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Putting lines/wrinkles on a face

andya_b341b7c5f5andya_b341b7c5f5 Posts: 694
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

I'm trying to add wrinkles/lines on a face, to make it look less flawless and therefore doll-like than the 'out of the box' look that most characters have.  (This is in Iray.)  Even with the freckles and such that some skins have, the lack of lines at the corners of the eyes and mouth and on the forehead (for example) is unrealistic.

I started by adding some fine black lines to the bump maps, but they are almost invisible when rendered, unless you ..erm...bump the bump value so high the rest of the skin starts to look like coarse sandpaper.  That might be OK for a gnarled old gent, but not a woman in her prime.

My only other idea is to export the figure to a modelling program, subdivide, sculpt the lines, 'bake' a normal map and apply that to the figure in DS.  While this would be good learning experience, no doubt, I was hoping for a quicker and less daunting approach.

Any suggestions please for alternative methods or even products that currently exist to achieve this?  Thanks.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,990

    One option would be to take the bump map into an image editor and use Levels or the like to pull the dynamic range in, so that isntead fo white to black it was dark side or mid grey to light side of mid grey. Then put your lines on top of that, in black/white or near to, and bump the bump up - having pulled the tonal values in the fien detail should not be exaggerated when the lines look right.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    Two suggestions that I adore:

    https://www.daz3d.com/aging-morphs-2-bundle-hd

    https://www.daz3d.com/skin-overlay-bundle

     

    The first adds high quality morphs to make characters look older. The second adds layers to skin surfaces, adding displacement and other fine details to make skin look 'older.' The combination can be used to great effect:

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Old-Yanmei-face-detail-569758931

    I really tried to push the limits of what I could do. For reference, that skin is : https://www.daz3d.com/yanmei-for-v6

    So, from a smooth and flawless woman's skin to old and wrinkled guy.

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/The-Wizard-572407090

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/VanCleef-556258697

     

    Now, most of the time I just use a hint of aging to make for mature or otherwise more 'adult' characters. But those are some of the more extreme examples.

     

     

     

  • andya_b341b7c5f5andya_b341b7c5f5 Posts: 694

    Richard, thanks for that idea, had not thought of narrowing the range to make the lines more prominent.  Will try that.

    Will, you are getting very good results with those products.  Your Van Cleef reminds me I haven't indulged my Western habit recently!  I am too late to the party to have any V5/M5 figures, and even though the Aging Morphs says compatible with G2 the detailed text mentions only earlier iterations - have you used it on G2 figures successfully?  If/when either product is updated for G3 it will go on my wishlist awaiting funding.

  • DrowElfMorwenDrowElfMorwen Posts: 538

    Will those products look as good in Iray renders?

  • Roman_K2Roman_K2 Posts: 1,239

    I've been working in other areas of the DAZ universe like mesh lighting in "The Library" but seeing as my computer is doing better in the 2nd half of 2015 here (DS 4.8 and newer DIM compared to earlier).  I was looking around my assets and found that Victoria 4.2 seemed to be loading quite well, in fact a lot better than I was getting before. I found all sorts of elaborate facial morphs and, applying a texture from an "older" DAZ female character, I liked the effect when I made the cheeks less smooth. I didn't do anything with the eye wrinkles, this is how they came out, "out of the box" so to speak.

    A few bugs but overall, for me it very nice. No idea for instance where the shadow or stain behind the ear comes from. But I spent a grand total of less than 3 minutes doing this, just on a whim so gotta say there is hope/light at the end of the tunnel.

    I'm very interested in putting in physical lines into the stock mesh with Hexagon say, and then combining that with modified texture file(s) and BUMP postwork. Not yet ready to try Iray translucency or SSD, in fact I'm going back to one of the old Walter Foster art books, "Drawing The Face" etc. in pencil, ha!

    messing-around-with-v42.jpg
    558 x 542 - 71K
    messing-around-'older'-texture-on-'regular'-young-v42-mesh.jpg
    776 x 967 - 233K
  • Roman_K2Roman_K2 Posts: 1,239
    timmins.william said:
    So, from a smooth and flawless woman's skin to old and wrinkled guy.

    Ha, trusting of course that you meant no disrespect!

    I thought that old Yanmei was very cool even though for me "VanCleef" would not load for whatever reason.

    Especially interesting to see that the skin appears quite shiny in your larger, closer-to-source version but when reduced to the basic 1024 x 768 browser view (say) the shine is replaced by a dry look. I've seen JPEG artifacts (of course) and interpolation phenomena but never anything quite like that! It's as though all the lighter pixels were dropped out, in favor of the flatter flesh colors.

  • vwranglervwrangler Posts: 4,889
    edited December 2015
    andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

    I am too late to the party to have any V5/M5 figures, and even though the Aging Morphs says compatible with G2 the detailed text mentions only earlier iterations - have you used it on G2 figures successfully?  If/when either product is updated for G3 it will go on my wishlist awaiting funding.

    Aging Morphs 2 is designed for Genesis 2, and doesn't work with earlier figures.

    Skin Overlay will work with Genesis 2, but only with V5/M5 UV sets, which come with Genesis 2 by default. (It throws off an error message, but you can ignore that.)

    Post edited by vwrangler on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    Yes, all those figures I linked to are Genesis 2, Iray.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    Oh, tip: be sure to have good lighting on figures so that the wrinkles show up. I was very annoyed with my wizard because none of the surface details were showing up, until I realized that all the lighting in my scene was diffuse distant glows. Once I put a softbox on him (spotlight with Disk geometry ~100-200 diameter), all the details popped. Whew.

     

  • Roman_K2Roman_K2 Posts: 1,239

    Interesting because as I mentioned, it's apparently quite possible for these things to flatten out.

    Should the next question (or new thread) be "What is a softbox", I wonder...?

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    Photography term, generally a translucent box you put a light in, so that you get a soft light rather than hard shadows.

    Easily done in Iray by giving a spotlight or point light 'Geometry' and setting it at 100-200 diameter. Bam.

    The bigger the lightsource, the softer the light. If you want really tight/hard shadows, very small or point source.

     

  • andya_b341b7c5f5andya_b341b7c5f5 Posts: 694
    timmins.william said:

    Oh, tip: be sure to have good lighting on figures so that the wrinkles show up. I was very annoyed with my wizard because none of the surface details were showing up, until I realized that all the lighting in my scene was diffuse distant glows. Once I put a softbox on him (spotlight with Disk geometry ~100-200 diameter), all the details popped. Whew.

     

    Good point.  I often think, and remind myself, that much of the wrestling with Iray's surface settings trying to get certain results would be more easily achieved by more attention to lighting.  Particularly for skin and similar surfaces.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    Yeah, it took me hours and contemplating going back to 3DL before I finally twigged to that. Duh

     

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