Ok guys, in the process of getting a character in the market place, am teamed up with someone on this one... LOTS AND LOTS of work and am succeeding.  Thanks for the help of a few, I figured how to add a "displacement only" pose, now I have another techincal question.

This question is for a face paint option.  I have the paint textures & displacements set, but want a different specular/glossy look then what the face is set on, like natural dried paint.  Since my partner already filled the "Alternate specular" properties on her original work with Binn, a few Edge Blends, I've looked for ways of adding the paint displacement map with a bit more glossy/lighter specular on the paints.  I tried adding the displacement map (total black/white) to the other functions (Binn, Edge Blend, etc...) experiementing and seeing if I can add another Edge Blend.  Hard to explain, but the results were moot.  So I looked for ways of adding something that would serve as an extra connection from the beginning, so I can play with the paint alone without disrupting the face speculars.

First I loaded "Blender", connected "alternate specular" to that, then added the originals to "input 1" & "Glossy" to "input 2", connecting "Glossy" to the displacement map.  It worked, but the face was slightly changed (brightness), and no matter what I did with the color of input1, it looked different (after test render results).  So I looked for something else.

So I deleted "blender" and added "Math Function" and left it at "Add".  I figured leaving the settings to "1.00000" would just searve as an extra connector, "add" being "strength".  I set both values to 1.00000 and spot rendered/compared.  It seems to do the trick I need.

I'm pretty confident of my finding, but I just want to confirm that it's the way to go.  What do you guys think?

...wolfie

 

BTW, just an extra question, what the heck does "Binn" and "Edge Blend" do anyways?  Why do we need so many "Edge Blends"?? lol  Lots to learn in Poser... sighs

Screencap of the material room would be nice visually.

Quote - First I loaded "Blender", connected "alternate specular" to that, then added the originals to "input 1" & "Glossy" to "input 2", connecting "Glossy" to the displacement map.  It worked, but the face was slightly changed (brightness), and no matter what I did with the color of input1, it looked different (after test render results).  So I looked for something else.

This sounded right until you got to the part I bolded.

You should have connected "Blending" to the displacement map, assuming it was black and white at the extremes. If not, it would take more work.

A Blender can be a "switch" or a mixer. A switch is how it behaves when the blending value is 0 or 1. When the blending value is in between, it is a mixer.

Did you leave it at .5? Then you were mixing the two values.

Hmm... must've forgot to click "email notification"...

Thanks for replying, guys, I'm getting a few screen grabs right now (material room and renders), then gonna try bagginbill's suggestion.  In my concept thinking, "Blend" either blends or goes "0" (void) one way and "1" (full strength) the other way, instead of "1" both ways.  But I'm gonna try that.

Crap, what's the "file size" limit here????????????????  I can't find that info :/

Well, this is one thing I hate about Rendo's forums, can't find info you need, so I uploaded the images to my DeviantArt's "Sta*sh", basically a hiding place from the public gallery.

 

First up http://sta.sh/#/d1p9vm6nr80y This is the original, as you can see the alternate specular is taken up, so I came up with this after some failed attempts...

http://sta.sh/#/diltnagnq2x  Here is what I mean by the "math" function, adding both functions as the math function is acting as an extra "plug-in".  As you can see in both renders (postworked next to the material room), there's no difference on her face speculars.

The concept here was to "add" the glossy effect to the paint job without disrupting the face properties.

The whole face paint not shown, have had some ideas stolen & marketed, so I'm just taking steps to not have that happen again.

...wolfie

People call at the most inconvinience times, so now I gotta go somewhere for a while, so it'll be a while before doing anything :/ 

Your stash links require login.

The image attachment limit is 200KB. There should be no problem doing that. I've posted thousands.

Finally back!

lol... 200kb is quite... choking.  Forgot not everyone's a DA member.  Anyways...

This is the original, as you can see the alternate specular node is taken up, so I had to came up with an alternative.

Here is what I mean by the "math" function, adding both functions as the math function is acting as an extra "plug-in".  As you can see in both renders (postworked next to the material room), there's no difference on her face speculars.

K... I just did a round of tests.

First, with the "math" node in place (the way I have it set up in image above), I spot rendered to find any seam problems, as well as spot rendered with the default face (no paint), no seams and no differences.  I pretty much decided that this is how I'm gonna do.  But I tried your suggestion as well.

After replacing the math node with the "Blender" node, left them both white (default), set the setting at 1.000, and spot rendered.  It does look good, but there is a slight difference in the way the light's reacting, just a tad... no seam problems that I saw though.  Changing the colors back and forth (black/white) made no difference.  What I'm thinking here, is that this is one light setting I'm rendering in, another light set may make more difference, don't know, so I'm just gonna stick with the "Math Function", it makes common sense to me that it's serving as a simple extra plug with strength settings & no color to play with.

It's good to evaluate and compare tactics, but what you're comparing to is unclear to me that you did it right.

Further, you're not doing a good job of testing what impact the math node has. Try using colored light and you will be in for a surprise.

This is the setup for changing the specular only where the displacement happens.

The displacement map I made has the word "Pattern" in it.

This drives a Blender node. The Blender's first input is the "original" specularity - in this case a Blinn node from EZSkin.

The second input is the "new" specularity for the raised surface - the Glossy node.

Because my displacement map has soft edges, there is not a sharp transition from Blinn to Glossy. Well that's not right, because although the "height" of the shiny area changes gradually, it should be completely shiny as soon as we're inside that area. By putting a 3 in the Blending value, I'm switch over to Glossy 3 times more quickly than the map value would otherwise do.

 

Here is the result on V4.

Now the specularity is not the whole story.

We can and should change the diffuse equation as well. The skin is using scatter and other nice things, but I want pink paint.

So - I also insert a Blender in the diffuse branch of nodes. The original is connected in the first input, and my new Diffuse node with pink color is in the second. I drive this again with the displacement.

Here is the result.

Now if you look closely in that last render, the "paint" seems bumpy. That is because the whole material gets the skin bump. It should not.

So let's go again. I need to switch to no bump (0) where the displacement happens.

I add another Blender, connect the original bump, and a 0.

You could realize that the second input is 0 and can be done by just setting it to black, but I'm trying to show you the standard approach over and over. Which is:

• Add a blender

• Connect the original effect to first input

• Connect the new effect to second input

• Connect the map that switches the effect to third input, and adjust intensity of switching in the Blending value itself (In my case, it was 3)

Here is the new result.

Finally, observe that in colored light (in this case, yellow) I get colored highlights to match.

Using your Math node you'll always have white highlights - not matching.

LOL @ BB... and congratulations! I'd never have thought of all that. Just goes to show you (well me) how clever the shader/material room can be! Now, just need to blend the "PATTERN" under the eyebrows...

Cheers,

Diolma

(PS - that last sentence is meant to be a joke, not a criticism..)

Well I'll be darned if I didn't lose enough hair today LOL!  I just did a bunch of rendering samples with a colored light set, was thinking that the face specular looked quite dull with your suggestion, but when I was about to screen capture the material room, I found my blunder.  In the blender1, I had input1 attatched to Blender2 instead of Binn. Blender2 is what I'm using for the bump map and displacement map (to omit the skin bump from the paint).

Anyways, just saved ourselves from waisting so much time (thankfully), so then I did everything right this time, your suggestion worked perfect!  Uploaded two renders, 1 with a cheap white paint job I just did up (not included in the package) & the other with default textures/settings.  The main light is purple (to our upper left a tad), the IDL light is ugly green (above/behind), and the back light is white (in back, slight left).

I thank you very much, bill, and sorry that I was about to challenge you (thankfully I found that mistake), as I don't just rely on people's suggestions and do my own homework, I do my very best to make things look right & natural to give my customers high quality/different/new ideas instead of just "copy/paste/sell", doing away from repetitives.  Which is why I'm thankful you're the one that helped!

I didn't bother with the diffuse color idea (yet) though, as my paint jobs are colorful already, but that is a great idea as well!  Thanks again, friend! :)

Now it's time to do the DS version, have a feeling I'll have to require my customers to use UberSurface2 (with duplicate everything like Poser), and I didn't really want to do that lol.

...wolfie