Here is a WIP, featuring M4 sporting the free Tyrese texture, VSS PR4 shader, and the BBEye, auto fitted to M4 by a script I'm writing. If the script does its job, it will load the BBEye correctly onto any figure, even one I've never seen before.

Crits are welcome - I especially am struggling with getting the specularity right, and compensating for the difference between sRGB and GC.

This was rendered in Poser Pro 2010 with IDL, but NOT with render GC - using shader GC only for the moment. So this is a P8-style render.

gets in line to wait for this

Honestly, this is awesome, I have a character I am working on using that texture and that is about what I have been trying to achieve for him. 

Since I don't have PP2010 (come on tax return) I am glad to see the P8 style render.

Good to see you back writing major Poser scripts.

Oh that will really be nice I'm looking forward to it :-)

What is your SSS color on him? Looks like you have avoided the usual pitfalls with black skin. His nose does have some red glow, though.

Quote - Crits are welcome - I especially am struggling with getting the specularity right, and compensating for the difference between sRGB and GC. This was rendered in Poser Pro 2010 with IDL, but NOT with render GC - using shader GC only for the moment. So this is a P8-style render.

Shader GC being that 2.2-based gamma-correction, or the corrected-sRGB you and KobaltKween talked about? Have you used the latter much?

Quote - What is your SSS color on him? Looks like you have avoided the usual pitfalls with black skin. His nose does have some red glow, though.

The same as in PR3 I think - RGB 255, 51, 0, with the SSS amount set to .3. Even setting it to 0 does not get rid of that redness - it is from using IDL and gamma corrected luminance. The bounced light is over-emphasized due to the shader GC. It is only avoidable by making the shaders not do the final GC.

Quote - > Quote - Crits are welcome - I especially am struggling with getting the specularity right, and compensating for the difference between sRGB and GC. This was rendered in Poser Pro 2010 with IDL, but NOT with render GC - using shader GC only for the moment. So this is a P8-style render.

Shader GC being that 2.2-based gamma-correction, or the corrected-sRGB you and KobaltKween talked about? Have you used the latter much?

Well it's shader GC at 2.2, but with an adjustment in the whole process that changes the equation. I'm not actually seeking math purity of sRGB here so it is hard to explain the math as I am making it up. I'm trying to make a parameter that "artists" will find helpful. We could call it "contrast" but it's more complicated than that.

Yes! A VSS update!  Can't wait.  The renders look promising.  Will the new script create procedural bump maps or will it rely on texture maps?  It would be great if it would eliminate the need for specular and bump maps.

It looks better than any eye shader I've done!

The only thing I could say is, sometimes the white in the eye is not completely white. Especially in people with high blood pressure, anemia, etc. And sometimes you can barely see some veins in there.

 But you would probably have to put the camera quite near the eyes to notice that.

Quote - Yes! A VSS update!  Can't wait.  The renders look promising.  Will the new script create procedural bump maps or will it rely on texture maps?

Either or both. I have never seen a Poser/Daz-character bump map that was better than my procedural. But if you really want to use one, you can. Maybe you have a good one. 

Quote - It would be great if it would eliminate the need for specular and bump maps.

That's why I'm doing this update. I honestly don't think the bump in skin is character specific, and you should be able to use any color map alone, as I've done here.

Quote - It looks better than any eye shader I've done!

The only thing I could say is, sometimes the white in the eye is not completely white. Especially in people with high blood pressure, anemia, etc. And sometimes you can barely see some veins in there.

 But you would probably have to put the camera quite near the eyes to notice that.

I am not going to be supplying any textures with the eye - you will use whatever you want.

The renders above are showing, from a distance, this texture that you can see on my free stuff page for the Antonia BBEye. (The original version - I'm changing the geometry now.)

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

I will not be distributing that texture, or any other at the moment. But if you look at the render in the linked page, you will see the details possible in a closeup.

I am remapping the eye to work with existing eye mappings from well-known figures.

In these renders, I have not done that yet. I was simply testing the automated fits. 

Note that the eye shaders will include simple parameters to:

Change the tint of the sclera (the white part).

Change the tint of the iris (the color part).

Change the strength of the dark outer ring of the iris.

And because of the script, you will be able to use V4 eye maps on V3 or Alyson or Ryan, Ryan maps on M4 or V4, etc - mix and match. These will be universal eyes that take any texture and fit any figure.

Quote - Either or both. I have never seen a Poser/Daz-character bump map that was better than my procedural. But if you really want to use one, you can. Maybe you have a good one. 

No I haven't.  I sometimes edit the color maps in Photoshop to get a more natural color but finding a good bump-specular combination has always been a headache.  So when will the update be ready? ;)  (I had to ask)

I will post a WIP PR4 skin shader to get feedback tomorrow.

Fantastic! Thanks.

Quote - I will post a WIP PR4 skin shader to get feedback tomorrow.

So that being 1 hr from now here, I can't wait. ;)

The eye script is what I am really looking forward to. Your last skin shader can hold me over (at least until I see more of the new one). The new geometry eye add so much to a render, but I can never seem to get the placement right.

Hopefully we will see this soon.  BB's got a birthday coming up, and if he celebrates before finishing, he will be totally useless afterwards.

Hopefully we will see this soon.  BB's got a birthday coming up, and if he celebrates before finishing, he will be totally useless afterwards.

May I suggest a few shots of Powers Irish (smooth)chased with a Rogue Brutal IPA*.* No bad aftereffects.. (I just got turned on to it)..haar*

Bagginsbill, this is so encouraging. I have really been struggling with Black skins and GC, and mostly I just end up not using GC on my Black characters, because of the pinky-grey washed out look. This looks so much better.

Quote - > Quote - What is your SSS color on him? Looks like you have avoided the usual pitfalls with black skin. His nose does have some red glow, though.

The same as in PR3 I think - RGB 255, 51, 0, with the SSS amount set to .3. Even setting it to 0 does not get rid of that redness - it is from using IDL and gamma corrected luminance. The bounced light is over-emphasized due to the shader GC. It is only avoidable by making the shaders not do the final GC.

I haven't ever used or operated Gamma Correction. Don't know or care what it is yet(JUST purchased Poser 8 to upgrade from Poser 6, ten minutes ago!)

You can use a simple blur map to compensate for the GC'ed light in the nose. Well, I'd imagine so anyway.

Sometimes its best to use a tiny map( or just a series of well placed Tile-node circles) to compensate for the too-much light in the nose.

Re-think this. It could work.

it looks nice IMVHO.  nose doesn't appear red on my monitor. Gamma Correction is a means to move beyond the muddy, low-dynamic-range poser4 renders that useta be the norm in poser 5 - 7.

Quote - I will post a WIP PR4 skin shader to get feedback tomorrow.

No I didn't. I got really sick (flu maybe?) Sunday evening and I was in bed all day Monday. I'm at work today but hopefully this evening I will post a test shader for you guys to play with.

Regarding the glow caused by IDL, this is due to the shader producing gamma-corrected colors, and the luminance of these false colors being used for lighting pre-calc as well as final render. I wonder if there is some way for the shader to detect its use in pre-calc and during that phase produce linear colors. Hmmm.

I'm at work and cannot play, but I wonder if any other intrepid shader masters can experiment and see if one of the nodes can be employed to detect the pre-calc phase. Maybe one of the specular nodes won't fire during pre-calc?

Your other trick to detect if something was gamma corrected first didn't work on this I take it.

When someone gets a chance, what is this pre-calc thingy?

My GC detection trick does work. The trick there is to have a SimpleColor node with middle-gray RGB(128,128,128) in it and compare that to the number .5. If render GC is on, the measured value will be less than .5. When middle-gray is less than .5 I disable the shader GC.

The problem is that shader GC is enabled (correctly) but it affects the indirect diffuse lighting pre-calculation. Objects near each other emit light on each other. (Such as the bottom of the nose and the skin under the nose - they light each other.)

We want shader GC to correct the colors for display on the monitor, but this messes up the diffuse inter-reflection (IDL) calculation. Gamma corrected colors are not being presented as linear values but the lighting equation is based on linear values. The boosted values cause the lighting to be boosted, and this is undesirable.

The use of IDL without render GC is really troublesome. The whole point of IDL is to get accurate secondary lighting, but all lighting is inaccurate as it appears in the final image without gamma correction.

I could skip the shader GC altogether, but then it will look like crap unless you do a bunch of compensations - the kind we always did - like adding fill lights and setting shader response values to unrealistic levels. Doing that sort of thing is counterproductive when the intent is to use and benefit by a built-in accurate lighting and rendering model.

I could also build half-GC into the shader - where it does the incoming anti-GC, but does not do that final render GC. Then you'd have to do the final GC as a post-processing step on the whole image, outside of Poser. Or you could do it with my artistic lens. But all of these other tactics are ugly compared to just enabling IDL and GC, ala Poser Pro 2010.

Yikes, that sounds complicated (I'm way too inexperienced to help and I still need to load P8 onto my PC).  Too bad you can't just add an AO node to your shader to compensate.  :( 

My plan is to make multiple versions with different UV mappings so it can use various popular maps without having to scale the images in the shader. I did already make a shader for it where you can adjust the center and diameter for both the sclera and the iris. With this node setup you can make any texture work on the original BBEye. But making those adjustments is tedious.

Instead I'm producing multiple OBJ files, each with different UV layout.

The loader script is a pose file with nothing in it but a call to a Python script. So it's a Py-Pose file I suppose. So far I just have one OBJ for V4 mapping, and one OBJ for Antonia mapping. To load the V4 mapping, you double click the BBEye-V4 Py-Pose file. To load the Antonia mapping, you double click the BBEye-Antonia Py-Pose file.

You don't have to load the correct Py-Pose file for different figures - any will work on all figures. The choice is made entirely by which mapping style you want. You can load Antonia mapped eyes on V4 or M4 or Ryan or Alyson or V3 or Sydney or Jessie or James. You can do the same with V4 mapped eyes.

The loader script examines the eyes on the currently selected figure. It measures them and figures out where the center of rotation is for each. Then it loads the desired OBJ file for each eye, positioning the BBEye to line up with the figure's eye and parents the BBEye so it tracks movement and rotation of the original. It hides the original eye automatically. The next part I haven't done yet, but expect it will be workable. The script will examine the geometry of the figure's existing eye, and scale the BBEye to match automatically. I'm hoping to measure the existing iris as well, and scale the BBEye iris and cornea to match.

The final step I hope to do is examine the existing shader on the figure's real eye, locate the maps, and copy them into the BBEye shader.

Hopefully, if all goes will, the workflow is:

Load a figure.

Load some textures onto the figure.

Load the desired BBEye loader.

That's you you'll have to do.

If you want to change eye maps, you would:

Load some new textures onto the figure.

Click the BBEye Refresh pose file to copy the maps into the BBEyes.

I also already have pose files that hide the BBEyes and reveal the original eyes, and vice versa.

If I do this right, you'll even be able to load the BBEye on dogs, cats, horses, etc. You'll need to know which mapping to deal with, and if I don't have a mapping, you'll have to use the generic version with parameter nodes for adjusting the center and scale of the sclera and the iris in UV space.

The eye script keeps sounding better and better.

Interesting.

Any news on when the new shader will be ready for testing?

Sorry I'm so slow on this. I didn't expect to be working very much this week but now I'm out of town and working long hours. The files are at home and I'm a little mixed up as to which is which.

I'll be returning home tomorrow night and I'm pretty sure I'll post Friday.

The important thing to examine here is how the specular behaves - that's the dominant new thing. I'd like to see results, good or bad, and perhaps comparisons with PR3 using various textures. I don't have a lot of textures, nor a lot of time to test. So if you guys think this shader is wonky, please let me know. It's got quite a few new ideas in it.

Do full size on both, and do a flip comparison. Tell me what you think.

I already know I did something wrong, because I'm getting very different results with render GC off - the shader GC is coming out much brighter. With correct math, they would come out identical. I missed something.

Sigh. Can't tweak much today - have to work.

The specular looks nice!  I'm working on something now but I look forward to trying this in a moment.  Happy times ;)

Not bad at all. Any chance of seeing that without the texture ? I'm a newbie at poser so I may be totally off base here, but that really seems like most of the work is being done by the texture. Would be cool to see what kind of shading you get without it.

First off Thank you so much.

I'll gladly play with, I mean test it for a bit. Is there setting in lights you perfer to see?

The following images are new shader upfront and old one behind, then reversed.

Question: does the new shaders look more natural and realistic?

In GeneralNutt's renders, I cannot tell which is which. So, I guess it's not an improvement. I think up close it might be, though, especially if the bump map in the texture set is lousy and you have to not use it. I don't know.

I've done a few tests and I'd say the new specular system is definately more natural and realistic.  I tried putting specular masks in the PM:Shine Level node and it gave good results.  I like the new MicroBump specular setting and it would be nice to have more control over it (or maybe I need to better understand it first)   I also haven't been able to fully get my head around the Diffuse Contrast feature and I'm not sure how to use it properly.

My mother is turning 70 tommorow so haven't had time to test it fully but it's definatly an improvement over VSS3.  I'll be doing more tests after the weekend.

With posers slider to view the difference, you can really see a difference. but without it, it is difficult. If you look at the rim lit area's you can see how they change. So far, as a whole I think I like the older version better, but I really like the new set up with the maps at the begining of the new one. I think I want to tweek the new one more to see if it grows on me. Any idea's how to lessen the greying effect? And what is that PM node, the one on the bottem all about (show ssse)?

I think that one's to turn SSS on and off.

I think I agree with Vestmann on the shine looks more natural, again I want to test that more though. The Natasha skin is DAZ elite skin and I usually tweek it a bit to get where I want, but didn't here. It also comes with a specular map that I think I should try Vestmann's idea and plug it into Shine level. The Ella map is from DMR, and I love these DMR maps, but they have no specular map, and thus work better without tweeking.  It would be nice if somehow VSS could have a feature to toss the specular map into the shine level instead. I think that's what all the specular maps I have really are anyway, no?

SSSe is a leftover from me debugging the shader. If you set it to 1 it shows the energy reaching the SSS layer of the shader. Or coming out of it - can't remember.

I thought I made it so that if you have a specular map in the target, that is multiplied with (essentially plugged into) Shine Level. I'll have to check.

It's been a source of confusion on my part as to whether specular maps represent what I call "shine" or "shine level".