaded as usual (with all of my characters) from the Poser Container of DAZ Studio's Content Library. I also havn't re-invented the wheel with the Iray Presets, I had to decide for a solution that lets my characters look very nice in Iray with all the available maps involved. As most of my characters have painted on hair on face and body the placement of the different maps in the various Iray channels is important to avoid burning out or washed out look.

All Iray materials are also applicable to G2M when you own M4 for G2M by Slosh - he also provided M4 UV mappping for G2M's genitals, so I provided also presets for those including the seam cover Slosh created.

Feel free to discuss the skin settings and maybe post renders. :)

Updates are about to roll in! :)

 

Post edited by jepegraphics on
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Comments

  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 6,982
    edited October 2015

    Thank you for this, and for the time&effort you put into giving your products Iray settings! :-)

    I use your characters and skins quite often, and this is a real time-saver.

    EDIT: Wow, the skin&facial hair looks great! Thanks again for this! heart

    JepesIrayTest.jpg
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    Post edited by BeeMKay on
  • Sfariah DSfariah D Posts: 25,610

    Thank you very much!  Sounds fun to play with.

  • OstadanOstadan Posts: 1,123

    Ooh.  If I get the Ian-Pierre for M4 update, will that give me enough setting information to apply (manually) to the related Pierre for D3?

     

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,142

    Thanks so much Jepe!  :-)

  • Thanks, Jepe.  I have several of your guys so I'll have to double check which ones and download their presets.  Very helpful!!

  • I'm glad the updates seem to be appreciated, thank you folks for the positive feedback. :) Exceptional render, lee_lhs, love it.

    @ Ostadan - the skin settings for Ian-Pierre are for Ian-Pierre, you can try your luck with Pierre D3 but I doubt something useful will be the result, Pierre D3 has no bump or specular maps, I think the skin shader for Iray would need different settings for sure! 

  • LindseyLindsey Posts: 1,983

    Thanks for the Iray presets, Jepe.  You've put a lot of effort into them and it shows.  I applied Nathan on a G2M mutt.

    Nathan on G2M.jpg
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  • Now that's just a character, Lindsey! WOW! :D

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,552

    This is a thread I'm going to watch!

  • LindseyLindsey Posts: 1,983

    I used Benny on M6 here.  The big variable for me is lighting.  I tend to just clickity-click Iray light presets and if I don't like the results, move on to another preset and or lighting product. I need to learn to start tweaking lighting and environment settings when I find a render that looks promising.

    Benny on M6.jpg
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  • AndySAndyS Posts: 1,434
    edited October 2015

    Hi Jepe,

    I tried to test your iRay skin shaders. But the loader requests some texture files, which should be located under runtime/textures/jepe...
    So with the missing texture base I can not test your shaders. sad
    Or you have to remove the texture links from your shader presets.

    Post edited by AndyS on
  • jepegraphicsjepegraphics Posts: 863
    edited October 2015
    AndyS said:

    Hi Jepe,

    I tried to test your iRay skin shaders. But the loader requests some texture files, which should be located under runtime/textures/jepe...
    So with the missing texture base I can not test your shaders. sad
    Or you have to remove the texture links from your shader presets.

    You indeed need to own at least one of the characters in the list above for testing out the skin shader, Andy, I'm sorry. The shader would give false results without textures anyway, as said above already, the placement of the different textures in the Iray channels are very important - to block the painted on hair from washing out for instance. :)

    Post edited by jepegraphics on
  • Lindsey said:

    I used Benny on M6 here.  The big variable for me is lighting.  I tend to just clickity-click Iray light presets and if I don't like the results, move on to another preset and or lighting product. I need to learn to start tweaking lighting and environment settings when I find a render that looks promising.

    Lighting is always the biggest variable in renders, Lindsay! lol But you're right, a little patience and the joy of experimenting can lead to surprising results. :) Sometimes it is even enough to turn the dome only to get a completely different impression for the scene. - I speak of the default HDR environment, that DTHDR-RuinsB-500 image - in the Render Settings --> Environment you can turn that around with the "Dome Rotation", by default it is set to 0.0, my "default" value is always 35°, with 270° for instance the light suddenly comes from behind and the scene gets spooky.

    Your render is again very impressive - love all the brown tones. If you maybe need a little bit less specularity on the skin, you only need to turn down the overall Top Coat Weight a bit for the skin (Templates 1, 2 and 3).

  • AndySAndyS Posts: 1,434
    edited October 2015

    For my characters I chose a smooth setup of the glossy effect.

    The example is for the Jesse-Skin.

    The hair material settings for different hairs I changed too. That way the glossy effect only depends on the real light and not on what was implimented in the textures.

    Jesse Skin iRay.jpg
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    Post edited by AndyS on
  • jepegraphicsjepegraphics Posts: 863
    edited October 2015
    AndyS said:

    For my characters I chose a smooth setup of the glossy effect.

    The example is for the Jesse-Skin.

    The hair material settings for different hairs I changed too. That way the glossy effect only depends on the real light and not on what was implimented in the textures.

    Maybe there's a little misunderstanding and I maybe havn't explained it enough - the glossy effect on the skin should of course only depend on the scene lighting, but the settings within the shader defines how the skin finally looks. I not only meant the diffuse texture, also the specular texture, bump and displacment textures are important and it is important where they are plugged in within the Iray Shader. The shine and glossy effect of the skin not only depends on one factor, it all is a bit more complicated. But once you (seem to) have the right settings, you can of course adjust the things to your likings and preferences. The shader I used for my characters is not always the same, as every character has it's own mannerism - if someone wants to have a smoother outcome, I would recommend to lower the overall Top Coat Weight, mostly that will give you the result you want already - without the need to dial and to try out every component in that shader area that is available. :)

    Post edited by jepegraphics on
  • Thadeus72Thadeus72 Posts: 408

    thanks a lot jepe !

  • Thadeus72 said:

    thanks a lot jepe !

    You're very welcome! smiley

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,091
    edited October 2015

    Thank you for the Iray settings - my "Jepe collection" just showed up as updates in the DIM - does that mean these have already been added and gone live? (I see Orso has 3 files instead of 2 now too - is there some other change or just rationalisation maybe - one is for M4, one for Genesis and one for G2M?)

    Post edited by MelanieL on
  • jepegraphicsjepegraphics Posts: 863
    edited October 2015

    Got a message from Q/A today that the updates start to show up in DIM, but I'm not sure if all updates are meant or a few at first. The Orso files show up in my DIM now too, to make sure you have all you need you should download and install all files that are available now. I would do that. :)

    From my side only Iray Presets with new preview thumbs are added, that we now have three installers - I don't have a clue why, maybe there are new guidelines for that that I don't know of. 

    Post edited by jepegraphics on
  • Downloaded all of my guys this morning and couldn't resist trying one of them out.  Here is my favorite guy, Leo on M4, with your new iray presets I downloaded.  I have to say, for a quick setup, he was ready out of the box.  I never got him to look quite so good in 3Delight (user errors, not a reflection on Jepe's amazing talent).  I may have to tweak this one a little to get rid of a few minor issues I have with it, but overall, a pretty decent render.  Thanks, Jepe.  I'll have to take a look at your presets and see if I can learn what you did to make him look so FINE!!!

    A couple of questions:

    1. Any plans to update your male skins for V4 for iray?  I have a couple of those.

    2. Any plans to update your special effects for iray?  I've been working with your steam set and had to do a lot of tweaking and fiddling with settings, but I finally managed to get them looking pretty good.  I'm using them for a render for this month's newbie contest.  If you want to check out how I used your steam in iray, look here near the middle of the page for my Vampire in London entry I've been working on.  Now that I know what I'm doing, I'll set up my own presets for the fog planes, but it sure would be nice to have presets for iray for all of the other special effects of yours that I own.

    Anyway, a BIG THANK YOU!!!

     

    LeoIrayTest.jpg
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  • Downloaded all of my guys this morning and couldn't resist trying one of them out.  Here is my favorite guy, Leo on M4, with your new iray presets I downloaded.  I have to say, for a quick setup, he was ready out of the box.  I never got him to look quite so good in 3Delight (user errors, not a reflection on Jepe's amazing talent).  I may have to tweak this one a little to get rid of a few minor issues I have with it, but overall, a pretty decent render.  Thanks, Jepe.  I'll have to take a look at your presets and see if I can learn what you did to make him look so FINE!!!

    A couple of questions:

    1. Any plans to update your male skins for V4 for iray?  I have a couple of those.

    2. Any plans to update your special effects for iray?  I've been working with your steam set and had to do a lot of tweaking and fiddling with settings, but I finally managed to get them looking pretty good.  I'm using them for a render for this month's newbie contest.  If you want to check out how I used your steam in iray, look here near the middle of the page for my Vampire in London entry I've been working on.  Now that I know what I'm doing, I'll set up my own presets for the fog planes, but it sure would be nice to have presets for iray for all of the other special effects of yours that I own.

    Anyway, a BIG THANK YOU!!!

     

    You're very welcome Cat! :) First I have to say, both your images are very fine, this render here and also that "steamed up" render in the other thread. :) 

    To answer you questions - 1. unfortunately no, I've made only one V4 male texture and DAZ bought it, so I have no rights anymore to do anything with those. The same reason btw, that my Stratton Elite is not included in the updates list, it's up to DAZ what to do with it.

    2. Well, a good question - do you know how many effect packs I have - and how many effects I would have to update? lol I can fully understand your request, but I'm afraid I won't have so much time to do that. On the other side, I'm of course interested that my effects work and look that good in Iray and as far as I could see they look good out of the box. BUT Iray has so many other possibilities the effects could use and it indeed needs a special setup to get something cool out of relatively simple things. Because the effects are really simple plane props with a diffuse and a opacity(transparency) map, nothing more.

    What I can do is to setup some samples and post the shader settings as screenshots that people can see what is possible. It is easy to save a shader preset in DAZ Studio, that you then can use on the other similar effects. Would that be ok? I would post it here - in a new thread possibly or even better maybe at DeviantArt, where I have my main gallery.

  • You're very welcome Cat! :) First I have to say, both your images are very fine, this render here and also that "steamed up" render in the other thread. :) 

    Thank you for the complement on my renders.  I'm still learning, but I am getting better.

    To answer you questions - 1. unfortunately no, I've made only one V4 male texture and DAZ bought it, so I have no rights anymore to do anything with those. The same reason btw, that my Stratton Elite is not included in the updates list, it's up to DAZ what to do with it.

    That's a shame, but I understand.

    2. Well, a good question - do you know how many effect packs I have - and how many effects I would have to update? lol I can fully understand your request, but I'm afraid I won't have so much time to do that. On the other side, I'm of course interested that my effects work and look that good in Iray and as far as I could see they look good out of the box. BUT Iray has so many other possibilities the effects could use and it indeed needs a special setup to get something cool out of relatively simple things. Because the effects are really simple plane props with a diffuse and a opacity(transparency) map, nothing more.

    You say that like it is such a simple thing, but I tried putting my own 'fog' on a plane that I made in Gimp and I have to say, it wasn't that easy.  I'm just glad that I had your steam effects that I could add to my render.  It worked out rather well.

    What I can do is to setup some samples and post the shader settings as screenshots that people can see what is possible. It is easy to save a shader preset in DAZ Studio, that you then can use on the other similar effects. Would that be ok? I would post it here - in a new thread possibly or even better maybe at DeviantArt, where I have my main gallery.

    Actually, yes, I think I do know because I seem to have almost all of them!  They come in very handy.  I'm actually working on a pirate battle render in iray and plan to be using some of your explosion effects.  We'll see how good I am at using those.  ;)  I'm still learning to save my own presets, and sometimes, when I think I've saved one, I go to use it and find I've done something wrong and it just isn't there.  So, any help you can give in the way of posting a shader preset or two that I can use with any of your effects would be very useful.  It is nice to know that products like yours that were made for 3Delight can still be used effectively with iray.

    Thanks so much,

    Cat

  • jepegraphicsjepegraphics Posts: 863
    edited October 2015

    Just posted a few screenshots for setting up my Special Effect Props in Iray: http://jepegraphics.deviantart.com/gallery/56412239/Jepe-s-Special-Effects-in-Iray-Tutorial

    To save a prop and to make sure you really saved it - first option - save it as a scene! lol Nothing is lost and you can always merge one scene into the other. Second and better option, save as a Scene Subset with the option to choose what you want to save - usually you can't make something wrong with it!

    To save a Shader Preset - make sure you selected the prop AND only ONE material zone before. Same with applying a shader preset, if you want to keep the old textures, CTRL+Click the preset and activate "Ignore Images" in the pop up menu . :)

    Post edited by jepegraphics on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,142

    Got the updates to the sets I have of yourse.  I do notice that the iRay settings are still included in the Runtime> Pose folder rather than put into the People> Michael 4 folder.  So I moved them and deleted the included PZ2 files.  I hope that's OK as I hope that the PZ2 files are not needed as a referrer or anything. 

  • RAMWolff said:

    Got the updates to the sets I have of yourse.  I do notice that the iRay settings are still included in the Runtime> Pose folder rather than put into the People> Michael 4 folder.  So I moved them and deleted the included PZ2 files.  I hope that's OK as I hope that the PZ2 files are not needed as a referrer or anything. 

    Presets can be moved wherever you like - as long as the textures are in the required place. I for instance have an Iray Shader folder with everything (to me) important. laugh

  • Ralf1958Ralf1958 Posts: 688
    edited October 2015

    How do I get rid of the seam without taking away the displacement map? frown

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    Post edited by Ralf1958 on
  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 13,188

    Do you have a program that you can paint a texture. If so you just use a very small brush with soft edges and clone and paint over the seam.

  • Ralf1958 said:

    How do I get rid of the seam without taking away the displacement map? frown

    What skin is it and which Preset? Usually, gens and hip/body should have the same amount of displacement. Never have seen such a seam, to be honest.

  • Ralf1958 said:

    How do I get rid of the seam without taking away the displacement map? frown

    There's a minor error in the G2M Gens MAT for Nathan, set the Minimum Displacement Amount of both Genitalia and Hips Material to 0.0 and you get rid of the seam, it's set to default for some reason (-0.1) which isn't right. 

  • Ralf1958Ralf1958 Posts: 688
    Ralf1958 said:

    How do I get rid of the seam without taking away the displacement map? frown

    There's a minor error in the G2M Gens MAT for Nathan, set the Minimum Displacement Amount of both Genitalia and Hips Material to 0.0 and you get rid of the seam, it's set to default for some reason (-0.1) which isn't right. 

    Thank you Jepe! smiley

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