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davidtriune, I tried out your DUF, but with a different lighting setup just to see how it would look.
I'm very impressed (see below)! I honestly didn't realize the DAZ textures were so high-quality. The default skin shaders aren't showing them off nearly as well as I thought.
To me, this is photoreal but (oddly enough) for her ears. Then I realized, there's no maps there. Was that on purpose or an oversight?
Also, this is the first time I've seen spectral rendering do a damn thing, but in your case it's dramatic. Your settings without spectral makes Mei look like she has a terrible sunburn.
P.S. This is a raw render. With post work it would look even better, I imagine.
Another one for fun, testing out other lighting.
Did anyone notice a serious image upgrade, like a before and after, as a result of such setting adjustments? It is easy when you have a hairless character, with eyes closed, against a black back-drop, to have it look like their skin stands out, when it actually may be pretty standard-fare compared to, say, what would be posted as a picture for a product in the Daz store, with hair, against a lit background.
Like, are you upgrading the skin, or upgrading the 'presentation' of the skin, as it were...Curious if anyone's older ways vs new were given a boost!
Fair question! I have the render saved, so I'll do a quick render with Mei's default skin settings to see if there is a significant difference.
Here is a comparison.
Although both renders are quite nice, I believe the new settings posted by davidtriune are a step above. I especially like the lips, and the way the light scatters on the right side of her face. Also, the skin seems to be absorbing the light rather than just bouncing it away.
The only problem is the red nose. I imagine this is because noses in real life have cartiledge and therefore aren't as translucent. We would probably run into this issue with fingers, as well. Any workaround?
(First is original, Second is new settings)
I tried plugging those settings in last night, and she just turned orange. Hopefully I'll have time tonight to figure out where I went wrong.
Hi Gordig - She'll be orange unless you use spectral rendering (faithful).
This is the only time I've seen spectral actually do much for a render.
Good to know, thanks. I've actually seen spectral rendering make pretty significant changes to a render, but I chronically under-light my scenes as a stylistic choice/exercise in masochism, so that might have something to do with it.
Those images are amazing! i'm glad the settings are working for ya!
I may have used another character's maps for testing and forgot to change them back to mei lin, lol.
I wonder if DAZ is using real life photos to capture their maps because they seem legit.
I tried other characters but they didn't seem that different. Mostly darker and less saturated (but maybe that's more correct) The newer characters already have translucency levels correctly set.
(animated gif)
Also, I don't recommend Lee 8, his textures are definitely not as good and seem "painted on" instead of realistic.
I actually like Mei lin's textures out of all of them, so far.
You can turn down SSS on the nose by lowering the SSS transmission distance, or switching from faithful to natural spectral rendering (although that makes lights not work, donno why).
Nice but it's probably more fair to render the original mei lin on spectral rendering off, since that's what it was designed for.
P.S. I attached the ultimate skin manager settings so people can just load it on their characters. (I forgot to mention earlier that you need to set all the "roughness" maps because DAZ doesn't do it for you. The maps have "S" in them. for exmaple, MeiLin8FaceS01_1001.jpg is the roughness map for the face.)
I think the difference is substantial enough.
That's male content for you.
If you have her, could you try Charlotte please?
I don't sorry. I only have about 5 base g8 characters, because i didn't see potential in them til now..
Before:
After:
Hmmm. Well, I've solved the problem of her being orange, at least.
did you make sure all the maps are properly selected? Also, some characters' maps may be improperly made so they won't work with my settings.
If there a map for SSS involved, or a map linked to the reddish hue you are seeing, like a Transmission map or something, you can tweak it in Photoshop or Gimp.
Whatever is used to allow for SSS color probably is white, vs grey or black. This map likely has white ears and a white nose. Thuis, if you make the nose a black, or a darker grey, it wil create that thick cartlidge you are looking for, as this Transmission/ SSS map will effectively then be limiting the SSS on the nose. At minimum it would be a quick hack, if not a fix, Cool!
The maps were right, I had just overlooked the transmitted color and SSS settings. Here's a corrected version.
What about having basic bones, like finger bones, that will give a bone shadow inside the fingers. You could have a basic nose bone too. Those bones won't need to be hi res, their job is to block light.
Thanks for your skin settings, davidtriune!
One note - I noticed the Top Coat roughness is off? At least in the new Mei version it's 0.42, not 0.30.
The 0.42 seemed to work better.
Gordig, you asked for Charlotte. Here you go:
1st is default (no spectral), 2nd is with davidtriune's settings (adjusted to Top Coat roughness to 0.30). I think #2 is far superior! (The lips especialy - love how the 'edge' all but disappears)
And although this looks like two different lighting set ups, it's not.
P.S. And although the faces are almost perfect, the body could use work. Looks like she has a nasty skin condition.
Sorry for quoting myself here, but this is , what I'm talking about. I know, it is hard to see. The skeleton fingers should be thicker, but I made a quick and dirty conversion from a Poser skeleton.
1.) without bones
2.) with bones
This should fix the glowing nose issue too.
yea, i realized that and changed it back to .42 earlier in the day, haha. it was an accident.
I also added "thin film" settings to try and mimic the human skin better. I'm not sure if it's working exactly the way I think it works. the difference is slight but it looks better in my opinion.
Bodies can use a little less top coat (in other words, oil) since we usually have more oil on our faces, I think.
btw the charlotte is amazing
Thanks, davidtriune.
Decided to lower the bump on the body and did one with eyes and a bit of an expression.
Wow emory, great job!! :O
Threw Ava's skin on her and starting applying davidtriune's settings. I'm just copying from Chrome into DS by looking, and not being the least bit systematic about it, so I end up with some interesting results, like when she went all minty.
Some new renders... this time a blend of HDRI and Spotlights...
That looks really good.
My diagnosis may be incorrect, but I have always thought that the eyes in your images look a bit dull/blurry. Like maybe they should be slightly more glossy.
Can one of you skin realisim gurus explain if it's better for SSS maps to be closer to white? Because I tried davidtriune's skin settings, on a whim on g3m using M7 skin and it came out super pale. Then I tried it out on a cusom g8m character who wears Landon's skin, and swapped out Landon's SSS maps for g8 base male's SSS maps which are the same as M7's and he turned super pale too! And that doesn't seem right to me. I will admit though, the veins on M7/g8 base male's SSS are really well done, and if I can sort out how to make it look less vampire-esq then I just may use them all the time.
G3M/M7
Custom g8 with Landon
Custom character with M7's SSS
I also had trouble working with g3 sss maps. I ended up using the diffuse maps for them, and then using LIE to lighten the image a bit (set opacity to 66%, depending on how light you want it, and then create a white layer underneath).
I used this method for several characters and I like the result
(animated gif)
Mei lin 7
Sue (new character in shop)
if you want to keep the details from the SSS map (veins etc) you may need to do some editing in photoshop, maybe overlay it over the diffuse layer and lighten it.
Hmmmm. Ok. Thanks for the tips. I don't usually mess with skins this much, but this is actually interesting.
You're definitely onto something here.
I'm still playing with davidtriune's settings, and really enjoying them.
Weird thing... On "Albany" these settings made a line appear at the UV seams. Anybody have any ideas why this would happen?
Sometimes the seams appear if there's a difference in the bump/normal/displacement maps or settings for the adjoining UV areas.