This question goes out to all the Poser users (or even vendors) that have been using Poser for many years...for all you Poser artists who have an exceptional eye for detail...and are very good in recognizing skin textures...something that can only come with vast experience and a very good trained eye!...

 

This person makes some outstanding Poser renders with fantastic lighting and all his characters have fantastic skin texture!...each and every one of them!...

 

I have send him several messages asking him which lights does he use and which skin textures...but i have gotten no response from him.  And i know that he receives my messages...because every day he uploads new renders...meaning that he is very well active on DA!...its just plain to see that he does not want to divulge his secrets.

 

So my only other resort that i can think of is to ask some one that has a keen eye on skin textures and lighting in Poser...maybe to make an estimate what textures he might be possibly using for his characters...yes...i know that this is very far fetched...and its like going out on a wild goose chase...but there is nothing else that i can think off to get an answer!...the only information that he gives is that he uses SSS skin shaders...but that is too generalized of an answer...many characters make use of SSS...even all the characters that i render use SSS shaders...but my characters dont even come close to the ones that he makes!...my theory is that he makes his own skin shaders...but again...thats only a theory.  In all my years that i have been using Poser i have never come across a skin texture that looks as good as the ones he renders!...so the real question here i guess is...is it the lighting rig that makes ordinary textures look this good?...or is it the skin texture itself...or both?...

 

One thing is a fact though...it definitely is possible to achieve this kind of result in Poser...if only he would make known how he does it!...

 

Link:  WARNING FOR WHOM IT MAY CONCERN...MATURE CONTENT!...

http://metalhed13.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

Thx for viewing

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

based on two I could view without logging in, it appears he uses hdri on envsphere, inf lite for sun, and maybe fill lite to get rid of IDL artifacts.  when they use one of those lite sets from poser 7 or earlier, it doesn't look like that.

I think Miss Nancy is right about the Envsphere as main light source. Add a good skin shader and see that your textures don't have burned in speculars, and you should come close.

 

Ah, yes, Metalhed13. I've favorited several of his (or hers) images. I've not tried to message him about his lighting. I've wanted to but just hadn't yet. He does use a free photo editing program called PhotoScape, which I've downloaded but haven't installed yet because I mainly use Paintshop 8.

sheedee3d :
It's not so much the textures "he uses diffrent textures" as it is shaders.
It's all about the shaders.think there's some diffrences in the shaders in diffrent renders.
It's the shader that's giving it the look he's getting along with the kind of lights hes using.

Don't know for sure but he might even be giving the shader a small glow .
make a shader in to a light sorse in a few of the renders.

I could make guesses for days but the best bet is to try diffrent shader ,lights render settings.

Can't remember what DAZ called them now but DAZ made a big deal about a realistic textures set a while back.

Ok, so this might make me sound like a d##k. I think that his images are just...ok, my stuff looks better than that.

 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2480813&user_id=23947&np&np

 

Quote - Ok, so this might make me sound like a d##k. I think that his images are just...ok, my stuff looks better than that.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2480813&user_id=23947&np&np

 

LMAO ,I agree yours is killer :)
your only come off as a B*%c# if you don't tell us about ya texture,shader,lights & render settings :tt2:

Ok, here are a couple of renders using V4's default Hi-res textures (everybody should have a version of these)

 

here are the render and skin settings

The V4 textures are the basic hi-res rextures from DAZ. The eye textures are based on a package I got at DAZ from Mindvision GDS. I changed some of the shaders for them but used a bit of the old shaders so I can't really post up those. eye lashes are from Druscillagoth by Fabiana. I set the gamma on female lashes to .45 to make them thicker looking.

Your a scholar and a gentleman ghostship2 .
Sincerely appreciated.

I recommend sheedee3d reading these 2 tutorials on lights IDL:
http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?70674-Lighting-Rendering-amp-in-Poser-Part-One

in 3 page you have the lights to download, but if you read it you will learn a LOT (and they are short, simple and very well explained tutorials), my renders improved 100% after I read those PDF ,and you'll be much closer to those results

ps.I was convinced that metalhed1 rendering in vray....

One essential thing about skin textures is lighting. Bagginsbill has often pointed out that Poser scenes tend to be 'overlighted' by far. Since I have pushed myself deeper into improving my figures skins, the only environment I can accept is the following:

1. I always (say again: ALWAYS) use IDL nowadays, long gone are the days where you struggled with AO (trying to fake IDL). And because I build real scenes around the character even for a portrait, which reflects the light in a correct way and gives true reflections where needed, I have completely abandoned IBL as well.

2. I have reduced light powers far below what I had been used to do in former times. I apply an environmental sphere for outdoors, where the image is not plugged to the diffuse at all, but instead to the ambience color of the sphere, ambience value set to 1 or below. Usually in outdoor scenes I have but one single infinite light, adjusted to around 40 to 45 percent, to serve as sun. If your lights are too strong, skin becomes very ugly, SSS does not work properly, and color tints may occur. My standard startup scene in Poser contains Bagginsbills (free) Light Meter and his (free) Gamma Meter, so I can always make sure I don't overlight the scenes. For indoor scenes, if there is a window I also use the environmental sphere outside to cast the diffuse light, which is needed, through the window. I may add an infinite light as sun, if I want the sun to enter the room. If there is only indoor lighting (lamps), I position an appropriate spot or point light exactly where the light props are in the scene. Again turning them WAY DOWN, and again using IDL gives the necessary realistic corner shadows also on skin. Usually I adjust IDL quality to not less than 7 bounces for the final production render.

3. Even if vendors claim to use SSS in their skins, differences in quality are huge, and sometimes you even find very funny constructions in their materials. I have learnt to use Snarlygribbly's (free) EZSkin on any human skin I use, because it gives the best results ever.

4. I always use true reflection on any material, always. Long gone are the days with fake reflection images, to the trained eye they always look wrong and ugly. So I always have raytracing active, sometimes just one bounce is enough, in reflective environments I turn it up to 2 or even 3 according to the number of reflective surfaces being close to each other.

5. I always, always use a python script to set texture filtering to NONE (or at least CRISP) in any texture image in my scene. And I use Gamma Correction, so I make sure for any image (except bump or displacement or transparency maps) to select 'apply render settings' for Gamma Correction of 2.2 and switch Gamma Correction in the render settings.

There are a number of more tweaks possible, don't expect a one click solution. Shader rate and pixel samples.

I never ever complain about render times for my settings. First, during building the scene, I use way reduced pre production settings, which I only change against my final production settings for the final render. Second: Quality always comes at a price. There are hundreds of portrait images posted which are embarrassing in quality, just because people don't want to allow the time for a good quality render. Me, after my scene is set, I start my high quality final render and go to bed. In the morning before I go to work, I save my image, and if I discover it is not even finished I leave the computer alone and save my image after return from work.

Hope I could give some helpful suggestions, cheers from Martin

Hey Martin,

I think I have to disagree with you on the hi quality render settings and leaving a render over night.

I've done that too but found that some of the render settings are best left down low because they don't affect quality enough to justify a 10 hour render.

Most of what I know about this comes from ArtBee here on renderosity and personal experience. IDL quality and IC don't matter much if the scene is well lit. Pixel samples is set to three...I usuualy render at much larger resolutions so 3 is all you really need for this.

Here is a render with M3 that took about 15 min with the same settings that I posted previously . As you can see from my signature I'm not using a super fast processor and these setting help out when I have to render multiple pics for a project.

I try to avoid using field of view blur because that takes nearly forever. Instead I render out a z-depth pic and open that in photoshop for post render bluring.

Ok, I figured I should post up a DOF render so here it is. DOF is done in Photoshop an takes about 1 min to set up and a few seconds to render out in Photoshop. If I had done this in Poser it would have been an all-nighter render.

Hi Ghostship2,

I agree completely with you that quality settings for renders only make sense if they really enhance the quality, me too I try to keep them as low as necessary. I also use from time to time a depth-z render and do the DOF in Paintshop postwork, just like you.

What I wanted to make very clear (from my personal point of view) was, that the desired quality of the final render should dictate your settings, and not impatience or 'being in a hurry today, but I want to post this anyway'.

Sometimes I am a bit annoyed when people think they have a right to have a perfect image with a single mouseclick, and on top of that it has to come out within a minute, otherwise they abandon... Looking around in the galleries you can find so many posts where people even admit they didn't want to use raytrace or real reflections or IDL because 'it takes so much time'. So they prefer to post a crappy image rather than waiting for a good one. But then they start complaining why others have so great quality images, and they assume that those posting great images must have some secret settings to achieve perfect images within a second...

Some people post that they have been working on their image for an extraordinary loooong time, which is one hour. Heee? If I start a project (I consider each of my images a project) I have a workflow beginning long before I even fire up Poser, and then in Poser I usually work between 2 and 10 hours on an image, to work out all materials in a way I want them, fine tune poses and expressions, lighting, camera settings, and so on. Then, before I post any of my images, I leave them and hide them in some drawer for at least a week or so, to forget about them. Because, seeing the image again after a week, helps to detect immediately the flaws which you could no longer see when working on it initially. So I rework, leave it again hidden in a drawer (just like my traditional paintings and drawings in charcoal or water colors), and only if one day I occasionally pull it out and say by myself 'wow, was it me doing this?? I can find nothing to improve here...', then I am ready to post my image.

Seeing that the thread starter sheedee3d seems to be a newbie, I wanted to share this, and that I don't even fear long render times, if NEEDED for the desired quality. Trying to encourage people to go for quality instead of mass or quick posting ;-)

 

I like your render- and EZSkin settings, they are very similar to mine. You seem to have a smaller machine though, because of your bucket size, mine is optimized at 32 and even has no speed losses at 64, but then (depending on the images content) sometimes a single bucket can get stuck for long time while the rest of the image is already finished, that's why I remain with 32.

Only I always put my Texture Filter to NONE. I put all efforts in receiving, buying or producing high quality and high resolution textures (like 4000 or 5000x5000), so I really hate when Poser messes around with them. Only for far distance props or figures I can of course activate 'QUALITY' instead and reduce ressources, because the occurring blurring doesn't disturbe in that case. But for closeup skin textures, like the thread starter asked, I always switch texture filter to 'NONE'. (Didn't try the 'CRISP', because I never felt a need for it, maybe its okay, too).

I have a question about your M3 render, do you use Bagginsbills Light Meter? This image seems a bit overexposed to me, which flattens the SSS and reduces saturation in the skin color? Just asking, because that Light Meter really made me understand how the typical 'Poser disease' too much of light (even if Gamma Correction is applied) can somehow destroy the variety in textures. The Light Meter helped me to disciplin myself and I got used to far far lower light intensity settings than I had used all the years before.

Hey Martin,

I have to claim ignorance when it comes to the light meter. I downloaded it a long time ago but could never firure out what to make of it rendered. I re-downloaded it this morning to see if I had missed a PDF file on it's usage. No PDF. I guess I'd have to go through posts here at the poser forum to find info on it.

Anyway, What I did find out is that the texture map that I was using was the pasty-lilly-white version so I replaced all those maps with the darker more tanned looking maps. Here ia it rendered out. No lights were changed, only the texture maps. And again, not sure what the light meter is telling me but there it is.

BB's Light Meter - the white dots will tell you the relative intensity of your light, the inner circle is for diffuse and the outer ring for specular. If the light intensity is too low the dots will disappear completely; as the intensity of the light is raised they get bigger until they disappear and white is replaced with reds and yellows. Quickest test is just to put the Light Meter in an empty scene, add a direct light and play with its intensity to see how the prop reacts.

Very simple and I find it invaluable.

Yup, caisson is right. As long as the dots stay white, you are in an acceptable range. Try to keep them in an average size. If you exceed this, they first become yellow (warning) and then even red (alert).

Like caisson said, the outer rim is for specular light, the inner centre for diffuse light, because you can adjust those light components seperately in different ways.

However you must take care to put the meter close to the object, but not in it's shadow. Don't forget you can resize it, so for close distances just scale it down and for large landscape scenes place it where it is most important (or place even two or three of them anywhere) and scale it up so you can still see it in the render.

BB's Gamma Meter is also helpful, working the same way, but the outer rim indicates wether or not you have activated Gamma Coorection in render settings. A red rim indicates your render settings have GC active, a black rim tells you are rendering without GC activated.

Lots of good info in this thread.

@ghostship2 - Your render looks well lit - the reason the light meter tells a story of low light is because the sun is behind it and the figure.

If you tilt the meter up so it faces the light a bit more, you'll see it show a much higher response.

I like to see a high-contrast result like yours, where in one direction there is strong light and in another direction it is weak, (but not 0!)

In real life, things are almost never truly black. There is bounced light hitting everywhere, no matter if a camera is unable to record it. But as other have noted, Poser people tend to avoid dark areas but for the wrong reasons, and they add lots of lights from 20 directions, producing lighting that is boring.

I also had a thought to say about render times.

Unless we're listing the contents of the scene, and actually paying attention to the bounces and transparencies, as well as actually counting pixels rendered, when two of us compare numbers thrown at each other, we're not having a meaningful conversation.

I have done some wonderful IDL portraits of a clothed V4 with hair in under 8 minutes.

But which hair? Was it one with 3 layers of transparency, or 25?

Does this mean that the same person (me) is somehow being a more brilliant fellow to do a 30 second render of the same figure without any hair or clothes? Nope. That's a much easier problem for the computer. It wasn't smarter lighting or settings. In fact, they did not change.

And was my render of 320 thousand pixels (such as 400 by 800) or was it, as some have to do, 6 million pixels (such as 2000 by 3000)?

If I do a 400x800 render in 8 minutes, the same render will take at least 2.5 HOURS to do at 2000 by 3000. If we add in a few other requirements, such as DoF or maybe some scenery with glass, the same will now take 10 to 12 hours. This is not because I don't know how to use the settings. Nothing has changed. What matters is how much material there is to simulate bouncing light on and through, as well as how many pixels have to be calculated.

326 thousand pixels in 3 minutes 18 seconds.

Some might come back and say it should be 30 seconds. Ah - but I'm doing slightly blurred aluminum reflections, and the white pawn has a very rough surface, which is nonetheless using reflection. Some might say they can barely tell that and I'm wasting my time. So be it. I see it. After staring at unrealistic materials for thousands of hours to decipher what is wrong with them, I see every flaw and I can't make those flaws or I'll be irritated.

This is, however, correctly lit. This is my default scene for the last few weeks. (I change it regularly, but not so often that I don't learn every thing there is to know about the scene I'm using at the moment.)

By giving up the soft reflections (only sharp reflections, and none at all on the white pawn) I render in merely 72 seconds - almost 3 times faster.

Is this image good enough to save 2 minutes? For many in the gallery it is.

Not for me. I see wrongness here.

Here are two red rubber shaders. One is ever so slightly more realistic and takes 4 times as long to render. 

Which do you think I use? No I do not complain about rendering over night. 

Ghostship, the skin and eyelash textures from your images posted 17 Sept are awesome, but I think the eye reflection is wrong. Eyes aren't glass balls. These three images are all portrait images, and one thing that is missing from all three is the surface reflection of the entire scene. I think the problem is in the cornea; the default mesh allocates it a material zone, but it has no effective shape.

Of these images, two are studio shots; that means the room was almost certainly dark so only the light aource is visible. Not an entirely fair comparison to your images, given that they are in a wide, well lit environment.

The image lower left is an outdoor shot (as indicated by the dilated pupil and how bright the iris is, and the fact the person was supposedly shooting in the desert) but there is still no real 'reflection' of the scene as you are getting.

I tend to wind back (halve) the value for reflection on the cornea after running EzSkin. Snarly's values are probably correct if the geometry of the eye was correct. My adjustment isn't ideal, but it's a quick fix to stop haveing mirror ball eyes.

While it is possible to get that horizon line across the eyeball, it's not a common thing to see. It certainly shouldn't be in every render.

Quote - By giving up the soft reflections (only sharp reflections, and none at all on the white pawn) I render in merely 72 seconds - almost 3 times faster.

Is this image good enough to save 2 minutes? For many in the gallery it is.

Not for me. I see wrongness here.

Man, I still strive to get images like your demos! What's your current set up?

> Quote - What's your current set up?

My EnvSphere has the sIBL Newport Loft

http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive/

It's the file Newport_Loft_Ref.hdr

I have been using this because of the fantastic contrast and reflections of indoor + outdoor (through large windows). I rotate the EnvSphere, yRotate = 154, to bring those windows in front of my subject.

I have a small white stage with a smooth curve between wall and floor.

Sometimes I just use the EnvSphere with Intensity = 4. Other times I add lights and use it lower. Here I used one infinite light at 80% (.8) intensity and the HDR at 200% (2) intensity. (HSV Value actually) Notice I didn't bother lining up shadows - in fact my "sun" is on the wrong side!. If the environment is excluded from direct observation, you can get away with making the lighting do whatever you want.

My render settings from the D3D Render Firefly dialog.

Notice my IDL values - of course I adjust them for every render, but this one is easy to remember because it's a number joke.

Intensity .66 (ok .65 here but that was a typo)

Bounces 6

Samples 600 (or 666 if you like)

IC 60 (or 66 if you like)

These are really easy to remember - all 6's.

Thank you again for showing me! I tend to use jpg panoramics rather than HDRs. I had not downloaded that particular one so now its in my Poser 10 Panoramics folder. I also tend to use Spot lights rather than a single inf. I suppose that's why mine turn out differently.

Note that I don't use the infinite because it's better or has a certain look. I use it because I'm lazy and I was doing a demo where the kind of light was not important.

Indoors, I'd use spots or point lights. Multiple.

This is why I throw a light in. This image is only using the HDR to light the scene - set to intensity 4.

The lighting is great, but Poser IDL + IC is doing a terrible job with it on the white pawn. I would have to raise the settings a LOT to get this to look decent, and then my render time would be 20 minutes or more.

If it were a suitable large image, the render time would be 20 hours or so. But - it would look as good as a LuxRender.

People are too impatient, IMO.

Most of my renders are studio/indoor renders. I typically use a Main spotlight and a Rim spot. Occassionally I'll switch the Main spot for a point light. I am currently a bit confused on the shadows. I had a render last night with only point lights (an old RDNA light set made by Traveler that I adapted), and the shadows on the floor looked, well not that great. I use ray traced shadows, usually .3 blur but I'm not sure of the samples. I'm using 90 samples right now for an image. Shadows look better than the render I did last night (that light setup had only 3 point lights).

Sigh, and I have to hit the sack. Thanks again for your answers. I always learn something from your work.

Added a 20% light to help reduce artifacts while keeping the fast render settings.

It's better but not at all good enough.

To keep the soft indoor lighting, I'd really be forced to go with a much slower render. If you add a strong directional then it's fine, but that isn't the look I want much of the time.

To make this right, I think an overnight render is unavoidable.

Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be heading to bed. The test render finished. My two spot set up and used the Newport image on the Environment sphere. Image looks a little on the blue side as far as the lighting goes. Body texture is one that I was creating today from merchant resources. Might keep it and give it a name. It looks like it renders nicely.

> Quote - Ghostship, the skin and eyelash textures from your images posted 17 Sept are awesome, but I think the eye reflection is wrong. Eyes aren't glass balls. These three images are all portrait images, and one thing that is missing from all three is the surface reflection of the entire scene. I think the problem is in the cornea; the default mesh allocates it a material zone, but it has no effective shape. > > Of these images, two are studio shots; that means the room was almost certainly dark so only the light aource is visible. Not an entirely fair comparison to your images, given that they are in a wide, well lit environment. > > The image lower left is an outdoor shot (as indicated by the dilated pupil and how bright the iris is, and the fact the person was supposedly shooting in the desert) but there is still no real 'reflection' of the scene as you are getting. > > I tend to wind back (halve) the value for reflection on the cornea after running EzSkin. Snarly's values are probably correct if the geometry of the eye was correct. My adjustment isn't ideal, but it's a quick fix to stop haveing mirror ball eyes. > > While it is possible to get that horizon line across the eyeball, it's not a common thing to see. It certainly shouldn't be in every render.

Hey Piersyf

Yeah I've stuggled with eye reflections for ever. What it looks like to me on real eyes is that strong lighting/sun shows up quite well but the rest of the reflection is muted. I have tried this a bit by plugging the reflect node back into the reflect value plug. It doesnt work all that well....I just don't know what combination of shaders will do this (like turning up the contrast on the reflection.)

Normaly I use the eye surface for the reflects and leave the cornea invisible. but here is an attempt at the oposite. I had to make a mask in Photoshop to blur/fade out the edges of the reflection to remove the razor sharp edge of the iris. The sclara has a similar mask to blend the transition with the iris.

Anyway, I'm nt smart enough to figure out how to get that contrast thing going with the cornea reflects (BB maybe you would know how to do this?)

Well, for all the extra work you did, my first impression of your render was that it was a photo, so I think it's a lot better!

Attached Link: Eye shader discussion you should bookmark or sticky

I am on a sailboat and can only type a little bit. Follow the link. 

Quote - Ok, here are a couple of renders using V4's default Hi-res textures (everybody should have a version of these)

 

Say, where did you get the panoramic image on the first demo pic. I'd like to have that one in my runtime.

> Quote - > Quote - Ok, here are a couple of renders using V4's default Hi-res textures (everybody should have a version of these) > > > >   > > Say, where did you get the panoramic image on the first demo pic. I'd like to have that one in my runtime.

I don't remember where I got that. I modified it a bit. I replaced the wood floor with a reversed copy of the celing and changed the color from off-white to white.