G9 surfaces dilemma
Wonderland
Posts: 7,021
I really like the improvement in G9's eyes for closeups but the lack of surface areas for the face is driving me crazy! Can anyone tell me if there is a trick where I can lower the bump on the face (which is often too pronounced for beauty portraits) while keeping the bump on lips and adding shine? Otherwise it looks like I have to go into Photoshop and use airbrushing techniques used for humans with bad skin which is a big pain. Why on earth were the surface areas removed??? This makes no sense to me and so annoying!
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That is one of the biggest things keeping me from getting on the G9 bandwagon (lack of lips material zone)
I hear ya... it's been said so that it's more realistic, but you can just copy the shaders from the face to the lips for a seamless transition. It forces you to use LIE and/or Photoshop (or equivalent).
I think I prefer the separate material zone myself as well. Easy to have separate Dual Lobe Specular settings, and it makes for a perfectly applied lipstick/lip gloss look which I like.
Y'all are almost talking me out of hopping on the G9 train... I was looking to finally step up to a new generation.
I read in another thread that we are expected to build our own LIE overlays or purchase premade ones from the store for makeup.
No solution for the lip surface features or other facial features other than really good textures and maps.
We got one such makeup set with the pre-purchase bundle, I think it's currently called the "Intro Bundle" The name keeps changing so I'm not ceratin how long it will keep it's current name.It can also be bought separately.
https://www.daz3d.com/victoria-9-hd-intro-bundle
https://www.daz3d.com/victoria-9-hd-makeup
It's a set of scripts that apply premade LIE overlays.
A few of the ones for the makeup work.
Some don't.
None of the ones to remove each layer (lipstick, blush, eye shadow, etc,etc) work at all.
Your only choice is to reapply the characters skin mats and remove all of them.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/598041/
Very frustrating.
edit: If you have this set and want something to giggle at. Try appling one of the presets to any skin other than V9s
This is V9 with the "G9 feminine skin 01 MAT" and with "V9 Makeup Apply 01 All" preset applied.
Any premades we can buy could very likely end up being for one character only.
Yeah, I have the makeup product but it's very limited in what it can do. I'm hoping for a new Skin Builder product. I think I found a cheat by looking at the new Biddie character that was in the bundle. To be honest, I don't like it at all out of the box but am tweaking it a lot and now I'm fairly happy with it after MANY tweaks and altering the morph. It comes with a lip mask and uses metallic flakes to make the lips shiny. I'm going to use that mask for all characters now to add shine but it can easily look too metallic. I'm wondering if it can be applied elsewhere to make it just shiny and not metallic. I lowered the bump on the detail map a LOT but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Nobody with that much makeup has that much skin detail showing through, that's kind of the point of makeup...
What does the Makeup Enable button do? Can something be added there? We really need new instructions (Not that we ever had old instructions...)
There is a mask for the lips here https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7853186/#Comment_7853186
Thanks that thread is helpful but I actually like the mask that came with Biddie better because it has a B&W texture painted on it rather than just a smooth texture but I have no idea how that will look on other characters.
OK I put the mask in the makeup weight channel but the black part of the mask makes the face darker unless you make it very low and there's no way to add shine although you can add metallicity but there's no controls for how much and I don't see any difference when it's on or off. Are there hidden controls somewhere? And in this case the liner is still visible as part of the face texture so you can't add another color without the liner looking really prominent. I really hope someone figures out a better way to do this.
Here I added the normal map. I'm not sure if I'm adding things in the right places. I'll try to create a larger mask with blurred borders to see if that works...
When you add a mask for the lips, the black part makes the skin darker unless you make the makeup weight extremely light unless I'm doing something wrong.
Wonderland said:
When you add a mask for the lips, the black part makes the skin darker unless you make the makeup weight extremely light unless I'm doing something wrong.
I saw this thread and thought of you! Hopefully, there is something helpful in it: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7854806/#Comment_7854806
This part in particular:
"Simplest way to apply a lip color.
1) Select Character in Scene tab
2) Select Head surface in Surface tab
3) Enable Makeup
4) Add mask in Makeup weight
5) Select color of choise in Makeup Base Color
Done
If you want to make the lips more glossy
6) Set Makeup Roughness Mult to something lower than 1, e.g. 0.5
Or wait till a PA comes out with a product that can do it."
Or recreate the surfaces you need with the build in geometry editor.
Tutorial here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/42088/tutorial-adding-surfaces-in-ds-with-the-geometry-editor-tool
Yes, I tried that too, and it does not work, works fine on V9 skin.
I would have thought as an LIE it works on all G9 skins.
i understand why you think this(because the product functionality is borked) but the vicky 9 make-up does work on all of the skins even the dark ones (to some extent)... even the the remove utilities work!
you just need to refresh the iray preview after loading/applying something.
I have actually realised that the mask seems to be a little too small. When I tested it I used a dark color for the lips and there it isn't obvious, but when I used a light color as wonderland it became clear.
The attached mask is 5 pixels larger than the original.
My initial plan was to use it in LIE on the face surface. And in order to use it there I added it to the base texture, to modify the translucency weight and to modify the Specular Lobe 1 roughness. Fact is, I haven't really understood how dual lobe 1 and 2 interacts.
Here as example on Stella.
The reason why I wanted to use it as LIE on the surfaces, was that you can stack the effects on top, e.g. adding lip color adding eye shadow or whatever you fancy. For certain things changing the blend mode can be beneficial.
Off course you can also stack layers on top in the makeup channel, but it will be almost as complex as adjusting the base color, although you avoid to adjust translucency, and using the makeup channel it won't be visible till you render.
Forgot to add this.
Here I added metalic flakes.
'That's exactly what I did if you look at the images posted above. The black part of the mask makes the skin on the face darker.
I can get the remove scripts to work if I right click on the Surfaces pane and do "Refresh Images" after cycling iray preview (on,off, Refresh Images, on, off.)
I didn't have it on to start with, so it's starting in the off position.
Not many people are going to fiddle with this to this extent to discover how to get the remove scripts to work.
Overlays still don't work on any skin other than V9's no matter how many times I stop and start iray preview or refresh surface images.
But I can get the remopve scripts to function using the above method.
When i say refresh the iray preview i mean the draw style... i got a laptop and a desktop and it works on all skins i have on both systems (on Stella it even works exactly like it does on Vicky9) on default gen 9 it works a little different.
But i agree that i does need fixing so it works just like it should.
Just like Vicky9 this is how the makeup loads onto Stella... but once you click on iray in the draw style tab (that is what i mean by refresh) the makeup loads correctly...
It's not really that much of a problem to have to refresh the iray draw style (literally 1 click) but it's not normal... getting it to work on other skins like the G9 starter essentials skins requires an additional step.
You are one click away from making this work on that particular skin... just click the remove all script.
This is me reproducing what you have done above...
And this is what happens when you click on the 'remove all' script...(it will take a little while)
Please note that once you get to this stage you need to remain in the iray preview mode... refreshing now (or changing the draw style) will activate the 'remove all' script, so best to do this just before the final render.
Thank you for your help.
I can't help but feel as though I'm learning a controller button combo on a video game for a secret finishing move or unlocking a hidden cheat code.
I don't understand why you are seeing a skin darkening.
In the attached image left side is the original and the right side is with makeup.
When using a black-white iamge as a mask or weight, full black means 0 value and full white means value 1.
I've notice that the new Genesis 9 models don't come with separated lips but instead the lips are attached to the head. Is it possible to separate the lips from the head like Genesis 8 models had?
I will give an example of what I'm talking about here:
1)In the first picture I have the Josie model loaded into another program and her lips seems to be attached to the head making it imposible to add lip gloss.
2) In the second picture I used a Genesis 8 model and the lips seem to be dettached from the head making it perfect for adding gloss.
3) In the 3rd picture I used as an example a custom model who has lips attached to the head but the gloss is separated and I was wondering if its possible to have this mesh/effect in daz even if I want to import the model in another 3d program?
PS: I already tried the methods above but the head is still attached to the lips...
I am thinking of taking the base mesh, using geometry editor to make my own texture zones (for example, the lips), and then in the future I can load that and dial in the shape and add the normal textures, but have the necessary extra zones already there.
This will work well for the more 'cartoony' look I sometimes use. However, for more serious and photorealistic textures it would mean considerable effort to make the necessary texture maps.