TY.  Would like to give these a try.

Templar. Here is a test render-on left the Mc5 you posted yesterday-on right EZ Skin2

They both are using my Teeth shader rather than EZ skin's version.

EDIT: On the left-I replaced the face material with your material-

Here is the material. I've several versions-but this was used in the render

Quote - those teeth look fantastic!  Ill look it up

Attached is my latest version of this shader. I posted a gallery image that highlights the SSS.

and here we are with  the same shader back on Lee Perry-Smith.  I changed the diffuse/bump map and switch from displacement to normal mapping for bump. Other than those texture changes I lowered the skin specular by about 10%.

 

This shader is incredibly easy to switch to other caucasian characters!

 

You can see in the gallery image the effect that the SSS scatter colour nodes have on the look of the skin, if you look closely at the nose edges you will see veins.

Quote - Shvr! Looks interesting. How do they compare to BB's Elder Skin?

I got part of the idea from BB elder setup.

BBs elder setup uses cellular for a lot of the bump, I only use it on the nipples.

I came up with the bump setup for the skin awhile ago.

This has been one of my problems with SSS shader set ups and the texture map I'm working on--loss of color and loss of texture detail. It's been driving me crazy trying to figure out a way to fix both issues. I'm trying out your shader using the VSS prop.

The shader I have come up with is quite good at keeping the original texture colour, mainly thanks to the seperate diffuse layer.  Texture detail can be controlled directly with the surface_color parameter in the custom_scatter node.  Higher = harder or more detail preservation and less scattering visibility.  To get a good medium, both surface_color and mean_free_path need to be modified in opposites. Ones goes up, one goes down.

I would love to find a character vendor who would work with me to create a real SSS character for Poser!

EricWalters - Looking at the comparison between the two, what would you say needs to be changed with my shader?

To my eye perhaps a bit more reflectivity. The skin looks a tad dry-bu then again-we don't set an air temperature or humidity parameter in our renders. :-) Perhaps she just came out of a colder room?

Quote - The shader I have come up with is quite good at keeping the original texture colour, mainly thanks to the seperate diffuse layer.  Texture detail can be controlled directly with the surface_color parameter in the custom_scatter node.  Higher = harder or more detail preservation and less scattering visibility.  To get a good medium, both surface_color and mean_free_path need to be modified in opposites. Ones goes up, one goes down.

 

I would love to find a character vendor who would work with me to create a real SSS character for Poser!

 

EricWalters - Looking at the comparison between the two, what would you say needs to be changed with my shader?

The shader I am using now is quite a bit different to the one I posted earlier.  The biggest change is the specular skin layer, which looks much more realistic.  That and the SSS veins

You can see a close-up of this one in my gallery

Facial close up? Like to see the veins mentioned earlier.

Quote - Another render. trying out the shader in proper scenes to see how it handles things.

 

The shader I am using now is quite a bit different to the one I posted earlier.  The biggest change is the specular skin layer, which looks much more realistic.  That and the SSS veins

 

You can see a close-up of this one in my gallery

Attached Link: Whisper Gallery Image

I will do a close up of her face from the above image.  Unsure if the veins will show up in daylight conditions though.

I would love to see how my shader works on your character!

If you've got a current version of your shader I'll give it a shot! I'll load it onto the VSS prop and render right now.

Attached is the latest.

Image_map is Diffuse

Image_map_2 is bump

No specular texture in use at this time

If you could render the same image above, that'd be awesome for comparison

I'll give this a shot. Take a few minutes! Thanks!

I am guessing that your diffuse texture is very pale in skin colour?

Give me the average RGB colour of your skin texture and I will have a look.  I can see immediately that specular is too high, which is in part controlled by the diffuse texture.

pre-scatter colour is also driven by a desaturated diffuse node, if its overly pale, this will greyout the end result.

Sorry, it's probably overly pink.

while I try and get it figured out. Where in particular are you seeing the grey-out in your image?

Pretty much the entire skin renders grey and overly shiny.

On the right I have only modified the face (forgot to apply it to the other areas sorry!)

I changed the following :

Color_math_2 node
Value 1 : 199 (greyscale)
Value 2 : 232 (greyscale)

HSV node (connected the custom_scatter)
Saturation : 1.000
Value : 1.1

color_math node controls the blend between the SSS layer, and the diffuse layer. Increase value_2 to increase the diffuse amount, which will add in more texture detail at the cost of the skin looking harder and/or lower value_1 to decrease the intensity of the SSS effect

Color_math_2 node controls the amount of Skin and Oil specular. increase/decrease value_1 (always a greyscale color or the same red green and blue value) to change the overall shine of the skin itself. increase/decrease value_2 to change the intensity of the sharp bright highlights.

HSV node is used to reduce the amount of the red in the pre-scatter colour for the SSS. depending on the colour of the diffuse texture, and the intended amount of red in the skin, this node will need to be tweaked to prevent whiteout.

Color_ramp node's purpose is to seperate the eyebrows and makeup from the skin for seperate diffuse shading.  The settings by default work well for dark makup and black/brown eyebrows.  The colours used may need to be tweaked a little for lighter hair, or different skin tones to properly seperate them. Its preview should look black with white just where the eyebrows are, and any makeup (like eyeliner, shade)

Okay, hope I changed it correctly. Going to render.

Hmm, why is the surface color on the custom scatter node going into a turbulance node that ultimately goes into the Bump Map? Shouldn't the surface color go into the color map?

The surface_color parameter is not so much what colour the surface is, but what light does not pass into the skin, and is reflected instead. the darker this parameter, the more light gets into the skin for SSS to happen. This gives the appearance of softer or less dense skin. at least that is what I have observed.

You could plug in your diffuse map and it would give you a sortof skin look, but bright areas will have a hard look, while dark areas will be very soft and blurred.

The turbulance node simply gives a slight variation to the softness of the skin to help break up uniformity. the amount of change is about 2-3 lumins. I use the bump map to control scale just to add further random-ness to it.

Top Row : Mean Free Path 0.1

Middle Row : Mean Free Path 1.0

Bottom Row : Mean Free Path 10.0

Column 1 : Surface Colour 0,0,0

Column 2 : Surface Colour 50,50,50

Column 3 : Surface Colour 100,100,100

Column 4 : Surface Colour 150,150,150

Column 5 : Surface Colour 200,200,200

Column 6 : Surface Colour 250,250,250

That is very helpful!

Quote - Here is an example of surface_color and mean_free_path and what effect they have on the final result.

 

Top Row : Mean Free Path 0.1

Middle Row : Mean Free Path 1.0

Bottom Row : Mean Free Path 10.0

Column 1 : Surface Colour 0,0,0

Column 2 : Surface Colour 50,50,50

Column 3 : Surface Colour 100,100,100

Column 4 : Surface Colour 150,150,150

Column 5 : Surface Colour 200,200,200

Column 6 : Surface Colour 250,250,250

Silly question-how do you get Poser to show a numerical RGB panel? I get either a wheel or a series of bars-no RGB

Quote - That is very helpful!

Quote - Here is an example of surface_color and mean_free_path and what effect they have on the final result.

 

Top Row : Mean Free Path 0.1

Middle Row : Mean Free Path 1.0

Bottom Row : Mean Free Path 10.0

Column 1 : Surface Colour 0,0,0

Column 2 : Surface Colour 50,50,50

Column 3 : Surface Colour 100,100,100

Column 4 : Surface Colour 150,150,150

Column 5 : Surface Colour 200,200,200

Column 6 : Surface Colour 250,250,250

Eric, when you click a colour paramter, that chooser comes up with the rainbow looking box on it.  In the top-right corner of that box is a little RGB icon, click that.

Its clear that EZSkin is either adding or keeping alot more red from the original texture compared to mine.

Question : Do you like the red-ness or prefer the more nuetral look of my shader?  I personally like mine better, I find the EZ skin to look too red.  Some highlight areas of my shader are white-ing out though, which I will work on.

Eric, click on the color area you want to change. In the color box that comes up there will be an icon in the upper right of the box that is red, green and blue. Click on that an the system advanced color box comes up.

When the advanced box comes up you can assign any color you want to a custom color swatch.

If you are on a Mac, you may need a better color picker utility such as Antetype Color Picker available here

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/34633/antetype-color-picker-

Or, on a PC, hold down Ctrl while clicking the color chip.  It will open the RGB panel directly.

I did not know that!

EDIT: It wants Lion 10.7 which Apple does not sell- download only. Crap. I am stuck with 10.6.8 since Apple wont allow me to buy 10.8- (Might be able to buy over phone from Apple-it is not listed-but others were able to get a code last year.)

Thanks for the tip. Mac-yes. I'll try the antetype. No seeing an RGB box to type into.

Quote - Eric, click on the color area you want to change. In the color box that comes up there will be an icon in the upper right of the box that is red, green and blue. Click on that an the system advanced color box comes up.

When the advanced box comes up you can assign any color you want to a custom color swatch.

If you are on a Mac, you may need a better color picker utility such as Antetype Color Picker available here

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/34633/antetype-color-picker-

Quote - Eric, when you click a colour paramter, that chooser comes up with the rainbow looking box on it.  In the top-right corner of that box is a little RGB icon, click that.

 

Its clear that EZSkin is either adding or keeping alot more red from the original texture compared to mine.

Question : Do you like the red-ness or prefer the more nuetral look of my shader?  I personally like mine better, I find the EZ skin to look too red.  Some highlight areas of my shader are white-ing out though, which I will work on.

Just an observation, but even with the side-by-side comparisons you're not seeing a full enough context to be able to make much of a judgement on how successful this combination of mesh/textures/shaders is. For instance, with Erics last renders using that particular HDRi on the envirinment sphere, I might expect to be seeing slightly more neutral colouration occurring, but it's hard to tell.

Latexluv's last render doesn't look horribly unnatural to my eyes given the ambiguity of the scene (more natural than the orangy tones in their current profile image in any case) although I prefer the EZskin version a page back.

What might be useful here would be to have a figure in the background of the HDRi to make some kind of comparison to, but even then the assumption would be that we would be able to match the camera exposure settings used for that particular reference which wouldn't be the same for all environments. 

Perhaps a useful experiment might be to take a photographic reference of a similar subject with a known lighting setup (say, a studio shot of a model) and try to replicate that with whatever shaders people are using. 

Anyone know a photographer or have any wide shots of a model studio session showing the lighting setup?

Hows this?

Using an image from the Lee Perry-Smith download page I created a new shader. I placed the image directly into the scene next to his head as you can see above which allowed me to side-by-side compare my render to the photo. I also recreated the basic scene he is in with a dark blue backdrop just behind him, with a single light not too far away from his face.

There is a problem with the colour going blue-ish around the eyes and mouth, and yellowish on the ears. Also there is too much SSS red in the shadow of the nose. Im going to try and fix these up.

Interesting. The SSS is also over-lightening the shadow areas at the nostril-crease & the neck (see against the background). Have you tried the latest bb suggestion of lowering IDL intensity to avoid blow out (although that might not be the problem here)?

Do you ever use light arrays rather than a single spot? I've just gone back to using a 5spot array (5spotlights arranged in close proximity to one another, simulating an area light - each set at 20% of whatever you want the overall intensity). Amazing how it softens transitions at the terminator but also allows for higher SSSvalues without losing so much of the softness. Increases render times though. You could alternatively try a single spot with a larger ambient circle shape positioned behind it.

Looking nice though. Feels like you're into quite fine territory as far as adjustments go. Sometimes I guess you just have to go with it.

I fixed the scene to match the photo better. Im using a point light encased in a hollowed out half-ellipse that is completely reflective, with 12 IDL bounces. this gave much more accurate lighting.

I use IDL intensity of .6 most of the time, like here.

Quote - A note for those new to the poser material room

 

Reflection, Refraction and Alternate Diffuse are actually all diffuse parameters.  You can plug any diffuse or specular node into any of these and they will work just as if they were plugged into just the alternate diffuse parameter.

Alternate Specular is however different and will not accept any special diffuse nodes (like scatter nodes)

Mostly true. When transparency is involved, the Reflection_Color channel is hacked by misguided P4 era logic, so it's not quite the same clean math as Alternate_Diffuse.

Once I discovered this, I stopped using the others - I add everything I need together with Color_Math:Add nodes and then connect to Alternate_Diffuse.

Color sliders/ RGB sliders... you don't need an additional system color picker to do this.

Hi Primorge

When I click on the vertical RGB- ALL I get is a Color Wheel-no HSV, no numerical fields. I wonder if it is a glitch with OSX 10.6.8? What OS are you using?

Quote - Eric Walters, the standard Mac OS system color picker has had numeric entry fields for RGB for as long as I can remember, see illustration.

Color sliders/ RGB sliders... you don't need an additional system color picker to do this.

Templar

Looking pretty good there! BB came up with something called the "BB Max Scatter Trick" to deal with the bluish issues. Take a look at EZ skin and maybe you can apply that to your set up.

 Eric

Quote - Photo|render

 

Hows this?

Using an image from the Lee Perry-Smith download page I created a new shader. I placed the image directly into the scene next to his head as you can see above which allowed me to side-by-side compare my render to the photo. I also recreated the basic scene he is in with a dark blue backdrop just behind him, with a single light not too far away from his face.

There is a problem with the colour going blue-ish around the eyes and mouth, and yellowish on the ears. Also there is too much SSS red in the shadow of the nose. Im going to try and fix these up.

Hmmm, you would think that an up to date OS (or relatively) would demonstrate improvements rather than loss of features... I have heard a lot of criticism of OSX after intel, though. Believe it or not I'm using OSX Tiger (10.4.11) on a Power Mac G5 PPC (enables me to run classic)... Please refrain from laughter, I really like my computer plus I can swim around in a vat of viruses unscathed. There is a sense of being in a steampunk style time machine, though.

...now if my own body were so virus resistant as my computer, I seem to have picked up that nasty flu bug that's an epidemic in the states right now. agony.

Unfortunately I seem to have lost some of that softness, which I will try and get back

No laughter here. It may be PoserPro2012 and OS 10.6.8. I do have access to RGB in other programs. I'll fire up PP2010 and see if it lets me address the RGB

Take care and get plenty of rest.

Quote - Hmmm, you would think that an up to date OS (or relatively) would demonstrate improvements rather than loss of features... I have heard a lot of criticism of OSX after intel, though. Believe it or not I'm using OSX Tiger (10.4.11) on a Power Mac G5 PPC (enables me to run classic)... Please refrain from laughter, I really like my computer plus I can swim around in a vat of viruses unscathed. There is a sense of being in a steampunk style time machine, though.

...now if my own body were so virus resistant as my computer, I seem to have picked up that nasty flu bug that's an epidemic in the states right now. agony.

Looks like you are on the right track!

Quote - Here is my latest.  This is the original shader I posted before, tweaked to better match the colouring of the photo.

 

Unfortunately I seem to have lost some of that softness, which I will try and get back