Surface Mask Creator and DS4.5

scott_4e0b772ae4

So, surprisingly, Dreamlight's Surface Mask Creator works in DS4.5...sort of...

I can get it to create a mask for everything in my scene except genesis. Has anyone had any luck getting it to recognize the genesis figure?
If so, did you have to do anything special?

Thanks,
Scott

Or, is there an alternative to this product anywhere?

Szark

I am just about to serve up dinner so please give me 20 mins and I will come back to help.

Szark

This Tip in undoable so save your scene first.

Select one surface in your scene, doesn’t matter which. Open Surface Mask Creator and set it up as in the image below.

You will be asked to confirm the removal of shader based surfaces. Click Yes. Then it will either do two things start to render or just stop. Either way we want it to stop. So if it is trying to render a mask then cancel it.

Then This time select your surfaces for the proper mask. Open Surface Mask Creator and leave it set on “Selected Surfaces” but Uncheck the Custom Shader Check Box, then Render.

I have not had any issues with doing like this. So hope that helps to at least use it.

scott_4e0b772ae4

Thanks! Will try this out shortly.

Too bad the rest of the DreamLight plugins simply do not work - and they have no plans to update. There is some very good stuff there.

SnowSultan

That's a good tutorial, thanks Szark. Surface Mask Creator is absolutely vital for me, and I've been doing exactly what you described here for quite a while (in fact, I have to make about a dozen masks for a new image later today). :)

One thing you can do to skip the first "failed" pass is to right-click on a surface with the Surface Selection tool and tell it to select all surfaces of that shader type (like all that use Ubersurface, pwSurface, etc). Once they're all selected, apply the default DAZ shader to them. Now when you start Surface Mask Creator, you won't have to select the "Replace Custom Shader" box and the first pass will work.

Szark

I haven't had much trouble with 4.5 yet using this handy tool. But each time we get an upgrade more and more surfaces don't take to rendering properly when using the plain Selection by Surfaces setting only and I have even noticed that even when a surfaces is labeled Default Daz Material the Mask won't deal with it without using the Replace Custom Shader command. So really what I am saying is that this is hit and miss. I gets tricky with surfaces that have displacement and won't render a mask. Using the Replace Custom Shader takes out the maps.

RKane_1

Pardon my ignorance, but what does Surface Mask Creator do you you, exactly?

Edit: Nevermind. I read the description. Man, that would be nice to have up and working in 4.5!

SnowSultan

RKane: It does work in 4.5, you just have to do what Szark says and select the materials manually and set them all to default DAZ shaders before running. Even not working at 100%, it's well worth every penny if you do any serious postwork at all.