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Comments
PhilW,
That looks AMAZING!!!!!!!
I'm also adding Color Correction to the Transmission of my recipe. It provides a nice level of control that as Phil demonstrates, can fix problems inherent in a texture such as over-saturation. Super awesome. Smart choice, Siciliano!
I just loooove Octane. I mean really. This darned application is so freaking awesome. Fun fun!!
Ha! I was already looking at rendering a darker skin - Maria from the Elite range. As expected, I needed to make some adjustments, although this is still a specular only solution. Still not totally satisfied with the shine on the skin, and for some iterations I seemed to be more plagued with fireflies, until I turned down the refraction index just a little. I will try to get more shine with just the specular, but feel I may need to mix in some glossy for this - we'll see.
PhilW,
Nice work. The issues you are finding with shine and transmission on darker skins using the same or similar settings to lighter skin are the exact reason why I wanted people not to be too stuck on caucasian skin types, because the lessons learned from studying such a narrow range of skin tones can be misleading. Okay, the first question is which shader method are you using, or is it some chimeric mix of the approaches discussed over the past several days? If it's based primarily on my own shader set-up then I'd know how to discuss issues, if based on another method I might not be able to offer as much feedback. But here's what I gather so far.
1. I suggest you use PMC kernel, not Pathtracing. PMC is better enble to handle Specular modeled textures with fewer fireflies in much much less time. In fact the entire point of PMC is that it knows where in the image needs to most samples so it sends more rays there allowing for faster convergence. With PMC the noise across the entire image remains more or less consistent avoiding fireflies in the shaded regions. With regular path tracing, no priority is given to shaded regions so they always render more slowly than well lit areas and the fireflies are a certain side effect.
The image is a bit on the small side to make detailed observations. At this point I'd need to know the shader set-up. I will try to render a Marie using my own set-up and settings for skin of her complexion and I'll report back. Thanks for stepping into the lesser explored territories.
Edit:
Since we're all working with more or less the same ideals, I assume I can probably make one more assumption. In this case I feel there is some SSS missing from her ears, but there is overall a lack of softness to certain parts of her skin. To correct this I suggest increasing the Transmission Power up from 1 to around 4. No other corrections should be needed.
OK, here is a closer version and I have mixed in some glossy, only around 10% but it provides the shininess that was missing from the previous specular only version. There is an artifact that makes it look like there is a laser sight on her chest!
Looking quite amazing, Phil! Excellent.
Edit: That laser on her chest is a glare. It will disappear in a few more passes.
Thank you - I doubt it (about the "Laser") - this one was run to 1500 samples (while I watched something on TV).
Just for info, the Maria bump maps appeared to have a lot more contrast than the previous character that I was using (Mihrelle's Raven) so I halved the intensity of the bump maps. Something to keep in mind that you will need to make adjustments depending on individual character maps. Of course this can be a good thing, giving more flexibiliy with things like the color correction channel allowing you to get a range of skin tones from the same maps.
Excellent, and thanks a bunch Rashad! I will give it a try since I have 0 absorption.
One of my latest with Iray 2015 (in DS4.9) ~ L'Homme De La Danse: Premiere Position - The Man of the Dance: First Position
View the large version of image in the gallery (just 4 likes away from top row WOW hehe)
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/93639
Looks great PhilW - when you add the color correction make sure the color correction gamma is sent to 0.5 (helped me a bunch). Rashad is 100% correct as my shader is extremely scale dependant. I am super delighted to see how things are going in this thread.
Let's do it!
AlexLo, The character looks awesome. He has a nice sheen on his skin and an intensity in his eyes. Aside from that his elegant pose is stunning. Very nice work!
Ok, here is a prime example of how hard it is to work with a texture that is filled with baked in specularity and shadows. Hopefully texture artists will start to realize this is no longer necessary especially with the advent of unbiased rendering software. While she is a very attractive character if you do not position lights correctly you will see the utter futility of baked in spec and shadows.
so now that we're getting skin down what about other less talked about surfaces. Would teeth and nails be specular based as well? I get funky results with nails sometimes.
Yes, but the recipe will be a bit different as bone has much less water within it than muscular and skin tissues. But yes, it does work. Nails I agree are a difficult subject due to the lack of geometry underneath the nail. Too much light is allowed to enter the fingertips causing the nails to render as overblown. Tricky indeed.
Here is the finished version of my playing with the Marie texture. I added a quick custom hair made just for this image.
Rashad - I am tgrying to use the files that you provided to test your settings in my scene, but have only ever rendered within Daz, not directly in Octane, and dont have Carrara. I have been going round in circles for about an hour and would still love to contribute. Can you describe a basic instruction for acheiving this in Octane please.
Victoria 7 HD test render.
Maxwell Render Plugin for Daz Studi, Maxwell Render 3.2.0
Image removed for nudity. Please see this thread for info: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3279/acceptable-ways-of-handling-nudityShe looks amazing Phil. We need to lower the specular or the reflection or perhaps a little bit of both because currently she is too shiny. But the nature of that shine is exactly right so all we need to do is make it a little bit less and we've got a winner. I'm curious about the Transmission Power setting, did you ever go and increase it up from 1 to 4? You'd think I'd be able to tell immediately but I'm not completely certain. I can see the SSS but I'm not sure if there should be even more. Anyhow, this is a successfully study in my opinion. NICE WORK!
Here is a link to the direct Octane Standalone files.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4IpzCJ1fXped1JNSC14T0VsMVU&usp=sharing
I'm not sure how the DS Octane plug-in operates, but there should be an option to load a shader directly from Octane in the DS Octane plug-in. You also need to load the Render Target or it will not work as expected. Sorel has made sense of it so hopefully he will pop in soon to help out. I do not currently own the DS Octane plug-in nor can I afford to buy it just now so I do not have first hand experience withthe DS end. Thanks for taking your time with this so far and hopefully we are almost there.
basically what worked for me was Turning on Fake Shaodws in the spcular node and increasing specular depth to 60 in the render settings tab.
Thanks Sorel, but I cant even work out how to get the files provided by Rashad into Daz or Octane standalone. Could you point me in the right direction please, would really appreciate it.
In the Daz Plugin in the materials tab though should be an option to import orbx files. Which version of the plugin are you using?
Wow great render Philw!
Rashad I'm wondering, is there a particular cornerstone reason that the 'minor' mix channel should be a Glossy channel? It seems to me the Spec channel does the heavy lifting on this and the other mix channel is only there to enhance, but I was thinking of trying a diffuse channel as the minor channel to brighten the skin and provide potentially faster renders, but before I even try experimenting I thought I'd ask if there's a hardcore reason to stick with glossy instead.
I have been playing with Rashad's skin shader and this is my best result so far. It's deifinitely better than my previous tests with dark skin. My experiments with fair skin are still looking a bit green so I need to keep working. I have been trying different settings based upon everyone's posts but this usually results in very strong, extreme skin tones. So I toned everything down and started to see some improvement.
I have attached my current node setup. It's the Blender plugin but should be easy to follow.
irondog, that looks excellent.
Siciliano,
So true. In fact it was this very issue of baked in shading and specular highlights that lead me down this path of skin study in the first place. I decided to create my own skin maps from scratch using leather and pore brushes in paint shop pro. When it came to figuring out the SSS in Octane I was free to truly concentrate on the behavior of the SSS without being distracted by how "realistic" and "detailed" some photobased texture might have been. I figured that if I could find plausible SSS settings that even a plain green diffuse could be made to look like real skin, even if it belonged to the witch of the west.
I suspect that if allowed to continue rendering the skin in your above shot would begin to darken up. You might also consider using a bump map for the reflection and specular as they will prevent the specular from appearing too uniform and flat.
The dispersion coeefficient is also another consideration. It creates a chromatic noise that was less noticeable with lighter colored skin. I assumed originally that it was helping the appearance of the skin, but that could well have been due to other factoirs such as overall lighting and other factors of the particular skin map. This is one of the reasons why I suggested working with a range of different maps. After this darker skinned example I feel certain I can say that for the skin at least (all skin, not just darker skin), the dispersion coeeficient might not be necessary. I suspect much of the time Jonstark spent rendering those tests was spent ironing out the coeeficient chromatic noise. If I'm not mistaken the true purpose of dispersion coefficient is to mimic certain abberation effects in things like diamonds and prisms..pure mediums of single atoms arranged in a grid. Skin by contrast has a whole lot of chemical components within it, so the dispersion would not be noticeable. Try removing it from your next test and see if it hurts the look of the skin.
For teeth however, the dispersal cooefficient might still be favorable.
This particular texture and others like it are perfect examples of why not every photobased texture is ideal for realism in unbiased engines. The way I see it, Octane knows how to make things appear realistic, it is my job to get out of Octane's way. Textures all baked up dont leave any room for the engine to improve upon, so realism can only diminish after rendering.
As you state, we need a new way of thinking about textures. When buying, we have to consider how much stuff is baked into the texture and if it will become detrimental when rendering for realism. It's a very case by case thing. But for the most part the texture shouldn't really look "real" until it is fully rendered. It is possible to have a texture that is "too real" out of the box.
Kinda. Both the Diffuse Material and the Glossy Material types have nodes for diffuse and allow full control over diffuse related issues. They each work the exactly the same way as the other in that regard. The only real difference between the two is that Diffuse Material offers Transmission and Medium inputs, whereas Glossy Material offers a specualrity input instead. Since the Specualr Material is already doing the SSS work, we don't need to engage Medium inputs of a Diffuse Material at all if we wanted to combine the Specular Material with the Diffuse Material. But then Glossy Material has a Specularity node, that Diffuse lacks. In the final tally, Glossy Material is more ideal as the secondary mix material for skin and other living surfaces because it can do everything the Diffuse Material would do in terms of diffuse, but also provides an extra Specularity node which means you do not have to rely entirely on the Reflection channel of the Specular Material for shine on the skin surface.
I do not think any render time would be saved by using a Diffuse instead of a Glossy.
Very good question I must say!
Hmm, she looks very good. As I look at your node set-up I find myself curious about the input for the Transmission. It looks as if you are using the Marie map but also it is combined with a uniform color swatch. Maybe I'm mistaken in my understadning of the shader set-up. I'm curious to know how you came to this idea and if it has offered any added control to the workflow? There is no single perfect solution, so all sorts of parameters can be played with as we continue to play around and discover.
Other than that added layering of the Transmission and Diffuse color nodes, it all looks to be more or less as expected. I will give it a closer look to see if I might find more considerations. Thanks for taking the time to play around with this.
Thanks Rashad, that makes a lot of sense. Especially if there is no render time benefit going to Diffuse, I can see the benefits of the Glossy as being easily apparent the way you explain it. The Glossy specularity also might serve to 'break up' the even-ness of the blurred reflections just from the Spec channel (I think) giving certain areas more pronounced reflections in some places, just like in real life skin isn't all-over evenly reflective the same way, so that could be a side benefit too. I remember experiments in the past with Carrara's native engine trying to tune skin shaders to get both blurred reflections and highlight/shine (for those who don't know this is 'reflectance faking' channels in Carrara and most biased engines) for the same purpose, to make the spec effects less 'uniform'.