I have a problem with the dark skin of a figure: it is the Bantu Lady of the Evolution One figure from Erogenesis. The skin is supposed to be dark, but not so that you can hardly see anything. On the right is a V4 for comparison. On the other picture you can see Nordic Girl on the right, also an Evolution One figure. I have already compared the settings in the Material Room, but they seem to be identical.

How can I get a better detailed skin, so that you can see shadows and reflections and the figure is not that dark?

Drop it into Photoshop and lighten it.

Can you show us what specular shaders are doing. Is the diffuse map plugged into the specular, at all? If so, this is incorrect. Specular highlights on skin are primarily a surface effect, not interacting with the melanin particles beneath, so light and dark skin should have more or less identical specular settings and maps.

Can you show what lights you have in the scene?

There is another option within Poser for adjusting the intensity of an image directly within Poser, before you commit to editing the image elsewhere. On the image_map node, there is a Texture Strength setting, normally set to 1.0. If you reduce this, dark areas become lighter. At 0.0, the image map will be white. Don't trust the previews in the material room, they do not always represent what the texture strength will do in a render. Be aware that this is a mostly linear transform, so you can't do much adjustment without the texture becoming washed out, as the light areas get brighter as well, and less saturated. A Color_Math node set to bias might be a more flexible adjustment if you don't get what you want with Texture Strength.

an0malaus is correct. The issue you are having is the shaders are set wrong and there is no visible reflection to the skin. I'm not sure if your render is Firefly or Superfly. You might try The Superfly plugin for EZSkin3 that I use.I also notice that the hair on all your figures is not casting shadows. You might be doing this to save render time but that is a mistake. https://www.sharecg.com/v/85846/browse/9/Plug-in/Cycle-based-plug-in-for-EZskin3-poser11-only

Second thoughts on this is that I don't really see any shadows at all on any of the figures. Are you turning cast shadows off for your lights? What is the lighting setup here? OTOH could be ambience or translucence in your skin shader that is nullifying and shadows on the skin. Essentially turning your figure into a light source.

I just checked the texture setup in the Material Room for this particular figure/character and I do not see anything peculiar with the node arrangement. No ambient value, no active translucency; arrangement complicated but not strange. I am currently running a Superfly render with an EZDome background and I will post the results. I do agree with ghostship2, however, I think there might be too much light in the scene washing out everything. Is this a Firefly or Superfly render? There are 2 sets of skin textures, one for each render engine in Poser.

I just finished this render with the settings I posted above. Nothing unusual with the skin texture as provided by the vendor. I am not crazy about the specularity on the lips and around the eyes but should be easily correctable with a few tweaks.

You also have the option to fade back the texture map in the materials room. With a white base underneath it, that should lighten the colour.

Are these renders or previews? Maybe it's the lack of shadows, but those look like previews or preview renders.

@ RedPhantom: I thought about that also but I tried to duplicate a preview look with no luck. The only thing I didn't try was a preview render.

Allright, thanks a lot for all the helpful input!

In the first render, I used the developer work light. Here´s another one with strong sunlight and it looks much better! I used the material for Firefly and rendered it with Firefly.

And here are the nodes of the torso:

Interesting. I don't speak German, but I noticed there's no specularity or spec value plugged in. You have everything plugged into alternative Diffuse or alternative specular.

Is there another material layer in there? Looks like there might be.

I'm sorry, but since Poser is owned by Bondware, I´ve got this German version. This material set came by the vendor, I´ve changed nothing so far.

No, there´s just this Base Layer.

Steve_Vaii posted at 2:04PM Mon, 03 February 2020 - #4378793

I'm sorry, but since Poser is owned by Bondware, I´ve got this German version. This material set came by the vendor, I´ve changed nothing so far.

I don't understand. Why does that make it German?

I don´t know. After the new registration at Bondware, Poser was German. I would like to have the English version again, but I don´t know how?

What do you show in the Preferences dialog here?

I never noticed that before. Of course, mine's always been in English and greyed out. I never had to choose a language.

THANK YOU, Deecey!!! How easy things can be

Hmm, looks as if there is no specular at all on the skin. I had such an issue with the microfacet node about 1 year ago on my Mac. The microfacet node was completely broken in FF. Out of a sudden it worked again after upgrading to MacOS HighSierra.

Mhh, interesting! I already use HighSierra, but I´m afraid to upgrade to Catalina. Does anyone else have this problem with Evolution One and MacOS?

Why don't you plug Your SSS into specularity and see what happens? If your Microfacet is broken, won't matter anyway, but unplug it first.

Steve_Vaii posted at 10:53PM Mon, 03 February 2020 - #4378829

Mhh, interesting! I already use HighSierra, but I´m afraid to upgrade to Catalina. Does anyone else have this problem with Evolution One and MacOS?

I have no clue why it started to work with HS again, makes no sense at all. Before i switched to HS i found that microfacet was broken since Poser SR4 or SR5 in older versions i did work just fine. I reported the problem in the old SM forum but nobody confirmed it at that time.

BTW i will stay with HS out of several reasons. It seems that HS is the last MacOS for me.

@EClark1894 connecting SSS to specular makes no sense you better give one of the other specular nodes a try. On my system only microfacet was broken, which BTW is my favorite specular node in FF.

I don’t use FF that much anymore… so i gave it a try and you know what microfacet is broken again in Poser 11.2.307.

Well, I never understood Firefly anyway.

i made more tests and its the same old buggy behaviour i had before. Only for a roughness value of exactly 1.0 the microfacet node does work. For all other roughness values there is no output from it at all.

I would suggest you write a bug report.

Do not use the developer lights for renders, they are too bright. The intensities should be much lower than intended. Check the values and lower them, 85% is a good start.

Allright, thank you! I just wanted to be sure that it´s not the light, that causes the dark skin.

just a short note, i tried the Poser 11.3 public beta and the microfacet node is working again.

Good to know, thanks for the hint, I´ll keep that in mind!

Using Firefly you can put an HSV node between the main skin texture and the node the skin texture was connected to and play around with the value (bump higher) and reduce the saturation. I got that from a thread by BB years ago. Have yet to try that same trick in Superfly

I haven’t tried it with skin, but yes, the hsv node does work with superbly. I recommend the hsv2 node or the one that comes with superfly. Hsv2 is an improved version of hsv. BB explained it, but I didn’t understand it so I don’t remember it.

Great, I´ll try that too

I just downloaded ezskin2 from CGbytes and it said my version won't work with my (latest) version of Poser 11. I almost exclusively use Firefly. Where can I find the latest compatible version of EZSkin2?

By the way, try putting ezskin2 in your forum search. Mine came up empty despites the fact that I'm sure I've Snarly's fantastic plugin mentioned many times.

quietrob posted at 11:38PM Sat, 29 February 2020 - #4382206

I just downloaded ezskin2 from CGbytes and it said my version won't work with my (latest) version of Poser 11. I almost exclusively use Firefly. Where can I find the latest compatible version of EZSkin2?

By the way, try putting ezskin2 in your forum search. Mine came up empty despites the fact that I'm sure I've Snarly's fantastic plugin mentioned many times.

I just noticed the fix file. It works!!!

Thanks for the hint!

ghostship2 posted at 9:27AM Sun, 01 March 2020 - #4378726

Second thoughts on this is that I don't really see any shadows at all on any of the figures. Are you turning cast shadows off for your lights? What is the lighting setup here? OTOH could be ambience or translucence in your skin shader that is nullifying and shadows on the skin. Essentially turning your figure into a light source.

I just noticed your computer configuration. Does running two graphics cards have a noticeable effect when rendering? One of the reasons I'm not happy with Superfly is the grainiest one gets when you use lower settings. While I prefer firefly for my comic, Superfly might be fun when I'm having fun. Below is my config.

If I could pick up some speed....

W10, Ryzen 5 3600, 16Gb,Radeon RX 580 8GB, PP11, 11.2.307

quietrob posted at 5:48PM Sun, 01 March 2020 - #4382250

ghostship2 posted at 9:27AM Sun, 01 March 2020 - #4378726

Second thoughts on this is that I don't really see any shadows at all on any of the figures. Are you turning cast shadows off for your lights? What is the lighting setup here? OTOH could be ambience or translucence in your skin shader that is nullifying and shadows on the skin. Essentially turning your figure into a light source.

I just noticed your computer configuration. Does running two graphics cards have a noticeable effect when rendering? One of the reasons I'm not happy with Superfly is the grainiest one gets when you use lower settings. While I prefer firefly for my comic, Superfly might be fun when I'm having fun. Below is my config.

If I could pick up some speed....

W10, Ryzen 5 3600, 16Gb,Radeon RX 580 8GB, PP11, 11.2.307

two video cards show up in your render settings and can be used at the same time.Cuts render times in half. You are rendering two giant tiles at a time with this config. You also have the option to run a render on 1 card and use the other just to run your monitor. In this config I can surf the internet and watch youtoob videos all day long while my machine also renders something in Poser.

two video cards show up in your render settings and can be used at the same time.Cuts render times in half. You are rendering two giant tiles at a time with this config. You also have the option to run a render on 1 card and use the other just to run your monitor. In this config I can surf the internet and watch youtoob videos all day long while my machine also renders something in Poser.

That sounds like me now. I do notice a speed boost but my system still chokes at higher settings. Hair is still the meaning of eternity. I worry about stealing cycles from the render. Have you noticed any difference in the array of colors over, say, the integrated chip or a cheaper video card? Plus your video cards aren't matched.

Hmmm, you say Poser is set up to take advantage of crossfire? I do have a spare PCI slot. (SLI for you uninnoculated),

quietrob posted at 10:20PM Sun, 01 March 2020 - #4382309

two video cards show up in your render settings and can be used at the same time.Cuts render times in half. You are rendering two giant tiles at a time with this config. You also have the option to run a render on 1 card and use the other just to run your monitor. In this config I can surf the internet and watch youtoob videos all day long while my machine also renders something in Poser.

That sounds like me now. I do notice a speed boost but my system still chokes at higher settings. Hair is still the meaning of eternity. I worry about stealing cycles from the render. Have you noticed any difference in the array of colors over, say, the integrated chip or a cheaper video card? Plus your video cards aren't matched.

Hmmm, you say Poser is set up to take advantage of crossfire? I do have a spare PCI slot. (SLI for you uninnoculated),

Poser doesn't do crossfire nor does it need it. My cards are not crossfired. I have to manage how much texture ram I use or I get a crash. I can squeeze in two figures, clothing and an image for the dome and that runs me up to the edge (about 4.5 gig). Yes hair takes a long time to render but your issue with some stuff taking a long time to render could also be bloated shaders. As an example the shaders that come with Outoftouch's hair models looks nice usually when rendered in SF but slow down the entire render including sections of the image that are not hair.