I decided to try something with VSS the other night and tried an albino character. I am liking how she looks so far but there are a few things that I am thinking could be much better.

mainly lips and nipples. If i change their shade to something other than white there is a hard edge between the white of the body and any other color.

Hell knowing how I was screwing up trying to use VSS earlier I may be  using it wrong again but I do like how she looks so far but I do think it can be better.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1957993&user_id=69584&member

Link to the render i did with her. This was done without any actual textures other than mouth and eye textures. (I only tried this because I thought I remembered reading that VSS didn't need actual textures)

If anyone has any suggestions to make it better, especially ways to make her lips and nipples have a bit of color instead of being dead white without having the hard line between colors.

 hey, dasquid ;)  I fixed your link.

I think it's starting to look really good...I know nothing about VSS, so I'll just sit back and learn ;)

Quote -  hey, dasquid ;)  I fixed your link.

I think it's starting to look really good...I know nothing about VSS, so I'll just sit back and learn ;)

Thanks, for the compliment and the link fix. I don't know why I cant get a link to work on here.  I also don't know why I cant get a regular easy copy paste to work without two popup windows showing up that claim that my "security settings" are causing it. I'm not one to use the buttons because I can never remember which is which c or v.

Oh and I hope to learn too lol.

 I hear ya.  Everyone's different in how they do things.  I've always used the keyboard method, because it's cross-application copy/paste.  ;)  Easier to remember.  Plus, my mouse is on a pillow to my right, lol.  I probably have the weirdest desk configuration ever.

(ok, I'll quit hijacking your thread now, LOL)

It looks promising.  Although you can technically do without any texture, VSS application looks better if it has some detail to work with.  VSSProp enhances the skin texture and makes it respond much more realistically and naturally to the lighting environment.  Eliminating hard edges is a little tricky but can be accomplished with blurred transparency masks. 

Yes, one could make masks and use Blender nodes driven by these masks to pick different colors.

There's a V4 lip mask around somewhere. I can't remember where.

And it's probably pretty easy to make nipple masks.

But, as easily as you can draw the masks, hooking them up would be a bit of work, as you'd have to name them and such. It can be done, but it isn't a one-click thing. You have to load these masks up into each target material zone, rename the nodes, create similar empty Image_Map nodes in the shader, name those to match, and hook the mask up to a Blender in the Template Skin.

It would be less work to just make an albino textures set. Just start with white, then draw red where you want it. Load those onto the figure as trivial skin materials. Then synchronize with VSS.

Scratch that. I have a better way. I designed a skin shader to "albinoize" any texture, while preserving elements of that texture that don't look like ordinary skin. I'll give you the new Template Skin shader to load onto your VSS control prop and you can use any texture.

While everything is adjustable, I'll try to set it up with defaults that work well. So I need to know what version of Poser you're using, and how you want to do GC (render or material) versus HSV ETM, IBL and AO versus IDL, etc..

P7 or Pro or P8 with material GC? And with material AO or light-based AO?
PPro with render GC? And with material AO or light-based AO?
or P8 with IDL+HSVETM?

I used the DAZ "Standard Res" texture set for V4. But on her face, I used the "!Makeup_Darkness" face texture, which adds extra dark lipstick and heavy eyeliner.

These were rendered in P8 with IDL+HSVETM.

The first render is with the DAZ standard shader.

The second is with VSS PR3 No AO, modified with GC=1, Shine=.4, SSS=.3.

The third is with the new "Abinoize" skin shader.

Wow, excellent.  The maintenance of detail in lips and eyes is incredible.

Klebnor

I have a reference picture here(Connie Chiu) She is part of  what made me think Hmmm albino sounds like something to try.I know she is probably wearing some makeup but she is an albino.
Since she is a model it is kind of hard to find pictures of her with no makeup. But then again  the  renders I do are mainly fantasy with a bit of realism so i want my character as pale as possible.

Oh Sorry I took so long to reply had class and then  stuff to do after class.

Oh forgot. I'm using Poser 7 with the latest Sr installed. as for the AO I use its the one that is not on the lights.

Quote - Yes it can go lighter. I will provide several parameters to control the effect. Here it is at maximum whiteness.

Looks very good. and that from the texture you mentioned first?

There are 4 parameters for the Albino effect.

First is the match color. You pick the basic center color for the effect where it is to be maximum. This will vary from one texture to another, but is easy to sample right off the texture. Colors that are close to that will be altered more than colors that are from from that.

The other three parameters are Strength, Range, and Gain.

Here is a demo showing how the Strength parameter works. When Strength is 0, there is no effect. When Strength is 1, then the match color is completely changed to white.

Depending on the Range and Gain, other nearby colors will also become white. As the texture color goes farther from the match color, it is less affected. Beyond a certain difference in color (such as on the lips and eye makeup) there will be no change at all.

Looks great, one question I can think of now though if a character is not wearing makeup will the lips change with the rest of the skin? (I don't use makeup on textures because well elves don't need cosmetics.:P )

If the lips are similar in color to the skin match color, then they will change a lot. If the lips are very different from the skin match color, then they won't change much at all.

Look at the nipples on the earlier render to see how colors similar to the overall skin color are affected.

You sure you want material-based AO? I don't use that anymore, since light-based AO works very well now. I did the changes to the non-AO version of the skin template, thinking that's what you'd want. I'll have to go back and do them again for the material-based AO. As it's getting pretty late and I should go to sleep (have a meeting first thing in the morning) I'll get this out tomorrow.

Well I think  I should use what is easiest but then again that would depend on how good the quality is. The AO that I have used on some of my renders was the node settings that you posted in the render with the shoe render you posted when talking about AO.

Quote - You sure you want material-based AO? I don't use that anymore, since light-based AO works very well now. I did the changes to the non-AO version of the skin template, thinking that's what you'd want. I'll have to go back and do them again for the material-based AO. As it's getting pretty late and I should go to sleep (have a meeting first thing in the morning) I'll get this out tomorrow.

This time, a face texture without makeup so you can see how the lips turn out.

Also, this is not using IDL+HSVETM. Instead its using material GC + IBL + AO (light based AO), the same as you'd use in P7.

Quote - I did another render.

This time, a face texture without makeup so you can see how the lips turn out.

Also, this is not using IDL+HSVETM. Instead its using material GC + IBL + AO (light based AO), the same as you'd use in P7.

Looks perfect BB I Can't wait to see what it looks like with one of the very pale textures I have.

Could you please do a IDL+HSVETM version for P8 as well? Pretty please.

Sure, I'll publish both. But ... going to bed now.

Quote - Sure, I'll publish both. But ... going to bed now.

Cool thanks BB Ill have to see what I can come up with this weekend :P

Thank You

My goodness, BB.  So we can lighten or pale the skin with skin textures?

Very cool.  Look forward to it, and thanks for looking into VSS for us.

Keenly interested in what I see. Here's hoping BB will buzz back in and show us how to do this!

Looking forward to seeing more on this myself.  very interesting.

It will be great to look at this node setup.  Endless possibilities.

I meant to go find the source code for the shader and put the albino feature into it nice and neat. But I can't find the source. I also meant to write a tutorial on how to build this particular function in nodes, but I'm too tired. It's only like 8 additional nodes but requires a lot of explanation.

For now, I've uploaded a VSS Skin Template shader for you here.

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

In there, look for VSSAlbinoSkin.mt5 and download that. (In the future, this may go away when I make a better version. So future readers, if it's gone, read further. I'll post some kind of note later about where to get it.)

In the attached screenshot, I show the four new parameters.

If you're not using the standard V4 textures, then you may need to adjust the Albino Match color to be the most common skin color in your particular texture set.

Have a look at the cards I rendered earlier to get an idea of what Strength, Range, and Gain are doing.

If you have questions or problems, come ask. I don't mind typing a bit - I'm just not into coding at the moment.

I left it in GC mode for P7 users. This is the version without material AO. If you want AO, try using light-based.

For HSVETM, change PM:Gamma to 1.0 and PM:SSS to .3 or less.

Also, when the skin is really white, you may want to tweak the SSS color. I changed it a bit, adding a little more blue from the original VSS SSS color.

To apply this, load your existing VSS control prop. Go into the Template Skin material, and load this albino skin shader. Then save the new VSS control prop for your use later.

Don't forget to synchronize after loading it.

Oh, thank you so much.  I can't to try it out.

Thanks, BB.  Speedy recovery.  This is the worst time of year to come down with the common cold or flu.

Thanks for these can't wait to try them out. Hope you feel well soon.

Thanks BB looking forward to giving them a try out.

Did anybody try this? Did it work right?

I have tried it out and it seems to work well.  However, I haven't done extensive testing just yet.

I have fooled with it nothing finished yet. I am working on this, it's still not right (the image not the shader), I'm just not sure why it looks wrong to me.

Hopefully Ill be able to get a completed render posted tonight some time after I get back from class or after my 40k game tonight.

Anyway I like it.  Like, dasquid, I love the pale touch to the skin while keeping in tune with the skin tone.

Now that i look at it I think I may want to re-do the cloth simulation as well.

Oooh - pretty. Thanks for the renders, people.

Because I had only tried it with a couple texture sets, I was curious if it generalized well or not. Looks good so far.

DAsquid, I am impressed.  That is going to be one very nice render.  Can't wait to see it finished.

DAsquid, I am impressed.  That is going to be one very nice render.  Can't wait to see it finished.

For some renders I performed but have not posted yet, I changed the SSS from it's red to light blue.  The change imparts a colder tone to the skin texture, very close to a black & white image.

HB: Very nice results. Thanks for sharing.