We still seem to have glowing when two meshes with SSS are atop each other very close together - like with LH's genitals, I had to remove SSS in his conforming anatomy bits to avoid the glowing. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to show up too much.

The bluish look used to happen when you used HDRI with bright blue sky. I don't see it happening nowadays, but might be just that I found better quality HDRI. Not sure.

Tomorrow (I'm off to bed now) I'll show renders of my latest character I'm working on, and her shader - with PhysicalSurface root, yes. As I'm getting a better hang of Substance Painter, I'm getting better results. PhysicalSurface makes it stupid easy to look good in Superfly with good textures. There are just some things it (the Physical root) simply can't do at all, like anisotropic specular or volume effects and refraction. For everything else, it works wonders.

Superfly's one BIG flaw remains being the lack of micromesh displacement. I'm still forever begging them to give us that.

Thanks Ohki.

RedPhantom posted at 8:37PM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426774

The glowing mesh intersections was fixed by adding a scatter id. I don't know of a blueish look, but that might be how my monitor displays.

It's discussed here.

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2904067#msg4275176

Though scatter ID or "groups" were a fix introduced way back for Firefly, it's still a problem in Firefly under certain circumstances, BB also came up with the Max Scatter trick which was built into EZSkin. Was just just wondering if Superfly stamped that out completely without need for the extra nodes of Max Scatter trick being wired in, or if the Max Scatter trick is even Possible in Superfly if it were necessary.

Being that Scatter groups are present in Superfly it leads me to believe the blue green occlusion bug still exists in Superfly.

The real reason I ask is because I created an HD genital morph for La Femme, amongst a bunch of other things, and my test renders are showing the blue green bug a bit there. I'm super nitpicky about that stuff, most people wouldn't notice. Being that the hip material is part of the Torso Skin material it can only have 1 scatter ID assigned to it, so the Scatter ID in this instance is useless. I suppose I could wire in the max scatter nodes, the shaders I'm using are a variation on BB's early Scatter/Blinn formula that led to EZSkin. Not EZSkin but my own variation, so I'd have to add in The Max Scatter stuff myself, which involves adjusting an HSV node and fiddling for ALL the materials in La Femme. So in reality the Max Scatter trick isn't a practical solution. Unless I completely rebuild the shaders. I think I'm just going to have to deal with the slight blue green bug for that morph and not obsess over it.

I have been tinkering with SSS in Superfly renders and I think I stumbled on the solution that I need to verify on several other models to be certain. I've been using the Principled Bsdf node and the Poser 12 manual covers a tutorial on how to set it up and use it. But I have found that a list of Subsurface radius values for different surface types happens to be off by a factor of 1000, values too low IMO to influence true SSS. Plus the subsurface scale is set too high in the associated images in the manual. So by scaling up the radius values by 1000 and reducing the subsurface scatter scale to 0.01, I get a very nice render without the self glow. I've been using one model to tweak these settings and modifying textures to optimize the look.

As promised, my wip Iolanda and her skin shader, lighted with only an HDRI:

And without HDRI, with one of my Level Up Superfly lights:

Edit: you'll notice that her skin maps aren't all done yet. Roughness and normal maps help make it look real. PhysSurface root IS made for PBR textures.

She's gorgeous!

Interesting. So you don't actually need substance to generate these maps from what I'm reading on the web, you could paint them or generate them by other means such as mudbox, zbrush, blender or even photoshop. For instance this open source tilable skin roughness could be used to create a roughness map that would work perfectly fine in Poser, assuming that physical surface in Poser handles this in a conventional way (black is perfectly smooth and white is very rough)?

I imagine baked procedurals would be useful here too.

TwiztidKidd posted at 2:56PM Mon, 06 September 2021 - #4426808

She's gorgeous!

BWAHHHAHAHAHAHA!

Thank you! xD

primorge posted at 2:56PM Mon, 06 September 2021 - #4426810

Interesting. So you don't actually need substance to generate these maps from what I'm reading on the web, you could paint them or generate them by other means such as mudbox, zbrush, blender or even photoshop.

Well yes, there are many tools for these. I just got Substance because I found it purchasable instead of by subscription (which I'm slowly getting rid of everything subscription I use, as I can - still annoyed that I can't find something that does everything I need from Photoshop but eh) and I liked the way it works, but there are alternatives.

LOL! You welcome, Happy Monday!

I'm a bit bogged with subscriptions but I enjoy and use quite a bit the things I have so it's worth it. I know some people think it's the antichrist or something. I adore Photoshop and Mudbox, which is a statement likely to cause apoplectic foaming at the mouth in people; mostly because people are effing bizarre lol.

3D coat Textura seems like a good Substance alternative, has reasonable rent to own or buy straight away price point. Blender's free of course. I tried Quixel Mixer but it felt sort of wonky and handicapped. I have mixed feelings about Zbrush but I used to love it, some of its plug ins are incredibly useful but it's a bit overkill for my needs. It used to be the amazing, totally idiosyncratic, magical software. Blender holds that mantle now.

Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time Ohki :)

primorge posted at 4:07PM Mon, 06 September 2021 - #4426821

I'm a bit bogged with subscriptions but I enjoy and use quite a bit the things I have so it's worth it. I know some people think it's the antichrist or something. I adore Photoshop and Mudbox, which is a statement likely to cause apoplectic foaming at the mouth in people; mostly because people are effing bizarre lol.

I don't think it's the antichrist, it's just that currency conversion in Brazil lately is murdering us, PLUS subscribing for software gets me kinda anxious - it makes me feel like I gotta rush to use the thing otherwise I'm wasting money. :/ just doesn't work so well for me. I adore Photoshop too, though, been using the thing since version 4 when I was a kid playing on my uncle's computer LMAO

3D coat Textura seems like a good Substance alternative, has reasonable rent to own or buy straight away price point. Blender's free of course. I tried Quixel Mixer but it felt sort of wonky and handicapped. I have mixed feelings about Zbrush but I used to love it, some of its plug ins are incredibly useful but it's a bit overkill for my needs. It used to be the amazing, totally idiosyncratic, magical software. Blender holds that mantle now.

Another alternative with Blender is the addon Layer Painter. Doesn't have all the bells and whistles from Substance though. I bought it, and then later realized that Substance is on Steam, which does localized pricing, so I found it very affordable for me. I doubt that version 2022 will come on Steam though, looking at how Adobe seems to be going, so I'll be stuck at 2021. Which honestly seems like a good deal to me anyway. And yeah I dropped Zbrush for Blender :) wasn't one of the lucky ones who bought Zbrush when it was super cheap and got upgrades for life, so...

Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time Ohki :)

Oy, always! :D

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 7:41PM Mon, 06 September 2021 - #4426823

Another alternative with Blender is the addon Layer Painter. Doesn't have all the bells and whistles from Substance though. I bought it, and then later realized that Substance is on Steam, which does localized pricing, so I found it very affordable for me. I doubt that version 2022 will come on Steam though, looking at how Adobe seems to be going, so I'll be stuck at 2021. Which honestly seems like a good deal to me anyway. And yeah I dropped Zbrush for Blender :) wasn't one of the lucky ones who bought Zbrush when it was super cheap and got upgrades for life, so...

I haven't heard of Layer Painter, so just checked it out, and bookmarked it. I just need to get better acquainted with Blender 2.93 since, as a long time Blender user, this new UI is still driving me a little crazy, though I am making progress.

I beta test for someone at HiveWire who uses Substance, and I keep telling him his customers might want to make their own textures for his goodies, but he needs to include matzones with his UV maps so they can do it, but he keeps telling me he uses Substance Painter and doesn't need matzones. I keep needling him that his customers do, but he ignores me. Anyway, Substance Painter's a little out of my price range, but this Layer Painter seems reasonably priced, so may give it a try as soon as I feel comfortable with the newer Blender version's setup, so thanks for mentioning it.

Miss B posted at 6:21AM Tue, 07 September 2021 - #4426834

I beta test for someone at HiveWire who uses Substance, and I keep telling him his customers might want to make their own textures for his goodies, but he needs to include matzones with his UV maps so they can do it, but he keeps telling me he uses Substance Painter and doesn't need matzones. I keep needling him that his customers do, but he ignores me. Anyway, Substance Painter's a little out of my price range, but this Layer Painter seems reasonably priced, so may give it a try as soon as I feel comfortable with the newer Blender version's setup, so thanks for mentioning it.

My pleasure, I hope it suits your needs!

"PBR Painter 2.2" for Blender is also worth to mention: https://blendermarket.com/products/pbr-painter

Comes with a ton of howto videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGbSISX4ApM

adp001 posted at 9:27AM Tue, 07 September 2021 - #4426871

"PBR Painter 2.2" for Blender is also worth to mention: https://blendermarket.com/products/pbr-painter

Comes with a ton of howto videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGbSISX4ApM

Ohhh, also bookmarked. Thank you.

This is a quickie setup for Principled BSDF with La Femme. Highlighted nodes are new additions to the default LF shader. The Specular map is not used as I'm not good with math nodes - I took the original image into Photoshop, inverted it and used Levels to crush the blacks to a more reasonable value. Roughness = the nearer to black the sharper, brighter and more mirror-like the highlights will be. There is of course no such thing as Specular in Superfly, it's all raytraced reflections.

The SSS Method at the base of the PBSDF is set to Burley by default. Random Walk is better as it calculates the actual volume of the mesh so it's the most accurate SSS calculation method available in Superfly. Only the SkinHead and SkinTorso mat zones were altered, but I did change the Scatter Group ID for the eye materials to 3 to get rid of the blue cast from the intersecting meshes.

Rendered with 40 samples, single area light at 100% plus jpg textures on the Poser Ground for bounced light. Raw renders have had minor sharpen, contrast and colour adjust in Photoshop - after all, Blender and Iray and other 3d apps use 2d post-processing to optimise their results, so it seems only fair. This is about an hour of tweaks and test renders.

Looking good, caisson! I've been using a very similar setup, except that I didn't bother with a roughness map.

It's 2021 and I'm still getting overwhelmingly distracted by burned-in-specular on the color map.

This is very good.

A more significant question might be...

Superfly vs Blender Cycles. Figures can be welded. What superiority does Superfly have in that scenerio?

Which also brings to mind the question of Superfly and its relationship with animation as opposed to the other options in Poser.

I have seen Subsurface radius at higher values. I am currently using 3.67, 1.37, 0.68 with a Subsurface value of 0.01 which is considered a real-world value; I haven't seen any blue tinting around the mouth and have completely eliminated the self glowing issue many individuals are having. Consult the Poser manual and look at the PrincipledBsdf section. Also, there is a chart listing some known Subsurface radius values for different materials but I have found that those values are erroneous, they appear to be set in meters, not millimeters.

@hborre that would make sense. AFAIK radius is depth split into RGB values and the subsurface value is an overall multiplier, so higher RGB depth + lower multiplier should look similar to lower RGB depth + higher multiplier. I'll try your values when I fire Poser up next.

@primorge SF vs Blender Cycles is an easy answer for me - I don't use Blender, therefore Superfly always wins :D

Animation is an interesting question - personally I'd look at the number of frames I would need vs computing power available, then figure out a time budget per frame. That would determine the complexity of the materials, and that would influence my choice of engine.

I'm curious how these suggestions apply to Superfly. In particular the portals bit... It's a long video but might spark some interesting observations

https://youtu.be/8gSyEpt4-60

caisson posted at 10:07PM Fri, 10 September 2021 - #4427141

@hborre that would make sense. AFAIK radius is depth split into RGB values and the subsurface value is an overall multiplier, so higher RGB depth + lower multiplier should look similar to lower RGB depth + higher multiplier. I'll try your values when I fire Poser up next.

@primorge SF vs Blender Cycles is an easy answer for me - I don't use Blender, therefore Superfly always wins :D

Animation is an interesting question - personally I'd look at the number of frames I would need vs computing power available, then figure out a time budget per frame. That would determine the complexity of the materials, and that would influence my choice of engine.

That's what also thought. The problem that I encountered when increasing the multiplier is an increase in self glowing around creases and close contact material. Most sites I viewed recommend keeping the multiplier in and around 0.01 to 0.02, a real-world value. However, taking the RGB radius value too low will negate the SSS effect. The manual does a fairly decent description of applying the PrincipleBsdf however the chart listing other RGB Radius for other different skin types is in error, the values are totally off by a factor of a thousand. The number appear to be in meters, not millimeters as the title states.

Thanks caisson and hborre! I thought I had some decent skin materials, but now I'm just feeling very embarrassed. A little thing I've noticed while trying out your respective settings is that Burley produces increasingly bad glow artifacts with the larger depths, so it's really important to make the switch to random walk.

I took the liberty to do a quick comparison between caisson's (left) and hborre's (right) settings. Please excuse the blocky eyes and badly fitted hair!

Very close.

Looks very good to me, though I'd suggest trying a render using a single light source behind the figure too - I have found it useful using the ears to judge subsurface amount.

I agree.

@ Caisson, I seem to remember a complaint by BB that La Femme's ears were actually too thick for proper rear-lighting translucency. I also remember that Ohki creating a morph to correct that problem. Is this version of La Femme the pro version or the Poser bundled?

The Poser bundled version with leotard - everything bar the shader is default.

Now I'm curious about what caisson's LF ear would look like in that same setting with my morph applied!

I made one earlier, a morph that is. I kind of cheated though and made her ear thin and GIGANTIC, rendered it Firefly IDL. Light was definitely bouncing around in there and there's glowing translucency... Not volcanic like Caisson's though. I consider it a failure and a bad render to boot but I'll share it for the heck of it.

It's titled 'My La Femme in Firefly feeling dejected because she underwent ear morph trauma and didn't get volcanic glowing like Caisson's La Femme. Plus primorge should have turned off the tear material because it's reacting badly with the waaaay high intensity rim light"

primorge posted at 7:44PM Sun, 12 September 2021 - #4427270

It's titled 'My La Femme in Firefly feeling dejected because she underwent ear morph trauma and didn't get volcanic glowing like Caisson's La Femme. Plus primorge should have turned off the tear material because it's reacting badly with the waaaay high intensity rim light"

That's a great title - short, concise, straightforward, simple. LMAO!

primorge posted at 4:02PM Thu, 02 September 2021 - #4426528

Blender has gorgeous NPR style options. It'll filter over to Superfly eventually, hopefully.

Now that would be a reason to switch to Superfly!

Mason41 posted at 11:38 AM Wed, 3 August 2022 - #4442246

randym77 posted at 4:04 PM Thu, 2 September 2021 - #4426529

primorge posted at 4:02PM Thu, 02 September 2021 - #4426528

Blender has gorgeous NPR style options. It'll filter over to Superfly eventually, hopefully.

Now that would be a reason to switch to Superfly!

Superfly uses the cycle shaders so it should port over

I can't even get plain ol' Poser stuff to look good in Superfly. I bought some Superfly shaders, but Firefly still looks better to me.