Wow! Thanks for that tip with the user defined node, bagginsbill. I was wondering how to fix the tint without darkening the skin.

Change the tint on the lip zone to get a different lip color. I used a pink here. Being this close, we can see there is a hard edge, which is not good. But from a distance it would be OK.

For closeup work, you should either blend the lip nicely on the color map itself, or do it in the shader using Blender nodes and a good lip mask. This is what RobynsVeil is working on. I will also have something like this (some day) for sale. Obviously, the mask has to be specific to a particular character. My hope is to have good shader control masks for all the popular figures available. But I'm not good at making these - I can't draw to save my life and also I don't have good tools. Making lip masks is incredibly tedious for me.

If I ever get around to producing control masks for shaders, I'll buy the big Wacom Cintiq 21 inch where you can draw on the screen.

Ummm - I think I may have described the User_Defined bug for older Poser backwards. I believe it squared your inputs. Which means you'd have to enter the square root of what you want.

Whatever - it doesn't really matter what the numbers are since you probably don't know the factors a priori. Rather, you'd just keep adjusting up or down until you get the effect you like, using test renders to check.

In order to get glossy or wet skin (or lip gloss) what would you change? Shine Level? Your visual and text instructions are so helpful. It helps me learn what to experiment with without going over the top too much.

Quote - In order to get glossy or wet skin (or lip gloss) what would you change? Shine Level? Your visual and text instructions are so helpful. It helps me learn what to experiment with without going over the top too much.

Perhaps confusion on my part, but didn't I just write that 4 posts up?

Also I showed wet skin settings a few pages back.

Yeah, my bad I thought it was just lip color and didn't see the gloss!

More than a few pages - page 47. Time flies.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2737823&page=47#message_3346286

Thank you so much, that wet look is exactly the look I was aiming for.

It's fun to experiment with the PR3 settings, and thanks to that easy setup I can now quickly change from dry skin, wet water skin, oily skin, sweaty skin, and that's just playing with the Shine and shine spread settings!

I highly encourage those others new to VSS like myself to use PR3's settings and experiment, much like bagginsbill has said multiple times. You can get wonderful, VARIED results just from playing with those without changing your light setup.

Again, thank you so much for using your spare time to do this, bagginsbill. Not only do you help us start off, but you help us take the next step and encourage us to  follow our own paths of experimentation and artwork.

if you are interested more go look at the nodes in the PR3 shader. look how the blinn and math nodes are connected. how when you change one setting the other will also change because they are connected.
its really imressive.

You're welcome.

You'd probably do others a favor if you made a new thread and shared the settings and results you're getting. I think there are a lot of quiet people who would find it really helpful to see what others are doing and learning.

A good idea, will do as I get time, and I've been following the Nodes thread where you are teaching the math, and even though I have problems with mathematics, so far I am actually understanding it. It's cool to learn. I did always like Algebra.

  Excellent examples Bagginsbill. I'm so very grateful for your dedication to your products and the people who share them with :)

Tons of information I want to use. I will work on some more renders tonight. and THANK YOU for the tint info for GND's skin. I love the detail in it but Its always 'sunburnt' looking and I usually try to counteract it with green IBLs or postworking in photoshop. Wonderful wonderful information. Thanks again BB :)
 

You're welcome! I'm looking forward to your renders.

hey Bagginsbill

any chance you could send me this VSS skin shader stuff? my only internet access is at work (home doesnt have a phone line yet) and your google page is blocked by our proxy

if the images on these past few pages are any indication, I really need to check out what you have come up with this time!

edit

oh yes, and done forget, there is practically no light in the real world that is actually white.
I never use white lights in my renders, but no one notices because your eyes automatically adjust to compensate the color change. remember this when lighting your scenes, you will be happy with the results.

standard light bulbs are a sortof pale orange, flurescent lights are a pale green/blue

I posted about this earlier - snow lit by a sodium vapor lamp looks orange, but in my photo it was white as snow. hehehe.

Here's the original VSS - remove the .doc from the name.

My snow photos.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2767631&page=2#message_3419636

I never use IBL, in Poser 7, the results you got were IMO terrible, the few attempts I tried in Poser Pro seemed to be the same.

Has someone (probably you) found a way to make IBL lighting actually look decent?

if I want IBL, I use an enviro sphere, and use GI which causes the sphere to project light. looks about 1000 times better than IBL, but its considerably slower on the final render.

just looked at your snow shots, thats crazy, obviously I dont mean using a light that orange!

take a look at my latest renders, cornell box (attached) and the howler miniature.
these use colored lights to give the scene warmth

How's this mr. BB? 

this is insane. this is fantastic. you rendered this in poser?????????????

what figure is this? 

Off the charts Vex! Really stunning.

You nailed the lighting. You got VSS to generate perfect faking of the SSS or you post-worked the crap out of it. I love the background - great color choice. I don't see the typical Poser shadow. It's so soft and creamy. You must have post-worked this.

The Pose is so natural - the hands - is it yours? You have a lot more patience than I do.

We have to fix the eyes. That's my fault. My original set of lights was too hot. (Same as you and everybody else.) I didnt' fully understand the impact of GC when I started this. Since then with the help of this community I refined and revised the skin, but the eyes are still the old shaders tuned to the hotter lights.

We need to increase the Diffuse_Value in the Diffuse node of the eye whites and the iris.

At that point, the realism of the figure stands in stark contrast to the hair. The hair is good, but not the amazing perfection of the rest.

the only postwork is a tiny hip area where an AO artifact poked through. Background added in PS. but all the tones = straight render.

the Body = GND at about 0.8, the face a mix of Isabelle and Mimi, also using Corvas's V4 armpit fix (godsend)

The pose is actually part of an excellent set by Corvas (MOD V4)

The hair was about as real as I have. I suck at painting it but I could've thrown a few strands out there to rough it up a tad, but still, i wanted as postwork free as I could get and I'm pretty happy.

I want to rerender it with better eyes then :) I noticed they were kinda dark but I got so wrapped up in the skin shaders I kind of neglected the eyes hehe.

I've been considering the upgrade to Pro. My render times make me weep. It takes over an hour for that pic up there. 1 hour per test render... /whimpers...

just increase teh diffuse value to 0,8 in the eye white shader. and in the iris. for more realism try BB GC reflection shaders.

can you please explain what lights you used? 

Just what BB suggested, a 10% IBL light and a 75-85% infinite with shadow blur on 20. 

Quote - Here is Suelma close-up, for a one click solution your shader is pretty amazing. I stop here to leave space for more advanced user, they can help you to optimize your baby.  :thumbupboth:

Mazak

Amazing teture WoW!

What do you think? Click for full size.

Looks great! Except, did you forget to enable shadows on the rim light? I think I see blue rim light on both eyes.

Thanks for the parameter values - I'm sure others will find these helpful.

And good job on realizing that you can go above 1. These are just factors that work or don't work. They don't really mean anything. However, I probably really screwed up the eyewhite shader if you had to set it to 2. Heheh. That is still the shader from a year ago, with no new work done on it. I have a lot more experience with GC and AO now. But you made it work, so cool!

 Yeah I didn't set a shadow on for the rim light, as I was worried that it may have created artifacts in the eyes, but now I see it doesn't, so I'll keep one on. And yes, initialy I set it to 1 and felt it was still too dark, so doing the math I predicted if I increased it to a hyper color it would look alright, for being a pure eye white, and it does not look bad, indeed. I'm still experimenting with wet skin looks as I am having slight trouble with getting the amount of bump versus the shine levels, so far most are either too shiny (and create large white highlights instead of bumpy 'pockets of liquid' or the bump is too much and the shine looks like individual white pixels. Any advice on that?

BB any new tips for fake SSS on the eyes?
could we use maybe the skin shader for the eyes? 

BB, you mentioned above about gamedever's render, "...The hair is good, but not the amazing perfection of the rest."

I saw how you mentioned in another thread that you were working on a shader for hair.  From the sample you had posted it looked amazing!  My hair always ruins the realism of my images.

Can I buy that from you now as is?  Is it still in the works?  Can we at least see your material room set-up in the hopes that we could possibly get something close to resembling your great results?

Please.

Quote - BB, you mentioned above about gamedever's render, "...The hair is good, but not the amazing perfection of the rest."
**
I saw how you mentioned in another thread that you were working on a shader for hair.  From the sample you had posted it looked amazing! ** My hair always ruins the realism of my images.

Can I buy that from you now as is?  Is it still in the works?  Can we at least see your material room set-up in the hopes that we could possibly get something close to resembling your great results?

Please.

where? can you find it for me? thanks.

this? 
www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

Oliver had a good node set up for a hair shader. It was over in the Node Cult of RuntimeDNA.

Unfortunately, RDNA is closed due to moving.  And yep ice-boy, that is the only reference ever made about the hair shader.  I assume if bb tells us, he'll have to kill all of us also.

looks normal diffuse with little specular. you can do that right now. maybe he used some trics with colors. but this looks to me like good hair with good texture and transparency map.

thats a good shader for hair . of course you need to update it with GC.
www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

we need a better ''fake'' hair shader for transmapped hair. something where you could use a texture map to tell the shader how to calculate specular. something that would work.

Quote - looks normal diffuse with little specular. you can do that right now. maybe he used some trics with colors. but this looks to me like good hair with good texture and transparency map.

It's a GC shader, not normal diffuse, and there's a lot of specular, and it's anisotropic, and you don't know how to make it stop going nuts at certain angles, or make it actually light individual hairs without a bump map, and I'm not done with it either.

Quote - BB any new tips for fake SSS on the eyes?
could we use maybe the skin shader for the eyes? 

There is some already - maybe you don't like it? SSS in the eyes is different.

Look at my eyewhite shader - look at the blue/pink blender.

Quote - > Quote - looks normal diffuse with little specular. you can do that right now. maybe he used some trics with colors. but this looks to me like good hair with good texture and transparency map.

It's a GC shader, not normal diffuse, and there's a lot of specular, and it's anisotropic, and you don't know how to make it stop going nuts at certain angles, or make it actually light individual hairs without a bump map, and I'm not done with it either.

i said it looks normal. i am aware that your shaders are complicated and do amazing things.  but in your render it looks normal.
didnt want to insult your work.

Quote - > Quote - BB any new tips for fake SSS on the eyes?

could we use maybe the skin shader for the eyes? 

There is some already - maybe you don't like it? SSS in the eyes is different.

Look at my eyewhite shader - look at the blue/pink blender.

i know the one with the blender. using it always. this setup gave me ideas for other shaders. just asked if there is something new. 

i tryed to connect the toon shader in the blender node. when i have low light then the specular is low. and then the eye becomes red. trying to fix this.

Quote - I never use IBL, in Poser 7, the results you got were IMO terrible, the few attempts I tried in Poser Pro seemed to be the same.

Has someone (probably you) found a way to make IBL lighting actually look decent?

if I want IBL, I use an enviro sphere, and use GI which causes the sphere to project light. looks about 1000 times better than IBL, but its considerably slower on the final render.

You didn't by any chance catch all this last 3 pages of IBL renders, did you? :) I think it looks decent. Your GI render looks splotchy and takes 100 times longer than my IBL renders. I love GI and want it badly but I'm not willing to trade my 3 minute renders (as above) for 8 hours and then get splotches.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - looks normal diffuse with little specular. you can do that right now. maybe he used some trics with colors. but this looks to me like good hair with good texture and transparency map.

It's a GC shader, not normal diffuse, and there's a lot of specular, and it's anisotropic, and you don't know how to make it stop going nuts at certain angles, or make it actually light individual hairs without a bump map, and I'm not done with it either.

i said it looks normal. i am aware that your shaders are complicated and do amazing things.  but in your render it looks normal.
didnt want to insult your work.

I wasn't insulted at all. Just wanted to make sure it was understood that it was mostly the GC that made it look good.

one good IBL and IMO smart use of bounce lights and we can get a similar render. and it wouldnt take long.i will try a similar render.

from what i understand this fake GI in poser is just gather on every material and ao turnd on? 

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - > Quote - looks normal diffuse with little specular. you can do that right now. maybe he used some trics with colors. but this looks to me like good hair with good texture and transparency map.

It's a GC shader, not normal diffuse, and there's a lot of specular, and it's anisotropic, and you don't know how to make it stop going nuts at certain angles, or make it actually light individual hairs without a bump map, and I'm not done with it either.

i said it looks normal. i am aware that your shaders are complicated and do amazing things.  but in your render it looks normal.
didnt want to insult your work.

I wasn't insulted at all. Just wanted to make sure it was understood that it was mostly the GC that made it look good.

when i said diffuse i meant diffuse lighting and diffuse texture. i know used wrong words. 
i think we need to see a more wet hair or a darker hair to see the specular more.

i knew that you used GC. why wouldnt you. get it................why wouldnt we he he ;)

what you said about anisotropic made me curious. maybe you have a site for reference on what you are doing?

i am searching on google for months on a fake technique for some transmapped hair.

Quote - > Quote - looks normal diffuse with little specular. you can do that right now. maybe he used some trics with colors. but this looks to me like good hair with good texture and transparency map.

It's a GC shader, not normal diffuse, and there's a lot of specular, and it's anisotropic, and you don't know how to make it stop going nuts at certain angles, or make it actually light individual hairs without a bump map, and I'm not done with it either.

ohhhh nooooo you didnt do that. wooooooooow. 
now i understand why you dont like to talk about shaders that are not ready. i am shaking.........i am shaking. how,when,if and what time . he he he. i am going crazy.

Quote -
You didn't by any chance catch all this last 3 pages of IBL renders, did you? :) I think it looks decent. Your GI render looks splotchy and takes 100 times longer than my IBL renders. I love GI and want it badly but I'm not willing to trade my 3 minute renders (as above) for 8 hours and then get splotches.

If you are referring to the cornell box image, I was in the processes of finding good settings for GI, if you look at the howler image, it uses GI, and has no splotches.

I rendered an image last night using your VSS shader, a GI sphere, AO and dynamic hair numbering in the 500,000+ hair range, unfortunately I forgot to bring in my cable for my iriver, and everyone here at work are ipod lovers, so I cant upload it. I am going to go see if I can buy one to leave at work.

with this talk of hair, how come noone uses dynamic hair? if you want realistic hair, nothing is more realistic that individually rendered strands! I know its a bit of a pain, but I have found a way to cheat styling. I have created several "proxy" objects that parent to V4's head that are used for dynamic calculations on hair, the shape of these "proxy" objects style the hair as it falls. Doesnt work for alot of hair styles, but it sure does for standard split-down-the-centre hair styles

Your VSS shader is amazing Baggins, it really makes a phenomenal difference in render qualities. a few slight changes were needed to get it to work nicely with GI, but nothing major.

and I have only seen about 10% of the renders in this thread (the top 10% of each), I work in a rather public area, and giant naked renders of vickie wont go down to well here LOL

oh, and on eyes. the main problem is that V4's eyes arent realisticly modelled, I use Blackheart's Eyes, dont know if they are still available in the marketplace, but they are much MUCH more realistic than the standard eyes.

Sorry, had to go do some business downtown. I always save screenshots of node set ups. Looked up that Oliver set up.

 All the dynamic poser hair i have seen has been disgusting. If i want chia pet hair, its great, but i've yet to see a good showing of dynamic hair. it always looks like hair plugs....