Hi Folks,

I'm a relative newbie at Poser 5, but I've been experimenting in the material room, and here's something cool I've found.

Pretty much since the beginning, I've been facinated with getting a real skin appearance on the characters. I got the Victoria 3 character from DAZ and started experimenting.

The keys to getting real looking skin are twofold. 1) You have to start with a high quality high resolution texture map. Of course! But when you load this great looking texture, your renders may fall short of the quality you are looking for. This leads me to 2) the bump map. Those of you who've been around probably already know this so you can shut your eyes :-).

In the material room, you can see, in the little window at the bottom, the texture that's been loaded. It may or may not be connected to a bump map. If it's not, then drag from the little eye where it says gradient bump to the color texture that's loaded. Then start experimenting with the values. Sometimes, this is where the problem lies. The values are set way too low. Try giving it a 1 value then test render. If that's not enough, then give it more or less. Then do a final production quality render to make sure it's where you want it.

Hope this helps.

S

Unless you have an oldfashioned P4 .bum - bump map, do NOT use the Gradient Bump, use the one called Bump instead. Funny you think the values are too low, the default value is 1.0 and IMO that is usually way too high for Poser 5. 0.3 or something looks better. But that may be because you're using the wrong bump channel. Good tip really. A decent bumpmap does WONDERS for a natural look :o)

Yeah, sorry I didn't mention it. I'm using Poser 5. Earlier versions handle bumpmaps differently. I'll try using the bump instead of the gradient bump. Maybe values using bump could be smaller. Using the gradient bump though, I found values less than 1 to render the skin too perfect. Of course how you like your skin is up to you :-) S

Ernyoka, You're right. I changed to bump instead of gradient bump. Settings of 1 ARE much too high (yuck!). I found a setting of about .025-.03 about right for my taste. Thanks, S

Watch out with that tip :) The bump map uses highlight for elevation, so a light spot is a high spot, and a dark spot is a low spot. If you just do that, you'll end with the bumps reversed (inward looking). To avoid that interpose a math subtract node, like the right side of the pic i am submitting, thus inverting the image (as a negative) and having the correct elevation bumps... Just a quick tip ;)

Yes, as you've seen there's quite a difference. And as Stemardue shows, the TEXTURE map is not meant as a bumpmap, that's why special greyscaled bumpmaps exist. And an ideal bumpmap isn't just a greyscaleversion of the texture map either :o) Part of the confusion is probably caused by Pro pack Mat poses, which attached the bumpmap - wrongly - in the gradient bump channel. Here's a comparision of the two bump channels. As it's clear, the gradient bump is almost invisible with the jpg plugged in.

It's funny. Today I had to go out on a rather long drive for business and I was thinking about Poser and this thread. I tried explaining it to my wife. I remembered how Bryce handles elevations, and I remember reading this is how Poser handles texture (which are micro elevations in a way). As I explained it to her I started thinking that a freckle would be rendered as a low spot, yet in reality a freckle isn't usually a pit, neither is a mole. I started thinking, also, thats why perhaps the old BUM files were negative images. Except Ernyoka says a negative image isn't an ideal map. What would be closer to an ideal?

I like the idea of a math subtract node as a bump. It seems this may result in a more realistic skin texture than even the old negative image BUM files, eh? It might help if someone could explain how Poser and the Firefly renderer handles this issue differently than the earlier Posers.

Hopefully Curious Labs has continued work on this technology and we can expect even more magical results with the Poser 6 version? (Are you folks at Curious listening? :-))

This is proving to be a great thread. Thanks for your contributions.

S

An ideal bump map is one that is MADE as a bump map. In other words, one that have little white dots where a pimple is and a little darker one where a pockmark goes. One of the things that makes a negative image wrong is places like nipples, they will typically be reversed and also pores in skin that can easily be little spikes on a bumpmap. SOMETIMES a negative image works ok, and it's usually better than NO bumpmap, but not really good enough. A .bum is not really a negative image, it's more like an embossed version of it. And with a sick green look to it too, if you open the .bum in something like PSP (as you probably know, .bum files are essentially .bmp's, which also is why they're so immensely HUGE compared to jpg bump maps.) The renderer handles bump mapping quite good, and if you need "bigger bumps" there's always displacement mapping, one of the REALLY REALLY NIFTY features in Poser 5.

I totally agree with ernyoka1. Mine was just a quick way to use something instead of nothing and have some better results than with the original skin texture. But, there are drawbacks: think to a skin with tanlines... that would cause bumps where they are not supposed to be! So sometimes a simple noise node (tweaking the settings by trying) could be just fine for giving the surface some grain. And the displacement maps, well, those can dramatically change your geometry in the render (too bad you can't see the effect till you actually render, not me at least...) Happy experimenting!

Can you all explain the steps on making a bum/bump. file in photoshop? (Please..........................x100000)

1.Something about inverting the Image and that it has to be save as a bmp.

2.All I know is I have to load my original texture.

3.But do i have to invert it or something so it becomes grey?

Manuel(Nio)

In photoshop, take your pic, desaturate it or use the grey scale option. They do the same, only the desaturated image still contains the colours, they're just "switched off". then invert it. Some things will bump the "wrong way" by this way of making it, but it's better than nothing. There's no need to save it as a bmp, jpg will work just as well. If you're using Poser 4, Poser will ask you if you want to convert it to a .bum - answer yes and Poser will do the rest for you. In Poser 4 Pro Pack and Poser 5 you can use the jpg as is.

thanks ernyoka, y0u said Some things will bump the "wrong way" by this way of making it, but it's better than nothing. You mean by this, that its the only way.

Not really. You can *paint" a more correct bumpmap. But in reality it's not worth the bother. It's mainly things like body hair and eyebrows, since they're usually dark they will create dents instead of ridges on the bumpmap.