What is your favorite 3Delight character skin texture.
kwannie
Posts: 869
I have recently started using 3Delight again and I like how I can use many of the old products with ease. I have however found myself fiddling with the character skin settings a lot. I was wondering which character do any of you think has the best 3Deligt skin, preferably G3 and G8, but whatever yeilds great 3Delight results. It seems that lighter skin is very difficult to tweak in 3Delight, and getting the specular settings right changes every time a lght shines at just a slightly different angle. So what is your favorite 3Delight skin
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...the ones I create with Zev0's SkinBuilder3 (it works in both Iray and 3DL) There is also a SkinBuilder8 for G8 The downside is it's only for female figures (wish there was a make version).
I used it for the skin on both characters in the image below which was rendered in 3DL.
The nice part is has overlays that do not make use of the LIE for freckles, eye shadow, veins, etc.
OK yes I have skin builder, and in general my issues is that 3DL skin always comes out looking like a heavey oil painting render. Getting the right amount of spectoral seems allusive. It usually ends up look like plastic barbie doll skin or like the flat oil paint. I assume that it may be heavily dependant on the lighting.
None, I have never used 3Delight. I used Luxrender, Vray and Maxwell before Iray. I wasn't aware of any G3 or G8 figures that came with 3delight options since Iray started late with G2 and then into G3.
Yeah, I'm a fan of Iray when rendering skin but I really want to get a full environments in my scenes and HDRi's are just a pain. I have tried to create my own HDR maps but all I have is gimp and can't get high res that looks like the real scenery. I prefer real geometry that I can pan a a camera around with. So 3Delight is certainly fast enough.........oh but I'm so spoiled with Iray textures.
I use mostly the DAZ core characters, with a few other favorite PA characters. I think most of the DAZ core character skins are quite nice, but the 3DL materials that come with them aren't always very good..
Around Genesis 2, the included 3DL materials for the DAZ core characters switched from UberSurface (omnifreaker) to AoA Subsurface. I usally have issues with the AoA SS materials, so I convert them to UberSurface (it's free; comes with DAZ Studio.)
For example, here's Ollie 8 with the default AoA 3DL materials using a basic, neutral-color portrait light with specular accents:
I don't think that looks good at all. There were some odd choices in the setup, but I'm not familiar enough with the AoA SS shader to understand what was done and why.
I switched to UberSurfce, using my standard set of skin settings and adjusted as needed from there.
Same lighting, but less odd-looking.
For comparison, Ollie 8's default Iray materials, using a color-neutral light probe light setup.
Different render engines so they're not going to look identicial, but they're comparable. Ollie 8's iray settings seem a little too shiny to me, but not horribly so. I'm still not familiar enough with iray to fiddle much with settings (only reallly started using iray this past summer.)
The specular maps for UberSurface need to be the ones that are darker and look less like the gray-scale bump maps. The light specular maps will result in shinier people in UberSurface, which is kind of a pain.
I will make SSS maps and darker spec maps in Paint Shop Pro if I need to, but not everyone is going to want to do that.
What skin textures are you mostly using? If I have them, I can see if I can try and help you out.
Ohhhhhh, mmalbert now I'm scrambling........lol. I would love to get your help but honestly I just started using 3DL so I don't have any favorite skinds yet. That's why I was asking what others favorites are. Maybe I could send you a private message later asking if you have resources for a skin that I found that I like, if you don't mind.
I still use V4/M4 characters ... and I render exclusively in 3DL ... if you'd like to know the skins I like best, I'll share.
Willow how well do v4 skins transfer to G3 or G8? I have seen some amazing v4 skin and I think it is always rendered in 3DL in DAZ
I'm as interested as you are in the answer, lol. I haven't been interested in investing in genesis figures until the most recent release and haven't much because I wasn't sure if or how my V4 skins would translate. I have thousands of dollars in V4 materials that I won't just ignore. And since my needs are NPR, I've gotten away with it. But I like how V8 looks, so if I can still use my characters ... game changer.
You could send me a PM or just ask here. I don't mind sharing info and others might find the discussion useful. It's up to you. :)
I've used the Cayman Studio Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 Legacy UV products for transfering Generation 4 skins -- I haven't gotten around to buying the Genesis 8 version. Haven't had any issues, though sometimes I forget the steps I have to go through to get everything onto the figure and its geoshells. But the end result looks fine. I can post some examples later.
...lighting does have a a fiar deal to do with it, just like in Iray.
For the scene I attached, I used Parris' IBL master for the GI instead of UE (UE takes too bloody long to render, particularly on my old 6 core Xeon and with all the transmaps like hair and foliage) and two AoA distant lights, one for the sun and a low intensity one under the ground plane [shadows turned off] for the bounce light.
Skin Builder does have SSS adjustments, it takes a little playing around with to get a more "natural" looking skin. Keep in mind 3DL in Daz is only capable of getting "so close" to realism but not as spot on as Iray or other photoreal render engines. I also have Wowie's AweShader which opens up a more of what 3DL is capable of, but just after I got it, the scene was lost in a drive crash so I never got to push it to the next level.
Ambie.
and old V4 always loved the Dark Matter.
dunno if i should even try searching the store to post links.
My love for 3Delight & Genesis never went away, not even after I got myself a new PC with a decent NVidia card which provided me with iRay functionality. I really enjoy iRay for the stuff it can do, but whenever I use it I mostly rely on pre-made environments for sceneries and lighting simply because I can't be bothered to re-learn everything I know about how to apply lighting. IMO there's also something to be said for artistic impressions vs. artificial perfectness.
Alas, to answer the question... Riley for Stephanie 5 (based on Genesis, obviously) is still one of my all time favorites. She simply looks so darn cute and you can really pose her any way you'd like.
See, in the end I think (too?) many people are ignoring a very important basic concept, one which can apply to both audio & video ("CGI") alike: Things don't have to be perfect in order to be perceived as such.
Okay I guess next question would be, if I use a 3DL environment they all seem to be very flat shaded on my computer would I need to match the environment with the charcater skin.......i.e. DS default, omnifreaker. I notice that many of the different 3DL skins have different surface settings available, some of which make rendering very sluggish. I would like to get the environments to look more natural in 3DL but I am not sure which shader to apply.
I'm in total agreement with ShelLuser. My background is in traditional art. I enjoy pushing the 3D medium to look as traditional as I can rather look photoreal. I have my camera for that. And even with my camera, I'm not striving for perfection. Flaws are beautiful.
As far as shading the environment ... In my experience lighting is more important than shaders, although I love me some high-quality shader kits, lol.
I like Alexaana's Nimmeth for V4 and using it on my avatar. I converted it to the new duf format so I could use on Genesis2, though I suppose I could have just applied to Genesis1 and saved, but since I had the V4 to G2F conversion I figured why not use it. You can find the texture set it, it's free.
https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/freestuff/?item_id=74748
I've also used Riley and I have converted a lot of V4 textures for use on Genesis 1&2, though have not tried them on the others
I also really like Moonfire's Colleen and Tempesta3d's Melencholy Lily and a bunch of others, most of which are free.
Tigerlily and Bryonia for Genesis 2 Female
https://www.daz3d.com/tigerlily-bundle
https://www.daz3d.com/bryonia-bryony-bundle
Matty that is a very nice character . I think I had Giselle for G2 and from what I remember there was issue with some strange stripes showing up on the arms and legs when zoomed out the camera for very wide shots. Are you familiar with what I'm talking about.Seems like Haiku's skin did it also. I have had problems with the seams showing on G3 and G8 when I apply the 3DL skin of characters that come with 3DL. Is it a bug with the newer versiond of DS I primarily us DS 4.12
+1 for Bryonnia. her outfit too.
In 3DL it really is important to have specular light(s) in order to make the skin look better. UberEnvironment especially needs specular lights; AoA ambient lights are better with specular out-of-the-box imo. If you have a 3DL light set you particularly like and it doesn't have a spec light included, you can try copying the main illumination light (a distant fill or spotlight) and create a new light with those exact setting, but then switch the Illumination option to "Specular Only." Start with whatever strength you'd like and adjust from there.
Light strength/intensity will likely need adjusting from some skins. Higher for darker, less for lighter. Lighting pale white fantasy skins can be a challenge. Then those adjustment might mean props or clothing or hair look too shiny or not shiny enough and need to be adjusted too, lol! This hobby is constant tinkering and test renders for me.
For older skins, DAZ's Elite series for M4 and V4 are pretty good. They have bump and specular maps, but I don't think any of them come with SSS maps. I made some quickie ones by desaturing the diffuse textures, but some folks plug the diffuse textures into the SSS and translucency slots. Morris made a lot of nice skins for M4, V4, and K4, though quite a few of the M4 sets are gone from the store now. Maddelerium over at Renderosity has a large selection of great V4 skins and many of them are unusual enough that I regularly use them on later Genesis figures. Most of the V4 ones were made for Poser and don't usually include specular maps, either, so they take some extra work.
For female Genesis 1 textures, I like Joanie and Elite Valerie for V5.
DAZ's Ninive 6 is a pretty pale texture, but some of the other core character ones are good too though I changed them to UberSurface instead of AoA SSS.
For Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 I stick to the DAZ core character textures most often -- again, changing the settings to UberSurface -- but I've also been happy with textures from Saiyaness, RedzStudio, and Mousso. The PAs don't always include 3DL materials so these will need to be converted to 3DL.
A few test renders. Taffy for G3F wearing Christalynn for V4 (maddelerium at Rendo) via the Cayman Studios Legacy UVs utility; Natasha Elite for V4 on V4; Reby Sky V4 on V4; Tiffany for K4 on G1's Hitomi (pretty sure Genesis Starter Essentials comes with the Kids 4 UV maps); Joanie for Genesis 1; Elite Valerie for V5; Elite Lana for V4 on Genesis 1; Ninive 6; Ninive 6 with makeup, and Ninive 6 with a bluish SSS to make her paler and vampire-ish.
..of the characters above I do use Nineve6 on occasion (both skins and morphs). The last one looks very close to an albino skin.
Ninive 6 was one of the last G2F base figures I bought, mostly so I could use the Lady of the Lake skin texture because it was one of those textures based on a specific figure (so glad they don't do that any longer.) Turns out I really like her a lot, both the skin and the morph.
The pale version might be a bit too blue-tinted for albinism? I never thought to try to approximate that skin tone. I should poke around google images and see what I find.
Favorite textures are going to be subjective, but I do have favorites in the ranges from toon to fantasy to realistic and qiute of few PoC textures too. DAZ has gotten much better at diversity these past few years.
...reducing the blue SSS a bit and adding just a hint of pink to the base colour should do it: The attachment belowis a photo not a rendered image One of which I use for reference.
I render in iray, I got the pwsurface 2, it makes v4 skin look much better, however if there is a pale skin applied the pwsurface overirdes it the color-
is there a way to make v4 skin more pale looking?