Matte Skin Frustration
Martin Leufray III
Posts: 107
Hi.
The Genesis 2 Female has me bewildered.
I am using DAZ Studio 4.9.
If I load Victoria 4 with my favorite skin, I can adjust the render from matte to blinding shininess with one control -- Glossiness.
But if I load Genesis 2 Female, no matter which shader I use, I can't make her skin shiny. Healthy human skin has a natural subtle shine. If use the standard shader, no value for Glossiness causes anything other than a matte render. If I use the Uber shader -- which has about 10 glossiness sliders -- nothing that I do causes the skin to shine at all. I've been thru tutorial after tutorial, I follow what it says to the T and I never get "a healthy glow" with G2F.
I must be overlooking something very very obvious.
What is it?
Thanks,
Martin
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Comments
Oh, I forgot to mention several things:
I use the iRay render engine exclusively.
When I load G2F I change the UVs to V4 so I can apply my favorite skin, and it works perfectly.
I am trying to use G2F because I heard that there is no way to use V4 textures on G3F.
I am trying to move from V4 as a base to G2F because G2F bends so much nicer than V4, not perfectly (there is some scary stuff going on with G2F's geometry at the back of her pelvis -- not even close to being human -- but I work around it), but much nicer than V4 most of the time.
I don't buy characters like V6 because I build all of mine from the ground up anyway.
Have you tried the G2F iRay skin shader rather than Uber Base?
There are several ways to do it...
1. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/58929/how-to-use-g2f-skin-textures-on-g3f/p1
2. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59665/tutorial-converting-textures-from-gen2-to-gen3/p1
3. Blacksmith3D has a texture converter plugin...
Some or the above methods require a multistep process to do it, but it is now doable.
Without really seeing what your materials look like, there's no simple way to tell you how to get the effect you are looking for. And if you are rendering in Iray, you really ought to be using Iray shaders, not relying on autoconversion. Here's an M4 texture on Gianni...it certainly is possible.
If you're using the IRAY uber shader, there are many possibilities for your problems. I think most canned IRAY skin shaders use the metalicity form of the IRAY uber shader. I generally convert to using the glossiness form for human skin. It gives you a slightly more intuitive approach to setting things up in that context. If you're using the metalicity form, you want to decrease glossy roughness to get more gloss, and you might need to decrease the metallic flake settings too. If you're using the glossiness form you want to increase glossiness to get more gloss.
Beyond that, there are several other parameters that will effect your glossiness. High translucency and high SSS values can decrease the glossiness as more light is being "absorbed" leaving less to be reflected as gloss. Also, there may be maps in the glossiness settings (this goes for top coat too) that will effectively limit glossiness. Uless there's a very good reason to do that, I tend to eliminate maps from the glossiness channels - in a physically based renderer, your model's topological details along with your bump, normal and displacement settings should be the basis of glossiness control, not glossiness/specular maps. If you remove those maps, the structure/surface details of your model will have a bigger impact on the glossy effects - smooth surfaces have more inate glossiness potential than rough ones. Increasing nump, normal and displacement will break up the glossiness, resulting in a less glossy appearance. Simply turning the strength of those things down results in seemingly "stronger" gloss as the glossiness will be broken up less.
In a glossiness format, such as I use for human skin, I tend to turn all the bump, normal and displacement settings to 0 first, then experiment with changing the glossy layer weight and the glossiness settings to get a base gloss level. If I remember correctly, the glossy layer weight controls the size/spread of the gloss and the glossiness parameter controls the strength/sharpness of the gloss - so for wet skin you'd increase both to higher levels (and perhaps decrease bump/normal to give the appearance of a water layer which is smoother than non-wet skin), for dry skin you'd decrease both to lower levels, but moreso the glossiness than the glossy layered weight - even dry skin reflects light, it just doesn't reflect it as sharply. Once I get those to a good place, I then add in the bump/normal/displacement to add in more realism to the surface and thereby adjust the glossiness effect. I usually also add top coat to provide fresnel glossiness, which I think adds a bit more realism - some people are against using top coat at all, and some of those have produced fantastic skin shaders, so it's really a taste thing.
I hope some of that helps (and that it's accurate).
If you are using PBR Metallicity (just for reference), 'shiny' would be handled by:
Glossiness weight.
Glossiness color (some people argue, but best to leave this as white).
Glossy Roughness (0 is very very tight highlights, higher values make the surface look rougher/more diffused highlights).
So, some of the reasons skin may look dim:
Glossy weight might have a very dark map in it (this happens a lot with autoconversion). Try removing the texture map to see if this is the culprit. If you want to keep the map later, you can go into Parameter settings (click the gearwheel to the upper right on the Glossy weight parameter) and uncheck Parameter Limits. And then set Glossy weight to something absurd, like 5 or 50 or something.
Glossiness color might be dark or a map. Try setting it to simple white.
Glossy Roughness might be set to 1 (again, happens with some autoconversion). Try .5 or lower and see if you get highlights.
For the record, for reasonable skin I usually use values ~ .3 weight, white, roughness .3 or so. Very wet skin, weight higher, roughness lower.
(I actually prefer to set the values for base skin to something very dry looking and then add top coat, but that might be a bit much for now and the usefulness of it is arguable)
Yes. Result -- total failure as well. Sorry for not including in the list of things that don't work.
I purchased the product from Renderosity long ago. The name of the product is Maxi created, I believe, by Rhiannon. It is inexpensive. Buy it and study it.
Gr00vus and timmins.william,
I will implement your suggestions and report back my results.
Martin
P.S. My actual name is Martin Leufray III. I have no idea why DAZ has assigned me a different screename. It's especially disconcerting because in 2002, DAZ far exceeded the design limit of their intial systems and the site became unusable. I held their hands until they were dug out. Why they had someone else implement my guidance remains a mystery. I many people copied my work but have never improved upon it.
If you google my name, ignore the first entry calling me a charlatan. My actual profile is contained in the second entry by LinkedIn. If you don't see a record of my work at DAZ, Dan Farr is intimately familiar with what I did.
If you don't have a Gallery at Daz 3D, then the system will assign you a username, based on your email, with a random code added to avoid duplicate user names (as many people just have email addresses called info or similar things) You can change your user name by going here https://www.daz3d.com/customer/account/edit/
This was partially explained here http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/51141/gallery-name-updates
This was done so that gallery and forum user names became the same,
What, exactly, was this supposed to mean?
Chohole,
Thank you, and while we are wildly off-topic, where do I change my image?
You asked. I told you how to acquire the texture so you could study it all you want.
I do not see any room for confusion on either your initial suggestion nor either of my replies.
It is no concern to me if you buy the product or study it. It's your life.
Martin
Click on the gear icon at top right of the page, click on your name there, that takes you to your profile. click on the gear icon there, and then on Edit profile. You will find several options for changing things there, including change picture.
It is general practice to post at least a screen shot of what your settings are in the surface tab and a render showing what is or is not to your liking. Without those it is nearly impossible to offer any but the broadest suggestions.