Pale skin not doable?
LilithVX
Posts: 36
Is there a way to make very pale skin work in Daz Studio with iray and G8F?
I tested with some skin textures of my own, but I can't make it work. So I decided to test G8F with V8's skin instead. I changed saturation on V8's skin in Photoshop so it comes out very pale, almost white/grey. Unfortunately I can't seem to make it work either. I understand that transmitted color (seem to anyway) controls it all but as soon as I deviate from the basic orange color that V8 has the preview render or just an ordinary render creates more noise, rather than less. The white parts gets black noise and the darker parts get white noise. And no it does not seem to matter how much or little lights I use. As soon as I switch back to the basic orange transmitted color it works. But that turns the pale and pink skin texture even more pink, and not just pale that I want.
I never had this problerm with G3F and V7, with her I could give her that undead skin look. Is there some setting that I have missed?
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Comments
Have you tried adjusting the strength rather than the colour? Or the transmitted distance.
Hi Lilith,
over the time I did a lot of evaluations (http://andysanderson.deviantart.com/gallery/58238151/Skin-Evaluations). Think those settings are a good start for trying it out.
That way I succeeded to have a "standard" which has that effect on G8.
http://orig13.deviantart.net/6b0b/f/2017/170/9/e/g8f_skin_compare_by_andysanderson-dbd8li7.jpg
or total compare: http://orig08.deviantart.net/6f5a/f/2017/170/7/7/g8f_skin_by_andysanderson-dbd8l8c.jpg
I can change the strength? Changing transmitted distance to lower or above 0.12 makes G8F slowly disappear in the preview window when I use the iray draw style. Basically noise covers her completely after a few minutes.
The main reason is the strange translucency color setting. Some other authors already discussed in some other threads what's principly wrong in the later skin settings of G3 and G8 related to the real skin physics/optics.
See the entries of Arnold_C and my post above.
Hi! I tried some of the different settings, about half of them does not exist with V8's surfaces, but unfortunately I get the same effect again - G8F disappear after a minute or so due to noise, or just goes invisible if I change transmitted measurement distance. Changing translucency color or weight does not stop G8F from being covered in noise, and it makes the skin look more "rough".
I can get just the skin color I want with a few changes in the settings; until I render. So until something changes I have to use beige skin?
Or I have to accecpt loosing that realistic skin and use more basic surface settings. Which kinda defeats the whole purpose of me using G8F/V8. Because G8F/V8 looke more alive compared to G3F, I don't want to loose that but I also don't want to be forced to just use a single (well two with V8's) skin texture.
Another change I did was with Diffuse Overlay Weight. And sure, the higher value I use, and set a texture, the more pale it looks but at the same time it looks less "alive". I don't mean the fact that the skin turns almost white thus making G8F look like a vampire of the undead kind. The gorgeus effect you get when the light hits the skin with the basic settings (like if you use a flashlight on your palm the other side of your hand turns red) goes away at the same pace as I increase the diffuse overlay weight. Or well, it looks like it does. I might be wrong.
Hi Lilith,
the noise in the beginning of iRay render is related to the way iRay works. You need a lot of patience until it is over 95%. This is progressive render - almost similar to the look of 3Delight progressive render method.
Overlay has a different purpose. I used it to apply dirtyness, tattoos, etc. It's just like painting over the skin.
Yes but the render becomes worse as times progresses. The noise in the first minute slowly disapears and a few minutes later small block dots starts to cover the skin; as long as I change the transmitted or subsurface colors. If I use the default V8 colors this does not happen. The current version of iray in Daz Studio does not seem to like white or at least very light surfaces. I never had this problem with G3F and an older version of Daz Studio (4.9.2).
But my comparison renders were done with 4.9.4.117 beta.
As you see: with the default G8 skin you don't get that natural "shine through".
You may test that setting: http://sta.sh/21wrlbxirz9y
I did the renders with a photo studio setup (three more or less soft spotlights) - nothing else (scene only render setting).
Thank you, I tested your setting, I no longer get the render noise problems. But want I want is also to have a more natural-looking skin. The base G8F texture does not give me that, only V8 seem to do it. The later however does not work with pale skin. Thus if I want that pale skin I have to take a step back to G3F's skin settings. Which I do not want to do.
That's the point.
The look in general depends on the "quality" of the diffuse texture. So perhaps you have to look for other characters, where sometimes the authors state that the texture is based on real photographies.
The rest (translucency and transmission/scattering) is only to imitate the influence of the different layers of the real skin. And playing around with the color parameter is one possibility to tone the color and bright-(dark-)ness.
Genesis 3,, better textures
under Iray textures on surfaces check the "show hidden"
select Skin, go to "difuse strengh" (i use 1.4 instead of 1.0, (notes: some textures is 0.5 that show dark,,))
also change from metalic to "Weightened" (that remove all skin reflection)
keep glossy or metalic only lips,mouth and nails and eyes.
on render setting, use Gamma "ON" and level 2.2
OK - and how do you produce the glossy shine of the skin and the second sub-layer?
For me, a gamma of 2.2 , makes the colors look too pale. Here you have to carefully increase the contrast.
If you compare with real photography, a gamma up to 1.8 is usefull. Gamma at 2.2 and above suits our eyes, cause you can better see the regions laying in the shadow. This corresponds with faint, low-contrast photos.
I went back to the G8F basic skin and settings. And I then applied V8's skin (modified) and set the translucency to 0.90, as that is what V8 has. And yeah; I was able to achieve the same effect and look as V8. The skin now look more real but with the added bonus of having that very pale, undead-ish skin that I love and wanted. Thank you!
This is the first time I'm not using V's skin, I have done that since V4. Well okay I am using her skin texture, but I'm using the basic G8F settings instead. And that's a first for me.
Don't use diffuse overlay at all, all it does is to add another diffuse layer which at default is pure white, it will only make the skin less detailed and less toned.
If you want to use V8 but a lot paler version of it, try the following two thing:
1. Use photoshop to edit the SSS skin texture itself, add brightness to the texture and change the color to a bit less "red" and a bit more "pink/pale", it takes a bit of some trial and error but you can get there :)
2. Go down to the (I think it is the SSS color setting or the other one) which is pink, and drag the color in the pallet vertically down (I don't have daz3d in front of me atm so I will let you know when I double check that)
I kinda disagree with you here, diffuse texture, depends on the way you approach skin, can even be dropped completely (I did), and in fact SSS displays skin details a lot better combined with specular and bump. Having diffuse + bad translucency + bump sometimes only shows the struggle to get the appropriate skintone and have a cakey face :/ But some did manage to stimulate it to a very great level, but without absolutely correct science everything is still "wrong" >.>
Another approach is to reduce vibrance of the diffuse texture and basically nudge it lighter, with deeper color coming from translucency color.
Thank for your advice!
I tried changing the SSS texture and it did make it more pink, but not pale. Changing the SSS color (the pink one) makes it either more pink or very pale (what I want) but it also makes G8F/V8 disappear in the render window. Basically a noise (color matches background) covers her up and after a few minutes only the background can be seen. It also adds a green tint to the skin.
I also did the changes with the diffuse texture but that made very little difference.
If I use the basic settings with G8F and V8's modified textures I can achieve the pale skin that I want but I can't get rid of that green tint. I know it's not the render setting that adds that green tint.
Edit: What I want is to replace the green tint with a pink one.
I use this for colour tones and then tweak as necessary :)
http://www.photokaboom.com/photography/learn/Photoshop_Elements/color_correction/skin_tone/1_skin_tone_samples_chart.htm
so please show your results including the parameters.
Thanks for those examples. I have the same problem and I at times at thought I was being unreasonable to expect that rendering those tones wound be possible as one of the product supplied presets. However, I have yet to buy a recent product that actually supplies such presets, Snowflake for Aiko 7 coming closest. Somehow there is something not right about how light reacts to skin as modeled in DAZ iRay products and it's only disguised by the darker toned characters and flood lights, but the problem is still there.
I think I like @EcVh0 approach. It just seems natural that the color reflected would be a function of geometry and material physics reflected in those other maps and not just a flat painted mercator projection of diffuse. Which will prevail I have no ideal though because the colors in diffuse are actually light's final visible reaction after exiting all the other layers and that complexity is never going to make it modeled into a long winded list of PBR layers.
One questions whether DAZ or any other PBR shader light method should be including any color outside the diffuse map that actually is arising from light's reaction to skin as that color's final result is after all in the diffuse map. Now using those layers to simulate an unsually sweaty person, oily person, wet person and so on outside the normal washed and dried people photoscanned in a controlled lighting environment is more what those layers are more technically reasonably capable of. That's maybe very problematic though for creating good quality skin texture sets that are unique but totally artificially created. LOL, well for myself personally at least.
Yeah that is normal when the translucency is turned up to 1, diffuse map stops mattering anymore unless you need to use glossy weight in weighted mode
Hmm yeah I think I somehow made a pale skin once before during testing (didn't care that much by then cuz I was just playing around with it), I will do more test when I get my hand back onto daz within a week and let you know how that goes :)
Not sure if I understood this correctly, but you basically used V8 textures on G8F shaders?
G8F shader is actually completely different than the V8 shader, G8F's shader is still the good old way of how the past gens has been using the textures so it shouldn't been too hard to achieve a pale look. If you are using "mono" on SSS mode and translucency < 1, simply play around the translucency tint to see if you can get rid of the green tint
I think the key with the new v8 shader is to change the SSS texture precise enough to get the look you want, but that can be really hard/take you up hours :/ but by the result you will get in return it is definitely worth a try :)
I don't usually keep results of my testings (i'm a messy person), but I managed to find you one for my upcoming character :) doesn't really have a comparison atm tho...
No diffuse map is used in this, in fact, if the skin shine is done via top coat instead of glossiness diffuse weight can be turned off :)
Simulations, it's all simulations so I guess there won't be a "perfect" preset that can achieve such effect. My (coming soon) skin shader does not have this as an option but it is already the top on my todo list to add a "proper" pale skin tone as an update to the product, will start working on it the moment when I get back to DAZ (within a week) :D
Thanks :), I personally believe that the diffuse map should at most highlight the skin areas (brows, eyes, lips, etc) with skin color desired but should leave the skin tones and details to other maps, at least this is a try towards actually throwing physics into render engine to let it calculate itself.
One of the great example would be the pinkish tone on skin only shows when a bright light is shine on it, and the physical engine allows us to create a realistic scene without having to add fill lights like they do in biased engines, and that takes away the realisticity on the skin, especially the darker side and the transition from the part facing the light to the part that is not.
Artificially created texture is real hard, but hey I guess it's not impossible ;)
Yes, I use V8's texture with the G8F shader settings. But I changed a few things to emulate V8's shader settings because I wanted the realistic shine through skin effect that V8 has. I am able to achieve the same (well, like 90%) look that V8 has, minus the problem I've had with pale skin. I also got rid of the green tint by turning the SSS direction all the way down to -1.00. And also playing around with transmitted and SSS color. I noticed that using a very bright or grey/snow white SSS texture produced better results. My G8F now looks like an undead with snow white skin with a little bit of grey, but certain parts of the body still have some color, like the lips or veins.
Edit: Okay, after a bit of trial and error I was able to achieve a light grey skin for V8, her textures and shader. All it took was me changing the SSS texture to grey, and add some pink to certain areas like I mentioned. Also tweaking the transmitted color (set to blood red), scattering measurement distance (0.032), SSS color also to blood red and lastly SSS direction to -1.0. If it was not for me adding some red to the lips and the like I would've believed I accidently set saturation to 0 in render settings.
So in other words, I now have that vampire skin look that I wanted. :)
That's great! Congrats :D trials and errors for the win, taking notes down in case I need to do anything similar XD