SSS, Domina, Genesis 2- HELP
DisparateDreamer
Posts: 2,506
Can someone post a pic close up of Domina's face/shoulders rendered in Daz, without anything else- no lights or anything? Just the genesis 2 F with the domina daz materials default? or V6 or olympia?
And then one with something like lantios fashion lights or something?
I'm having problems with genesis 2 characters in DS4 and I'm thinking its not normal.... need help please...
I'm not sure how exactly the shaders SHOULD be looking, but no matter what lights I use, i get super radioactive results.... I can turn off SSS of course, or tweak heavily, but aren't they supposed to look good and non radio-active without having to disable all the fancy stuff? I don't think its working right on my machine. :(
I'm using DS4.6.1.17 and I reinstalled the subsurface shaders just in case but I'm stumped.
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As an example, here's two pics f Domina, one without lights (just the ds default, and one with 3DU lights, and one with Lantios fashion lights (dimmer ones).
On the G2F base shape, unlit (bottom image) and using Dimension Theory's Advanced Lights preset J (top image)...
Still radioactive huh...how are these even usable like this? :(
I don't have domina so I don't know how her sss is setup. also make sure your lights are ray traced. When I setup my lights in use one aoa area light, one distant light, a light for specular, and a rim light. Depending on how the surfaces are setup I adjust the lights strength based on those. Usually have the power between 50-70 percent.
i don't think the light is so much the problem, i still need the rest of the scene to look normal, if they are dark and she's still glowing red, something is not right and i doubt it's lighting :(
when using SSS you need a light with a shadows and specular , other way you will get always radioactive glowing effect
the shadows will prevent it from glowing all over
It's not a light issue. I AM using lights with raytraced shadows. I tried with my regular work lights, I tried with every single light set I have. She glows regardless!
Can you post a screencap with her surfaces?
Check if there are SSS control maps as I see the effect is stronger around the face mouth nose than the rest.. the SSS may be set to high
some people use gamma correction what tone down the glow other don't so it is hard to tell since I don't have it
but from your default render ..it looks like too much of SSS value
If you have used shadows on any lights that are behind or to the sides of the figure and any uber lights used then check to make sure that the inner mouth surfaces like gums, tongue, and inner mouth have a different group ID than the skin does. Unless the mouth will be open so that they are going to be exposed turn the SSS off (0) and that may solve it the easiest.
Personally, I never use character material settings at 100% SSS... 50-70% usually gives better results. Maybe try the alternate SSS presets that are supplied with the product in its Materials subfolder and see if they're more what you're looking for.
The SSS is (and should be) pretty variable based on the amount of light being used in the scene and so forth. I think the biggest mistakes that get made are setting the diffuse to high and getting the character too light or over-lighting all together since sss takes less light to get a brighter character.
Make sure that Diffuse Strength + SSS Strength + Velvet Strength (if any) <= 100%</p>
This is often caused by an energy conservation issue in the shader where if you have Diffuse + SSS + Velvet and the strengths end up totaling more than 100%, then the surface is technically returning more light to the rendering engine that it received from the lights.
Here are 2 quick renders. First one uses the preset SSS 65 DIF 50.duf, second one uses a custom preset with SSS at 40% and Diffuse at 70%. Personally I prefer the second one.
Anyway, can I suggest you to use Gamma 2.2 and set Gamma Correction to On in Render Settings. I do not render so much with 3DLight, but I was recently making some tests and have found the same problem until change those 2 settings. My renders really have improved since I made these changes.
Thanks very much, I turned gamma correction on, upped gamma to 2.2 (to be honesty, I'm not sure what this does? I've never needed it before and I'm very used to being able to use unpostworked renders, so how will gamma settings affect the rest of my render??)
I also set it to Diffuse 60, SSS 30, and velvet 10, and under my normal (gray, untinted, raytraced) work lights, this is the result:
(EDIT TO ADD PIC, oops!)
I definitely find it a vast improvement. I just don't understand how any of the settings these major characters come with - V6, Olympia, Domina- are usable the way they are. It's baffling that they are sold and prepared to be practically radioactive bright. I don't get it at all. Aren't things supposed to be closer to ready to render for these kind of things? Obviously nothing is point and click, but supposedly these elite characters are supposed to be pretty darn close.
Later I could tell you what the gamma correction does. It is a long topic, and I confess that English not being my native language is an obstacle to write fluently about the matter. As you, I don't remember when these settings were implemented in Studio, but this changed the way as the default render settings is applied. Anyway I can assure you that Victoria 6, Gia, Olympia, Stephanie 6 and all other SSS characters which used show radioactive in my renders, now are rendering pretty well and I am getting better renders.
I think the correct should be Gamma 1.0 once mostly all textures are gamma corrected when they are created and saved as JPEG, but probably these settings are applying an inverse curve to linearize gamma corrected textures. Who knows? I will send a support ticket asking for clarification once the documentation center does not have any word about this.
Wikipedia and Google are always our friends, so some links about Gamma Correction and how this affect our 3D renders:
Gamma correction in Wikipedia
Gamma FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about Gamma by Charles Poynton
GPU Gems 3 in NVidia Developer Zone
Adventures with Gamma-Correct Rendering by Naty Hoffman
Oh, I can see that you got a better render with Domina. Just try these settings with Victoria 6 or Stephanie 6 and I think you will get surprised.
The main thing to keep in mind with increased gamma is that if you're using preset light rigs, they'll probably need their intensities reduced to stop too much detail from burning out... but it's a personal taste thing, so experimentation is always a good idea.
I think it is more an issue of being use to over lighting to compensate for the duller skin tones we are use to with the ubersurface shader. Not that I think that the settings used are 100% ideal. Enough so that I covered it extensively in a tutorial I have coming out later this month. Lighting levels however play a big part in the skin getting too hot no matter what set up you use with the AoA. In the attached image you can see how much duller the standard ubershader set up looks compared to the AoA set up I use.
not sure what light set up you're using in the first half... but thing is, i dont think we should se the light to match just one character, there's too many things and the light should match the scene.... I think the characters should, in all practicality , be set for a more a middle ground.
I think it is more an issue of being use to over lighting to compensate for the duller skin tones we are use to with the ubersurface shader. Not that I think that the settings used are 100% ideal. Enough so that I covered it extensively in a tutorial I have coming out later this month. Lighting levels however play a big part in the skin getting too hot no matter what set up you use with the AoA. In the attached image you can see how much duller the standard ubershader set up looks compared to the AoA set up I use.
Hi Khory - I think your image to the right looks great, and I am looking forward to your upcoming tutorial! That was great news!! We can never have too many tutorials - especially covering lighting and skin tones.
You light for the most important/main item in the scene...and for most that happens to be the character.
I turned on gamma for whatever reason and everything rendered really orange or really dark
If you turn on Gamma Correction, you should change the gamma value to 2.20.
I'll try it, stupidly, it took me days to figure out gamma was the reason for the orange colored renders lol
It was an ubersurface using the park light at about 40% with the front (key) light ending up around 45. It has about the same brightness as most of the lights from my last set http://www.daz3d.com/lighting/caressed-by-light. If you look at those promos you can see that I am not advocating going dark with the lights. People have always had to match lights to characters because different characters have different skin tones and the lighter the skin tone the less light that the character can handle without getting burned spots or out right burn outs on the surfaces.
Edit to add: I hope that the tutorial will be useful Mari-Anne. It is about 35 pages but most of the first 15 pages are going to skew toward new users. The rest is really about the AoA on character surfaces in one way or another.
I was planning to test out this character anyway, so here goes...
All these are with Gamma 1.0, no gamma correction (until I say otherwise)
First, no lights. G2F Base, V6, Domina
Here they are again with the Domina light preset #1. One of the lights has no shadows which might in part explain the intense mouth-area glow with both V6 and Domina.
Edit: looks like this is actually light preset #2
Will you go to the surface tab and check some settings for me? Do the skin surfaces (like face) share a Group ID with the inner mouth and gums perhaps?
A few things I've found while working with Domina (and is also true with any character that uses one of the sub-surface shaders for skin):
Every light must have raytrace shadows on. The glowing red mouth with the default lighting (when you have no light in the scene) is because the default light has no raytraced shadows. Every light in your scene needs to have raytraced shadows turned on.
Shadow bias on the lights also needs to be set, much much lower. I set the shadow bias on the lights to 0.1 and sometimes as low as 0.01. This will control/effect the shadows/shading around the eyes and the ears. The number is in cm. A default value 1 is way too high for the details on a normal human head. But too low a value can make shadows appear on skin/muscles.
Domina has a very high Shading Rate on her surfaces. This results in shadows and banding when rendering medium and wide shots. If the camera is very close, the value of 8 it is set at is ok, but pull the camera back and that number needs to go down. I've set mine at 1.0 and might even consider going lower. Raise it up to like 64 and do a render so you can see the effect so you know what to look for. It's a kind of stripe and banding along the legs and arms. At 8 (which is what Domina loads with) it is still very visible.
Lighting is really, really important with SSS surfaces. Shadow bias and raytracing play a huge role. My default test rig for looking at a character is just two lights, an AoA Amibent Light and an AoA Distant Light or Spotlight. All his lights have the right raytracing for the shadows built in. The distant light and spot light need to have their shadow bias lowered (0.1 is a good starting point). Sometimes depending on clothing details the AoA Ambient Light's Occlusion settings will need adjusting (otherwise you notice shadows around details/cracks). And of course the 100% light is way too high. I usually drop that down to 40% on the Ambient and 70% on the spot or distant. This will get you a decent render with any character using the omnifreaker or AoA subsurface shaders.
Yes, they do for Domina, and for V6.