Realistic Skin

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

Hello. I've been trying to figure out the free version of Daz Studio. Every person, I try to render, comes out looking like a plastic mannequin type. I think I have the Elite Human Surface Shader installed but I don't know how to apply it to the images, or if it even works with Daz Studio. I used the Marie texture and morphs, with otherwise default settings and the software renderer. I'm trying to include links to before and after pictures. Can somebody please tell me what's wrong?

Before

After

Posted:Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:22 am

How are you applying the Marie textures? You should be using the DAZ Studio presets, not the Poser poses.

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

I'm sorry to take so long to reply. I didn't really know how to determine if I were somehow using Poser stuff instead of Daz Studio stuff. The installers had all kinds of letter combinations like dpc or ca, and whatnot. I assumed the dpc ones were "daz poser carerra" and "ca" was just Carerra, and so on. So I installed based on those assumptions. In Daz Studio, I don't know how I'd tell the difference within the software. I decided to uninstall and reinstall it all. That went terribly wrong and I wanted to wait until I got that straightened out, which is why I'm just now replying.

So I doubleclicked Victoria 4.2 from Content/Figures/DAZ People. I added the GlamourHair in the same folder, as I did not want to invest in any non-free hair until I knew what I was doing. Then I scrolled down to Studio3/People/Victoria 4/Textures/MAT Elite and dragged Maya Elite MAT All onto the figure. It resulted in the same plastic look as last time. I haven't reinstalled the Marie texture yet, so I couldn't reproduce that process exactly.

Posted:Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:43 am

OK, that's the right thing to apply. What are your render settings? Also, after applying the materials preset open the Surfaces palette, click on the 02_SkinTorso entry in the list of surfaces and make sure it does say Human Surface Shader and not DAZ Default Shader at the top of the palette, above the settings.

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

In the Surfaces tab, for the hair it says "Shader: DAZ Studio Default" and for Victoria 4.2, it says "Shader: <Multiple>". I don't know how shaders are loaded or unloaded. I don't know if it's automatically applied when the texture is applied, or if there is some setting. I went to Shaders/omnifreaker/HumanSurface, right-clicked on !HumanSurface Base and clicked on "Load". That made the Surfaces palette say "Shader:omHumanSurface" but it turned the character into a metallic white. So, maybe either I don't know how to apply the HumanSurfaces shader, don't know how to disable whatever shader is in the way of this one, or both...?

Posted:Sat Oct 24, 2009 4:55 am

Hold down the ctrl key when loading the shader and tell it to ignore maps, then it won't turn white. Are you sure you had only a single msurface selected when you got Multiple for the shader?

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

I had clicked on "Victoria 4.2" and all of the parts were selected at the same time. When I clicked on the torso, after figuring out how to do that, it just said "Shader: omHumanSurface"

As far as I know, all of the settings are at their defaults. This is all new to me. I don't know what "Specular" means, nor do I know how things like Pixel Filter Rate or Ray Trace depth will affect the image. So I tried to not change anything at all.

Posted:Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:56 am

Sounds as if it's applying the shader correctly. What are your render settings, how many lights do you have in the scene, and could you post a render (just show the ehad and shoulders, to avoid needing the Nudity flag)?

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

I don't know how to check the number of lights. I did not add or change any lights, so I assume I am using the default number of lights. I'm attaching two renders, one with the "Maya" texture and one with the "Marie" texture. I did a screen capture to show the render settings as they appeared to me, but it's more than the 6 files I can upload, so I've linked to it instead.

http://sharaya.straightblack.com/daz3d/

Getting the skin to look realistic seems to be the most frustrating part. Exactly how many settings do they have that turn things into plastic anyway?

Joined: 09 Jul 2005 Posts: 1785

We're not going to be able to determine anything about your render settings if we can't see them. Show us the advanced tab.

Posted:Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:42 pm

If you haven't added any lights then you have only a "headlight" shinging from the camera, so any surface facing the camera is going to show specular highlights. Try creating a new Distant light, which will turn off the "headlight", and select it from the camera/view drop down list (where it says Default camera at top-left of the viewport) then use the navigation tools so you are looking down on the model from slightly above and to the right of the view through the camera. Now switch back to looking through the camera and try rendering.

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

Here are the render settings and a render after creating a "distant light" with default settings. I hadn't tried changing the lighting before. They still look plastic, but the lighting is rather fun...

Posted:Tue Oct 27, 2009 5:45 am

Try lowering the shading rate, to .5 or even .2 - I've noticed that higher rates tend to enlarge specular highlights, though I'm not sure that's the issue here.

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

When I tried .2 for the shading rate, I didn't notice any different. It still looked plastic. Then I tried checking the option to use hardware rendering and the option to use the OpenGL shader. In the image below, the three pictures on the left were using the hardware accelerator and the three on the right were with the software "2Delight". I guess the hardware renderer is making the images look exactly as they do before rendering. It also seems preferable to the software rendering in the middle and bottom rows. I'm not sure about the top one. I'm wondering if there is some "plastic" setting I'm missing somewhere.

Posted:Tue Oct 27, 2009 12:33 pm

No, it's just a question of playing with lighting and surface settings really. There is a "plastic" setting in the default shader, but that's not going to affect the Human Surface Shader.

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

I tried sliding almost every slider and rendering each time to see if it made a difference. While I did learn a thing or two that I can use in the future, none of them seem to have fixed this problem. I tried contacting "omnifreaker" but so far there has been no response. So I'm not sure where to go from here. Unless there is some corruption in the software that can be fixed with a reinstall, there doesn't seem to be a solution. Is it possible to remove the HumanSurface shader and use the DAZ built in shaders even though the textures are preset to HumanSurface? Are there any particular combinations of settings to make something look plastic? Maybe I can do the opposite of those settings and somehow counter what's being done...?

Joined: 22 Apr 2004 Posts: 130

Shaunna--

As Richard states, I would suggest playing with the lighting as getting a good look is a combination of surface shading, lights, and shadows. Try adding a spotlight, moving it to a 3/4 view and render with shadows on.

If you want simple lighting that looks good (but may render slower), you might try UberEnvironment2. There is a tutorial on how to use it on my sight.

Best of luck!
om
omnifreaker.com

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

After updating DAZ Studio from 3.something to 3.something else, updating my graphics accelerator driver, and playing around with all of your suggestions, I don't know which of those things worked, but it's working. I think I was doing something in the wrong order or not at all but I've got it now. I thank all three of you for your help.

Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 19

Hey Shaunna,

Would you mind posting one more pic of after the Studio upgrade please? I am curious to see.

-Jam

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 13

Definitely. This is where I'm at so far, carefully cropped...