Let's talk about Holden
Masterstroke
Posts: 2,512
in The Commons
Holden is in the store and amazes with unbelievable realism in shaping and skin materials.
https://www.daz3d.com/ocn-holden-hd-for-genesis-9
Can anybody tell us more here?
What is "Omni Skin"?
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Holden looks great, and appears to have been hand crafted rather than a variation of an existing character.
I like him a lot. And all the promo pics showing his features are greatly appreciated. I really hope we get more of this quality of character.
I asked this question on another thread:
I bought him, but I have a question for anyone who knows about this "Next generation skin shader: powered by NVIDIA's OmniSurfaceBase Iray shader, the included OCN Omniskin material preset..." I am totally lost on this reference and even with my Nvidia updates have not seen a reference to it. Do I need some new essential products for this to work?
I have an RTX-4080 card on my Windows 11 but also use my MacMini M4. Will he work on both?
They are infomations about it on the third picture in the second line.
Glad, you're over here. I started this thread, because Holden deserves special attention.
I'm running a 306012GB with latest driver and Holden works without any problems.
It is not a new shader - was introduced in 2024.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/703161/omni-surface-shader-test/p1
More explanation from AI.
## What Omni Skin Is
**Omni Skin** is a **material system** that uses **NVIDIA Omniverse MDL
(Material Definition Language)** shaders inside **DAZ Studio Iray**,
specifically the **OmniSurfaceBase** shader.
It replaces (or offers an alternative to) the traditional DAZ Iray skin shaders
that rely heavily on Subsurface Scattering (SSS) stacks.
In the Holden product, this is explicitly described as:
> *“Next generation skin shader: powered by NVIDIA's OmniSurfaceBase Iray shader…”*
(https://www.daz3d.com/ocn-holden-hd-for-genesis-9)
## What Omni Skin Is Used For
### 1. **More Stable Skin Rendering**
Omni Skin is designed to be **lighting‑agnostic** and behave consistently
across different HDRIs and light rigs.
Traditional DAZ skins can look great but are often very sensitive to lighting changes.
OmniSkin improves:
* Predictability in renders
* Fewer “blown out” highlights
* Less fiddling per scene
### 2. **Reduced Dependence on SSS Maps**
Classic DAZ skin shaders depend heavily on:
* Multiple SSS layers
* Color and translucency maps
* Specular lobes and top coats
Omni Skin **removes the need for SSS maps entirely**, instead using:
* Transmission
* Translucency
* Physically‑based roughness and specular response
This simplification is one of its biggest advantages.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/703161/omni-surface-shader-test
### 3. **Better Match to External Render Pipelines**
OmniSurfaceBase is the same shader family used across:
* NVIDIA Omniverse
* USD pipelines
* Real‑time and path‑traced workflows
That makes Omni Skin particularly useful if you:
* Render in DAZ now but export later (Unity, Unreal, Omniverse)
* Want a shader that behaves more like Unreal’s Digital Human skin
* Prefer physically‑based workflows over DAZ‑specific presets
***
### 4. **High‑Detail Close‑Up Rendering**
In Holden’s case, Omni Skin is paired with:
* **HD micro‑detail morphs (Subdivision level 4)**
* Fine wrinkle and pore sculpting
* Separate surface zones tuned for OmniSurface behavior
This allows convincing skin detail **without needing ultra‑complex shader stacks**.
***
## Omni Skin vs PBRSkin (Included Comparison)
The Holden product includes **both**:
* **OCN OmniSkin Skin MAT**
* **OCN PBRSkin Skin MAT**
This lets you choose between:
| Omni Skin | PBR Skin |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------ |
| NVIDIA OmniSurfaceBase | Traditional DAZ Iray PBR |
| No SSS maps | Uses SSS |
| Lighting‑stable | Lighting sensitive |
| Better for pipelines | Familiar DAZ workflow |
| Simpler tuning | More artist controls |
***
## What Omni Skin Is *Not*
* Not a different texture resolution
* Not automatic realism
* Not exclusive to Holden
* Not a real‑time (Filament) shader
It’s a **modern shader foundation**, comparable to upgrading from an older DAZ skin system
to a more industry‑standard PBR/MDL setup.
## Why DAZ Is Moving This Direction
DAZ added the full family of **Omni shaders** (skin, hair, surfaces)
when integrating NVIDIA MDL support into DAZ Studio 4.22+.
Community testing shows:
* Easier setup
* Cleaner results
* Closer parity with non‑DAZ pipelines
## In Short
**Omni Skin** on *OCN Holden HD for Genesis 9* is:
> A physically‑based **OmniSurfaceBase skin shader**
> Designed for **stable, realistic Iray rendering**
> Requires **less manual SSS tuning**
> Better aligned with **modern PBR and Omniverse workflows**
The artist, Uncanny Valet, alse created another character called Vadim who is available over at Renderhub. If like Holden then you will deffinatly like Vadim. He has the Omni skin texture as well.
Thank you @Masterstroke, @Elor and @Artini. I just started a render with him on Main Streets USA on my MacMini M4. May take a couple hours. :-) Or not. I never know. But I do like him so far.
I see some similarities in the product presentations. Could this be the same vendor?
OmniSkin refers to skin shaders inspired by similar technology as OmniHair, designed to make character skin look more realistic. It's a work in progress shader as OmniHair was https://www.daz3d.com/omnihair
There are a lot of similarites in the products and promos. The new PAs name is UV Rapt, I assume the UV is short for Uncanny Valet. I am not sure why the PA prefix is OCN.
In Smart Content the PA's name is Ocean, hence OCN.
I am no great shakes at renders, so this is what I came up with after 1 hr 37 minutes on my MacMini.
I am very pleased.
Most impressive male character in quite some time - quite possibly the most impressive since I started with Daz in 2018. Looking forward to seeing some folk turn it (him) on in gallery. Props to the artist for a great piece of work. Hope they treat us to more.
Am wondering how much of the skin detail (marks and wotnot) can be 'turned off'? It mentions 'zones', in the promos, so can different details be turned on/off; same with the body hair? <-- info from anyone who has bought much appreciated.
I like how the skin still looks realistic close up, far away, and with every lighting setup thrown at it. That's not usual. I immediately followed the PA link Page Not Found | Daz 3D (UV-Rapt) to see what else this PA has published in the DAZ Store but it's an HTTPD 404 Not Found.
If you search for Uncanny Valet artstation store the rest of the stuff they've made for Daz come up. Very worth a look.
A while ago, i did a render of the Rob Pattinson for Genesis 8.1:
The other characters are great, aren't they? Here's a render I had of Jon, who I probably wouldn't use for my own work out of the box because of the likeness, but he mixes well. A lot of the charaters, including Holden, have seperate feet and hand morphs as well.
I was a bit more literal with the Kit Harrington
Thanks, I'll take a look.
It is, you can find more of his stuff on 3dshards too
According to this discussion about Omnihair, you'll likely need Daz Studio 4.22 at least:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/675841/omni-shader-hair-thread/
There is a PBRSkin shader option included should you need a faster shader. Including a third option in addition to the two I included seemed unnecessary.
All hairs included in this product are strand-based hair, not hair cards, and therefore Cutout Opacity is not particularly relevant.
All hair in this product use Daz Studio's standard OmniHair shader for strand-based hair, not a custom shader.
If you need to use Cutout Opacity then you can easily apply a different shader which includes Cutout Opacity, although I do not understand what is motivating this request. Daz Studio's standard OmniHair shader does not include Cutout Opacity because it is not relevant for rendering realistic hair strands. Natural hair translucency is dictated by other properties on the shader.
If you encounter any issues with glossiness on OmniHair, you may wish to adjust Render Tesselation Sides to 0 instead of 1.
There are many different unrelated shaders beginning with the prefix Omni, so I would advise to avoid saying "OmniShader" because it is not clear enough which one you are referring to, especially when we are already discussing two different kinds in this conversation now (OmniSkin and OmniHair, which are essentially unrelated to eachother).
I will remark that I only deployed the OCN OmniSkin because I believe the end result is better, but a longer render time is a known drawback, especially notable for those with non Nvidia cards or slower machines, in which case the benefits may not outweight the costs. There are other issues with the shader, which we have been discussing at length in the OmniSurfaceBase thread on this forum.
When I was preparing the materials for PBRSkin, I tried to ensure that the PBRSkin was very close to the OCN Omniskin material preset, so I would suggest just using the PBRSkin material to avoid any pitfalls with OCN Omniskin presets. It's not like I made one good material preset (OmniSkin) and then phoned in the other (PBRSkin). I made them both look acceptable.
It is possible to get PBRSkin looking close to OmniSkin with much effort (see attached). The problem when setting up materials with PBRSkin (and Iray Uber had the same exact problem) is that PBRSkin is highly dependent on the Translucency Color map, where even minor changes in color values will lead to drastic changes in the skin appearance. This makes fine tuning the skin on PBRSkin and Iray Uber infuriating. The Translucency Color map used for those two shaders is also necessarily lacking in detail because it has to be washed out/blown out vs the main color map, and this means that the final skin lacks a certain level of detail. For OmniSkin you can keep all the important detail in the color map because it doesnt use a "Translucency Color" map at all let alone a washed out one, and the maintained detail is borne out in the final result.
Unlike PBR, Omni Shader does offer a Opacity cutout.
It just needs to be unlocked/activated.
PBR and Omni Shaders both have their flaws. PBR is usually to dark on skins, Omni Shader is to bright.
I fixed it by by darkening the skin textures.
I copied the the skin textures in Photoshop to a new layer, set the new layer to multiply by 50% and merged the layers to visible.
It is easier to darken the textures, than brightenen them. By making the skin maps brighter, they are loosing details.
I never liked DAZ PBR skin materials. Omni looks so much better.
Thanks to Ocean for getting me on the Omni-path.