I've been searching the web for a week to no avail. I remember seeing a couple of tutorials on- 1) Multi-layering transparent textures 2) on how to get skin to look wet or oiled does anyone have the link to these two tutorials? thanks ahead of time.

I don't know, but the thing that works for me is using a white highlight on your figure, that makes it reflect the lights more and thus will look wetter. I am quite interested in this tutorial too.

there is one tut at curious labs for wet eyes and lips if thats any good to you.

The white highlight works...but only takes you so far. Beach baby at RDNA (link below) comes closest to the look I'd like to see BUT it's incorporated in the texture and has it's obvious limitations. I think a combination of an overlay texture and bum (or displacement map) that could be used as part of a multi-layered texture would be great. You could use it on additional models with fewer lighting limitations. http://host1.bondware.com/~syydr/catalog.ez?ShowProduct=MW%2D023&TopElement=0

i've tried the white high light and It's just not the look I want or maybe I haven't the tweak right yet. There has been sevral posts of art work that has a overall gloss. A real high wet sheen. Perhaps if I use the highlight with a plastic wrap filter in PS? I'll check out the tut a Clabs for lips and eyes. But I did see these two tuts somewhere. I believe there is a connection between the multi-transparent texture layering and the wet look that I'm looking for. Rendererotica has several posts of kick ass art work where clothes and skin have this high sheen. I'm waiting on a couple of replies from some of the artists. if they do reply for anyone interested I'll post them

As far as I know, you can only simulate such an effect in Poser 4 (I don't know about Poser 5). Most other rendering applications offer a so called "Shellac"-Shader (3D-Max) or a mixed material (Vue d'Esprit) or something comparable. When using a Poser-Figure in 3D-Max, simply create a new shellac-material, instance the original Poser-texture into slot 1 and add a transparent, reflective and very shiny shader into slot 2. You can add a bitmap with small droplets into the function-tab, to restrict the shiny-shader to certain areas. It works quite well for me and I am certain that other rendering-applications offer comparable methods. Vue d' Esprit and Bryce have to go another way: Simply make a new, shiny material and give it 100% transparency with a function. Add a bitmap to this function that looks like a negative version of the droplets where you want the wet skin to be. In the same menue (Vue d'Esprit) you can add a texture to appear under the original texture. In this tab you need to add the original texture. Looks quite good but is one hell of a project, since Vue forces you to do this with all of the materials used on the Poser-Object. I have tried comparable techniques in my old RayDream Studio and it worked. A friend of mine uses Cinema 4d and also uses this way. I guess that's the only way to get acceptable results. Another version I see quite often is to simply fake the wet effects by adding "droplets" and "plastic wrap" to the texture, using Photoshop or some comparable application. While this seems somewhat unprofessional, I am quite amazed and impressed, what results some people got with this method. Joerg

Here is an amazin example for the "droplets and plastic wrap"-technique: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=24818&Start=1&Sectionid=0&Form.Search=wet+skin&Form.Criteria=ALL Sadly, one of the most amazing examples was obviously removed for being to erotic in nature. It was almost 2 years ago that this picture of some damsel in distress, bound to a pole in some waterbasin with corcodiles popped up. Great picture... But I can't find it anymore. Had the best postwork-wet-effects I have ever seen. Joerg

Was just playing with Staale's Body Morpher1 mk.3 figure. It is a P4Fem figure with 3 skin material layers. A random noise bump map on the top layer with the Highlight & Ambient levels pumped up; and full transparency with no transmap, renders just the overexposed highlights from the .bum. They appear as little sparkley highlights like sweat or water spray on the skin without affecting the other two underlying material layers.

I just recieved an e-mail from one of the artist in the UK and this is what it said: To achieve this greased up look - in Poser 4 give your figure a skin texture, set highlight colour to white and uncheck the 'apply texture to highlight' box in surface materials (from memory haven't used 4 in a while) In Poser 5 apply a skin texture to the figure, set specular colour to white and disconnect it from the texture node Since rendering this pic I've found that adding a bump map and an anisotropic reflection node would make an even more realistic wetlook Hope this makes sense and helps you Happy rendering Rubbermatt

Alright now knowing all the above, say one wants to create the oily/wet/greased look- but with out a skin texture and other words completly transparent but with form and "depth" yet keeping that extreme sheen. like a bucket of crystal clear oil with out the bucket and keeping it posable yet fluid like? can any-one follow that? or am I being too non-discrip. Remember the animated water scene in the abyss. like that only with the high sheen. But not chromy.

Where might one find a "random noise bump map"? Nance. You out there?

Where might one find a "random noise bump map"? P5 has one, in the Material room click "New Node - 3D Tex - Noise". I don't know how random it is though.

I am going to try out a sweaty skin theory I came up with. It's made for Poser 4, if anyone is interested I'll post a tutorial on how I did it okay?

Please do Shademaster...or at least tell us what doesn't work :-)

Note that without the second skin, the bum highlights on the 1st skin only appear in the transitions from the highlighted areas to the unhighlighted areas.

I'm still not quite there, (kinda furry looking due to the bad matte), but looks like it has potential.

yes, looks awesome! This might be the look whe are looking for, needs some minor perfection but thatsit. The way I was going to try it is to draw a bumpmap that shows waterdrops, then make that bumpap a transaperncy map with 2 colors (black&white, so no gradients) and then apply them to a second figure that has the exact same pose and location but with slightly higher scales so that the outer figure functions as a second texture layer consisting of only the sweatdroplets.

Sounds like Staale's figure might do it for you all in one render. I was using a .bum 2500x2500 on bottom skin layer and 1280x1280 on the upper skin layer. Since the "drops" you are seeing on mine are individual pixels on the original bum, you will need to use a really Truly HUGE map to get enough resolution for them to show up as actually droplet shapes. However, taking it one step further, perhaps this top skin layer could be individually remapped as a self tiling material which would allow you to do the droplet thing using a tiny map.

Nance, your examples look great. I personally prefer the third one. To me, the last one has too many drops. Now, we need a three layer map for Vicky.

Poser 5's displacement mapping could yield some great results too. You can assign the bumpmap to the displacement channel and create real droplets, not just bumpmaps! But that's poser 5 only and I don't really kow how many poser users use it...

Actually I agree about #3 (unless someone turned the hose on her in #4.) But then we've been doing stuff on a single layer for quite some time, so kinda got the hang of that part. Working with the second layer has so many possibilities its going to take a bit of fooling around to see what works. In this instance, as Shademaster suggested, a specific map for the droplets would probably work better than the random static noise map. And I also enthusiastically support the call for a multi-layered Vicky. I looked at what Staale had done with Posette's .obj file and saw the new VT and F lines for the second skin layer, but unfortunately still too mind boggling for me to tackle. And off the top of my head, I dont recall that Staale does work with Vicky. Any takers?

Just thinking. Since real droplets would take a huge map, thought Id try for just-out-of-the-water streamlets.

Smeared the 2nd skin 2500x2500 noise bum vertically for streaks and ripples.

AFAIK, Staale pretty much only does P4. I'm inspired now to play with his figure. If the how-to baffles you, I know better than to even try it. Probably could be added to UVMapper. This could really give P4 some P5 capability though.

Nance, For the just-out-of-the-water look, I think the streamlets would follow a more predictable path along body lines and curves due to surface tension. But just to make sure, I'm going to have to watch the Mrs. the next time she gets out of the bath. :-)

How about a seamless coating like milk or honey? I'm thinking of the liquid poured over the body so it would sort of cascade down. It would only cover part of the body and vary in thickness/transparency, perhaps with some rivulets and droplets towards the bottom and have to be colored of course. Possible? I'd like to see even a crude example. It occurs to me this technique might also be used to create a more realistic skin texture with pores, (though they'd have to be very tiny), scars, body hair a wet clothing look, etc. If it could be varied during an animation, you could create some interesting transformation effects. Using the second skin layer would have thehuge advantage of allowing you to use the effects on different body textures without modifying the textures themselves.

For the third figure the settings for Skin2 are the same and the top skin layer was made invisible with all the colors for "Skin" at zero luminance. This means, without using Staale's second skin layer, it was essentially a standard Posette .

And a correction, there are only two skin layers, not three.
I misunderstood staale's readme. It's the UV template itself that has three layers. Two for the skin and a third for the eyes.

Nance - 2 questions - In applying this to the skin layer as I've noticed in others work, It applies to the whole skin layer. Including the palms of the hands. How would you regulate on the arm per say NOT to apply this mat to the palms of the hands and fingernails only. Secondly; in rendering out a multi-frame sceen and wanting a natural gravity effect to apply to the water drops and/or ripple effects you so kindly showed above, so the ripples flow or drops run down to the floor following the posettes contours. How to do this with-out it looking un-natural because from what i am seeing this technique works great for still renders but not multi-frame movement. Am I correct? Thirdly for anyone - I recenly saw the movie Artifical Intellegence - in the last scene where the machines had evolved (the tall skinny semi-trans figures that brought the mother back to life) does anyone have any idea how they acheived that look of tranparency? and the internal action (when they spoke)And can it be achieved in poser4 or do i have to have p5?

Saie_Tahnn, to vary the texture for an individual material, like fingernails, is no problem as it is already a separate material. For individual body parts combined in the same surface material, such as the palms, you could vary the texture or bump map itself or you could create a new surface material for that body area. I did this in fact with the images above. Because the head and face are scaled larger than the body on the UV layout template, causing problems when applying a uniform bumpmap to both the body and head, I created a new material for the head (and for Staales second skin, also another layer named Head2) using Steve Coxs UVMapper. You could do the same using Posers Grouping Tool. -On the second Q, I am unaware of any method of animating surface materials in P4. To get them to move, I assume the drops would have to be actual props. However, because the reflection of the bumpmap & highlights are so critically linked to the relationship with the lights, any movement of the figure, camera or lights changes the highlight effect, giving a moving shimmer or glistening effect between sequential frames. Because of this effect, I would suspect that the addition of just a very few droplet props that actually moved down the body may provide sufficient visual cues to convey the effect in an animation. -didnt see AI. Were they not something similar to SamTherapys Abyss type transparent character pictured above?

Nance - i was really hoping not to hear that about the animation rendering. But I have an idea, using another app, in conjunction, if it works it works, if not, back to the drawing board. No, in ref to the Abyss by SamTherapy. To discribe it - I'll try, I'm assuming now that the hilit was used on the exterior, but with a trans chrome finish, and heres where my discription gets weird, and the only way i can help you visulize it. Fill it with smoky colored jello with little lite shimmering sparkles thru-out and add animation to the interior and presto you've got preety close to what I mean. But you know what while thinking as writing this, dangerous combo, what if you did an abyss type posette,smoky chrome transparency, right? And had another similiar posette inside the original posette at 75% of the original size with again smoky chrome finish with the noise bum on the extior of the intior one and reverse the noise bum as in your figure 3 so it faces the intiorer on the extior posette? Did I say that right? you might have to do this at 25%, 50% and 75% of the original posette, keeping them all transparent and using the niose bum on intior extior maybe? I'd think you'd have to parent child all 4 posettes so they bend properly. I don't know just open thoughts about this. I know what I'm thinking but not how to put it in words.

**King Arthur: "What?"
Knight: "He said he's already got one."
**[Monty Python's Holy Grail]

Ok, kinda lost me there in the description but got the general idea. I'll have to catch the film.

Don't think you will be able to just rescale & get a second figure, that small,inside. Figure building's not my strong point, but I assume each body part would have to be individually rescaled and all the joints adjusted.

Does not sound like even extra layers with Staale's technique would provide the offset space inside the body that you would need for such an effect.

Though, ...for an extra "skin" layer, there's always the catsuit perhaps?

I guess my last response did'nt post... anyhow, I figured it would be had to follow my discription. lol I think contacting the image rather than resizing would be better discrition, since resizing would ccause the problems you mentioned. On the topic of layering though, wasn't there a tutorial on layering on the inside of a mesh? Look at SamTherapy's abyss figure you'll notice the reflection only comes from the front or rather the outside of the figure. Nothing from the backside of the head or back. and that reflection would have to come from the inside of the backside of the Abyss figure. So the layers have to face the intior, and I know there is a way to do that, do you know how?

I really need to spell check... I mean "contracting" the image in my last post.