A questions to the experts and every hint is appreciated. I transferred a poser girl (Victoria) with Yuma texture to Bryce5. I found several tutorials that explains what to do with the transmaps and so on. I'm still not satisfied with the result. The skin looks a little bit dull/lifeless. The same is valid for the hair. Should I add reflection or other things to the skin? How? Are there any hints for lighting (I just use the sun until yet), or is it all left to postwork. I saw some terrific render here in the galleries and there must be a better way to do it. Thanks in advance - Tintifax

Lighting is not that important unless you want a specific atmosphere. Of course, IMBW. You can always add a light or two, just for fun. The imported skin has to have the texture set both on Diffuse and Ambient colours - up at the top. And then play with Diffusion and Ambience values in the second group. (Sorry, no pic, I'm not at home.) Specularity has to be set to a low value, otherwise you'll get a plastic look. I wouldn't set Reflection at all.

I would have to see your setting for specifics... Erlik is right, and all I can really add is That I usually set diffusion around 80% and ambiance around 20% for a starting point. A wee bit of bump can really help things, a very low specularity and you might try reflection but keep it very low....sometimes it gets a good effect. Check your sky settings, it is advisable to turn the shadow intensity down, this can help the way skin looks.

Thanks for your help. I'm not at home, so I cannot show an example. Settings are default settings at the moment. Texture is only set as Diffuse colour. All other things are set to zero (just imported as *.obj from Poser4). I thought that at least on the hair a mild reflection might help to make it more glistering in the light. From certain angles I also get strange shadows from the nose over the eyes (too dark and not smooth), but that may be solved with setting the texture also to the ambient colour. I'll try your suggestions and may come up with a picture... Thanks indeed for your help...

Ah, yes, the hair is something else. Just like the lashes. After you've set the transparency map, it would be okay to put a mild, mild reflection on the hair. Something like one percent. But the shininess of the hair would be better done with Specularity. Change the Specular Halo colour to match the colour of the hair, too. Or, if you want, put a different specular halo colour and play with highlights in the hair. Shadows ... well, sometimes Poser figures have these strange bumps that cannot be smoothed out by smoothing the model. Zero value? When I import Poser figure in Bryce, Diffusion, Ambience and Specularity are all set to 100. BTW, do you have the texture on the eyes, or are they white?

Shouldn't have said zero. Default is the better word. Outer Eyeballs are set to transparency with a little specularity. Transmaps on lashes and hair are applied. Still I want the result to get more realistic... Will make a try on Specularity, thanks again.

Also check ambient color, default poser imports are usually black.

Set both ambience and diffusion to the texture. Diffuse should be 100 (unless you want darker colouring) and ambience 12. Specularity is only needed if you want the skin to look wet for some reason; settings of 5 to 10 are appropriate. A bump map with a strength of 2 or 3 can be used to give more detail. It's better to use a proper bump map than a sandy texture in the bump channel.

Oh yes, there's no transmap on the hair, lashes are still half-finished, and note the angularities on the face that smoothing couldn't iron out.

It's a good start and the hair looks pretty good too. The best way would probably be to mess around with the settings and see what works for you. Good luck!

Another biiiiig thing you don't want to forget about is bump mapping. You can use Poser bump maps, or drive the bump in another channel and use procedurals set at really low levels... Try it, because almost nobody's skin is perfectly smooth!

Another note: I forgot the anti-aliasing on the second one...

Erlik, you have applied a bump map with zero strength, which has no effect, and you have a specularity of 33.5 with black colours, which also has no effect.

Applying the bump map with zero value does have some small influence. Enough for my purpose, although I'll recheck. But the specularity is an oversight. :-) Thanks.

No, Erlik, unless there is a .1 or some positive or negative value, the bump channel has no effect whatsoever. It isn't like the reflection or transparency channel, which don't need a positive value to affect the material, and which can't have a negative value. (Negative reflections? Whoa!) Just suggestions my friend...

Negative reflections? I like it! I'm sure Dr Who could tell us more.

Sure, why not... We've got negative lights to work with. I mean who ever heard of a FLASHDARK! What's next, negative lasers? What the *&%$# is a negative laser!?!?!

Attached Link: http://hinchu.tripod.com/tuts/specularity/