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Looking good - face huggers from Alien ?
Nice !
Sorry for the delay in answering this question. For the water droplets on the boots, I selected the 'actor' level of the boots figure. I entered the vertex modeler (ignoring the warning). I selected the area of the boots where I wanted water droplets and created a new shader domain. Back in the scene area, I created some water droplets. In this case I was lazy and just used tiny primitive spheres with a water shader applied. I inserted a surface replicator. I chose the 'actor' of the boots to replicate upon. I chose the water droplets as the objects to replicate. In the surface replicator options, I limited the range to the shader domain that I selected in the first step. I also increased the highlight and shininess of the area of the boot upon which I replicated the droplets but only the back of the right boot displayed much shine.
Agreed. The toon bird and critter scene was shaping up excellently.
Wish you had had time to enter the remake. I love the story told in this image!
Thanks for the comment, Bunyip.
~ thanx kindly _ yeah , could be Or Peas in a Pod ( was supposeing this kind of thing also ) ~
Thanks. Very detailed and clear!
No problem.
I edited one of my fishing pinup entries to correct a typo. The credit discussion said Lotus for C2F, but it should have said Lotus for G2F. Just mentioning it because the edit date now says later than the closing date. I didn't substitute a new image or anything like that.
_ thanx very much _
~ yeah , actually this kind ==>
Thank you all for the nice comments. I just wasn't able to finish to my satisfaction in time, but plan to finish the image anyways.
Diomede - thanks for the hints for the snow shader(s). There is something new to try.
The Heat Meister Acme Malfunction looks great. I love that little village. The decision to light things up a bit more really helps the image 'read' easier.
The Sea's Son - ha! Very clever. Glad you went ahead and entered it. And oh, those dreaded chores...
ed3D - Glad you got the image entered. Looks great!
Headwax - Wow, that is preciously exquisite!
~ thanx , , ~
Hope it is not too late to follow up on this comment. I am asking for suggestions.
For these fishing images, I did use indirect light and pay the render time penalty. That did trigger subsurface scattering. However, that is not my usual procedure because I don't usually want to wait for the render time.
Here is what I usually do. I generally load a Ringo skin texture that does not necessarily match the figure UVs, and then swap out the maps with a set that does match the UVs of the figure. The result is that settings like shininess, etc. are good as per Ringo but are not integrated with the other shader channels so not so good. Also, I generally do not use sky light, indirect light, or Gamma 2.2. Not using indirect light disables the subsurface scattering (I think). Most of these choices are to reduce render times.
Genesis 2 Skin texture choices - I have quite a few Daz G2F characters. For example, I have almost all of the ones that Ringo made Carrara sets for. In addition, I have a few other random ones, including one merchant resource by Forbidden Whispers. Also, there is a way to specify the UVs to be used in Daz Studio. Can that be used and saved out of Studio as a scene subset or something to allow G2F to use the full range of UV sets available in Studio for G2F? For example, is there a way to use V4 maps on G2F in Carrara?
Test 1
I noticed that many of my purchased G2F character skin maps lack skin variation (I think). To try to get more variation, I tried using mixers for Thorne's Ysabeau maps and Forbidden Whisper's merchant resource maps. To blend them, I used a mixer of (a) fractal noise and (b) spots - at 50% mix. I applied the mixer to every skin channel that get maps, such as limbs, torso, ears, etc., but not stuff like teeth. The maps are color, highlight, and bump.
Other than that, the settings are pretty close to a standard Ringo skin setting, including subsurface scattering. Here is a test render with indirect light enabled.
EDIT: The figure morphs are a mixture of mostly Ysabeau 6 and Callie 6, with a little Victoria 6 and Lotus 6.
Test 2
Same approach, but I changed the mixers so that the blenders were 100% controlled by spots instead of 50% spots and 50% fractal noise.
Improvement? No difference? Need different approach entirely?
For distant shots I use the base skins, close-ups I tend to use Ringo's shaders or a V4 conversion. V4 Skins Batch Converter to Genesis 2 Female(s) - https://www.daz3d.com/v4-skins-batch-converter-to-genesis-2-female-s
Note that it also needs Victoria 4 for Genesis 2 Female - https://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female
As I have quite a large collection of V4 items I find it worthwhile to reuse them. Will need to experiment Ringo's settings with swapped skins like you are doing.
Thanks. Great info. I have the V4 for G2F product but not the skin batch converter. Until the converter goes on sale, I will look for a different solution. The description of the batch converter says that the other product is a prerequisite so that you have the V4 for G2F UVs. Presumablly, that means I have the V4 for G2F UVs through the V4 for G2F product. There is probably a way to use Studio as a free plugin to save a version of G2F with the alternate UVs. Then I could use all those 'Elite V4' Carrara shaders on G2F. Unless differences in shader domains cause a problem. Has anyone successfully used the Elite V4 series carrara shaders on Genesis 2?
Here is another test.
Most of the apparent difference is due to lighting.
This has a single light from the packaging scene HDR that comes with Carrara. Using sky light, indirect light, and gamma 2.2.
But there are some shader differences. I tried to better align the eyebrows of the Forbidden Whisper Mats to the Ysabeau Mats, the blenders for general skin mix skews more towards the Forbidden Whisper maps, and a few other minor things.
Will test the V4 Elite textures.
Ran into a problem with UVs when I used Ringo's V6 with a V4 texture, might need to setup a base V4 texture with Ringo's settings copied over.
Eeeek on the V4 Elite with the Carrara shaders, will try converting with the Batch convert tool and see what happens....
Thanks for the help, Bunyip. Looks like the Elite V4 would not be a one-click solution. Thank you for posting your results.
Here is one more test. Lighting change. The skin shader is the same as the prior test. Instead of a single HDR and gamma 2.2, this leaves the gamma Carrara default and uses the 3 point light scene from Carrara browser.
To the surprise of no one, lighting is a very big deal.
Looking good.
Test results from Batch conversion, UV better but some slight gaps.
Found slight gaps in the seams for Elite Amy, Maya, & Reby Elite. However when I zoomed in on Reby Elite the gap vanished. Elite Lana & Marie both looked okay.
Hey Diomede,
Maybe your G2 skin maps are mostly for toon characters? My experience is the opposite. G2 maps (V6 for example) are often actual pictures of real human skin. I assume that Ringo's shaders are procedural. Please correct me if I am wrong, as I have never used them. Real skin is much more realistic (assuming that is what you seek), if the subtle differences can be brought more to the visual surface.
My normal approach to bring out the skin textures is to use a high gamma in the render room, and also to add more contrast in GMIC. A good HDRI can be a big help as well. Most often, I reduce ambient to 10% or less. This is a global approach, so you will have to adjust everything else - lights and shaders for example - to fit these more extreme settings. Sometimes things will work exactly the opposite that you would normally expect. But once you get the hang of it, in my experience, it is not that hard to play in this environment.
A more specific approach would be to adjust each skin texture in photoshop by adding more contrast (and sometimes changing hue, etc), and then apply them in Carrara. I rarely do this, as I prefer to stay in Carrara as much as possible.
Certainly, the proper application of specular and bump maps, and especially normal maps if they are available, can add to the realistic skin effect. For skin, I put shininess on zero, and adjust the highlight channel between 10 and 20. If normal maps are provided, they often need to be cranked up to 500 to be fully realized. But in this environment they can be wonky, and some experimentation may be required.
Hope this helps!