Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
i think the correct way is to take the Albdeo .. create a grey map in the range of the luminance of the epidermis..... all the rest (colors) minus lumincane range from epidermis.. goes in translucency...
then cut color range right under the luminance of the epidermis layer.. which will reduce inbaked light/SSS....
and all what is needed next is the correct TMC
Scattering is currently monochrome, but absorption is in full color (although restricted to only RGB).
Into Transmitted Color. Then adjust Translucency Color to make sure that it is at 100%.
Their are tons and tons of resources. Understanding or using them will depend on your degree of math and physics education. Now for "everybody" you have good informations on wiki about scattering and optical SSS, (via BSSRDF or Stand alone) and translucency. Otherwise there are more scientific ressources but most of them are hard to understand. And there will be one day my 40 pages (probably more report - based on pragmatic understanding and use of translucency for Iray, but this won't be out before I finish the rest of my projects and make a full video tutorial).
Anyway what is important to understand is that Scattering in DS cannot be computed "like in real world". Scattering computation will use models which will try to mimic the best reality, and even more, these models will be simplified in term of sampling (color / spatial / type of scattering), to allow tolerable rendering durations. If familiar with the physics behind and the way the models behaves in Iray, you will be able to "feel" - intuitively - better the orders of magnitude of each elements. But due to the global simplification, and to the fact that there is no volume absorption variation inside the volume of figures we use (the real volume of human body is not "homogeneous", you have skin, flesh, bones, organs, cartilages, etc, etc, this is constant for scattering in DS so for, and some cannot be made variable easily) some of the physically plausible set of parameters will have to be adjusted "as a compromise" to the global simplification of both the calculation models used, and the simplification of the volume used.
It might be monochrom scatter if only TMC changed the scatter color. But it is not only TMC, it is TDM for the given TMC which will give you one coeff of absorption per channel, and which will influence the color balance over the propagation distance and make the scatter color balance and total amount being dependent on the propagation path of the beam inside the volume.
Sorry ladies and gentlemen, I realise I spend to much time here and not enough working on my projects. I'll come to see later on, once I have done my job!
OK I agree if you exclude absorption from scattering. I personally include it in because for me it happening all over the scattering path, but I can understand people who prefer include absortion afterwards. It's just another way to see things.
Jag, thanks! You rock! Off to render.
Jag--so the texture for Scott goes on the geoshell and not the figure? Does the geoshell texture with the same UV?
All textures remain on the figure, but the one on the glossy map goes to the glossy layered weight. you can leave the GS as is... for now
.
Mea culpa.
(Although uninteded) The way I see it, if we are using skin textures we are already "cheating". When you photograph skin you are actually capturing the resulting color of all the light fenomena at that particular instant. In a Physically base rendering engine there are no wrong or right values, accurate no always means convincing 'cause after all it's a simulator using physical models and approximations.
To me an accurate texture (if using a photo) means one that has no gamma adjustment. From that PAs do their usual magic. I get better results using textures originally made for 3DL than the ones made for Iray. Iray ones had to be tweaked to double compensate the translucency color and the extra super colored scattered in the sub surface.
Besides there is no evidence that confirms or denies that DAZ or PAs are reading this thread so no way to force anyone to change anything, this is the perfect example of the uncertainty principle, isn't it?
I don't think I am understanding something. So the geoshell is displace under the skin. What color is it. White, or the same color as the figure? And it worked with Scott, but when I tried to use it with M7, the figure came out white. Urg!
And Jack? Are the screenshots settings for the figure or the geoshell? In other words, do I apply those color settings to Mike or the shell under Mike's skin? I was thinking the were for Mike.
Yep, the GS is placed inside the figure by using a negative(-.25) push modifier. Leave GS white for now, but remember to set opacity to 0%(invisible) to all non skin surfaces, and 100%(opaque) to all skin textures. Every figure requires its own GS.
jag11 comes from my name's initials and birth month, but everyone can call me Paco.
Oh, I see the confusion, apply settings from SC0001 to SC0004 to figure. Settings from SC0005 and SC0006 are GeoShel's.
Jag, how do you manage ears? -.25 offset means the surfaces of the ears invert.
When I said sometimes GS don't behave I was refering to that (small GS portions poke through), lowering to -.15 fixes it. Also if the figure is using displacement maps it is a good idea to use it on GS too. I have 50+ figures in my content library and only a few of them required to lower the offset.
Paco I can virtually gurantee that no PA (well, V3Digitimes excluded, obviously.. but she's doing her own thing entirely) is reading and/or will implement anything from this thread. They don't seem to pay attention to developmentss like this in the forums (at least for the most part). So we will continue to see products with "artistic" interpretations of material settings.
Thanks, BTW, in case I didn't say it before. Very interesting developments you have brought along.
As for the rest of you, thanks... but my god, you have my banging my head against the desk with all the physics and acronyms and formulas! I guess I really need to go study up so I can follow more than the bare 1/4 that currently registers.
They don't pay attention to threads like this because there have been, what, 400+ posts that mostly circle one another endlessly? :)
Oh, and lots of physics.
Oooor... they could be off making stuff.
@evilded777 ... No you dont have to go study
What i miss in this wholePBR development are the RIGHT INFOS and TOOLS...
...
Example - why they make it so diffiult . to set a Transmission Color ? .... i mean it is simple Math for that we have softare... one could also set the final target color and Iray does the rest...
let's take a IOR and specular color - why they must use BOTH terms and confuse everybody ? for a starter it takes weeks /months.. to understand what all this means.. For a enduser it is the same!
They say userfriendly - lol
Why they can not simple intergrate linear color to sRGB for sliders ? that is userfriendly...and others do this - they let us fall in every possible trap on every shader slot in iray (DAZ) ...
sRGB? Nice idea. Would you be interested for an interface allowing you to massively tweak the gamma of images maps for figure (base color/translucency color etc, etc), compatible for a Genesis 1/2/3 and Generation 4 figure. It would mean select your figure, the mapped properties list is displayed one slider for each mapped property (surfaces groups would be autoselected it would be "invisible" for you).
I've been preparing a huge tool for a while but if you think this could help, I can add a new interface with it for global gamma management (faster than browse surface by surface, catch the image, change the gamma). But I think there would be no preview in the interface, only on the Iray preview mode.
And I am more than confident that you are wrong. Not being up on math/science talk means that we may not be giving much input but it does not mean we are ignoring the subject. We also tend to be pretty good about clueing each other into information that we discover. In fact, I was discussing the current thinking in this thread just the other night with a PA who is doing his first iray character. Not posting does not mean not reading. Just keep in mind that most of the character people will have to have maps that can be used in 3dl as well as iray for the forseeable future so that duel use needs to be kept in mind when your thinking of casting aspersions.
I love the PA's for their work. I am a novelist, so I know how much effort and head- banging goes into any creative endevor. I just get frustrated. Because there are 50 V7 textures and THREE M7 textures, and I can't get him to look good. I do romance covers for myself and other writers, and I really need M7 to look as realistic as I can. People see an amateurish cover as an indicator that the book is amateur. I've been writing this book for six months, and I need a GOOD cover! And in romance covers, the focus is on the sexy guy, not the sexy girl. The exact reverse of the Daz/Poser world....
@Khory
Well the information lack of which paramteres does what and which input format to use - is the reason why also PA's cant come up with better skins....
What i mean with "software should do that" - is that a better shader GUI which converts different formats as option - and suggest values for the dfferent parameters while the user simple picks a color - would have eliminated 80% of the trial and error disscusions here in this thread...
@V3Digitimes ... yes absolutly - your knowledge which you teach - is fascinating - but actually.. pack this "things" in a great converter plugin for the iray shader. make it so that we dont must known math for correct data input - and everybody has fun.... and it is a buy for most sooner or later!
Sorry, Khory, I should have included you in that exclusion list. My apologies. You are always up on the latest developments -- part of why I own a lot of your products; but I don't see the same level of engagement (based on the results I see in their products) from the majority of vendors.
This is so incredibly interesting! I need to read all this information again with a "fresh brain!" LOL!
Thank you.
Psssst....proper maps are renderer neutral. Yes, it may require a bit different set up than usual to get them to work in 3DL, for example (and all of them may not be used/needed).
I see what you did there. You sell your PAs far too short. But, they do have day jobs. And, this is not their first rodeo so to speak.
@magnumdaz.. yes it is.... and Jag's "revolluzzer" approach - was the big eyeopner to me.. suddenlyl it made "BINGO"... not because his model is correct - his let's do it the oppsosite way approach was the missing link to me to understand actually how translucecy and SSS & TMC work together..
And his "wrong" approach looks better then most if not all "made for Iray" products in the store yet
....I have to agree with William on this.
Most of this is just going right over my head. I'm primarily interested in (and hoping for) tools the rest of us can use to create better skin textures without having to dive into all the numbers, physics, & such.
I have primarily been using Mec4D's suggestions and tutorials for the most part, and that is about as "technical" as I will get so, as William mentions, I can still "make stuff".
In the 1980s I was a traditional media artist who became fascinated by CG's potential. However, after a while working with it, I walked away as everything was all code back and felt very "un-intuitive". Now today, we have programmes that thirty years ago, I could only dream about, which approach the media from more of an artist's, rather than a programmer's perspective.
well.. i was the owner of one of the first renderman licences in my country more then 25 years ago - i think it was more easy then iray in daz today.... and i had just a white prompt on the screen (and a small, slick but correct handbook!)... parameters did the stuff i expected them do to - NOT like today
25 years ago it toke me 70 hours for a preview render - today it takes me 70 hours and 200 preview renders