So I've been working on texture maps and morphs for La Femme. I noticed a circle around her iris in my test renders. At first I chalked it up to

"Well my materials are a hodgepodge right now, probably just needs and iris mask to limit specular or SSS or something. I'll get to that when I start finalizing materials."

I took a closer look at La Femme's eye construction and noticed a rather strange transition of polys from the sclera to iris material zones. A very unsmooth transition. So I thought

"hmph. Her eyes are rather low poly at base resolution maybe a level of subdivision will clear up that line."

So I cranked up a level of subdivision on her eyes and rendered. Same line was there.

I concluded that it's the materials and continued working in photoshop.

Anyway, I take a look at some of the character sets in the marketplace and noticed that the line artifact is present in many marketplace products.

I also noticed in my purchases that the couple of characters I've gotten for her do not include an iris mask.

I also also noticed that the characters that do NOT have this artifact in promo renders appear to have the iris textures expanded beyond the iris material zone into the sclera zone, in effect camouflaging the artifact at that transition of polys.

Note that the artifact effect also shows with La Femme Pro's base materials. I haven't done any 'just maps, no shaders' tests yet to discern whether this is a geometry or shader problem.

Anyone know the whys or wherefores of this eye flaw?

Here's a marketplace product promo capture that shows the artifact I'm referring to... it's rampant in commercial products and I think some might be post working it away... I'm hoping there's a simple solution, eg. a mask or expanding the iris texture or even a shader adjustment. In any case I'm speculating and curious...

IIRC, there was a convex applied to the eye mesh for some apparent reason that escapes me ATM. There is a fix available at ShareCG.

@EldritchCellar I had a request a few months back from Rokket to make some eye textures/shaders for LaFemme. I sent him the files but never shared them with the rest of the group. I guess I'm not a very good Poser friend... Anyway, let me take a look at the files and make sure they are usable. Yes, they also use masks for the sclera and pupil and the iris is over-sized slightly. Take a look.

That looks incredible as always Ghostship. I'm going to guess they're superfly materials. I know this is going to sound very primitive but I just have too much on my plate right now to transition to superfly. If you share them I'm sure I can find a good use for aspects of your materials but bear in mind that the stuff I'm working on is destined as a commercial candidate down the road. Or that's my plan. So I can look at your stuff as an example I suppose... love those iris textures, almost like there's a bit of ambient going on in there.

Hborre. I can fix the convex. Plus Blackhearted included an iris flat morph in latest version of La Femme. If the iris flat doesn't work I could just slide the offending edge loop in a modeler to smooth out the transition and apply as morph target. But... I think it's a material problem. I figured I'd just ask here on the outside chance others have noticed it and the solution is old news. I'll solve it one way or the other. Thanks.

Clarification. I have too much on my plate to switch to PBR materials. It's easy enough to make things that are both Superfly/Firefly IDL compatible as far as I can tell. PBR is an entirely different thing and I'm busy enough that it's just not time efficient to sit down and stop everything to worry about PBR and grain and no displacement and barely documented fixes.

let me see what I can do for Firefly. I used to render stuff all the time in FF before 11 and I have a bunch of shaders that I used to use for V4 eyes in FF.

Your firefly mats were very good IIRC. Looking forward. I should have just stuck with monsters, makeup options suck lol.

ok this is what I got so far. file saved and and it's time for Creature Features so no more work on this till tomorrow.

This has been uploaded to the rendo freestuff section. It might be a few days for them to approve the mats.

Cool. I'll take a look.

I figured out the problem and the fix btw.

Thanks man.

Oh. I wanted to ask. Do you mind if I use your firefly scatter teeth shader in a commercial product. I'll credit you.

It's this... I like it, it's very concise.

It reminds me of BB's 'toon body' thread shader. He has a very stripped down scatter/blinn that he posted in there. Lips, Eyes, Skin, etc.

That might be from EZskin or maybe something else. I wouldn't use it in a commercial product.

Hm. You can't use EZSkin in a commercial product?

Lol. Ok.

Not seeing how that collection of node connections up there contains copyrighted material. I have my own texture maps. But ok. He he.

Jeez I wonder if BB knows that Snarly copyrighted his scatter/blinn formula that snarly used in EZSkin? And all those products in the marketplace that use Scatter/blinn... sounds like an intellectual property shit storm to me ;)

Anyway. That eye artifact seems to be a combination of refract settings and the geometry of the eye. The fix is simply expanding the Iris texture past the blend zone of the iris and the sclera material zones so that the iris texture is more in the sclera region. In effect the texture hides the artifact. In any case that's one way of fixing it.

LaFemme eye mats up in freestuff now https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/lafemme-eye-shader-and-texture-set-poser/85347

If you don't mind me asking Ghostship. Did you create these shaders out of thin air or did you look at EZSkin and BB's stuff and work off of those ideas? I know you came up with your ubershader by watching blender tutorials. See what I'm saying?

Now I'm really curious exactly how intellectual property applies to poser mats.

my main shader is derived from this Blender Guru video. I added stuff to the base shader in that video and use it on everything. None of my shaders are meant to be mathematically correct but I try to make them look as real as I can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3wghbZ-Vh4&t=711s

I know. On the topic of EZSkin I think any of the shaders that are derived from the scripts use are free and clear. It's the python script itself that's intellectual property. And as far as BB goes, one of his mottos used to be "math is free" or something of that nature IIRC. I can see if a shader contains proprietary image maps (as Parrotdolphin's shader packages available on the MP do, or used to), but beyond that I don't think Poser shader configurations themselves are copyrightable. Any clarification is welcome.

Any shader that is made from EZSkin can be used in whatever way you want.

I don't believe it's possible to copyright node setups unless they are ridiculously complex, and that's a big maybe. bb used to post stuff he made with MatMatic which had highly convoluted node setups, as they were built automatically by scripting - a case could be made for copyright in that scenario as it is vanishingly unlikely that someone else could come up with the same setup independently.

For the rest though, as everyone is using the same built-in nodes it is very likely that different people would come to the same setups for same materials, so copyright would not be possible.

So I would say that EldritchCellar is right ... but I'm no expert ;)

caisson posted at 6:28PM Tue, 26 May 2020 - #4390271

I don't believe it's possible to copyright node setups unless they are ridiculously complex, and that's a big maybe. bb used to post stuff he made with MatMatic which had highly convoluted node setups, as they were built automatically by scripting - a case could be made for copyright in that scenario as it is vanishingly unlikely that someone else could come up with the same setup independently.

For the rest though, as everyone is using the same built-in nodes it is very likely that different people would come to the same setups for same materials, so copyright would not be possible.

So I would say that EldritchCellar is right ... but I'm no expert ;)

The term Vanishingly Unlikely is darned accurate.

personally I don't care if that tooth shader gets used on a commercial product. I just know that I did not make it so use at your own risk.

Thanks Ghostship.

I'm not anywhere near finished this project. I have a bunch of character morphs and features isolated morphs done and am working on textures now. I'm very happy with how it's coming along but there's still a ways to go. In the meantime I'm researching stuff in old threads and trying to refresh myself on things I've either forgotten over the past few years, or missed. The shaders are really only an afterthought and a far off final step at this time. Right now I'm just using the basic SSS shaders included with La Femme to do test renders for my morphs and maps; IDL, Envirosphere, medium settings. It's a LOT of repetitive rendering. When I'm near completed the project I'll start a thread.

I appreciate your help and knowledge.