OK, I give. I'm asking for a refund from Renderosity on my recent purchases, since I was unable to recreate the promo shots the vendors provided.

I'm asking for community help. I need some realistic light-skin texture maps for V3 and M3. There's lots of plastic putty looking stuff available... I don't want something that looks like a 3d model, I want something that looks like a real person.

I can't use characters that look real only under certain lighting that is not provided with the character, and otherwise look dark purply-red, like Jose. I can't use characters that look too perfect and smooth, because they lose all detail when rendered at 300 pixels high.

Maybe this will help: I don't like the DAZ Michael 3 texture because it's got the strange magenta thighs and upper arms. I don't like the Vicky 3 texture because it's far too dark. I'm not a painter - I can't fix these problems.

I want a rough, realistic, perhaps TOO realistic texture for Vicky 3 and Michael 3. It's got to be super-real because when rendered at 300 pixels high, the details grow so small, the little ones get lost.

Any suggestions?

I've always had good luck with hyperreal, and see very good pics with anything from morris. My suggestion, get hyperreal and an additional very hires skin or 2 from morris and experiment with switching out the default hyperreal texture with the additional ones from morris. You can almost have an infinate number of very good quaility textures with little cost that way.

Message edited on: 03/17/2005 13:31

Try Galadia for V3 by Syyd at runtimedna.com She has some excellent M3 textures as well.

In the other post where you brought this up, the suggestion was made that you learn lighting even on the most basic level, and especially that you learn to remove the color from the lights......ONLY USE WHITE.....to get rid of the funny color, especially magenta/orange etc. Did you feel that was asking you to do too much? ::::: Opera :::::

I have had no problem recreating Eden or Jose screen shots in Poser Pro Pack. These are some of the best texture sets available. Jose in particular is amazingly realistic. I think you need help with your technique. The products are not deffective nor is there any false advertising involved. The problem is with rendering 300 pixel high renders. Any skin will have a loss of detail at that resolution. Even real skin in a photograph. At that resolution lighting will be more important than texture.

suggestion: get a camera, hire a couple of models and take a few pictures. Oh wait, nevermind, you still have to learn how to light the models. D'oh!

You guys are SO MEAN! I didn't answer before because you don't know me, but I will now! I WAS using white lights in that picture I posted, and I DO know about the importance of lighting. Stop acting like a vicious pack of snarling, snapping dogs for a minute, and think - 'This is a paying customer. She has worked with Poser since version 2, and has commissioned custom models from DAZ and others. She is deserving of our respect.'

Repeat after me... 'Calm down, a refund isn't the end of the world.'

What you just said is dogie doo. I do not believe it. ::::: Opera :::::

land sakes, y'all bein' a bit hard on the puir artist..
I don't know the pay stuff at all, but I know that you can do a lot with lighting. Only thing I have is Traveler's skin textures from RuntimeDNA..they're pretty good considering they're free (well, even if they weren't free..;) Good luck with whatever you do..

Opera, try to be more nice. If you don't believe her, leave the thread for people who do. I don't, because if I worked with Poser since 2.0 my technique would be probably near to superior - or very good at least. I work with Poser (P4) for 2 months and even if have problems with setting lighting from scratch, I have far better results with tweaking someone else' sets (like those from RDNA or by SnowSultan).
From what I've seen, Jose texture is one of more realistic sets, probably only HyperReal are better. I'd sell my left (or was it right) kidney to have Jose ;).
Opera: save your nerves, it's second or third thread with the same topic. Lotsa noise.
kamilche: did you try to ask a merchant about settings he/she used for promo renders ? Lighting, camera ? Maybe you would get those for free since you're making so much noise about yours technical abilities. No offence, but instead IM-ing merchant, you making your problems public. And those are yours, not community's. If other people have same results as promos in 5 minutes, it's your problem, not everybody's.
Sorry for being a bit rude too, but did you have to make another thread with the same topic ? Didn't you get enough attention in the first one ?

Edited for typos, it's almost midnight...

Message edited on: 03/17/2005 16:28

You think I'm looking for ATTENTION? :-D It is to laugh! And yes, I instant messaged the merchants. And I got back a response saying that the lights were for their use in creating promotional materials only, and not for sale, on one of them. The other one said they didn't remember what lights they used. I'm not asking for attention, merely a super-realistic texture for the DAZ Poser models.

some of best textures I think are the ones by Daz http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1102&cat=61

What version of Poser are you using? If it's P5, that may be why skin textures don't look good. I, too, thought the standard V3 textures looked too dark. Then someone told me that the bumps maps were wrong for P5. I fixed them, and the difference was amazing. Most merchants still don't support P5, unfortunately.

Attached Link: http://www.mec4d.com

Check out Cath's site...

Attached Link: http://poserpros.daz3d.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11727&highlight=

*I don't like the Vicky 3 texture because it's far too dark. I'm not a painter - I can't fix these problems.* You don't actually have to be a painter, you just need Photoshop or something else that can run Photoshop adjustment files. I like to have my caucasion skin textures that run tward yellow in the highlights, tward red in the mid tones, and tward blue a tiny bit in the shadow areas, that is more or less how I changed the saturation of the DAZ textures. DAZ has adjustments to the textures that allow you to make them darker (it adds gray to the base coor), but even the lightest seemed a little dark to me. Anyway, the link is to the Photoshop adjustment files I made, the texture it adjusts is the standard DAZ Victoria 3 medium-res one, and Ingenue Vickie is beside herself, see if you can figure which one is before and which is after. ;-)

NO "superrealsitc" texture is goin to lokok good under the p4 default lights. an unwillingness to learn your program is a recipe for self torture and frustration.

I have been supplanted as the mean dog in this thread by wolf! But I'm glad I'm still lingering, that Jim Burton saturation tip is great. ::::: Opera :::::

How did you fix the bump maps? She's so dark, on P4 and P5, for me. I have already adjusted the texture map similar to the way Jim Burton did, but I'd rather find a method that doesn't require modifying it.

I've been messing with changing the ambient material color. It helps to a point, but if I use it as much as I need to turn Vicky white, it's overdone.

Anyways, thanks for the tips! I look forward to hearing the bump map secret.

dont you think this entire line of threads youve started is a little harsh? you do realise that youre trashing two vendors right now, right? now no matter how i say this im going to sound like an ass - but so be it: perhaps before you look for a failing in the product you should try and improve your lighting skills. many merchants dont cheat, theyve just been at this for half a decade or more and know poser lighting like the back of their hand. is this something they should be punished for? should they have to publish unflattering renders of their products because of this? i go out of my way to include lighting tutorials with my products so that customers can get the most out of their purchase, but no product in the marketplace is packaged along with poser experience. if you expect to find a skin texture that looks good in the poser default lighting then dont hold your breath: one does not exist. this is because the poser default lighting has one PINK and one GREEN light globe, as well as an overly yellowish main one. if you set your material color to white you can see this - it severely distorts colors. not only that but the globes are placed in such a way as to totally distort the front of the model with overlapping shadows - you can get much better results just by moving the globes a bit and setting their colors to neutral ones. please take a moment and consider wether or not your complaint about a product is due to an actual failing of the product, or stems from your inability to use it to its full potential. the latter is nothing to be ashamed about, but neither is it an excuse to publicly trash the merchant's product in several threads. cheers, -gabriel (jim - very cute morph btw)

"Repeat after me... 'Calm down, a refund isn't the end of the world.' " just caught that... no, a refund is not. but to some merchants having their products trashed in several threads in a public forum may seem so, however.

Attached Link: http://www.enmeshed.com/shadermagic/

Link is to a tutorial shows you how to adjust textures for P5.

If you don't have time to actually follow the tute, it includes P5 MAT files for the DAZ V3 high-res textures.

Lighting does make a big difference. Generally, the brighter the light, the paler the skin will look. It's not easy to make pale skin that doesn't wash out in bright light, so that may explain why textures look dark under some lighting.

You might want to download some of the free light sets at RDNA. I like the LaRoo Pinup lights myself. Even though I don't own LaRoo. They look good with any figure, and render as quickly as the default lighting, but look much better.

Jim, I'd love to see you work some of your magic on Neftis' Elle figure ;)

Beautiful light-skined texture?

How about Blackhearted's Selyne?

(eye mod by operaguy)

AND IF YOU PURCHASE IT DO NOT DARE TO SEND IT BACK FOR A REFUND.

I think the whole dark tan look thing goes back to the whole supermodel look thing... not many pale texture around and only some more true brown skinned, mostly it is Malibu Barbie self-tanning accident in effect going around. I fix dark textures by making copies of the textures and desaturating and lightening them first thing (often I do the same for hair props). However, I have been pissed off to find more than once that the texture that was demoed with pore texture unzips to be a "high resolution" paintbucket fill of the template! what happened between the demo and the packaging of the zip is a mystery. I can make my own peach colored 3000x3000 pixel squares... Next I try overlighting with white and pale blue lights making sure not to blow out my scene completely. Most packaged light sets have far too many lights for me, my CPU can't render more than three lights practicaly - typically I use one bright white spot off the camera and two cool infinate lights up and to the sides without shadow as fills. Sometimes I use a second spot with shadows on, sometimes I put a dim infinate without shadows below to give ambient fill, and sometimes I put that fill above to represent bounce light from the ceiling. For outdoors I use the same setup but with a medium strong cool light with shadows more or less overhead, cool light from window obviously must come more from side. Then I use the ambient color deal with very VERY dark browns of one bias or another. This has worked for me. I have been using Poser for 6 or 7 years but a real life combined with limited intelligence has kept me from coming even close to mastering it... If everyone had the skills of the top vendors then there would be no need for vendors at all. When I was doing Adult Education I saw many drawers and painters who sucked despite years of serious effort and who would always suck it was clear... but there was no reason to beat them up about it, they were just trying to have fun. If they didn't understand their tools you could try to help, certainly people in Poserland have been very generous helping me. Yet there are ways to seek help in the forum without dissing someone publicaly, e.g. "Please help me light this texture properly" etc. Maybe the post at the head of this thread was an attempt to rectify the tone of the first post.

anyone else a member of 3D.sk? heh, notice that nearly EVERY model there has been to a tanning salon? wtf! im not complaining - far from it, its an excellent resource. but youd have to work a bit on color balance in PS/PSP if you wanted a truly 'neutral' skin color... and even then, your results would depend on the lighting used in the scene. a while back i purchased some very popular textures and was unhappy with the color - one was too orange, the other was too greenish/olive. i fixed them both by simply changing the color of the lighting in my scene a bit. so just as lighting in your scene can alter an otherwise neutral skin texture, it can also correct a discolored one. cheers, -gabriel

momodot,

I open up textures and change the color balance as well. I also follow similar lighting strategies, but your descriptions sound much more practiced than the level I am at. Would you be willing to post an image, especially one where you are lighting daylight without using more than 3-4 lights?

Also:
what values would you consider "cool".

::::: Opera ::::

Message edited on: 03/18/2005 14:12

I just did a huge post but it got eaten by gremlins. Had a render too but I'm calling it a night... my skin is just too thin. I was much happier just lerking to the most part all these years.

Well, I was happier lurking too. I was just refused returns by Renderosity, after they gave me the runaround for 2 days. They said many other people are happy with the products, it must be me. :-D What a sucky policy! After the treatment I've received in the forums, and from the staff, I can see why so many people have left this community. I think I will take a parting bow, as well.

why do you think I buy at DAZ....30 days moneyback guarantee, no questions asked :o)

Yeah, that's a much better policy. I've bought thousands of dollars worth of models there, and only returned one... they're generally high quality.

Renderosity is leaning heavily towards favoring the merchants, to the detriment of the customer, and the petty put-downs and snide treatment in the forums was a shock. I don't have time or patience to put up with this kind of juvenile behavior, and I'm certainly not going to PAY for it.

For those that were polite, thanks for the help! For those vendors who put out great stuff, I hope to buy your work at some other store!

sorry you had to suffer that momodot, it happened to me early on. Since then I always write offline in my HTML editor then hit refresh on the target thread before posting. Sleep well, you are a good asset, I can tell, and I for one hope you are not too discouraged, because I do want to learn from you about low-light-count sunlight emulation and what constitutues cool values in lights. ::::: Opera :::::

Look, why are you guys getting so fussed about the **skin**?