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Not really besides all the reasons Mustakettu85 gave there's only a female version.
And to Mustakettu85 I don't have wowie's products and I use Uber2 and have since it was first released.
Parris did a great job (although I don't understand the purpose of trying to make a super realistic skin texture, but including mostly "fantasy" makeup options). I also don't understand if there are glossiness/roughness maps or not. I'd say, these are crucial for that sort of realism. In most people, skin will have varied reflectivity across their bodies. // It's how you can tell when I was lazy about a render, LOL - like those test James ones, obviously the skin on the hands should have used higher roughness values, but I realistically cannot paint a map for every random figure I test //
I'm not too fond of two facts: a) if I get it right, it's a shader mixer network, not a "proper" RSL shader with human-readable source code; so just imagine all the potential issues, especially given how complex the network must be with all the bells and whistles (autodetecting if GC is on or not, etc) - if a customer ever runs into a bug, fixing it would be hell, if possible at all; b) per-shader GC. It's just so oldschool... just like the SSS approximation (likely to be something like this: http://www.iryoku.com/sssss/ or http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch14.html )
I wonder why there are no promos that show backlit translucency.
And I'm not sure that US2 has ever truly been "a shader of choice" for the community. I mean, just how many people outside of Wowie's customers and those few who have managed to sit through my tutorial are using it?
Ok, just waded through that little lot,
The shader does sound very intriguing and I look forwards to trying out the full version. I suppose you're right about US2, most just stick with the defaults for the AoA and leave it at that. It wasn't till after your tutorial that I saw the true potential of US2. Parris' texture might be worth a look still, can't hurt to see what others are up to. His bump and normal maps look similar to what EZSkin generated, except they left out the eyebrows. It does bug me that they're not treated as separate, other hair is, so why not them!? When I get LAMH, I'll generate brows for all the textures I most use and then paint them out of all the maps, that way they should look good. Well, that's if LAMH can generate fibres of a convincing thickness...
I looked at Sickle's helpers and they look like they could, a lot! Definitely worth the investment....
CHEERS!
I'd be very curious to see LAMH eyebrow presets...
I've thought about doing them myself, but I find fine details tricky in LAMH.
Using Skin Builder and Skin Overlay, I can generate no-eyebrow skins of decent quality.
Yeah, I'll give it a go, but when my finances are a tad less shaky.
I became quite adept with the clone stamp and cut and paste in Photoshop. Only today I made a new eye texture for Miki by stitching in a modded set of Anna's irises as all the textures I had for Miki had baked in reflections.
CHEERS!
The LAMH eyebrows dose sound like a good thought. Along with a half-baked thought about Translucency controlled by a map, and Velvet intensity of sorts.
I know nothing about shader code, tho the theory sounds good the more I think about it. Most body areas are round, with bones deep inside. So the glancing-blow brightest effect of the Velvet viewing angle-thing, may work quite well for a makeshift translucency shader of sorts. Then a simple intensity control map could be added to that, to help refine areas like the torso and head (skull). enough of that, I have not programed in so long, working a spreadsheet formula gives me a migraine, lol.
Displacement, part one-point-one. I changed the displacement from +/-0.25 to +/-0.635 (AKA a 0.25inch grout depth). I made the mistake of setting the pixel samples to 16x16 in Progressive mode, so this render only took 2 hours 59 minutes 14.23 seconds. Face-palm moment, lol. Now to swap that over to Bump, and see what happens. (I'm going to drop that AA pixel samples to 12x12 so it dose not take all night).
(EDIT)
"O" I had to bring the floor up a tad, as the grout areas were below the Test-chamber floor. I'm fixing the stuff still in the floor as well.
Scrap the whole 'velvet' idea...
Velvet is supposed to simulate the effect of the fine hairs and the way they play with light. Unfortunately it falls way short. All it ends up being is a poor 'copy' of the real effect.
The effect you are looking for is Fresnel.
Besides, short of a whole body wax,on the part of the models posing, any 'velvet' is baked into photo based skin texture sets, by the camera taking the pictures. You can with tricks of lighting reduce to nearly eliminate SSS in those photo shoots. But the only way to get rid of the 'velvet' effect is to remove the source...all the fine body hairs. And the only people I know that were nuts enough to endure a total body wax were some competitive swimmers...
Now, that's not to say the effect is totally worthless. I find it's wonderful for cloth, rubber and fuzzy critters, but not so nice to use in a skin material, unless it's totally 'painted' and not done from photo resources. Then, maybe, in very small, subtle doses.
I was only referring to the part of the velvet 'code' (formula, whatever) that makes a surface brighter the closer the viewing angle gets to the parallel of that surface. Dim straight on, brighter edge on. Just that nid-bit of the Velvet code, and no more. Simply to control how transparent a surface is, and have the ability to plug a map into that to further control where the more transparent parts are. After that, adding a color map option, to allow the control of what the translucent material color is.
Then again, it dose almost sound like cylindrical volumetrics of sort, lol. I can already think of a dozen uses for something like that, especially if it didn't take bloody ages to render, lol.
Looking at a simple cylinder from the side, it would appear thinner (more transparent) at the edges, and less transparent looking threw the thicker center of the cylinder. lol.
In any case, as for random thoughts, as I now want to see if I can break a shader, lol. [evil laughter]
Here is the same exact floor, and scene, with the displacement map in the 'Bump' channel. Still using the Daz Default shader. Now I want to see what happens if I plug that gray-scale displacement map, into the 'Normal' slot in a shader that has that... [evil laughter] Wo-aa-ha-ha-ha.
Oh, where is that sound sample, lol. Mortal Kombat, 'It has begone', Chose your shader, endless render time, lol.
You have been chosen, to break shaders, in a tournament called, 3DL Kombat, lol
That's precisely what the Fresnel functions are for. In other words, it's already done, if the shader has implemented Fresnel. Basic DS default surface, no. US and US2...they've got Fresnel. The Fresnel functions describe how light behaves at other than the 'direct' angle. Iray...well, it's a PBR, so more than likely it's implemented in the main renderer code. Remember Iray is NOT using shaders, in the same sense as 3DL...almost all of the kind of things that shaders do is built into the main code. It's using material definition files. Those are a combination of measured data and 'artistic' license to tell the shaders that are built into the renderer itself what a particular material is.
3Delight, on the other hand, has a few shadops built in and a robust shading language that allows the addition of a lot more functions, in addition to just describing a material or defining a light or volume.
Oh and the 'measured optical data' for skin...some of the shaders (AoA's, Tofusan's and others) DO include it. In AoA's shader...look at SSS Material Type. All those options...apple, chicken a, chicken b, etc...all measured optical data.
As to 'cylindrical volumetrics'...not needed. Translucency is a 'volumeless' property, while subsurface scattering MUST be a volume. That is why having the proper SSS scale is so important in 3DL. Using two translucent surfaces to 'fake' a volume is where you start running into all the problems. Using real SSS, which implies a connected volume actually solves or eliminates many of pitfalls of trying to recreate the SSS functions in other ways.
mjc1016, I could have used something like that a few months back, lol. I ended up just doing the maths longhand with a calculator and some graph paper.
OK. So lets suppose that all I have is what came with Studio, and honestly, I'm broke till the third. (Yes the bills are paid, and food is all set, it just implies there's nothing left to purchase advanced shaders.)
I want to create a simple cylinder of semi-transparent volume. The thicker the volume, the less light passes threw it. Is there a guide to do that with the free Omni Surface shader, or AoA shader (I'm Guessing, there is an AoA one in the Content Library somewhere)?
"O" that floor test render finished... Moo Waa, ha, ha, ha. I broke it good, and I broke Space-time good as well, lol.
I tried the floor with bump, then displacement (using the On/Off switches), to make sure I had all the other settings correct to match the look of the other two renders. Then I turned off Bump and Displacement, and drooped the map into the 'Normal' setting. I did a quick prayer to the great Coffee Gods (lol), and told the thing to render it.
:shut:
It didn't crash the instant I clicked the 'Go' button :ohh:
And then to my complete disbelief, pixels began to fill the screen :coolcheese:
I'm not sure if that is supposed to be reflections in negative, or shadows from another dimension.
I think that floor spent the past 1 hours 56 minutes 19.59 seconds, seriously tripping on the DSL cord :lol:
Yes, the base AoA shader is included...
Here's a series of a 1m tall, 1 m diameter cylinder, with the AoA shader, a backlight of a single spot 100%, and a distant light at 25%, angled to point down a bit.
The SSS strength is 100%, Diffuse is 5%. SSS color = a light grey (192). Diffuse color is also a light grey. The SSSMaterial is wholemilk. At 400x400 they rendered very quickly (no AO, no shadows...nothing specia), shading rate = 1, samples 4x4, MRD =4...
Image 1: SSSscale =1
Image 2: SSSscale = 5
Image 3: SSSscale =10
As mjc1016 stated the sursurface calculation already occurs on a closed volume. The calculations are based on Jensen's paper https://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/bssrdf/
The effect already is dependant of the volume thickness (example below) and varies with the parameters you give (see examp below. No map used to control the effect. Shader is ubersurface)
In 3delight's doc there is a chapter about SSS and how to use it
This series uses Tofusan's SSS shader...
http://www.sharecg.com/v/76970/gallery/21/DAZ-Studio/Subsurface-Skin-Shader
Basically everything is the same as the last series.
Except the 4th image. Tofusan's shader doesn't have a limit on scale, so I took the last one to 100.
Thanks...I was going to get around to UberSurface.
And here's one from the standalone 3DL, using the new (really much older) Grosjean model.
But in all cases, the volume is already defined. It's inherent in the model. The only thing that matters is getting the scale correct. That is what drives the 'depth' of the scattering. And as you approach a scale of the 'size' of the object, you approach a translucent, homogenous volume.
Of course, another way to get a 'translucent' volume...use a volume shader. But most of the time, doing so will incur a rather hefty hit to render times. Especially in/from DS, as its volume shaders don't have any of features to make that kind of volume easy or any optimizations for it, either.
You want a leaf, piece of paper, cloth, etc to be translucent...then use translucency. That's more or less it's purpose...and what it's good at.
Just downloaded that, looks good.
CHEERS!
PS (I'm an F1 fan, and I don't trust anything called Grosjean!)
Thanks...I was going to get around to UberSurface.
And here's one from the standalone 3DL, using the new (really much older) Grosjean model.
OK, I decided to hold off on that PDF, till this. Diffuse is at 5%, and at 192gray. It's a simple Uber-panle light behind the cylinder of, well, not so Antifreeze-like stuff, lol. I'm missing something stupid.
What is 'AO'?
(EDIT)
yep, I'm just blindly throwing dials at this point, and getting no where with making a tube of green Antifreeze-like stuff.
(EDIT2)
This is NOT working it all. It sould be brighter on the sides of the cylinder, not the center.
AO =Ambient Occlusion...a great thing to add to a render, but more often than not, a speed killer. It's the self shadowing that all the bumps, pits, folds, wrinkles, etc provide to an object
You put it better than I did, LOL! I could never get it looking good, it always looked like soot whenever I did it.
CHEERS!
The only way I appear to be getting translucent green stuff, is directly with the Opacity dial??? What am I missing from that 'Currently Used' list?
And what is up with them dots of green???
I think your light plane is pointing the wrong direction....
Used a 'Scene Subset' save of Szark's uber light camera thing, lol. It's has saved me from that panel aiming thing many times.
What's the scale, shading rate and if that's the AoA shader, pre or post SSS?
I'm using Tofusan's shader on this, as I didn't reload AoA's...but tweaking the settings some.
"Pre SSS - Post SSS" is still at 0.00 (Whatever that is???)
Yes, AoA, as was the first set of settings mentioned. I will say I'm having allot of difficulty locating things with this shader, first time ever fussing with it.
Cloths and figures usually use the Omni or the Daz Default, lol.
I just ran down the list of preset SSS things from Apple threw Wholmilk, and this one is kicking an error.
The cylinder is 1foot wide, and 4 feet long.??? Should it be more like inch in circumference?
(EDIT)
No "Specular Gain" either.
(EDIT2)
AoA, is broken. Light is just not going threw it without opacity dialed in. Next! Omni?
Pre/Post determines when the SSS calculations occur. I'm using Post.
Also, make sure that the SSS is actually turned on...a slider under Subsurface Color. 1 = On. Shading Scale (10) and Shading Rate (4) are right above SS Color.
I'm finding that the AoA shader, with the panel light slows to a crawl.
All the other settings are the same as yours.
Second image is using a spotlight...and it rendered in about 5 secs as opposed to close to 1 min with the AreaLight.
Hay! you got a hint of green threw that. AoA has got to be broken in 4.8, so much for that. So whats the setting name translations for Omni?
Scratch that, Now what made that work with Omni Surface??? And why is it pink, lol.
(How do I make it more transparent-ish?
Ah, I know the Omni shader asked me if I wanted to replace the AoA maps, what's up with the AoA????
OK, second apply did the trick, lol.
(EDIT)
Decided to try give the AoA one more try. Must be something somewhere, and back to that other Q. How do I make it a bit more like car coolant?
Thanks mjc1016. Studio just needed a restart after that Floor twist-up, lol.
Dose AoA have any kind of "RefRaction strength" of any kind, or is it just that 'Index of' with a combo of other dials???
It's dot product you're looking for.
For Lambertian diffuse approximation, it's Ln.Nn in an illuminance() loop. For "faded edges" (like the Glow example in the Shader Builder), it's In.Nn.
Where: Ln is normalised light direction vector, In is normalised view direction vector, and Nn is normalised surface normal (yeah I know sounds funny).
This will actually give 1 when the vectors are parallel (cuz dot product has a cosine inside it). But you can subtract this result from 1, and it will get inverted ( = dark center, bright edges). You can control the width by raising the result to some power. And with this result, you can drive any effect you want.
It's cheaper than proper Fresnel. Almost every "oldschool" (that is, pre-physically-based) shader would use cosine tricks like that.
Check this webpage out, it's really good if you want to know more about how it's done:
http://renderman.pixar.com/view/light-surface-interactions
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Not really besides all the reasons Mustakettu85 gave there's only a female version.
And to Mustakettu85 I don't have wowie's products and I use Uber2 and have since it was first released.
For years I had hoped for Parris to make male versions of his amazing cyborg gear, but it never happened. *sighs*
And hey, that's great you are a US2 user =) I was also among early adopters, but it took me some time to figure out how to use it well.
But I don't think there are many character sets outside of Wowie's MATs that use US2, even as an option. And most folks would only use preset materials. Sad but true (tm)
LOL! I was just kidding around. F1 means Formula One and there is a driver called Roman Grosjean and he's notorious for causing accidents.
CHEERS!
Soot. Exactly. I was looking for a word to describe the effect of overdone AO, and you nailed it. It mostly happens with "crazy" AO trace distances (which is, over a few inches). Meter-wide AO can be made to look artistically stylised (particularly nice when you run some inking/media filters on your image in post), but when the person who does the render is aiming for "photoreal" or even "photosurreal", it does not work.
Back then, when I was rendering in the REYES-based hider on an older computer, I used tinted AO colours as a cheat to approximate full GI.