make skin shaders
assmonkey
Posts: 0
I have picked out 1 base skin to use with all my character (it's pale enough to turn into almost any color)
Instead of using gimp to keep dialing in a color and hoping to get it right...I was hoping someone could show me a tutorial in making shades for skin
I have a couple skin shaders, but not too many and not ranging to much in tones.
I do have a few skint tone platelets I downloaded...so I"m hoping I may be able to use those
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At the simplest, just change the diffuse colour in the Surfaces pane - though there's a limit to how far you can push that sort of thing, however you do it.
What are my other choices?
I want a wide verity of skin tones
There are skin materials that use the Ambient property to change appearance. I think this is wrong. Skin does not glow in the dark. I have come across a couple of skins with ambient strength in the 20-30% range and a color of pink. This strong an ambient makes it hard to get shadows on the face. I'm not sure why artists do this. A little ambient is probably ok, if the strength is only a few percent or the color is almost black, but I think you would be better off to not use it.
The other place to change the tone of the skin is in the subsurface scattering. This is only available in the HumanSurface or UberSurface shaders that come with DAZ Studio. The UberSuface2 shader has a more complicated model of subsurface scattering, but it does not come with DAZ Studio.
I experimented a little with changing skin tones using UberSurface2. You can change the tone within limits that way, but I doubt you could change a very light colored skin into a dark colored skin and have it look good in a up close render.
Are you planning to do closeup renders of the face? Or renders of groups of people?
Why do you want to use only one skin? There are some free skins available.
Why does it matter why I only want 1 skin? I want to change the tone to a pale skin tone, it's that simple
Because the results, as skin, are likely to be inferior to using a map made to have a different tone - so the question is, do you have to do it this way?
I want 1 skin, I'm not changing my mind on that. Because i"M not dealing with all the damn skin textures out there.
1 perfect, pale skin is what I wanted, and I found it. My character don't get fancy skin, they have basic skin with tones, that's it, and some tones say "tan" they sure as hell aren't. I'll turn my skin into my tan tone, if I want
This really depends on what result you are trying to achieve. It you want to create toon skins with different tones that look good, well that is pretty straight forward to do. If you are trying to create photo-realistic human skin, that is more of a challenge. I assumed you wanted photo-realistic skins.
Are you planning to render facial closeups of these characters? Or only scenes with a group of people?
Getting a skin to look good in a facial closeup is a bigger challenge and you can probably only do smaller changes in skin tone that will still look good.
It shouldn't matter what I'm trying to do, I"m not even rendering at the moment. I'm trying to finish my main models
People are just trying to help, not trying to be nosey. The fact is, different answers depend on what your end goal is, so stop being so rude to everyone and either listen or figure it out for yourself.
Like i said, it should matter if i"m going head screen shots, group photo, body model. I'm going to do it all, It's not going to be one or the other
I just need ways to change the skin.
Actually, I think everyone is missing Vata'a point. He / she already has a pale skin texture, so is not looking for a way to make paler tones. variations to the skin tone can be applied by adding a slight tint to the diffuse colour, or the ambient colour (or even the specular for that matter) without having to change the values. subtle changes in skin tone can be achieved this way without loss of quality. Once you have changed the surfaces to a satisdactory shade, save it as a preset and it can be easily reloaded at any time.
I myself have been rather disappointed at the lack of really pale skin textures available, and have ended up having to make my own. I can't understand why so many skins come ready tanned. and why dont skins come with "bikini mark" options?
I found a texture called...Samara, it's pale. only thing that look weird is the lips, but the weird color goes away when you change the color a little
As Richard and I have suggested, you can start by trying to do this with changing the diffusion color. You will need to set up at least some primitive lighting and do some renders to judge whether the results are satisfactory. How the skin looks in the preview window is not a good guide to how it will look when rendered. You will need to render it.
Select a character with the skin applied. Go to the surface tab and expand all the surface areas. Use cntrl-click to select all the sections that start with "skin". You will need to make the same changes in all of them so the seams where the different skin sections join do not show with different skin tones. For properties like the diffusion color, you can do this by just cntrl-click selecting all the skin sections and changing the diffusion color in all of them at once.
Your skin will probably have white in the diffusion color. Start by adding small amount of pink, yellow, orange, blue colors so it is just a little off white color. Render your figure and see how it looks. See if you can achieve what you want this way.
If you want to try using SubSurface scattering, along with a diffusion color, to change the skin tone, you will have to use the HumanSurface or the UberSurface shader. These shaders are more complicated, although it is always possible your skin is already using one of these. You can tell what shader it is using by selecting one of the skin regions on the expanded surface panel. At the top it will give you the name of the shader it is using. If it says, DAZ Default or something like that, that is the basic shader. If it says omHumanSurface or omUberSurface, that is a more complicated shader that includes subsurface scattering.
I would not recommend using ambient or specular adjustments to change skin tone, but some vendors use the ambient.
Since I figured out how to save the diffuse coloring, I can work with that...and I have no idea how to even use the uber shader thing.
thanks for the help
Vata Raven, first off, if you want help and someone asks you a question, assume it's relevant and answer it. Every question asked of you was perfectly relevant.
Secondly you can get a variety of skin tone variations via the various UberSurface channels, IF you decide to play with them.
You can change the subsurface strength in relation to the diffuse strength. You can also use the velvet and ambiant channels to get various effects. It's all a matter of how much effort you are willing to put into learning.
Here is an example of what you can do with changing skin tone in shaders. This is Rio by danae (http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/the-metropolitan-collection---rio-for-v4-2/78614/). The two renders are in identical lighting.
The render on the left is with the vendor mats. These mats are pz2 files and are probably optimized for Poser. They do not render too badly in DS, but the result is different from the Poser promo images. The right HSS image uses some DSA Mats for this character created by SickleYield (http://www.sharecg.com/v/57666/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/DSA-Mats-for-Danaes-Rio-for-V4.2). The DSA Mats use the HumanSurface shader and include Subsurface and Translucency color. My understanding is Translucency is really not for skin, but I have seen vendors using it.
This gives an idea what you can do just with shaders. You can probably go father than this in terms of changing the skin tone and get reasonable results.
As Richard and I have suggested, you can start by trying to do this with changing the diffusion color. You will need to set up at least some primitive lighting and do some renders to judge whether the results are satisfactory. How the skin looks in the preview window is not a good guide to how it will look when rendered. You will need to render it.
Select a character with the skin applied. Go to the surface tab and expand all the surface areas. Use cntrl-click to select all the sections that start with "skin". You will need to make the same changes in all of them so the seams where the different skin sections join do not show with different skin tones. For properties like the diffusion color, you can do this by just cntrl-click selecting all the skin sections and changing the diffusion color in all of them at once.
Your skin will probably have white in the diffusion color. Start by adding small amount of pink, yellow, orange, blue colors so it is just a little off white color. Render your figure and see how it looks. See if you can achieve what you want this way.
If you want to try using SubSurface scattering, along with a diffusion color, to change the skin tone, you will have to use the HumanSurface or the UberSurface shader. These shaders are more complicated, although it is always possible your skin is already using one of these. You can tell what shader it is using by selecting one of the skin regions on the expanded surface panel. At the top it will give you the name of the shader it is using. If it says, DAZ Default or something like that, that is the basic shader. If it says omHumanSurface or omUberSurface, that is a more complicated shader that includes subsurface scattering.
I would not recommend using ambient or specular adjustments to change skin tone, but some vendors use the ambient.
You pretty much nailed it. Sometimes I really like the skin I'm using for a character, but I absolutely dislike the skin tone. So that's when I'll 255 the Diffuse if it's not already and reduce either the G and or B value to 224 or 192 if I feel like I need to. A little does definitely go a long way. :)