D Matter 7

Roland Younger

Curious,
When lighting and rendering characters of dark skin ethnicity I can hardly make out any details. This occurs often even with high illumination settings. Skin details, muscular details, etc. are indistinguishable or plain not visible. It's as if the dark skinned surface absorbs all of the light. Has anyone else encountered this and if so, what settings have you used to overcome this issue? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Richard Haseltine

Which application? If DAZ Studio (or Carrara) are you using native material settings or those made for Poser? How are you lighting the scene?

SlimerJSpud

Are you using texture sets that are already dark skinned, or are you making them dark by changing the Diffuse strength/color? This is called the "Diffuse Tan" approach, and it runs out of steam pretty quickly. That means you lose details, and the palms and soles look terrible. The higher quality dark skin sets have plenty of detail.

If you are using good dark texture sets, but there is no specular map, you can set the overall specularity to give a slight shine to the skin. In Daz Studio, I often start with Glossiness 70%, Specular color 64,64,64 and Specular Strength between 30-50%. If there are specular maps, those settings probably shift to color 255,255,255 and 100% strength.

As Richard said, a lot depends on lighting. If you are using a light set with multiple lights, one or more of them can be set to Specular Only, which allows you to dial the specular response up and down from the light source. Again, this applies to Daz Studio, but if you are using something else, please give more details.

The Black is Beautiful thread has been silent lately, but you might find more examples and inspiration in there.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/368/