Helping my friend out with a character... I can't for the life of me figure out how to get this harsh line out of the lips when 'gloss' is applied. Can anyone help?

You will need to create a lip mask: that is to say, on a texture map, outline the lips only, inside that area, make a white area over the majority of the lips and blur the edge of it into black, but not running into or touching the edge of the lip area, but as close as you can get it. Use that image then as the map for the specular. It will make the glossiness fade out toward the edge of the lips and make a gradual fade rather than a stark line.

Laurie

Like this example... Can't remember if this is one that I made or somebody elses but it's easy enough to do in an image editor, use SnowSultan's seam guide for the appropriate figure as a template. Her guides have colored delineations for the texture or material regions of the mesh... looking at this one it could perhaps have a wee bit more blur, didn't test it.

http://www.snowsultan.com/3.html

Edit- Think this particular mask might be FleshForge's on ShareCG.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/46983/gallery/11/Poser/V4-Lip-Mask-Bitmap

Bagginsbill explains this technique in this thread...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2732384

How do I plug it in? Do I plug the image map into glossy then glossy into alt spec. OR plug the image map into the alt. spec. and then plug the glossy into the image map??

Well, we have no idea what your material room setup looks like ;).

Laurie

:) sorry bout that.

Then don't apply the gloss...simples. Or apply some through specular which you can adjust down to what suits. Why use a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

try this, IIRC (it's been a while since I had to use a lip mask)... run the mask into K's of the glossy node. See if this helps.

There's also some extra bells and whistles that you can add via some blender nodes.

If I use glossy on lips in a render I usually just postwork any problems in photoshop.

As an aside, you might want to take a look at some of these material room explainations if you are confused about the purpose of various nodes...

www.castleposer.co.uk/

good luck!

I tried my own, and the ones suggested on share CG.. I still get a harsh line :(

You'll probably need to plug that mask into any reflection as well. Looks like you used EZSkin or a similar material setup and that has reflection.

Laurie

Could be any number of things, not least of which are my suggestions :), I'm getting ready to head out to work so perhaps some kind soul can come to your aid (hint, hint). hopefully correcting and enlightening myself as a selfish bonus.

I'll be back some time this evening. I'm currently working on some toon style textures, so I'll post a successful glossy lip shader using a mask some time in the wee hours if no one has addressed your problem (or you solve the problem on your own).

Edit- Woops! Sorry Laurie, crosspost. I defer.

Yes Laurie :) My friend did use it lol.
Didn't think it was that noticeable. ;)

It's kind of embarrasing that I don't know the material room that well...

Quote - Yes Laurie :) My friend did use it lol.
Didn't think it was that noticeable. ;)

It's kind of embarrasing that I don't know the material room that well...

If you want embarassing....I've been using a version of Poser with the current material room for over 5 years and I still get nearly none of it ;). It's a constant bone of contention for me. LOL. I view it as a lot more difficult than it has to be while others seem to view it as more powerful. Seems to be no middle ground ;). Just don't feel bad that you don't know it...I think the majority of us don't know it...hehe.

Laurie

LOL

And you were right. It was the reflect nodes that kept making it have a harsh line. I wasn't sure where to plug in the image node, so I just unpluged everything from the reflect lol. It looks much nicer :)

Thank you all for the help!

Rather than start with the EZSkin shader, you could start with a simple shader with just the image maps plugged in.

Then run EZSkin on that. Might work better for you?

Dunno if EZSkin's default Lip mat zone shader will preserve trans maps or not offhand. But assuming it does...