Dead Skin

artoir

I have seen so many renders where the skin on the model looks so good and so real! How does one achieve this? I get such dead and dry looking skin on my characters! The pic below is an arm from an M4. Is it shaders or what? What am I missing? Thanks for any replies!

Khory

Which program? If studio Iray or 3delight? My guess is there is not enough specularity on the skin but the fix will depend on what you are using to render.

DAZ_Spooky

Khory said:

Which program? If studio Iray or 3delight? My guess is there is not enough specularity on the skin but the fix will depend on what you are using to render.

Lighting will also play a role but the render engine is still what we need to know first. :)

artoir

DAZ_Spooky said:

Khory said:

Which program? If studio Iray or 3delight? My guess is there is not enough specularity on the skin but the fix will depend on what you are using to render.

Lighting will also play a role but the render engine is still what we need to know first. :)

Oh sorry, the pic was rendered in 3Delight. It looks about the same in iray since the only skin shaders for Iray is for genesis2 so far.

Khory

For Iray I strongly suggest this thread http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54239/ as it has loads of good information. As far as 3delight goes I'm wondering if the character is using the AoA sss shader (go to surface tab and look at the top. It should name the shader used on the skin) or what. You get much better results with that one as far as skin goes. Lighting is also I suspect an issue but I'd like to know the shader before making any suggestions.

DAZ_Spooky

artoir said:

DAZ_Spooky said:

Khory said:

Which program? If studio Iray or 3delight? My guess is there is not enough specularity on the skin but the fix will depend on what you are using to render.

Lighting will also play a role but the render engine is still what we need to know first. :)

Oh sorry, the pic was rendered in 3Delight. It looks about the same in iray since the only skin shaders for Iray is for genesis2 so far.In 3Delight that, usually, is the result of lighting that does not have a specular component. (Uber Environment 2, or other means of adding HDR lights is one example).

Try adding a specular only distant light to your 3delight render and see if that gives you what you are looking for. Remember basic physics though, angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. (So if the light can not bounce off the skin toward the camera, you still won't see it.)

Further there are two components to specular on the Surfaces tab. There is both the Amount of specular and the size of the specular component.

In the Base shader they are called Specular color and specular strength, but it depends on which shader you are using as t what they are called. (A couple of them add a third component but in any event it is a balancing act between those components.

Richard Haseltine

DAZ_Spooky said:

artoir said:

DAZ_Spooky said:

Khory said:

Which program? If studio Iray or 3delight? My guess is there is not enough specularity on the skin but the fix will depend on what you are using to render.

Lighting will also play a role but the render engine is still what we need to know first. :)

Oh sorry, the pic was rendered in 3Delight. It looks about the same in iray since the only skin shaders for Iray is for genesis2 so far.In 3Delight that, usually, is the result of lighting that does not have a specular component. (Uber Environment 2, or other means of adding HDR lights is one example).

Try adding a specular only distant light to your 3delight render and see if that gives you what you are looking for. Remember basic physics though, angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. (So if the light can not bounce off the skin toward the camera, you still won't see it.)

Further there are two components to specular on the Surfaces tab. There is both the Amount of specular and the size of the specular component.

In the Base shader they are called Specular color and specular strength, but it depends on which shader you are using as t what they are called. (A couple of them add a third component but in any event it is a balancing act between those components.

Glossiness is the size, Specular Strength is the intensity. Specular Colour is the colour of the highlight (or the colour that is blended, depending on the other surface attributes).