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Until Jonstark posted that series of the blond woman a short-while back, I was in agreement about the difficulty (impossibility, i thought) of getting the skin I wanted out of Carrara's native renderer - and I have all (?) of the various figure shaders for Carrara, and still haven't gotten 'the look' I seek.
Now I'm wanting to know how he did it! The above procedural explorations are quite good (freckles, etc.), but those earlier versions using skin maps look like a foundation I'm willing to invest in. They're honestly the best I've seen from the Carrara native renderer. I'd love to go mapless, but maps are just fine if they can be made to look like that, especially since I'm still using Genesis1 and the Mil4 family.
I'm with Vyuser in the constant wish for more of that oily skin look. Her renders speak for themselves when looking for that realism.
Dart, I love that hair on Rosie, heh! And the difference that I'm struggling with between Sol and Rosie is mostly that missing sheen. I think Jonstark nails it in his blond woman renders that we've been discussing.
Jonstark, I will happily help sponsor the creation of a recipe sheet for that map-based render-set and any tips/nuances you would offer to those that are interested in taking that particular path - it's amazing.
best,
--ms
Does anyone know if Carrara, or maybe a plugin can bake a shader to a texture map? I have tried painting it on but it is excruciatingly slow...
But that trial is all there is.
Perhaps someone could get ahold of Inagoni and see if one could buy a license code outright? I'm just exceedingly glad that I bought the Inagoni collection before they started wiping us from the store.
Back to Vyusur's and Mindsong's comments:
I agree, and that's where my experimentation has been going for a while - especially focussed on the SSS problem - which is why I'm using V4 Elite Reby Sky textures - they came with Texure Map_EC and Texture Maps_ES for each of the three skin UV islands (Torso, facial and limbs) in addition to the color, spec and bump.
First thing:
One of DCG's shader plugins comes with a special SSS that we can apply after the render is completed - so I haven't done much with it after I determined that it wouldn't be an answer for animted figures. But it allows us to use maps for the channels within SSS instead of just values or a color chip.
This brought on what I've learned about what Translucency does to a surface. The glow I was witnessing from some folliage I was experimenting with, using various maps controlling the power of other maps, and various combinations of nesting in that way... I remembered telling myself that this sort of thing might just work as a means of SSS in Carrara for something like a person or creature.
So I multiply the EC maps against the EC maps. One is grayscale and the other has red painted where the SSS tranlucent glow should be. I have a feeling that they were created for (and used with) Poser's material nodes and DS's 3Delight shaders of that time. They are haind-painted in photoshop, that's for sure.
I've tried my hand at painting these sorts of maps myself, just to see how well I could control a SSS-like effect using this method and, yeah... it's pretty easy to do. The hardeest part being to get the right areas to react at the proper strength.
The colored version uses a darker version of the skin where less SSS is supposed to be really apparent - and red where we normally associate SSS being. Like fingers, nostrils and especially ears. The grayscale then has darker gray for less effect, and lighter for more.
I still don't feel like I've nailed it, but Rosie's fingers really show the effect when her hand is open and in front of bright, powerful light.
The other big aspect here is allowing for an additional film, like Iray has. Well, Iray actually has several additional layers that can be used to affect the rendered outcome - and with Index of Refraction values available for each - which is even more powerful than what we see in any of the skin shaders I've tried so far.
I must say that I bought Janna to be used in Carrara and haven't tried her in Iray since I've been practicing with it, so I look forward to trying her in DS. I gotts say, Vyusur, I love the work you do - I bet your skin shaders are awesome!!!
It's embarrassing that I haven't got to her much yet - because I really like that figure!
the alternative I used before buying the Inagoni bundle is to use the isometric camera, no lighting (100 ambient) and render a textured square plane with the camera and it's settings zoomed to it's precise dimensions.
You can do all the multipass layers (normal maps etc) it will apply displacement too and it is still my preferred option to Baker for terrains.
Since Baker I suspect under the hood renders this way,
this technique works in DAZ studio too, I use it to grab 3Delight procedurals for iray or iray ones for other render engines except iray canvases have never worked for me.
I have added a simple scene file for "baking" textures
the result is this using the Lava material,
you can remove unwanted passes, just checked them all as some may want them
for terrains you have the added benefit of detailed normal/depth etc maps because they are 3D objects not planes
but you can then use those maps on simpler objects even a plane with displacement
just scale ithe terrain to fit the plane in my scene
Yes I ended up doing exactly that, rendering a bunch of terrain textures. Painting a texture image onto a model has much better performance than a shader.
I also tried to export a regular terrain primitive to obj so could just use the texture map it exported. After a couple minutes it was still at 10%.
Mind you I was using 4096x4096 sizes, but still if I can render a scene in seconds, why take so long to export an the shader to a flat image file. Bug maybe?
A performance update needed in shader painting for v9.0 ;)
Jonstark thank you very much for your youtube tuts on hair. Not only did I learn a ton about hair, you showed me a solution to a problem that has always been a thorn in my side lol.
It was not part of the tutorial, you just did it. Never seen it before...
In the shader room the navigation tools are so sensitive as to be useless in most cases, but you used the 2D Zoom marque select tool in the shader preview window to perfectly zoom in any portion of the model.
Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou!
P.S. I can't be the only one who didn't know (blush)
Made in Carrara
I follow this tutorial to come up with the highlight specular skin effects
I use this recipe almost eternity
I like this method for creating skin - although I haven't done it in Blender yet.
I've used a similar approach in Carrara using the 3D Paint tools, which I could only take so far, then finish off in an image editor.
This is very cool, Vyusur! You are forever an inspiration!
Thank you ever so much, Dart! Alas, Carrara doesn't have stencil tool and clone tool among it's painting tools. Blender does have them all.
This is new to me. I tried it a bit. How are you using it?
I think I first learnt to do that watching a Cripeman video back in the day
I just drag select on any part of the model am interested to view, you can keep doing it to get even closer. ALT click will zoom back out.
See attached images...
Got it. Thank you!
I noticed that when I started studying the new Blender. That's one of the main reasons why I want to learn it more.
I haven't been spending any time with Blender recently, but it's something I will be picking up more and more as I come across those times when I need the tools I want to use in it.
The plan is that, if it ever gets to a point where I can no longer use Carrara, I'll likely be so pissed at Daz 3d that I'll jump ship entirely to Blender! LOL
But that's only if I can no longer run Carrara - and it's holding good and strong for me now.
I know that a lot of the Blender community was upset that they put VFX compositing and other tools into Blender, but I think I'll enjoy those too!!! I really like the new Blender so far!
Wow. It hurt hitting send after writing that! I am such a Daz 3d fan. But I guess... if they dump me, I should probably dump them back, eh?
where's Dartanbeck, and what have you done with his body?
--ms
I know, right?
Sorry guys, I'm way behind. Got sick and knocked out of commission for a week, still playing catch up in various areas of my life lol, but I'm sorry I had no responses for so long. :)
:) you're more than welcome, happy it helps! Got to admit, it took me years to figure out that little time saving trick, to my shame. :)
:) you're more than welcome, happy it helps! Got to admit, it took me years to figure out that little time saving trick, to my shame. :)
welcome back
Thanks for the kind words, I'm putting together a tutorial for my method now. During my sick week off I probably could have been done with it by now, but I sluffed off from doing much of anything aside from trying to organize my library of Skin shaders for each character set that I have that will go on Genesis1 easily. Last count: 240+ different character shaders I have done and organized (insanity). And there are at least 40 more sets I've bought and haven't yet converted to shaders yet (many that I bought in the distant past and that I never even downloaded yet). Very interesting differences in PA choices about the level of specularity map used (some, like Sabby/Seven don't use specular maps at all, and instead assign the bump maps to be used as spec maps. Crazily, it looks pretty decent, makes you wonder if a separate map is really needed. However ideally the bump map should have white areas like the brows that are raised, whereas for spec maps those areas should be black instead so they don't gleam with highlights...)
Although I love HollyWetcircuit's video on how to do specularity in Carrara that Xervious posted, and lived by its precepts for many years, I admittedly take a different approach than that now. Remember that in the video Holly is doing specularity for a darker skin shader. Because our human eyes spot contrast pretty well, it takes less highlight brightness to show up well and give details for dark skins. My current method is a good deal more complex (I wonder if it's needlessly complex lol), reminds me of one of Holyforest's shaders (which, for anyone who has Holyforest's shaders they are awesomely complex and very realistic, however they can actually slow render times considerably! :) Fortunately while my current method is complex, it doesn't slow render time at all, at least that I can tell. However set up time is a bit more, and it requires some plugins from DCG and Sparrowhawke (which are all free now and I'm guessing almost every serious Carrarist already has them). Specifically Shader Ops and Shader Ops 2 (for the clip and light mangler functions) and Sparrowhawke's fall off shader. Holly did a great tutorial on Carrara Cafe about the importance of having a good falloff shader; I didn't fully grasp it back then, but now I've learned a bit more and she was 100% on the mark.
One of the most important things I finally figured out was that the way Studio handles specularity and the way Carrara handles specularity are very different from each other. Sure, Glossiness in Studio and Shininess in Carrara both control the same function - namely the size of the specular highlights on a surface, but what 0% glossiness in Studio is very different than 0% highlight in Carrara. Once I parsed they are so different and tried to nail down where they each stood in relation to each other, then it became more possible to 'convert' the settings that PAs used to set shaders up in Studio for textures designed to be used in Studio to an equivalent setting in Carrara. Of course, that doesn't mean the PAs themselves were always wise enough to choose the best settings in the first place, and familiarity with Carrara can actually let us do a bit more to improve them (imo) in many cases better than before. :) This probably sounds complex as I'm using words, but it's easy to see visually. I'll post a mini-tut on just the specularity differences in a different thread...
One of the surprises for me in finally going through all my character textures were some that I bought on a whim because they were cheap but didn't much care for the promo pics turned out to be very high quality. Specifically I'm thinking of Liquid Rust. All the promo pics look airbrushed and a little uninteresting, so I never thought much about them, but they are actually very high quality textures, and always include not just Diffuse, Spec and Bump maps, but also a Diffuse multiplier map as well as in many cases some Displacement maps. Much higher quality than I expected. Sometimes (most times!) those old promo renders on the product page just fall way short of giving a fair peek at what the product actually entails. :)
Upcoming Digital Art Live Sessions (2) on PBR Skin Shaders - Thought some people might be interested. The first 30 minutes of first session will be free for live participants so may be worth attending first session even if skeptical that information will be applicable to Carrara. The rest is paid, and this one is more expensive than some others, but that is probably because it looks like 3-4 total hours instead of 1.5 hours. And probably more anticipated interest in the topic.
DAL has multiple ways and multiple prices for parts of webinars. For this one
Participate Live First Thirty Minutes - Free
Participate Live First Thirty Minutes and Longer Full Sessions and Get Session Recordings (and supplements offered by presenter, if any) - these recordings are $77
Wait and See if the Daz Store Accepts the Session - Full Price (probably in same range as live event so approximate $77)
Wait and See if the Daz Store Accepts the Session - Debut New Release Price (typically 30% Discount)
Wait and See if the Daz Store Accepts the Session - PA catalog on sale (typically 50% Discount)
I suspect that the info will be applicable in Carrara. And I wonder if Philemo's DUF plugin would make it even easier, but I haven't experimented enough with his plugin to know.
See - https://digitalartlive.com/event/daz-studio-skin-and-clothing-texturing-how-to-mimic-pbr/
Although posted before, here is a reminder of Philemo's plugin.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/240836/new-beta-available-pbr-microfacets-disney-fresnel-and-tutti-quanti/p1
I was able to follow along without any problems and am eager to learn more!
I have to say that, what I've tried with Light Mangler so far didn't work across animations because they require a rendered result to work from - but I'm hoping to learn that I was incorrect in my assumptions!
Still, even if I have to settle for not using Light Mangler, I think the rest of this will do me a Lot of good! For example, I've never used the Falloff shader.
Thanks man! Looking forward to learning more!