What's with the extreme glossy skin in some PA's characters?
mazinkaiserzero
Posts: 200
Hi! I've noticed some PAs have this way of shading their characters skin using Specular/Glossiness and then cranking gloss weight to 100, which of course makes them look like a Twilight vampire in the texture shaded viewport. On Iray... I don't think they look "bad", they get some kind of soft...sheen?...that I guess can look nice if you are not going for a particularly realistic look. But I suppose that part can be a bit subjective.
Doing 3d renders I try to live by the motto of "if it looks good, it works" but, I don't know... this just feels wrong for some reason. Doesn't help that most, if not all of them, also use the same diffuse map for pretty much everything except bump and normals, then they maybe add a microdetail map in topcoat. Which also strikes me as lazy, but there might be a good reason I don't know.
I guess if I had to say something completely objective about why it's bad or at the very least annoying, is that it makes impossible trying to see details changes from moprhs in texture shaded view
Not going to say "names" because it's not my intention to roast anyone, my goal here is getting feedback about it, arguments why it is indeed wrong or why it really isn't, especially on the technical side, like making renders take longer, more noise or something.
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Comments
You do realize you can adjust any of the settings in the surfaces tab to how you want it to look and then save it as a material preset for future use. not all PAs have the same knowledge/skills and some probably live by the same motto "if it looks good......"
Yes, I do and I pretty much tweak most characters I use, but the way they are made basically makes it easier to start from the ground up. And even in that case, they don't have proper spec maps because they use the diffuse for that. Plus, the whole point is that Daz Studio is supposed to be friendly for newcomers and products should be good out of the box. So, if that shading "system" is wrong/bad quality (and discussing if it is or not is the main point of this thread, not me asking for help to fix them), then being able to change them is not a excuse to let it go. Not saying they should be banned or something, but if it's wrong that makes it a bad product and I wouldn't recommend it, not "hey, yeah, it has crappy shading but you can fix it". While if it's just an artistic choice, if someone asks me about one of those vendors I'd just mention it has a particular way of shading that may or may not work for them, instead of saying "don't buy it".
I'm confused - what the skin looks like in texture shaded mode doesn't matter...it's what it looks like in Iray mode that does. And the amount of specularity/gloss/shine is a personal preference that is hugely effected by the light you put on it.
and the kinds of lights. i noticed that the point lights and emissive planes I usually use create nice specular when the materials are set up as such, but ghost lights don't give me the same effect.
To the OP, I guess everyone has a different take on user friendly since i find the plug and play nature of DS and it's products extremely user friendly compared to actually using these products in a modeling app like say maya or max, or even blender. As Melissa pointed out, you should never judge materials by how they look in the texture preview mode.
So, I guess you all work all the time in Iray preview mode?
Yes, like I said, ultimately what matters for the final render is how it looks in Iray, but texture shaded or even smooth shaded view are good to quickly see geometry changes on the model from morphs and such. At this point I'm not sure if any of you have seen how the shading I'm mentioning looks in those view modes. And yes, though gloss/specularity is until some point a personal preference, it also depends on what's the goal. If you are striving for realism, then not so much. If you are not, then yeah, I can understand these shadings as a artistic preference, but then I wonder if it's efficient. Considering how the render engine works it makes me wonder if having that kind of glossy values doesn't affect it negatively, and if that is the case then I think it's safe to say it is objectively bad shading.
Yes, that makes sense, you are creating the light but there is no "lightbulb object" to reflect.
What would help is if we knew which characters we're talking about.
Yeah, was trying to avoid pointing fingers so nobody felt directly attacked or something, since I wanted the topic to be mainly about the shading itself rather than the PAs using it. I'll try to take some screenshots of a character later, since looking at the promos is not really a good indication of what I mean (after all, I bought the characters because I liked the promos =P)
Oh, ok, looking at the promos of that product I can see the "sheen" on the skin those character's have when rendered, so I'd say it's most likely, and I'd understand why it was the same among different PAs. Not sure though, I don't understand what's Merchant Resource about some surface settings (as far as I could see it's just using the regular Specular/Glossiness Daz already has, but removes the glossy limit and crank it to 100, not sure if the diffuse maps the PAs are using comes with that)
I think I like the result but not for everything, at least to me it doesn't look "realistic" as it claims to be, but I usually don't strive for realism. And even if it looks nice, I still have my doubts it's... cost effective?... for render times at least. Doesn't strike me as natural or logical having to use gloss weight that high o.o
Generally the gloss weight is toned down by the other settings so it isn't so bad. Think of it more like subtractive gloss rather than additive, or something..
Most the "realism" things aren't ever really "realistic" because they go waaay overboard. If you're spending time doing an effect you probably want people to notice it in some way, or at least dial it up until you yourself do. Whereas generally such things are pretty much unoticable subtle minor things no one really does.
A recent figure is modelled entirely on "really realistic really real realism" measured by the "really real institute of reality", but I can't look at her and not think she looks like a giant woman shaped gumdrop (with oversized vellus hair)...
Indeed, I often feel like the "Is this real life?" kid because I keep reading that about a lot of products that don't look realistic. Imho, it's because there is a wrong idea around that "realistic" equals "high quality" by default so they throw the term around for every product to sell more.
No example pictures?
The trick of the settings is that it only needs the diffuse map from the original character, all other effects are created within DAZ from that map. So it's great to bring new life to old characters (especially if they lack normal maps) and can even be applied to props and environments as well. Here's an example of Lee 7 out of the box vs Lee 7 with NGS and a few tweaks:
NGS doesn't always yield good results out the box because, like I said, it uses the info of the Diffuse map only. So if a creator tweaked the color of the skin via settings, you'll lose that color and get a lighter version of the character instead. But NGS gives a good base to work from if you're unconvinced with a skin. Like:
Having said that, I haven't seen Generation 8 characters be released with the NGS system (though I haven't bought a lot, to be honest). And I have since stopped using NGS because most characters for Generation 8 have great skin already.
Ah, sorry, I completely missed that last post. Only noticed today because I forgot the name of that shader product so I went through my discussions to find it xD
You see... I actually like more the default Lee 7 shading than the final NGS with tweaks version. I probably would just tone down the lips glossiness a bit.
On the other hand, definitely like more the final tweaked version for Kai, if going for a "detailed/realism" version. The original seems fine if going for a... "not full on toon game-y" look though, which seems to be the intention.
how do you make the moist lips look in pbr shader?
Honestly, it's not just Daz stuff. Excessively glossy skin comes up in a lot of 3D art made by people who use other software too, so I suspect some people just like the aesthetics of it, possibly because it brings attention to to the texture in the bump/normals, or maybe they just like shiny things. For skin, I never expect to like the default settings (though I render in Blender these days, so I expect to have to set up my own materials anyway).
I think some folks think it looks more real; I've really no idea, it looks seriously fake imo.
Hi, I'm kind of on the fence about the gloss thing also. For example, I really do like Nikolina for G8F, and I think the shine on her nose, when rendered, is very lifelike and cute, but I'm not so sure about the rest of the face. In some lights it looks like she's been crying, her skin seems so wet. Unfortunately, I'm no good with the surface settings so I haven't figured out yet how to keep the nose shine but reduce the gloss elsewhere. So I tend to use her the way she is and then maybe do some postwork on the gloss.
As I work a lot in textured preview like the OT (I think), I'd agree that too much gloss can be really annoying, because then the tex preview gives you a completely wrong impression of what the figure will actually look like in Iray. Can't be helped though for me, I'm mostly on a laptop without a dedicated GPU, so can use Iray preview only sporadically.
...I tend to use the Skin Builder resource for the most part so I'm always tweaking skins anyway.
Iray view is great when you have a GPU that can handle it and give you a decent refresh rate. If you have an older card with less VRAM and fewer cores the refresh takes longer. With my Titan X the screen refresh is decent but I notice a bit of lag in doing other operations like accessing and moving around in the content library. If someone is content to render on the CPU and deal with the longer render times (because of cost or the recent lack of GPU availability) refresh rate for Iray view is excruciatingly slow (I never used it until I got teh Titan-X installed). So yes, in texture mode skin will usually look shiny which could seem bothersome.
Even with a GPU It is good to eventually close the programme down to clear video memory if using Iray mode as the default view.
I haven't messed around too much with it, but as far as I saw, it should be the same way you do with Iray Uber. Maybe with some slight differences if you use dual specular lobe, haven't tested how different they are in that parameter but other than that, if you don't use any of the new parameters I felt they were very similar (if not the same).
About the amount of skin glossiness, when I rant about realism it's really only when people claim something is super realistic and it's not, but overall I don't think that should be a general measure of "quality" because that's not everybody's goal. For me glossiness works the same way as in the real world, as in models using lotions and stuff to make their skin shinier for photoshoots and the reason is simple: it improves a lot how light defines shapes hence making images less flat and more interesting. So no, I don't have an issue with overly glossy skins, just don't claim it's super real xD
My issue with NGS is that it seems like... "bad technique"? Like, sure, the render doesn't look bad but, is it render efficient? And on top of that, PAs using it usually don't include any map besides the diffuse and the generic micro detail map for the top coat, which strikes me as lazy and not worth as much as other PA's characters. Not to mention that, imho, it doesn't help with teaching newbies how to work with materials properly. Now, not saying it shouldn't be used, but I do think PAs using it should make it clear in their products' descriptions since I can barely tell now because I can kind of tell when something was rendered using it (after buying many characters) and maybe reading how many maps it includes, so I doubt people less familiar with it will notice it until too late.