"Why it’s so hard to make CGI skin look real" - VOX

UnifiedBrain

Jonstark said:

Just to give an idea of what 'Materialize' can do.  This is the V4 Merchant resource kit:  https://www.daz3d.com/skinsource-v4 ;    I bought it during a sale a long time ago and didn't really know what it was or how to use it, so I was disappointed that it was texture maps only.  Not very useful as is.  Here's what it looks like:

So I took that base color map into Materialize, then generated a Bump map, and from that point I generated a Normal map and a Metallic map (spec map).  Added them to the texture and the difference is pronounced:

 

 

It's not perfect; certainly it's not in Elite texture territory, but boy does it revitalize an old texture map.  I had saved a lot of those older character texture sets that were laying around collecting dust, but if I can figure out how to master Materialize I'm thinking I could give them a whole new life :)

It took me a couple of years to realize the value of good normal maps.  I loaded up a Marcius product and tried to get it to look like the promo images.  It wasn't even close until I figured out how to use the normal maps that were included.

So, I fully support your experiments and look forward to more of your results.

That said, I also have the Sarsa Skinsource product.  I really like Sarsa skins.  Since I've never used it, I was curious how it would look in a render compared to yours, using the old school solution of putting the diffuse map in the bump channel:

Even without bump or specular maps, It was much easier to get a good result with Sarsa than with LR, in my experience. :)

 

Jonstark

Philemo_Carrara said:

 

Jonstark said:

Oh yes, I've got Reby.  I have all the Elite series, even the S5 Joanie, M5 Dave, V5 Valerie... the only one I didn't have up til a few weeks ago was V4 Ariana, which somehow I never saw or heard of before, and to be honest I'm wasn't in love with the promo renders for her, but when it popped up on sale my OCD side said: "must complete Elite collection immediately!" and since I have no impulse control... 

The Reby sky for Genesis is just a morph for the Reby shape though, it doesn't include any textures.  But yeah the Reby textures are kind of fun to see what kind of hijinx the texture creators were trying to get up to back in the day to make a crude SSS effect (which in fairness worked pretty well).  The SSS maps made me chuckle, looks like a kindergartner with a crayon drew red marks over a diffuse map.  

Better SSS maps are included with M5 Philip and V5 Bree (the 2 that every Carrarist has as they were included with Carrara).  Though imo everyone has gotten SSS maps wrong in one way or another.  I ended up making my own to make sure that the effect was guided to the right places and not the wrong ones.  (almost everyone who made a SSS map seems under the impression that every character render should have eyes so red it looks like they are in the throes of a terrible malady). 

That reminded me I also had nearly all of them. I agree they're great. I decided to give it another try.

This is V5 Valerie:

 

Nice.  A backlit scene is the most difficult to get a good appreciation for skin textures in my experience, the skin being mostly in shadow makes it hard to see specular details.  Directly facing the lighting has its problems too, too much light washing out the skin and giving it too even an appearance.  Side lighting is probably the way to bring out the skin texture best, I'm guessing.

Jonstark

UnifiedBrain said:

It took me a couple of years to realize the value of good normal maps.  I loaded up a Marcius product and tried to get it to look like the promo images.  It wasn't even close until I figured out how to use the normal maps that were included.

So, I fully support your experiments and look forward to more of your results.

 

Ah, dangit.  Now I'm seeing the seams when using Normal maps like Dart suggested might be a problem.  I was just on the verge of re-making all of my shaders with Normal maps, since they do render a little tiny bit faster than Bump  does (not much; on a super close-up of skin that has high render settings + full GI it might be a total difference of a couple of seconds, but still).   I can just barely see seams at the thigh (curiously can't see anything at the arm/shoulder), but it is visible, sadly so Materialize might not be a tenable solution for Normal maps after all.  Dart mentioned a possible solution, but I'm uncertain.if it would fully address the problem.  I can take a bit of solace though in the fact that I actually think the Bump maps Materialize generates are even better (by a smidgen) than the Normal maps, and the Bump maps don't have any seam issue.

In fact, I'm finding that the Bump and Specular maps I can make in Materialize are not just applicable to old texture sets, but they appear (to me) to beat out even more recent PA Bump and Specular maps.  I haven't compared/contrasted anything from the Elite series yet, and I'm thinking Elite will be the top contender, but so far in my experiments I would say that it's worth making my own Bump and Specular maps rather than using the ones provided by the DAZ PA products.  Specular in particular seems clearly better than the original character maps.

 

That said, I also have the Sarsa Skinsource product.  I really like Sarsa skins.  Since I've never used it, I was curious how it would look in a render compared to yours, using the old school solution of putting the diffuse map in the bump channel:

Even without bump or specular maps, It was much easier to get a good result with Sarsa than with LR, in my experience. :)

 

 

Nice result!  Yes, I agree, even at a glance it looks like Sarsa's map does better than the LR map from the prior pic.

 

Side note, since you got me thinking about Moda hair (or more specifically 'Dresden' hair which is part of the Moda set).  I forgot what a nice hairstyle that was.  At one time I was going to refine it and rig the hair cap to go on Genesis1, save it to my library of most commonly-used hair products, but somehow life got in the way and I forgot about it.  So I got the bug to spend about 5 min or so correcting the problems.  Here's the original Dresden hair:

It looks like it's half-finished.  Hairs sticking through the skin in the forehead, and just at the top it's apparent that it doesn't have enough hair segments, the hair is janky in that it just bends at hard hangles instead of curving the way it should.  So here's my fixed version:

Really easy to do, just jump into the hair modeling room for a couple of minutes.  First, increase the number of hair segments from 16 to something higher (I chose 50).  Immediately the hard edges on the curves disappear.  Next click on the 'even hair segments' so that it evens things up.  This gets rid of those straight hard angle bends, but as a result the hair is going to drop ever so slightly flatter to the forehead.  So next just break out the brush tool, using the point slider to get the points nearer the root, a gentle brush back up into place.  Then there were really only 2 hairs that were causing all the problems with visible hairs sticking right into the face, they were both right at the front and a few brush tool strokes to brush them out of the face texture, and done.  Easy-peasy.  :)  Neither here nor there, but I thought I'd share.  And thanks for reminding me of this little gem of a hairstyle.  :)

Jonstark

I'm so easily distracted, lol, can't keep focus...  So I had to go look at all the other Moda hairstyles to see if any of the others were useable.  The only one that I think is useable without alterations is Caden hair:

The only other one that's close is Brent hair, which I guess could be used for a mad scientist.  Or someone who is being actively struck by lightning:

 

What do you say about Edin hair though:

Or Anthony hair:

They just scream 'the PA just rolled out of bed, and lazily dumped a hairstyle that looked like it had just rolled out of bed too, onto the marketplace'.  :)

 

Since Brent hair looked like there might be a use if it was 'fixed', I got out my scissors tool and my brush tool and gave it a whirl:

 

 

I've seen guys with big stand-up shock hair, this could work for a bassist in a punk band, for example  :)

 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

all those hairs look better draped so I am assuming that is the reason for the electrical shock look, they are meant to be draped

Jonstark

Here's Anthony hair draped.  It went kinda crazy, and draped upwards instead of downwards.  Maybe there's a readme with Modacuts that specifies some special draping method.

 

WendyLuvsCatz

did you check default gravity enabled?

sometimes if stuff click loaded it isn't, I have not tested myself but have used those hairs as a starting point 

Jonstark

Double checked, and yes the default gravity check was enabled.  I tried to do a drape with a different moda hair and it crashed my system sadly.  Loaded up again and tried draping Dresden hair, it really didn't move much which isn't really too surprising when I looked and saw that the 'shape' setting in dynamic controls is set really high (70%).  It seems strange that these hairstyles would be meant to drape, as they are built on a haircap, so there's nothing to collide against but the haircap itself.

UnifiedBrain

Jonstark said:

I'm so easily distracted, lol, can't keep focus... 

Better to have your brain bubbling with creativity than to be sitting around waiting to be "inspired."

Good tips on fixing Dresden hair, thanks.

Based in the product images, I don't think that any of the Modacut hairs were supposed to be draped.