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Another try with Macro Skin on http://www.daz3d.com/zyra
Light setup from http://www.daz3d.com/beautiful-bends-for-genesis-2-female-s
Here's my G2F test render: G2F with V4-Elite Lana verus Marco Skin.
DAZ Studio 4.7
V4 Elite-Lana Poser Skin (there is no DS version) converted to GF2 by applying Lana MATs to G1 and using a filtered save to create a MATERIALS file.
Render times at Width=2000 dpi using a Circa 2009 MacPro Quad Core were:
Lana = 10 Minutes
Macro Skin = 50 Minutes
Skin MAT settings were:
Lana Default except:
Gloss, Spec and Amb set to 70%
Bump Strength set 10% with + and - Bump set to .01 and -.01
Macro Skin 01A Default except:
SSS set to 20% (Reduced from 75% Default)
Bump Strength set 10% with + and - Bump set to .04 and -.04
DAZ Studio 4.7 Render Settings were identical:
Max RayTrace 4
Pix Samples 16
Gain 1
Gamma Correction Off
Shading Rate .2
Pix Filter "Sinc"
Pix Filter Width 6
Light settings were identical except for the AoA Advanced Ambient Light:
Intensity was reduced from 80% for the Macro Skin to 50% for Lana
AO Strength was reduced from 100 % for Macro Sin to 50% for Lana
2000 dpi render attached.
Lana has been my go-to skin MAT since I started working with G2F. After this test, she still is.
Hope this is helpful...
Hahaha, the different eye sizes made me laugh :) But aside from that, I'm kind of surprised at how much longer Macro Skin took to render...!
Yep, there is something quirky going on with the time comparison. I can't say for certain what is happening specifically with out more info. But one thing that comes to mind immediately is that Lana, if memory serves, does not use SSS, which is calculation intensive. Still my machine is several years old, not top of the line by a long shot, and similar size renders finished in less than 6 minutes, so 50 minutes is pretty alarming.
I would speculate that if you added early v4 to the comparison, you would find she renders even faster than Lana. But there are no "smoke and mirrors" in my claims about speed. I've done extensive tests comparing to AoA's and Omnifreeker's SSS based skin shaders and those are where MacroSkin is consistently faster. The reason is exceedingly simple: MacroSkin's default shaders account for SSS in a way that doesn't require the same complex calculations from the render engine. The calculated SSS versions of my shaders (marked with SSS in thumbnails) that I include just because I know some very particular folks will want them, are definitely slower because they use calculated SSS and a more time intensive advanced specular model (BSDF Blinn).
Lana is an amazing product. You should continue to use it, if you are happy with it. But if getting closer to realism (especially for close ups) is important to you, I wouldn't throw out MacroSkin just yet. I've tried to make this product as easy to use as possible through presets and I've put a lot of important information in the ReadMe. And I'm going to do more soon to help folks understand. But there are a number of advanced techniques in this product that may be confusing to some, if they try to set up their scenes exactly the way they have always done.
Specifically, you should reduce the strength of fill lights, because MacroSkin does Gamma Correction in shader. I hope this helps, as well.
Also, if you want an unbiased view (which would be any not coming from me, since I made it) that shares a test result more in line with what I'm saying, take a look at Novica's post here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/52145/P420/#803897
You sold me on the idea of using the Macro Skin high resolution Normal maps in Iray, and I'm very, very happy with them. This is all Macro Skin textures plugged into my own Iray skin shader (which I'm still trying to hammer out...).
Note to anyone else who might want to use these in Iray - you've got to disable the texture compression in Iray or else the compression will screw the high res maps up and cause the skin to look like it's covered in ugly soft mottled bumps. You can disabled it in the Advanced Render Settings tab by raising the medium and high compression thresholds to 10000 and restarting DAZ. After it reboots, it loads the Normal maps up without compressing them, and they are glorious!
Ooo, thanks for the compression tips. I wonder what stuff I've been missing because of that...
(Although I'm pretty sure most of the textures I regularly use don't exceed 4096)
Sure thing! The compression settings were actually set much lower than 4096 by default on my machine if I remember correctly, but the compression only causes errors with Normal Maps, so you wouldn't normally notice it. I had to raise the setting up to 4096 before when some 4096 Normal maps were making something look all funky, and it happened again here with the 8000px maps, so I just raised the thresholds to 10,000 to take care of any eventuality.
As far as I could find, no documentation has been published on the texture compression and what the medium and high threshold settings actually do. All I know is if the compression kicks in, it tends to mess up Normal maps. Someone from DAZ commented on this in another thread and mentioned that this should be fixed in the next release.
The default compression settings are Medium - 512, High - 1024.
And thanks pearbear for trying these textures out in Iray, I was wondering how they would look myself. ;) You may want to try mapping the surface details in the Roughness channels too, though I'm not sure how to do that if you only have normal maps to work with (for bump/displacement maps you would just invert them and scale the levels to what you want your roughness range to be).
I'm personally of the opinion that high-res maps are the way to go for everything, especially bump/normal/displacement maps :)
Parris:
You are absolutely correct, Lana has no SSS -- so perhaps it wasn't a fair comparison to begin with.
The render was at 2000 dpi -- and 10+ minutes for the Lana MAT (with hair and other props) at 2000 dpi is pretty typical on my old 4-core mac.
Come to think of it, that Rim Light Rig has 8 spot lights, each with Raytraced Shadows, so that may also be adding a lot to the SSS overhead.
What I do love about Macro Skin is that it provided a whole new level of control over skin renders. Just for fun, I attempted to substitute the Vanilla Sky MATs for the V5 Marco Skin Defaults. There were a couple of glitches that I've got to sort out, but overall the result was amazing.
Thanks for a great new product.
I seem to be having issues with these ...
Applied (in order)
02A Macro Skin SSS Tan All
03 Back Scatter Ear
Polish Plum Toes
Polish Plum Fingers
Makeup BronzePlum Tan
Lipstick Plum Tan
Eyes Brown
Gamma Correction is on and set to 2.2
Here are two examples, same scene, just one has an AoA AAL and an AoA ADL, the other (which highlights the issue more) is with no lights.
I can confirm this - shows up in Smart Content for Genesis, but none of the selections seem to apply.
Looks like the Torso map isn't being changed...right?
I am definitely considering this:
So this can be applied to other textures/characters?
It is like a shader?
Do you have to hold down the ctrl key to ignore and apply?
That kind of shader?
can someone please try to make a render with a natural looking skin to
convince me buying this product
I do not like it so far
for magazine pics ok
Not really. I mean you can but the makeups, for example, need the supplied skin and the other maps may or may not line up properly. It's really a shader that makes use of its own maps.
What I'm trying to get my head around is the lighting. Looks great with the headlamp but I haven't found a sweet spot yet when I add lighting. I do prefer a little more contrast than I'm getting--but that's just me. Besides I haven't been able to spend more than a couple hours playing so far so whatever I say may not be fair.
This is my Macro skin render in 3delight with Lantios Core Lighting 1-09. It took about 5 minutes but its not a large render size. My first impression is that this product is like a very high quality Tony Puryear type character skin so more milky smooth instead of photorealistic imperfections and contrasts but with added level of macro details, a large set of supporting maps, and some additional shader brick technology about gamma correction that is way over my paygrade. I think I will learn alot about rendering and lighting from experimenting with this texture product.
I had a similar issue.
And it still doesn't seem to work with Genesis.
Let's hope Parris issues a fix.
Tim.
I think you can sell her to Madame Tussaud
I have encountered with macro skin the eyelashes appear like untextured blobs, anyone know whats going on there? everything else looks great, just the eyelashes!
I haven't used it personally, but a couple people on another board got it and love it. It's a shame it is only for G2M, though. One of them showed renders of a G2M with some M6 texture next to a G2F using the macro skin in a darkly lit room. The G2F was orders of magnitude more lighted. The G2M was very darkly showed, but G2F was bright as day! It was pretty bizzare.
Looks like the Torso map isn't being changed...right?
A bit of experimentation has narrowed it down - loaded plain G2F and then applied each texture option in turn (laving the Back Scatter Ear to last) with a render in-between. Not until I applied the 03 Back Scatter Ear did it happen. Applying the Off option does not undo the effect, although Ctrl-Z (Undo) does. In fact applying the Back Scatter Ear Off does a similar thing!
Here is quick test I slapped together... I think the maps will do wonders in Iray with some minimal tweaking.
it would be very nice to have scroll option for the attachments
A bit of experimentation has narrowed it down - loaded plain G2F and then applied each texture option in turn (laving the Back Scatter Ear to last) with a render in-between. Not until I applied the 03 Back Scatter Ear did it happen. Applying the Off option does not undo the effect, although Ctrl-Z (Undo) does. In fact applying the Back Scatter Ear Off does a similar thing!
I think I recognize what is going on with your issue, though I think you have it sorted. The ReadMe has some good information. Basically, I've offered two versions of the shaders: The default accounts for SSS with a non-calculated method (so the backscatter ear preset works with that). The presets with SSS in the thumbnail use the same method that other SSS shaders do, so they calculate backscatter strength based on ray-tracing. Ear presets can't work with the SSS versions, so don't use them for those. Sorry for the confusion!
Also, be aware that the SSS versions will render slower than AoA Subsurface because they specifically use an advanced specular model (BSDF Blinn) + calculated SSS. The default shaders render faster because the calculated SSS is not there, but they do still have the same advanced specular model. The reason I use that model is so that less of the diffuse get's buried by the specular. If your diffuse maps have good photo realistic detail, then you want them to show!
I had a similar issue.
And it still doesn't seem to work with Genesis.
Let's hope Parris issues a fix.
Tim.
I will look into this and definitely fix if it is broken. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I purchased this and like the skin. I do not like that pubic hair is included, should be an option. I am considering returning it because of this.
Thank you for your feedback. You should return the product if you are unsatisfied. I am curious though, if you can be appropriate for this forum but more specific. For instance, if you want none as an option that may be doable. If you want a different style entirely then I probably will not do that as an update.
Thank you for your feedback. You should return the product if you are unsatisfied. I am curious though, if you can be appropriate for this forum but more specific. For instance, if you want none as an option that may be doable. If you want a different style entirely then I probably will not do that as an update.
No hair should be an option, if I want my lady to go full brazilian. There are other products available to overlay different styles and amounts of hair.