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Have you put the diffuse map in the SSS colour slot? This will give you the skin and what's "in" it - i.e. tattoos, birthmarks, etc. Remember you may have to edit the map if it's too dark for the original UberSurface.
As for eyebrows, they just won't work well with SSS by themselves - since in real life, they are not "inside" skin but hair on top of it. I use geometry shells with transparency masks (described in section I.5.2, and as for making a mask per se out of any map, I have a step-by-step here: http://www.sharecg.com/v/76562/gallery/3/PDF-Tutorial/Creating-masks-from-diffuse-maps-in-Paint.NET ) or external eyebrows like the free ones by JoeQuick I linked to a few posts above.
Oh WOW! What a difference that makes! I thought I had read your tutorial through a cpl of times, but i clearly missed that part
Anyway, thank you SO much Mustakettu85, you are absolutely fantastic! I have never managed to get SSS working before you helped me with your crystal clear explaining.
(just one last thing.. did you get my pm about "what's happened to my specular?")
Uber Surface Spec control, the glossiness in fact is in reverse of the Daz Studio default surfaces. I find about a 10 - 30 % glossiness with about 40 - 50^ strength. The spec 2 controls are really only best visible if you turn off Spec one and Diffuse and SSS etc. A pain yes but it gives better result when you can see the effect.
When using Area Lighting I would add an normal light set to specular light only as Area light doesn't give good spec light. Neither does UE2 but AOA's ambient light does....niceeeeeeeeee.
I'm assuming you're talking about UberArea lights? I find they actually give rather good spec light, provided you do not use them with UE2. If you want to use area lights and keep the specular, you need to use either AoA's Ambient Light or the ambient light that came with the point-based occlusion render script.
Don't know about omAreaLight though.
Well it is common knowledge that Area Lighting (yes Uber Area Lighting or omAreaLight) in DS gives very little specular, that same with UE2 which has no specular component at all. Yes it does give soft highlights after a fashion but nothing like wet/sweaty or oily skin.
Based on my experience, I would say that's probably because most users don't setup their materials/lights correctly. A long time ago I would agree with that assesment, primarily because I was using UE2 and UberArea lights. But once I started using and understanding UberAreaLight much better, I found they do emit specular light (with the same intensity as diffuse light). Having both types linked actually works much better, since it more closely mimic actual light. Plus it helps you tweak your specular component more accurately.
Here's three renders - the first is with the specular disabled on all materials for reference. The other two are made with DSdefault directional light and UE2 and another with UberAreaLights and AoA's Ambient Light. As you can see, the specular component is generally similar in intensity. The materials are the same on both renders with specular enabled. Both UE2 and AoA's Ambient Light are using the same intensity with limited to diffuse only.
your examples prove my point. LOL I did say if you want oily, wet or sweaty skin then you do need to add a spec light. And that is what I get (like your examples) so my surface are set up right. ;) I never said they didn't give specular I just said they don't give stronger highlights as your images show.
Now I'm the one who is confused.
Isn't oily/glossyness controls found on materials settings rather than the lights? The only reason I can think of for doing a specular only light is that you want to fake fresnel reflections or specular highlights coming from indirect light. I don't recommend doing that since you need to do so with the materials rather than the lights.
If you're trying to do somethng like that, you need to boost the specular strength to get the highlight strength to where you want at glancing angles and then tweak both the specular glossyness/sharpness (to get that oily look) and fresnel strength/sharpness settings (so the highlights 'behave' correctly and don't highlight the area you don't want). This is where the advanages of UberSurface2 specular fresnel attenuation comes into play.
Here's some renders to illustrate what I mean. The light is just one AoA's Ambient Light and two UberAreaLights (diffuse and specular are enabled for both UberArea lights, specular is disabled for AoA's Ambient Light). SInce this is a quick test, I removed the spec maps and boost the strength all the way up to 100 for the oily, glacing render highlights render. It will work just as well with spec maps, but I didn't have time to fine tune it.
YES glossiness is a material issue but if a light doesn't have a specular light aspect built in like the main lights do then the effect will not be as strong...no matter how high you make the spec strength. I have tested this exhaustively over the years. And many here have moan about Ue2 not giving enough specular over the years.
You said earlier, UberArea lights do have specular so that's where I'm confused. There is some difference in intensity with the default DS lights but this is not just limited to the specular aspect (it's also true for diffuse).
I think it's quite clear that UE2 don't have specular. Otherwise it would really be a great IBL light. Plus using UE2 together with UberArea lights will cancel the specular aspect of all UberArea lights in your scene.
Here's a render of the same settings with the DSDefault Lights and UE2. Generally the same strength, although there are some differences. You can always adjust the scale of the AreaLIghts to compensate or re-adjust the specular sharpness to get 'sharper' highlights.
What I said was Area lights don't give good spec...(compared to normal lights that is) Ue2 doesn't give any as far as I can make out.
I generally decouple specular from diffuse in lighting, if I'm using a non-pure-white diffuse. Then diff-only light is the coloured one, and the spec-only light remains white. I got this idea from this video, and it makes sense: http://vimeo.com/38180924
You can't do it with UberArea lights, though.
The discussion with Szark have left me wondering if there might be a bug with UberAreaLight.
So I started DS and made a new scene, load one UberArea light plane and created a sphere with the diffuse set to 0% and specular set to 100%. I then turned off the area light (made it invisible in the scene tab), create a DS default spotlight and tried to match the same specular intensity I got with the previous render.
This is what I'm seeing up to now.
However, when I saved the scene, exited DS and started it back again, load the same scene and render with just the UberArea light, the sphere is simply not lit. So, using UberArea light with a saved scene will not give you any specular. I'm using DAZ Studio 4.6.5.30. I don't know if this affects other build as well, but if anyone else can reproduce this, I'd be happy to file a bug report.
In my case, in DS 4.6.3.52 (the most recent build I can dl from my account), it works fine. At least, in the quick tests I just did.
But I did not create a spotlight, I just set the plane to invisible and back.
Actually, I think Szark has dealt with that. I couldn't seem to get any specular working on the skin, even dialling it up to massively high strength. It was as though the SSS was "killing" it somehow. But it could be this thing about US "reversing" glossiness values.. I'll try that
Well got a response back from DAZ and they said that UberArea light is NOT supposed to have specular light. So, I must be doing something wrong, that came out right :)
Btw, I did a quick test and I think it's not related to the app build. I uninstalled and deleted the default shaders and re-downloaded/installed them via DIM. I'm still getting specular from UberArea lights, but now it works with fresh and saved scenes. Using them with any kind of ambient light kills the specular though. I tried UE2, AoA's Ambient Light and the scripted render, so it kinda rules out having AO with them.
LOL I am glad you got that confirmed about Area Lights but like you I always get a small specular feedback.
Yep. I think I'm going to save the default shaders somewhere else so I could always fall back to it just in case DAZ went and 'fix' it. :)
I remember that in DS3, I could get specular from UberArea with UE with the default shader and iirc UberSurface, but not UberSurface2.
I wonder if it affects other area light shaders.
Here's a comparison of the specular aspect of UberArea lights with DS Default material and HSS,US and US2. As Omnifreaker noted, the glossiness is different so there's quite a difference when rendered (set to 20%). I would say DS default material 20% glossiness is comparable to about 0.5% glossyness with Omnifreaker's shaders, which is what I used for the fourth render.
For the third render, I added fresnel on top of the specular (0.5% glossiness) . The fresnel settings are 75% strength, 1.5 fakkiff abd 75% sharpness. Specular strength is constant for all the renders above (100%) and UberArea light intensity is set to 247%
Well got a response back from DAZ and they said that UberArea light is NOT supposed to have specular light. So, I must be doing something wrong, that came out right :)
Btw, I did a quick test and I think it's not related to the app build. I uninstalled and deleted the default shaders and re-downloaded/installed them via DIM. I'm still getting specular from UberArea lights, but now it works with fresh and saved scenes. Using them with any kind of ambient light kills the specular though. I tried UE2, AoA's Ambient Light and the scripted render, so it kinda rules out having AO with them.
So if I have followed this correctly, uberArea is not supposed to have a specular component...but does as long as there is no light producing AO effects?
How utterly bizarre and frustratingly useless.
Adding a specular only light would still net you specular, though, correct?
It sure does explain a lot of the bizarre stuff I have seen if this is the case. And should cease some the head meets desk behavior.
Yes. I'm assuming you mean with DAZ default lights, but it should work with all lights.
Yes I would be referring to a Studio default light to provide the specular only light.
When you say "indirect light/camera" setup, what do you mean? And are you suggesting that would produce an AO like effect?
I was just wishing for something that would do bounce calculations quickly and efficiently. I am wishing for it now even harder. And have it do specular, please.
Didn't the AH lights do specular? I so wish he would come back and recompile them for 4. Do you hear me Arthur? Please come back! We need you more than ever.
I'm referring to using shader mixer to create an indirect light/camera setup. I believe it uses photon maps to calculate ray bounces. Areas where that are not 'hit' by direct and indirect light should be quite dark, pretty much like what you get with AO. I don't know whether or not the photon maps can be saved for reuse though. If it is possible, subsequent renders should be very quick.
3delight is capable of using point cloud to calculate bounce rays, but I haven't seen anybody produce a ready-to-use solution for DS. There was some discussion in wancow's thread about this, if i'm not mistaken.
yeah I was/am a big fan of ahEnvironment. I wish the same.
I'm referring to using shader mixer to create an indirect light/camera setup. I believe it uses photon maps to calculate ray bounces. Areas where that are not 'hit' by direct and indirect light should be quite dark, pretty much like what you get with AO. I don't know whether or not the photon maps can be saved for reuse though. If it is possible, subsequent renders should be very quick.
3delight is capable of using point cloud to calculate bounce rays, but I haven't seen anybody produce a ready-to-use solution for DS. There was some discussion in wancow's thread about this, if i'm not mistaken.
I do not believe this produces any bouncing light, only color splash... I can't think of the correct term. Like the Cornell box example...the indirect light camera doesn't actually add any light or enhance the light, just color bleeding... that's the term.
//edit
but now I think about it, there's more than one way to do this... isn't there? If you use shader mixer lights and setup it up right, maybe that does work.
I do not believe this produces any bouncing light, only color splash... I can't think of the correct term. Like the Cornell box example...the indirect light camera doesn't actually add any light or enhance the light, just color bleeding... that's the term.
Actually photon mapping will give you full GI. The shader mixer camera (IDL cam + photon mapper brick) is rather slow, though. Maybe it will be faster with "do final gather" turned off - if it does work internally the way I think it does. But you will need to use photon-casting lights (most readily, shader mixer ones). I could walk you through that, if you want.
As for point clouds, they're quite viable in DS4, actually: there's a script for the 'scripted renderer' that works in conjunction with UE2. A lot of people on the forums are using point clouds now for AO, colour bleeding and full GI. I posted a full Cornell box with it in Wancow's 3Delight thread, with settings.
There are also other options, if you're willing to go deeper into 'tech' stuff.
The Cornell box should give light bounced from the wall with color bleeding. If not, then the setup is not correct. Not easy inside DS I know
I've been thinking about that. Most people probably stil used older builds together with bucket rendering. I'd like to see what the performance is with newer DS or 3delight builds under progressive rendering. Richard Haseltine mentioned that DS progressive rendering uses the raytrace hider, which can be faster than the traditional REYES in certain scenarios. From my experience, this is very true when you have transmapped or fiber mesh hair (high polygon models). You do need to have a lot of memory (i would say 4 GB is a minimum) and a 64 bit system is recommended.
Plus, the latest DS build includes an updated version of 3delight
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log
I don't mind the long wait with final gather, if you can save and reuse the resulting point clouds :)
I realize we have kinda gone off topic here, sorry about that Scott-Livingston.
When using the scripted render, what's the deal with Gamma Correction? There's no switch for it in the render options. Does 3Delight do it on its own?