Let's talk about Holden

3DIO · August 16

Ocean said:

3DIO said:

Currently working on a Holden render, although I have to say that OmniShader is on my hate list, big-time! I much pefer UberShader. The performance on my system is appaling with OmniShader

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.

Eyebrows and eyelashes are a real problem with this shader since there's no slider for Cutout Opacity!

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.

Hey Ocean. thanks for the insight on that! Yup, I was definitely having a glosiness issue, but wasn't aware of that setting, so I'll look into it for next time. Still not a fan of OmniShader, although I suppose it could be my lagging old system taking the joy out of using it.

Too late to salvage the current render, but I'll have a try tomorrow in post (it's currently around 2:30am here).

Nice to see a masculine-looking male, by the way. It's annoying the amount of effeminate-looking males on the store, so it's good to see a character like Holden!

Ocean · August 16

3DIO said:

Still not a fan of OmniShader, although I suppose it could be my lagging old system taking the joy out of using it.

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.

Masterstroke · August 16

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.

jmucchiello · August 16

Masterstroke said:

Unlike PBR, Omni Shader does offer a Opacity cutout.

https://www.daz3d.com/pbr-skin-plus

Masterstroke · August 16

jmucchiello said:

Masterstroke said:

Unlike PBR, Omni Shader does offer a Opacity cutout.

https://www.daz3d.com/pbr-skin-plus

At an extra prize to pay.
Omnisurface Base by Mello is free:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/703161/omni-surface-shader-test/p4?srsltid=AfmBOoqPC88oRxK7U-62Kt5ycbs9gaPJAN3T8mzDFGEyDFu15AkM9Nob

3DIO · August 16

Thanks all for the info, and, I think it's fair to say this shader has a new fanboy right here!

That, however, was an absolutely gruelling experience on my machine, so there's no way I could use it until I get a new GPU. In order to use and get my head around a shader as sophisticated as that, I really need to be able to mess around with sliders and have live visual feedback so that I can learn as I explore it.

Anyway, I've done a render of Holden using an 80mm f/1.2 lens. He's intentionally underexposed to keep him within the TOS, and to keep the ladies guessing!

Click Image for Full Resolution

3DIO · 6:42AM

@Ocean
At the moment, I've not much clue as to what I'm doing with it, but looking at the output of OmniSkin, it's as if you've simulated an epidermis layer, and that's the single most important thing I felt the other shaders were lacking. Whatever it is I'm seeing, well done! Buggered if I can find that "Render Tesselation Sides" setting though! I've searched both the Surfaces and Render Settings tabs using the actualt search panel for each window and still can't find it. I'm just wondering if it's because i'm rendering on a CPU instead of GPU. Does it perhaps show only for Nvidia cards?

@jmucchiello
Thanks for the link but Ocean's OmniSkin is on another level compared to that series of shader. I just need a better system before I can enjoy using it.

@Masterstroke
I wish I could just switch over to it right now, but it's just not feasible (for me due to my old system). Even the render I did yesterday didn't turn out that clever since I've somehow managed to give him a rash, and I completely forgot to adjust subsurface on the eyes. Also, while it looks as if there's a normal map in use on the lips, the rest of him looks to be without normal maps. No idea how I've managed to do that, so I'm putting it down to the weirdness I'm having with my DS install.

barbult · 11:32AM

Tessellation settings are in the Parameters pane.

Masterstroke · 12:02PM

For some reasons, I don't really understand, copy and paste Omni shader from e.g. Holden's settings does not work as expected. Quite often the target shader looks to wet and as I said before textures are way to bright.

Ocean · 12:52PM

Masterstroke said:

For some reasons, I don't really understand, copy and paste Omni shader from e.g. Holden's settings does not work as expected.

Copy to where? To a different shader?

Quite often the target shader looks to wet

There is a problem with Iray on both PBRSkin and also on OmniSkin where if you are not on Frame 0 on the animation timeline, there can be a visual fault with specular settings on iray preview. If you have too wet or too dry skin and nothing is working to adjust them, the only fix I am aware of is to restart Daz. This has been a problem for years.

and as I said before textures are way to bright.

What textures? If they were made for another shader, then they are as bright as they were intended to be for that other shader.

Ocean · 1:00PM

3DIO said:

@Ocean
At the moment, I've not much clue as to what I'm doing with it, but looking at the output of OmniSkin, it's as if you've simulated an epidermis layer, and that's the single most important thing I felt the other shaders were lacking. Whatever it is I'm seeing, well done!

I did not make this shader. It is NVIDIA's OmniSurfaceBase shader, which you can find documented online.

Skin tissue is simulated only with subsurface scattering i believe, same with PBRSkin.

Buggered if I can find that "Render Tesselation Sides" setting though! I've searched both the Surfaces and Render Settings tabs using the actualt search panel for each window and still can't find it. I'm just wondering if it's because i'm rendering on a CPU instead of GPU. Does it perhaps show only for Nvidia cards?

As stated by other poster, its under Parameters. You can adjust the profile of hair curves and poylines in Daz Studio using "Render Tesselation Sides". It is a feature of Iray so independent of card type.
0 and 1 = Iray Curve,
2 = 2D strip,
3+ = geometry "fibre"

I dont understand why the behaviour of "0" and "1" are so different, given they are both rendering as iray curves, but for some reason they have an impact on some of the surface parameters of Omnihair shader.

@Masterstroke
while it looks as if there's a normal map in use on the lips, the rest of him looks to be without normal maps. No idea how I've managed to do that, so I'm putting it down to the weirdness I'm having with my DS install.

You can reapply the material preset to get the maps back to default. If there is a problem with your install, then you would have received an error about a missing file upon load.

Masterstroke · 3:00PM

Ocean said:

Masterstroke said:

For some reasons, I don't really understand, copy and paste Omni shader from e.g. Holden's settings does not work as expected.

Copy to where? To a different shader?

To the materiials of a different character.
works like this:
Select a material of a character, e.g. Torso
Save as Shader preset
choose different character
Load all of its materials and apply OmniSurface base to those
now apply the previous save shader preset contrl-click and select ignore
Fill in the matching texture maps for this character in your OmniSurfaces materials.
You will now see, that your character's diffuse texture maps appear way to bright.
In order to fix this, copy the skin textures in Photoshop to a new layer, set the new layer to multiply by 50% and merge the layers to visible.
Save those diffuse maps under a new name.

3DIO · 3:23PM

@Barbult
Thanks, and you are by far my most favourite Hyacinth today!

@Masterstroke
I was having a similar problem in general, and what worked for me was to ensure that the shader you are copying to is of the same type.

@Ocean
I thought it was a shader you'd customised. Either way though, it seems to handle the effect of epidermis better than UberShader. It looks especially good at handling a very thin layer of epidermis. There's definitely an impovement although I must admit I don't know what it is in a technical sense.

Regards the tessellation, I suppose it could have something to do with normals calculation, it's my only guess, my thinking being that perhaps by setting it to zero, it could internally be a command to handle the normal in the most suitible way, as opposed to handling it with a specific set of faces/sides.

Anyway, one more version of the same image, since the original was rendered as a much wider shot than that shown in the crop of the first image: I only hope he doesn't start demanding a pay rise after seeing himself in true, cinematic widescreen!

Click Image for Full Resolution

Masterstroke · 3:44PM

3DIO said:

@Barbult
Thanks, and you are by far my most favourite Hyacinth today!

@Masterstroke
I was having a similar problem in general, and what worked for me was to ensure that the shader you are copying to is of the same type.

@Ocean
I thought it was a shader you'd customised. Either way though, it seems to handle the effect of epidermis better than UberShader. It looks especially good at handling a very thin layer of epidermis. There's definitely an impovement although I must admit I don't know what it is in a technical sense.

Regards the tessellation, I suppose it could have something to do with normals calculation, it's my only guess, my thinking being that perhaps by setting it to zero, it could internally be a command to handle the normal in the most suitible way, as opposed to handling it with a specific set of faces/sides.

Anyway, one more version of the same image, since the original was rendered as a much wider shot than that shown in the crop of the first image: I only hope he doesn't start demanding a pay rise after seeing himself in true, cinematic widescreen!

Click Image for Full Resolution

Looks even more amazing in monochrome.

barbult · 4:43PM

My understanding about Tessellation is that 0 is for dForce hair Iray curves and 1 is for strand based hair created with strand based hair editor that hasn't been converted to dForce by a PA. I have no idea why they should be different, though. If you use 1 on dForce hair, it is way too shiny.

Ocean · 9:19PM

Masterstroke said:
Select a material of a character, e.g. Torso
Save as Shader preset
choose different character
Load all of its materials and apply OmniSurface base to those
now apply the previous save shader preset contrl-click and select ignore
Fill in the matching texture maps for this character in your OmniSurfaces materials.

Is that easier than simply applying the OmniSkin Material preset and dragging and dropping the replacement maps from another character (assuming that is the end goal)?

You will now see, that your character's diffuse texture maps appear way to bright.

I understood this part. This is often a problem when using Daz color maps in other software like Unreal or Blender - they often appear too bright.

The influence of the base color map for Iray Uber and PBRSkin shaders in fact is really not that significant on the final appearance for those shaders. The final appearance in the classical PBRSkin and Iray setups is mostly driven by the Translucency Color, assuming the vendor put a high Translucency weight, which they should have for realistic skin (85%+).

As a general rule, I wouldnt expect maps fine-tuned for one shader to work on another shader they weren't made for without adjustment.

In order to fix this, copy the skin textures in Photoshop to a new layer, set the new layer to multiply by 50% and merge the layers to visible.
Save those diffuse maps under a new name.

You can do this in LIE also, which some users may find easier and more accessible. A few years ago Daz added Multiply etc to LIE blending modes.

Of course, Photoshop will give you more control if you want to tweak the values within Photoshop using Adjustment Layers or (per your method) Multiply layer transparency values and see the effect in real time in Daz. Resaving in photoshop and pressing Ctrl+i will refresh the textures in Daz, which makes fine-tuning the look development stage a lot easier. In contrast, it's not so easy to adjust all the LIE settings at once as quickly as you can export out adjustments from Photoshop (or Substance Painter) etc.

Ocean · 9:26PM

3DIO said:

@Ocean
I thought it was a shader you'd customised.

I would just say implemented, not customised. The actual .mdl shader file has been sitting installed in your Daz shaders folder for years unused/unimplemented ...

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