How to create the effect of skin being passed by the sun or make it look like this?

toplyz233

Hi, I just saw this effect in Daz3D gallery, just like the pics. It makes skin look more beautiful. I mean, the sunlight shines on the skin and the edges of the skin are like transparent, the blood makes it glow red. Looks great, How can I do to make it look like this in Daz3D, or what product can do it? Because it looks really great, thanks! Perhaps there's a word for this principle, I don't know.

TimberWolf

The effect has two components:

1) Lighting.

Backlighting is the process of creating and positioning a very bright light directly in line with the camera (or thereabouts) but behind and obscured by the character's geometry. This will create a glow around the edges of the character and its hair.

2) Sub-surface Scattering (SSS).

This is what causes the realistic red glow and translucency of the skin material. This is highly dependant on how the skin surface is set up for the character and is a fairly wide-ranging and complex topic. Well-made characters will do this out-of-the-box with no extra effort from you but others will need some adjustments to the material properties.

How familiar are you with Daz surface and material properties so that those who reply know how to pitch their responses? This can get very technical, very quickly!

This is a decent primer on the subject:

https://renderguide.com/daz3d-subsurface-scattering/

 

toplyz233

TimberWolf said:

The effect has two components:

1) Lighting.

Backlighting is the process of creating and positioning a very bright light directly in line with the camera (or thereabouts) but behind and obscured by the character's geometry. This will create a glow around the edges of the character and its hair.

2) Sub-surface Scattering (SSS).

This is what causes the realistic red glow and translucency of the skin material. This is highly dependant on how the skin surface is set up for the character and is a fairly wide-ranging and complex topic. Well-made characters will do this out-of-the-box with no extra effort from you but others will need some adjustments to the material properties.

How familiar are you with Daz surface and material properties so that those who reply know how to pitch their responses? This can get very technical, very quickly!

This is a decent primer on the subject:

https://renderguide.com/daz3d-subsurface-scattering/

Thanks for your help! So quick and effective, I think I did it

TimberWolf

Do be careful with it. Subtle application is usually better than 'LOOK AT MY SUB SURFACE SCATTERING EFFECT!!' when it comes to rendering but there are times when you can really go for it - imagine a character in a nightclub backlit by all the spotlights in a smoky environment; it can be very dramatic. However, in general use, softly, softly. Use the effect to separate your character from the background and do have a read of the link I provided as it will give you an understanding of what is going on behind the scenes to produce the effect.

Here's a character from one of our games which uses a superb skin material (Victoria 9) and a superb hair shader from OOT. Absolutely no tweaking required because the artists who created these materials really knew what they were doing. You won't always be so lucky so it's worth understanding what's going on so you can adjust those models you have which aren't quite as well made. This took 2 minutes to set up because the artists who made the materials are experts.

 

 

DarkElegance

toplyz233 said:

Hi, I just saw this effect in Daz3D gallery, just like the pics. It makes skin look more beautiful. I mean, the sunlight shines on the skin and the edges of the skin are like transparent, the blood makes it glow red. Looks great, How can I do to make it look like this in Daz3D, or what product can do it? Because it looks really great, thanks! Perhaps there's a word for this principle, I don't know.

 

Hi, just a FYI, a product in the market you may wish to look at is

https://www.daz3d.com/altern8--skin-shader-system-for-genesis-8

 

Its brilliant as you can alter the SSS colours, how much of it you want to apply(even a correction for the red nose issue). It is a breeze to work with and no fuss.

toplyz233

TimberWolf said:

Do be careful with it. Subtle application is usually better than 'LOOK AT MY SUB SURFACE SCATTERING EFFECT!!' when it comes to rendering but there are times when you can really go for it - imagine a character in a nightclub backlit by all the spotlights in a smoky environment; it can be very dramatic. However, in general use, softly, softly. Use the effect to separate your character from the background and do have a read of the link I provided as it will give you an understanding of what is going on behind the scenes to produce the effect.

Here's a character from one of our games which uses a superb skin material (Victoria 9) and a superb hair shader from OOT. Absolutely no tweaking required because the artists who created these materials really knew what they were doing. You won't always be so lucky so it's worth understanding what's going on so you can adjust those models you have which aren't quite as well made. This took 2 minutes to set up because the artists who made the materials are experts.

 

Amazing, how do you make it so realistic? My work is like, ugh, something from 10 years ago. I mean the skin, is it about texture, materials, or shader? Or just the advantages from G9. I'm a good learner, one clue and I can dig a lot on my own

TimberWolf

90% of the battle with Studio is the lighting. If you get the lighting wrong it doesn't matter how good your characters and props are - the scene won't look good. If you get the lighting correct, any character can be made to look great. The better characters, in my opinion, are those where the artist has put a lot of effort into the material creation; these characters save you a lot of time and effort tinkering under the hood with SSS settings.

Have a look at this YT channel. The tutorials on lighting are very good, very easy to follow and the creator, Rauko, is a regular contributor here. This is one of his pieces to give you an idea, but do have a look through the rest of his gallery for some great examples of how to light characters. It's also really worthwhile looking at tutorials for real photography; when rendering, Studio is essentially a camera simulator so you really should know the ins and outs of all the camera settings which are (almost!) the same as a real SLR and how professional photographers light scenes. It really will help. The only oddity in Daz Studio is that it has two aperture settings - one controls the amount of light that is used and the other determines depth of field.

G9 is, again in my opinion, shaping up to be much better than G8/G8.1. The main problem with it at the moment is the rather noodly limbs which don't bend particularly realistically and in fact G8 is much better in this regard. However, G8 can be made to look very realistic - G9 is not a panacea.

I don't normally recommend lighting sets because, quite honestly, it's fairly trivial to make your own but I do make an exception for this product:

https://www.daz3d.com/hdri-photoshoot

This would take a fair amount of time to create yourself and it's basically a photostudio lighting setup in a box. It might seem like it has no use in larger or outdoor scenes but once you get to grips with canvasses in Studio, which allow you to render elements separately, you can easily use it to light a character without it impacting the rest of the set. Again, plenty of tutorials on YT for this process. This lighting set turns you into an instant expert - it really is worth getting and can give you an insight into how to create your own lighting setups.

Used below on G8.1 with no extra lights (I don't normally go for skimpy outfits in renders but the aim here is to show as much 'body' as possible without incurring the wrath of the forum moderators!):

 

toplyz233

TimberWolf said:

90% of the battle with Studio is the lighting. If you get the lighting wrong it doesn't matter how good your characters and props are - the scene won't look good. If you get the lighting correct, any character can be made to look great. The better characters, in my opinion, are those where the artist has put a lot of effort into the material creation; these characters save you a lot of time and effort tinkering under the hood with SSS settings.

Have a look at this YT channel. The tutorials on lighting are very good, very easy to follow and the creator, Rauko, is a regular contributor here. This is one of his pieces to give you an idea, but do have a look through the rest of his gallery for some great examples of how to light characters. It's also really worthwhile looking at tutorials for real photography; when rendering, Studio is essentially a camera simulator so you really should know the ins and outs of all the camera settings which are (almost!) the same as a real SLR and how professional photographers light scenes. It really will help. The only oddity in Daz Studio is that it has two aperture settings - one controls the amount of light that is used and the other determines depth of field.

G9 is, again in my opinion, shaping up to be much better than G8/G8.1. The main problem with it at the moment is the rather noodly limbs which don't bend particularly realistically and in fact G8 is much better in this regard. However, G8 can be made to look very realistic - G9 is not a panacea.

I don't normally recommend lighting sets because, quite honestly, it's fairly trivial to make your own but I do make an exception for this product:

https://www.daz3d.com/hdri-photoshoot

This would take a fair amount of time to create yourself and it's basically a photostudio lighting setup in a box. It might seem like it has no use in larger or outdoor scenes but once you get to grips with canvasses in Studio, which allow you to render elements separately, you can easily use it to light a character without it impacting the rest of the set. Again, plenty of tutorials on YT for this process. This lighting set turns you into an instant expert - it really is worth getting and can give you an insight into how to create your own lighting setups.

Used below on G8.1 with no extra lights (I don't normally go for skimpy outfits in renders but the aim here is to show as much 'body' as possible without incurring the wrath of the forum moderators!):

THANKS!! After a few days of trying and researching, yeah, my character finally looks like a human, not a bionic robot. Yes, lighting makes it more real and better. And that YT channel really helps, I watched almost all the videos, it even makes me feel good about myself, LOL.