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Been about 5 years since I rendered and I come back to find a whole new render engine, Iray, that I'm desperately trying to learn the ins and outs of. So far, I'm pleased with it, but I can't seem to get the skin to stop being so shiny. No matter what surface options I adjust, my skin always has a "wet" look to it. Any ideas on what settings I should adjust to curb this? See example below of a test render I threw together just to learn Iray.
Currently, I've made the following adjustments to the skin:
Translucency Color
Glossy Reflectivity: .5
Glossy Roughness: .07
Top Coat Weight: .5
Top Coat Roughness: .07
Top Coat Layering Mode: Fresnel
Top Coat IOR: 1.33
Your main problem is the value for Roughness: 0.07 is very low, and it's actually even lower 'cause it's being additionally internally squared by the shader. The actual value so is only 0.0049, pretty smooth. A common used value for roughness for human skin is 0.30, since that is internally squared you need to calculate the square root first to have the renderer use the value you've chosen. Square root of 0.30 is 0.5477225575051661134569697828008 or 0.547723 when applied to the input field. Looks like Studio is restricted to use up to six digits and automatically rounds.
An Index of Refraction/IOR of 1.333 I wouldn't use for anything except Water. On Base you can even spare to set it when "Refraction Weight" isn't set to anything greater than 0.00. "Glossy Reflectivity" will do its work instead. Since the use of "Refraction Weight" also determines the transparency of a material, I'd recommend to use it only for transparent materials, such as Glass, Transparent Plastic and Liquids. I still use it, but only as a reminder to myself what IOR I did use to calculate the value for reflectivity.
- Glossy Reflectivity: 0.581507
- Glossy Roughness: 0.547723
- Top Coat Weight: between 0.35 - 0.45
- Top Coat Roughness: 0.547723
- Top Coat Layering Mode: Fresnel
- Top Coat IOR: 1.50
If your textures are for the V4, Genesis/Genesis 2 lines of characters and you applied the Iray Uber Base preset, their Specular Texture Maps will be put into the "Glossy Color"/"Top Coat Color" texture slots. Since they aren't thought for PBR use they're much too dark for that place and will turn your skin looking very dry, even when setting a much lower roughness. Transfering them to the "Glossy Layered Weight"/"Top Coat Weight" texture slots, as recommended in DAZ's documentation, won't change that behaviour even a bit so it's irrelevant where they are put into. You have the choice to either remove them or to disable "Use Limits" (see picture below) on the "Glossy Layered Weight"/"Top Coat Weight" parameters and now set those to a value of about 3.25 and more to compensate for that.
On an older V4/M4, Genesis/Genesis 2 texture set I wouldn't use a color for "Translucency Color", and especially not one that's that blue (although veins will appear blue, choosing a blue Translucency Color will the whole set of tissues also appear to be blue. Except for an alien being that will mosly look very odd). Most if not any of those already have the final amount of Translucency-, SSS- and Ambient Occlusion effects already build in. The Iray Uber will put the default Diffuse Texture there, just set the color to 1.00 1.00 1.00 (or lower, if you want your skin to appear a bit darker). Also, when converting from 3Delight to Iray with the use of the Iray Uber Base, there will be some funny colors appear on "Glossy Color"/"Top Coat Color". Just set them back to a correct 1.00 1.00 1.00 (plain white).
First, the topcoat IOR is for water...and the topcoat roughness is pretty low (low =shiny).
Please do...I'll buy those.
Arnold C., thank you very much for such a detailed explanation! I very much appreciate it. Being out of rendering for so long, I've been a bit overwhelmed learning Iray. Your explanation is very helpful and I will fiddle with those setting you mentioned after work. By the way, this is a Gen 3 model, SC Joy for Genesis 3 Female. Again, thank you! I'm excited to see the results later today!
UPDATE: Arnold C, THANKS!!! I am MUCH happier with these results and now have a better understanding of Iray settings for future renders!
These settings are pretty great. Thanks, Arnold.
Did you try rendering Joy without messing with the skin parameters?
Ill release them for free as a thank you for all the help with skin shaders :)
You're welcome.
You're welcome, too.
Looks nice so far. If you're going for a more natural look, you could lower roughness a few tads. Depending on skin type (sebum amout), nosetip and -ridge, forehead and cheeks are mostly very glossy. If you're more going more for a powdered look it's alright then. It's always hard to recommend the right roughness value while we still have to counteract not that optimal and mostly very different specular/gloss weight texture maps.
That would be a very generous move. Thanks.
I bought Leo today so I had to make a fixed skin preset for myself.
Here are the results:
Left: Default (high translucency)
Middle: Default (medium translucency)
Right: My settings.
I wonder why Daz artists make all the characters as sun burned piglets : D
Yeah, I'm not getting why so many of the artists make the skins look so red. Your settings are beautiful though! Nicely done!
Part of the "sunburn" problem is the change between DS4.8 and DS4.9 and the change that Nvidia did to Iray. Which is why some of the "older" figures like Victoria 7 were updated.
source: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/21750/start
Looks nice. What did you do: further decrease "Translucency Weight", or change "Translucency Color" from the the original ridiculous red or the newer dark reddish-brown to a lighter brown?
Because many of them still seem to work by the principles they evolved for the 3Delight renderer, I'd guess.
(Crude guesswork over the thumb.)
Partially. What has changed is the color for the "SSS Reflectenace Tint" from a blueish to a yellowish one. Two things still not defined correctly are
- "Transucency Color" (if you'd peel off the epidermis, you won't find a dermis tissue that red, its more a pinkish tone, depending on the amount of minor blood vessels within that part of the skin layer. Ever had a blister where the upper layer of the skin got rid off? That would be the color tone we're looking for, if the light returning to the skin surface wouldn't be a subject of further absorption from its repeated cruise through the epidermis again.)
- "Transmitted Color". There are a lot of different ones already in use: from the original pink (1.00, 0.34, 0.34) over blue (0.41, 0.72, 1.00) and a newer reddish-white (0.95, 0.12, 0.12), and as I've seen comes Izabella 7 with a white! Transmitted Color. Each of them is just completely nonsense.
Take a real-world measured Absorption Coefficient for human skin (whole skin) for each of a red, green and blue wavelength range, and put them into the equation the Iray renderer uses for the calculation of the Transmitted Color. What you'll get, putting the results into the red, green and blue color input fields, is always a skin tone. The color of one's skin tone is a result of melanin absorption within the epidermis and haemoglobin absorption within the dermis. The result of both combined is the color tone you see when you look into a mirror... if you'd see any ridiculous red, blue or white color tone, I'd strongly suggest you should see a doctor!
A 1.00 value in one of the color input fields is even a thing the NVIDIA engineers strongly recommend not to do: the amount of light transmitted trough a given material doesn't change if the Measured Distance changes. Means, even if a skin layer would have a thickness of 1,000 km, 100% of the light sent in on one side will still come out the other side. A non-absorbent material? Not Physically Based...
Agreed. Not sure why so many are so hot for the Translucency channel when most of my results are also very reddish! Not natural unless you like going in the sun with no sun block! lmao
Right?
Care to share?
Nah... that's not really the issue. The issue is their bizarre material settings and color choices.
Yeah... what he said! Only he said it better than I would have. And he's got the science, not just 'tude :)
I agree, in fact, out of all the various settings suggested by a number of people on this thread and elsewhere, I found them to be the best I have tried, so thanks very much Arnold.
I've been converting the maps of quite a few old skins lately, using the Blacksmith transfer utility, and I really noticed the difference and the impact of the texture maps themselves (this has been discussed here already, as I recall). The old skins tend to look almost like straight photographs—over-coloured and over-saturated, with lots of baked in highlights. They may have looked OK in 3Delight and Firefly, but as they are I think they are next to useless for use with Iray. They look rather bizarre and "hyperreal" and don't blend in with the rest of the scene. I was looking at modern maps, such as the Michael 7 ones which appear to be at least somewhat optimized for Iray use, and the difference is quite dramatic. I decided to modify these old skins to give them similar characteristics (e.g. using high pass filter to "flatten" the stark contrast somewhat, using the established touch up artists's Photoshop techniques to tone down highlights, and to modify saturation and colour) and I was really quite satisfied with how the results were going. My point is that it's all very well using accurate physically-based shader parameters, but unless the base textures themselves are correct then the results are going to be disappointing.
Finally had some time to myself this weekend and decided to have another go at trying to get a setup for V4 that I can be happy with.
I know the nostrils need masking and I need to create a mask to bring back the colours of the skin blemishes (didn't realise just how much the sss effects wash out the base skin colours).
But any other comments or tips on how to improve it would be welcome. The more I stare at the images the more unsure I become about whether things look right or wrong so I need reassurance I'm heading in the right direction or to be told if it's all wrong and needs redoing!
Bah added the thumbnail rather than the actual image!
That looks fantastic, Vadrus! I've been strugging to come up with some good settings for V4 skins - but haven't had a lot of luck. Care to share your settings? I think it looks great!
I tried an experement. And I'm still kind of laughing at the outcome. I tried applying Victoria 7 Iray skin settings to a couple of Victoria 4 skins. ...Yeah. lol They kind of look like they either sayed in the sun for a LONG time or underwent a race change. lol
Bombshell Beauties Joanie V4 skin - Default
Bombshell Beauties Joanie V4 skin - with V7 skin settings
Stephanie 4 - Default Skin
Stephanie 4 - with V7 skin settings
While I do like that it brings out more of the skin texture's detailing and (at least to me) makes the skin a look a bit more real looking, the "peaches and cream" complexions get lost. I'm trying to figure out how to bring out those details without adding quite so much darkness to the skintones. I'm not having much luck with that though. If you guys have any suggestions or advice on the settings and maintaining the lightness of the skin while bringing out the textures details I'd appreciate it.
Decided to see how things held up using an HDRI only, not sure if it's ended up looking to blue or not.
Will post up the settings tonight when I have more time and then people can point out the obvious flaws.
This one is G3F with V4 skin. [Click to enlarge]
If you look in the Gen 3 SSS settings, they rely on a black and white SSS/translucency map plus strong red added into the translucency color. Personally the red is already too strong with the textures its designed with. If your using pre gen3 textures, the only thing you texture you really have to put in translucency color is the diffuse texture again, which is, of course, reddish too. Add the red from the v7 material settings to the red of the diffuse texture in the translucency map location, and things get really red, really quickly.
So solution time. the key is to cancel out some of that red. the simplest way is to set the translucency color from bright red to light cyan (something like RGB 215/243/240) and set the SSS reflectance tint to really light nigh white cyan while your at it. There are other things one could tweak, but that should get the V7 settings to something nicer with older textures.
edit: also make sure there is a texture of some sort in the translucency color slot
Thank you so much, j cade! That was a huge help! :D
Here's Bombshell Beauties Joanie with the original V7 Settings:
And here she is with your suggested changes:
Much better! Thank you!
Beautiful! That looks great! I love her freckles. She could use a bit more of a slightly bumpy texture as it looks a bit too smooth, imo. Are you using a bump map and normal map?
I think she looks great! I love the settings! I was curious about the blue tint around the edges though. It looks very slightly "off", imo. Is that backscattering?
No, there is no backscattering used. I'm not sure what caused the fringe effect.
I tried to improve the maps I used for translucency last night but found out I'm very very bad at digital painting! Yet another thing to try and learn.
The blue is the sky....seriously. Its from the sky in the HDRI reflecting off her skin.