Problem with Light Dome Pro-R (skin texture)

XoechZ

Hello!

In my images, the skin textures usually look like here: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/34328/
I get this effect by tweaking the specular and glossiness settings and I like that oily shine very much.

Now I did an image with LDP-R and it looks like this: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/37325/
As you can see, the skin looks very pale and flat. LDP-R seems to wash out the skin texture a lot.

By the way, in both images the skin textures and settings are completely the same! Also the postwork steps are the same.

So, why is LDP-R doing this? And how can I avoid the washing out of the skin textures?

Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you!

bad4u

You are talking about same postwork on both images, so I'd guess you maybe hit the DS render button instead of using the LDP-R render script ('Render LDP-R') from content library ? You should get about 12 images, that you then load in PS and combine via PS action into one layered image to add postwork in next step. Using PS Elements I needed to load the action manually from install path the first time, then it will be kept in Actions list, not sure how this is with PS. There is another optional filter script that can be used for changing the color then. For better understanding it's worth watching the two videos on store page (at the bottom of 'what's included and features' tab): http://www.daz3d.com/light-dome-pro-r

(Edited text for some corrections, as I just fired up DS and PSE to check)

XoechZ

No, I use LDP-R as it is supposed to be used.

Here I made a really quick example. The left image is rendered without any lights (just the built-in headlamp) where you can see the shiny skin texture.
The center image is after rendering with LDP-R and simply combining the layers in PS. The right image is made after applying the default filter script.

As you can see, the "washed out" look is getting worse from left to right. I don´t know if I am doing something wrong or if is the natrure of this product, but is seems LDP-R kills all specular and glossiness from textures and washes them out. And this is not what I want.

bad4u

I only used LDP-R for one character image set yet and liked the results so far, though I did not apply the additional filter and instead used my own filter setup (which includes some blur and so isn't good to compare with what you are heading for).

XoechZ

Ok, I did another test. This time I did not tweak the skin texture settings and it looks much better :-)
I think, for some reason LDP-R does not like my skin tweaks.

And, as you suggested, I did not apply a LDP-R filter in PS, but did my own processing as usual. The result is really much better.

bad4u

Yep, that definitely is much better.

LDP-Rs concept is postwork and 'tweak 'til you like' and its default settings are neither for every scene nor will they meet everybodys taste. I'm a noob when it comes to postwork, so I tried LDP-R to have a few more options from the start - as you can tweak the separate lightning layers after combining. For my image series I set Sky layer to 50%, Sky Bounce to 40%, Sun Bounce Copy to 80%, Sun Copy to 40% and most important reduce Fog/Haze layer to 50% opaciity. I copied Sun layer again and set to 20-50% opacity and to 'Normal'. Don't use these as recommendations, just play around and see what meets your personal taste ^^ . After that I saved as *.png, reopened and copied the layer, which then got some Gaussian blur (2.5), increased the contrast somewhat and set to 25% opacity. Again that was just my personal taste, as I wanted some softer, shinier look for these images.

Edit: You can see results of that values here. If you look third portrait image in full size you can still see the bump in the skin on nose and forehead despite the blur, so I think it's not washed out, though - as said - for the colors and light it was what I wanted there. Finally it was only a first try and definitely could be improved with some more learning.