How can I make wet skin ?

Thank you.

There are several approaches to this.  Probably the simplest way is to play around with the specularity (Highlight) settings, which will at least give the skin a glossy sheen.  Adjusting the values can give you varying effects.

You can also buy textures with a wet look already added to the skin, which uses the above method,combined with painted or photographic details to give the appearance of water droplets.

I believe there are some shaders included with Poser 5 (may also be in 6 up) for the default people, which also give some kind of water droplet effects for the default people.  If you're using another figure, these can be adapted manually.

You can also try using the figure with a body suit.  Set the skin to some kind of shiny wetness and use the body suit to place water drops and runs here and there, using a water shader with a bump map to raise them up.  Obviously, you'll have to make a transmap to mask out the parts you don't want to be visible.  I have to confess I've never actually tried this particular method (yet) but the theory seems about right.

12/20/07

ST:

I hope you are feeling better now.

Could one use a second skin instead of a body suit?

LMK

Plugging a granite node (P5 and later) into the specularity value socket can also help, especially if you dial down the scale considerably. Not recommended for close-ups though. Also, you can use the same granite node to add a tad of displacement - sometimes helps.

Alas, there is no way (with the current technology) to "simply" add a wet look.
The problem comes from the complexity of what's going on to cause that look (in real life).
Water tends to spread out as a darker layer on horizontal surfaces but gather together in separate dribbles as the surface becomes closer to vertical. The flattish bits are thin and the dribbles are not so thin. All (well, mostly) caused by the water's surface tension. And there's no set of nodes (that I know of) that can calculate all that plus add the required depth and transparency/specularity (or refraction/reflectivity) to all parts of the skin, any part of which may be orientated differently and may have different oilyness...

The only way I've ever come up with anything that looked remotely reasonable in near-closeup was to create an extremely detailed and specific set of bitmaps for specularity, transparancy and bump - and specific to a single character and the pose. The whole thing took me nearly three months to complete (admittedly in sporadic sets of enthusiasm) but finally I just junked the lot after my HD gave up the ghost and I couldn't face the effort of trying to re-create all that I hd done..

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news:-((

If you ever find a way of doing it, be sure to post here - there are several hundred others waiting to hear for you..:-))

Cheers,
Diolma

HI LMK.  Thank you.  Much better but still not a great deal of stamina.

A second skin wouldn't really work any better than directly working with the main skin texture because the second skin doesn't actually overlay the first one; it's just a shader trick to combine two textures.

The reason I suggested the body suit is simply as a way of having the refractive effect of water droplets on top of skin.

Essentially, wet skin is just that, a layer of skin that is covered with a thin, uneven layer of water.  Consider a very thin glass texture on top of the skin.  Obviously, refraction would be low.  Just another method to consider.

12/20/07

ST:

I'm glad to read that you are recovering. Get plenty of rest. Pneumonia is a serious illness. Lung tissue is actually damaged, and swells during the healing process obstructing aeration of the lungs. It takes energy to heal the lung tissue, and excessive activity hinders the process. Energy used for activities cannot be used for healing. Good nutrition with plenty of protein is also advisable.

I would think that an advantage of using a body suit would be that with WW2 one could convert the wet skin suit to a number of models, and even fit the body suit to a highly morphed figure. The texture images would only need to be created once.

In my previous question I was thinking of 2nd Skin by Deminsion3D, which I have never actually bought or used. The conforming skin this produces could be textured with water drops? As with a body suit, one could also apply different shader values to the textures in this 2nd Skin than those used for the original figure.

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=36265

Bagginsbill has shown in some thread (which I do not now recall) how to use nodes to combine a texture (with a white background) with other textures. The white background is not seen, but anything not white shows up. One could make a water drop texture in a graphics application using any of a number of paintbrush packages.

LMK

LMK

Yup, don't I know it.  :)  Fortunately, I have my long suffering (her words) Good Lady taking care of me.  Also, it's given me the will to quit smoking.  I'm all geared up for it now and I'm signed up to one of these official Quit programs we have here.  My quit date - on their advice - is January 3.  Wish me luck.

Anyhow...

BB's method of blender node/math node masking would work.  You'd still be faced with the problem of nothing being under the droplets, though.  I was hoping for a way to get the droplets over the skin, hence my thoughts on the bodysuit.  

For the record, I just tried the idea of a bodysuit.  It works in a fashion, doesn't look great and takes forever to render.

I just checked my Materials folder and found the Water Droplets shader.  It's not part of the included content but it's part of the free shaders pack by Ajax.  The shader is configured for Don but the basic idea will work with any figure, using any texture.  The shaders should still be available in Freestuff.  Well worth getting because there's a wealth of things in there.

1. For medium range to long range renders, Wetness can easily be simulated just by playing with the Specular Channel.  Add some fine grained noise into the Specular Value  - Diloma's idea of a granite node is a good one - and set the size accordingly (should be a smaller size to give a more shiny look).  

2. Close up renders are a completely different challenge.  I use gray scale luminance maps of drips and drops in SkinVue which adjust the luminosity of the base skin texture.  In Poser, it's a little more tricky.  You can use a Color Math node (set to bias) and blend a grayscale luminance map with a SkinTexture (see enclosed pic - warning nudity).  In Poser, there is no way that I know of to jitter or randomize the luminance overlay like you can do in Vue.  Also, Poser doesn't allow textures to be world mapped so you will see seams across different mat zones which use different UV Maps (e.g. on V4 the Body Map versus the Limbs Map)

That's impressive.  Very.

Thank you very much for nice suggestions.
I have to learn them.

Dburdick,

It is very nice.
Recently, I am using Vue6 Esprit for rendering.
I am interested in the SkinVue.
Does SkinVue wirok with Vue6 Esprit ?

alas no, SkinVue only works for Infinite and XStream at the moment and only on 32bit

That’s too bad. I am not ready for Vue Infinite, and some poser people who own Vue may not need Infinite.

Any plan for Esprit in near future ?

you'd have to ask E-On about their plans to support Python in Esprit.