Quote - Thanks BB.
I do have those render settings saved to a text file here somewhere.
Should have re read it before hand as i got the pixel samples and shading rate
arse about. And also had my irradiance caching set at 10.
I did a couple of portrait face only close ups. And with the original setting the face
came out extremely pitted.After changing the settings these smoothed out very nicely.
Although it was much better still not as I would like it to be.
As it was pretty late by then I didn't look into the spots or texture filtering, will do that tonite.
And see if it improves it anymore.

And I was using the PR2, will get a hold of PR3 and see what difference that makes.
Am using the V3 skinvue texture on her.
Will post a portrait up showing the diffs when I get it done.

Ah well PR2 was all wrong. I accidentally left a lot of tint in it because so many textures have too much color. The Diffuse Color of skin is actually yellow, not pink. The pinkness comes from SSS, and since that is now supplied by the shader to a large extent, we want the diffuse color to be less red.

Quote - I think your lights are too bright when used in combination with gamma correction, causing the skin to look washed out. Gamma correction doesn't change the hue of the base texture, so VSS probably isn't causing the yellowish look. If anything, the sub-surface scattering will make the edges of the figure look more red. If you're using VSS PR2 or PR3, you should definitely reduce the intensity of the Indoor lights, which were released for VSS PR1. I've heard the intensity should be halved to compensate for the gamma correction.

I can't help you with the artifacts though. The AO sample number might need to be increased or the bias might need to be decreased. You also might want to try increasing the Irradiance Caching and decreasing the Min Shading Rate, though neither of those fixed the problem for me when I had it. I'd also like to know what causes those spots because I get them from time to time.

Hello I don't think I have Irradiance Caching as I'm using Poser 6 not 7.

I'll try the rest of yoru suggestions.

Thank You. :)

Quote - > Quote - Hey BB. Been using your VSS.

I'm guessing this is artifact? How can I fix this? She's also very yellow and lighter than her original texture. I'm guessing that's the GC?

Tips on helping her to look closer to her original color would be greatly appreciated.

Using VSS with your Indoor lights 2.

Use the PR3 shader. All the controls you could ever want are on the left side.

Find the PMC:Tint one. That's a color that is muliplied with the skin texture. You can use it to shift the color quite a bit. Want it more green? Decrease the red and blue in there - making a pastel green. Want it less red? Decrease the red, making a pastel pink. Want an African texture? Put an orangy brown in there.

Other controls you might want to play with:

PM:SSS Amount - controls the amount of the SSS effect.
PM:SSS Spread - controls how much the SSS spreads across the figure.
PM:Diffuse Reflectivity - adjusts the amount of light that is diffusely reflected before it goes below the surface and hits the SSS layer. If you increase it, there will be more of the texture color and less of the SSS color. If you decrease it, there will be less of the texture color and more of the SSS color. The Tint doesn't affect the SSS color.
PMC:SSS Color - what color is the subsurface scattered light. If it's too red, add more green to this.

And if I remember correctly, at the bottom is a
PM:Boost - increase or decrease to change the overall brightness of the skin.

You have a lot of control of the specular effects too.

PM:Shine - master control over the amount and tightness of the shine. Increase it for a more wet look. Increase it a lot for an oiled look.

PM:Shine Spread - adjust the spread of the shine.

Hope this helps. You have tons of control over the texture.

I'll try the new version.

Thanks.

Quote - JWF:

In the screen shot of the template, you cut off the top so I can't see which template zone that is.

Why does this matter?

Because you show me a PR3 shader in a template, but on your figure is the PR2 shader. That means the template you screen shoted is not being copied to the figure. I'd know better what is happening if you went to the figure and loaded a non-VSS shader first. Then you could find out which is the case: 1) not changing the figure at all, or 2) changing the figure to some other template than the one you think it is.

• You've accidentally loaded the PR3 skin shader onto some template zone that is NOT Template Skin. In which case, the shader it is copying is not the one you think it is.

It's clear to me you didn't notice the significance of the fact that those two shaders look nothing like each other. VSS copies the nodes exactly into the target, including all the PM: nodes. Since they're not there its clear that the PR3 shader is not being copied. I just don't know why you have a PR2 shader on the figure. You didn't say what the initial state of the figure was before you tried to Synchronize.

You're right. I did not realize the significance of it.

Evidently I missed the crucial step of specifically applying the PR3 MAT file to the Template Skin sub-section of the VSS PR2 control prop. This entire time I've been simply selecting the VSS prop in the Materials Room and immediately applying the PR3 MAT file, which must have been applying it only to the Preview area. So I've been using PR2 these past few weeks without realizing it. Serves me right for not reading the instructions completely I suppose.

Heheh. No worries. But every instruction I type matters, so if somethings not working, you really should print them and put a checkmark next to each line as you do it.

This is cut and pasted from a posting I made here Nov. 18 for gomcse who was having trouble(bold added now to highlight the key step you missed):

*Can you tell me in more detail what you did, and a screen shot of the error message dialog?

Something like:

I load the same control prop as ever.
I go into material room.
I select the Template Skin.
I double-click the PR3 material.
I get this dialog (screenshot)

*And I posted this Jan 23 (again bolded just now):

*So your steps should be:

Load the PR2 control prop.
**Load the PR3 skin shader into that control prop, in Template Skin.
**Find the Color_Map node in that shader and connect it to Diffuse_Color.
Save this new prop for your future use as VSS Generic PR3 or whatever name you want, so you won't ever have to do this again.

If you haven't loaded your VSS main buttons do so.

Load your figure.
Apply whatever mat-pose you want to load up images in your figure's material zones.
Syncrhonize.
Render.

*And again on the same day:

*When you say "sp3" do you mean my Preview Release #3 shader, PR3?

That is a Template shader, and your'e not supposed to load it manually on your figure.

**You're supposed to load that into the "Template Skin" material zone on the VSS control prop.

**On September 6th:

*Go into the material room.
Select the VSS prop (usually VSS_1).
Using the material room material selector pulldown, choose Template Skin.
Navigate your Library to where you have the VargasVSS materials.
Double click one of them to load into Template Skin.
Synchronize to copy to all zones on the figure.
Render.

Same instructions over and over and over. I know this thread is huge and that's the problem and the manual is out of date and that's a problem and the manual is already too huge, too and that's a problem.

I'm so busy with work I haven't done ANYTHING with VSS in weeks. Bantha even sent me a new VSS control prop with PR3 loaded on it already and I still haven't checked it out and put it on the VSS home page.

I need a break from work. But I can't - I should be sleeping right now but I'm coding into the night because I have a deadline and an unexpected meeting in the morning so I'm screwed. I shouldn't have even looked in this forum. ;-) Heheheh.

Now, I could post a link to my updated props here and the people could do some renders with it. That way we could do some error-checking, and you would have some images to judge too.

Bantha, I put your updated PR3 prop zip on the VSS home page.

http://poserbagginsbill.googlepages.com/vsshomepage

I didn't test it - don't have time. Thanks, man. Somebody else should check it out.

Don't thank me. You do the magic, I just put it into a box.

There are two pr3 props inside. One is with AO included, in case you don't use AO on your IBL lights. One is with AO removed, use this if you use AO on your lights.

Suggestions for improvements should be posted here, I will add them as soon as possible.

@ bantha: Question: Are the modifications to the VSSPR3 prop results of what was posted earlier in this thread?  I made similar changes to mine and I am wondering if it is worth downloading yours.  Maybe I'll go ahead anyway and make a comparison.  Thanks for making this available to everyone.

Quote - http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/random-shaders

In that folder on my website, I uploaded the newest skin shader I have. It's in the file VSS_Template_Skin_PR3_WIP.mt5 44k - on Oct 14, 2008

Download that file into your runtime materials folder somewhere.

Open your VSS control prop in poser material room.
Select the Template Skin material.
Load this new material into that.
Save the new control prop for your use later as PR3.

Then synchronize with this new skin shader in place and see what you get.

It has many nodes on the left side of the shader organized nicely.

Tint, specular controls, diffuse reflections, gamma - all are easy to find.

Was reading back so I'd be in the know about anything we had to change with regards to SR3. So If I download Banta's prop, I don't follow these steps correct? I'd just load her prop then synchronize?

Still reading back...

Yep - Bantha put together the PR3 shader with the other PR1 shaders on new props. I don't know if any adjustments were made. Probably some of the eye shaders need adjusting,  because if you'll recall my first pass was tuned for lights that were too bright to make other content look right.

@hborre:
I did include the changes to the eyewhite, and I fixed the obvious connection error. It's compiled from the prop I used to make my latest image, so no changes which were done after Jan 20th. 

A comparison with your actual version would be great. We would need a change log here.

Quote - If your skin is coming out too red, try adjusting the PM:Tint color and also try increasing the PM:Diffuse Reflectivity.

I did both here. Compare this to the last render.

Tint changed from white to RGB(240, 255, 245)
Diffuse Reflectivity changed from .75 to .8

The Diffuse Reflectivity parameter controls how much of the incoming light is diffusely reflected. Whatever is left is what goes to the SSS calculation. So if you increase the diffuse, you're also decreasing the SSS

bumping this for future use.

Quote - You also have the further complication that in that template shader, I forgot to connect the color map to the Diffuse_Color on the Poser Surface node.

That has no impact on the render, but it does matter for preview. So your steps should be:

Load the PR2 control prop.
Load the PR3 skin shader into that control prop, in Template Skin.
Find the Color_Map node in that shader and connect it to Diffuse_Color.
Save this new prop for your future use as VSS Generic PR3 or whatever name you want, so you won't ever have to do this again.

If you haven't loaded your VSS main buttons do so.

Load your figure.
Apply whatever mat-pose you want to load up images in your figure's material zones.
Syncrhonize.
Render.

...

 Well, the color map node is connected to the diffuse already. I made the eye shader brighter too.
If there are problems left, just tell me.

I am going to re-do my Grace portrait using the PR3  shaders system and see if that improve the "DEAD EYES" syndrome so common to us newbies wanna bees....

Make sure you ray-trace and enable shadows. The AO in the eyes is important.

Quote - Make sure you ray-trace and enable shadows. The AO in the eyes is important.

I already did that... Take at look at it in my gallery now.... You can always check my last post under something about dead eyes.... :lol:

TS

Thanks for making the updated PR3 available, Bantha and BB... I tried using the PR3 briefly but found I was getting better luck with #1 in my renders. Time to try again. :)

req. PR3 shader,  were is the spots control ? in the PR1 I know but  can't figure it on this one

No spots in the PR3 shader. Too many people wanted to know how to turn it off, to get the original texture effects only.

If you collect all the variations of shader effects I have and list them in all possible combinations, it is something on the order of 1 million variations. I've given you 3.

Quote - No spots in the PR3 shader. Too many people wanted to know how to turn it off, to get the original texture effects only.

If you collect all the variations of shader effects I have and list them in all possible combinations, it is something on the order of 1 million variations. I've given you 3.

Ok thanks

I've rendered twice, first with test render, then with high quality... I'll try again with a complete reload of the prop, but something is definitely going wrong for me at this point....

This looks like an entirely different head texture than the body.  Are you sure this is from the same set?  Try loading a different skin texture from another character, synchronize the VSSProp and render again.

It's the same texture. I've just done zillions of renders with this same texture (testing out various hairstyles). The only change I made was deleting the old VSS and firing up with PR3.

But I'll try it with another texture set and see what happens.

Thanks for responding.

I should add that everything looks okay in the preview (which wouldn't be likely if it were different textures).... it just messes up in the render.

it doesn't look like different textures.  it looks like different material settings. if i had to guess, i'd say it was only synching the head and everything up there (eyes, lips, etc.).

That was my thought after looking at the render a second time.  That would certainly be unusual for VSSPR3.  Using it many times now, I have not seen this happen.  I would check the Apply Rules in the material room.  Technically, all the skin rules, including the head texture,  are plugged into the Template Skin.  Unless the torso texture is labeled differently and is not being included in the naming convention of the Apply Rules section.  I would definitely double-check the material names of the body texture and match the rules accordingly.

Thanks, cobaltdream. That's the funny thing... I had the same thought, and so I did look over the synchronization report. But as far as I could tell, everything was right.

However, I did reload the original texture, and my new render was fine. It seems that it was a glitch, but I have no idea what caused it, unless somehow something in Poser's brain was retaining some of the info from VSS1 which I had been using previously but had deleted.

All I know is that I have renders of pretty much every V4 hair in my runtime using that same texture (but without VSSPR3), and there was no such divergence in the texture.

So I'm at a loss, but at least it seems to be working now.

Poser does have a tendency to remember previous textures and screws up every-so-often.  I don't see it much, but I have come across it once or twice.  Quitting and restarting the app seems to take care of that.

Well, it wouldn't be a previous texture per se, would have to be a previous material setting. Now that I think of it though... might not be a bad idea to use the Reload Textures feature if this happens again, just to see.

Yep, it's amazing what it can do.  I have applied it to the Nybras demon from DAZ and an unconventional skin texture seen at this link:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1827909

Quote - Love how this works for characters you wouldn't even expect...

did you use GC in the rendering settings and in the shader?

Quote - > Quote - Love how this works for characters you wouldn't even expect...

did you use GC in the rendering settings and in the shader?

BBs shader comes with GC but where' GC in the render settings? Is this in Poser 6?

There is no GC in Poser 6 or Poser 7 render settings - only Poser Pro has this feature.

Quote - There is no GC in Poser 6 or Poser 7 render settings - only Poser Pro has this feature.

Ahh ok.

How are the slopes?

A bit icy but the weather is perfect. I'm at Sunday River in Bethel, Maine. We haven't had natural snow for a couple weeks. They do man-made but it scrapes off by noon if there's a lot of traffic, which there was this weekend. This week is vacation week for all Massachusettes school kids (mine included) so the place is hopping. Which means my kids are ready to call it quits by 1 pm. Fine by me - I'm getting old and I'm way out of shape. I used to prepare a month in advance for these ski vacations but not this year - too much work.

However, I didn't ski today, so I'm not sure what it's like. My oldest daughter has her car here and drove herself and sister and a couple friends to the mountain today. Ah - the freedom of having older kids is awesome. I'm totally done with little kids. Yay!

We have lots of friends all here in the area in various condos and houses, so it's a blast even if we didn't ski. We're going to have 10 adults and 16 kids at my condo in a couple hours - pizza time!

I saw an interesting thread today about the economy. Is the economic crisis real or hyped? I read with horror all the stories about people losing jobs, hocking tools to pay utilities, stuff like that. I feel really lucky, but not in the sense that I was given a break. Rather, I'm lucky that I figured out how to maximize the value I create specifically in a depressed economy. I don't think a lot of people "game" the system the way I do. And yet, I don't seem uniquely lucky because there is a serious crapload of people up at this mountain, spending money like there's absolutely nothing wrong. It costs about $60 a day for a teenager to ski here, plus at least $10 for lunch on the mountain. So for me it's $140 a day just to let my kids go, and closer to $350 when my wife and I go skiing. (We eat and drink better than the kids.) And yet we're not alone, by a long shot. In fact, we have to wait for a table to eat a nice lunch. We have to wait in line when the kids want to demo another set of skis. (Demos cost another $50 a day.) It looks to me like there is a HUGE number of people who have no problem with the economy. So I don't know what to think, really. Looks like normal around here.

Oh well.

Enjoy your vacation. Looks great.

About the economy crisis - I work in a german loan and savings bank as database admin. It looks frightening real from  here. There are still some risks which aren't resolved, which means that the trust between the banks isn't going to return soon. The next wave will most probably be started by the credit card companies, when more and more people aren't able to repay their depts. In January alone, more than 500.000 people lost their job and won't be able to spend a lot of money any more. (source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm ) How many will it be in February? In March? Noone nows, no prediction I know came even close to the real numbers. 

And then, there is ALG, the next major problem. Another case of "too big to fail", whith about 300 billions of dollars at risk. I would love to see a sign that it's a hype, but from what I have seen, it isn't. 

well, the same was true during the depression.  the jet set still existed.  in most economic crises, there's still enough people at the top who have enough that it's not a problem for them.  it's the statistics you have to look at.  even before the crisis, iirc,  the average income was about $46,000 per 4 person family.  so most of those people were never on the slopes in the first place.  but then, i personally know a lot of people across the economic spectrum, so i see how easy it is to move in one social class and get a skewed view of the "common" situation.  also, in my city, the last economic crisis put a lot of engineers and tech people out of jobs for more than a year.  so i watched some people go from high paying jobs to selling stuff off and taking retail jobs just to make ends meet.

personally, i think of it pretty simply.  when my parents bought the house they have now, it cost roughly 3 times my dad's yearly salary as a mid/entry level engineer, and my mom was soon working herself (when i entered kindergarten).  there's no way you could find a house in that same neighborhood for 3 times an entry-level engineer's yearly salary today, even though it's basically the same class of people (and in some cases, the same families) working at the same type of jobs and making on average about the same money as they did when i was 13 (a long time ago).   at the height of things, houses were going for about 3/4 of a mill in the neighborhood.   those who have moved in over the years just took on much more debt.  same ratio issues apply down the line for everything from school tuition to TV sets.  add in the fact that tons of people in that area have lost their jobs in the past year or even past few months as different places  closed or cut staff, with no prospect in sight of new jobs, and i can tell you that for a lot of middle to upper middle class people where i grew up, it's not just a matter of gaming the system.  it's a matter of only making so much to pay for necessities, getting into greater debt as that became the necessary, and now either not having the income to pay for it or living with the prospect of losing that income. 

and i've watched the same thing happen in the city i live in now, which is thousands of miles away.

personally, i'm not worried about my parents because my dad's been really good about money. and i'm not in the worst position myself.  but that's not true for everyone, and most people i know are saving as much as they can. frankly, i know of people with millions who are being careful with their money now and cancelling vacations.

Quote - Enjoy your vacation. Looks great.

About the economy crisis - I work in a german loan and savings bank as database admin. It looks frightening real from  here. There are still some risks which aren't resolved, which means that the trust between the banks isn't going to return soon. The next wave will most probably be started by the credit card companies, when more and more people aren't able to repay their depts. In January alone, more than 500.000 people lost their job and won't be able to spend a lot of money any more. (source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm ) How many will it be in February? In March? Noone nows, no prediction I know came even close to the real numbers. 

And then, there is ALG, the next major problem. Another case of "too big to fail", whith about 300 billions of dollars at risk. I would love to see a sign that it's a hype, but from what I have seen, it isn't. 

Don't forget the huge number of Alt-A and Option ARM loans that are going to be resetting over the next two years. Just as the subprime loans are running out, the Alt-A and Option ARM loan resets are now are ramping up and they won't be done until the middle of 2012.

 AIG of course, not ALG. Well, I'm an IT person, not an economist or banker, so I remembered that one wrong. My bad.

Quote - ... Looks like normal around here..

I have a friend who is an instructor at  Wachusett Mountain, and he's been really busy.  (I don't ski myself-I have rickety knees, and besides,  I'm chicken!)

Looks like you'll get some snow Thursday-probably rain here-YECH!

Have fun,
Rod

Quote - [
 Don't forget the huge number of Alt-A and Option ARM loans that are going to be resetting over the next two years. Just as the subprime loans are running out, the Alt-A and Option ARM loan resets are now are ramping up and they won't be done until the middle of 2012.

True, to my knowledge. And there are still lots of risks which we haven't mentioned here. It can take five to ten years before the economy grows steadily again, from the expectations I have read. But then, there is no precedence for what is happening here. Noone can make reliable predictions. Could be over earlier, if the banks start trusting each others again.

The first time this happened, I moved the camera focal point slightly back behind her, but the re-render had the same problem.

I'm using VSSPR3... the earlier successful renders were also using this.

Thoughts/ideas?

P.S. I know the office scene doesn't look that great... haven't done any shader work with it... don't know enough at this point. I suspect I'm going to end up superimposing characters into photographic scenes until I have better knowledge/tools.

Have you thought about upping the AO in the shader a bit?

Quote - Have you thought about upping the AO in the shader a bit?

Are you saying this in reference to the artifacts in the lower chest area, or with reference to the quality of the render for the office?

PS Ambient Occlusion for Template Skin is at VSSPR3 default strength of 1.

It's probably worth posting what you have Irradiance Caching and AO Bias set to.

Irradiance Caching is 99.

Where are you wanting me to look at AO Bias settings? Main light, materials....?

Edit: I should say again that I haven't altered VSSPR3 Template Skin settings for AO. RayBias = .008333; Strength = 1.0.