Ghost, ZBrush will generally crash if you try to create a displacement map for a model with overlapping uv's. I export from P5, delete all the polys belonging to the material groups that you don't want (ie. just leave all the SkinTorso, SkinLeg, etc) polys. Then import into ZBrush. You can use Wings to delete the SkinHead, eye, etc polys - although it is a little slow.

Duane, have you had a msg go into limbo? I though IOR was always greater than 1 (ie. 1.0 thru to around 1.6 - at a guess).

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1740708

Ah, thank you. That helps a lot. So a more eligant fix is to replace the line a = f.Actor("Hip") with a = f.ActorByInternalName("hip") * Note small 'h'.

Select the hip (hufte), then bring up the Parameters Dials window (Shift-Ctrl-N) - select the Properties tab at the top of that window and it will disaplce the Name and the Internal Name. Are they both Hufte?

Glad you like it Singular3D! Can you pls confirm that both the NAME and INTERNAL NAME (2 different things) for hip are both 'Hte'. Thanks.

duanemoody - what do you mean by "everything I try goes too far"? Realistic eyes are on my to-do list, so I haven't played around enough with this yet....but what I was going to try was..... Eyewhite - texturemaps plus some incidence effect to simulate light passing through the eyelids and head into the eyeball plus specular Iris and Pupil - texturemaps, but no specular. No need for Incidence effect. Cornea - Specular (same as eyewhite) - and no texturemaps (you are right - they are redundant on the V3 mat pose). Maybe set the diffuse colour to grey, and only make them 95-98% transparent (since nothing is completely trans). Attach a RayTrace->Refract node to the refraction_color. Set refraction_value high (0.9-1.0). Set IndexOfRefraction to whatever value give you the right effect (there is a website with IOR's for different materials - maybe it has eyeball?). The overall refraction effect will be a factor of the IOR, CorneaBulge and IrisOut. But I haven't actually tried the refraction thing on the cornea....so let us know how you go!

Singular3d - out of interest - could you pls tell me what the INTERNAL name for hip is on the German version of P5? Check the Properties tab in the Parameter Dials window. Thanks.

Lucifer, the "No such directory: blar blar blar" is the only permanent thing I would change at this time (although I think the default Fresnel is probably a touch high too). To date there have been no other show-stoppers except the German version issue (only 2 reports of). Because I don't want to create confusion by having a number of different versions in the marketplace, I've posted an FAQ at http://www.users.on.net/~pkinnane/RealSkinShaderSupport.html, which describes changes that can be made. The original idea behind the script was to support the tutorial, but it seems to have taken on a life of it's own - so an update in the next few months might be in order. There is also a Mac version that is getting close to production testing (if we can get around a couple of lethal bugs in the Mac version of P5). Because it doesn't support a GUI, we have developed a different way of allowing the user to modify the setup parameters, which provides a little more flexibility (ie. enables changing specular parameters, etc). Maybe this could be incorporated into the PC version. We are also working on a version that works with a specific textureset - check my gallery over the next few days for some beta examples.

Interesting Ajax. Firstly, yes I tried importing the original model back in - but got the same result. Secondly, I was painting displacements on a posed and exported V3 (rather than the original obj that comes from DAZ). From what I can tell, when you export from P5, the obj is structurally different from the original V3 obj (ie. different number of vertices and poly's) - even if you don't weld vertices on the export. I suspect if I painted the displacements on the original V3 mesh (like you did) - I would have got better results. Thirdly - all the abnormalities were where body parts were joined. So I would displace a line from her hip to chest, and at the hip/abdomen and abdomen to chest boarder the displacement would not render correctly in P5 (eventhough it looked fine in ZBrush). Looks like you also have some small spotting artifacts in the image above (outside the displaced polys). Did you use Quinlors 16 bit node set-up to get around the 8-16bit issue? Would be interested if you have more luck then I did - I think there is some real potential with displacement maps (ie. make an "aging" map for V3, etc.

In testing for realism, I usually hide parts of the image to determine if that part of the images looks real (so the other parts of the image do not interfer). So hiding her head above - her shoulders and arms look real (although her hair spoils that a little - due to absence of shadowing). Keep in mind that it's not just skin that makes people look real, it's pose, joint deformations, shadowings, etc. Her forehead upwards looks good too. Her eyes appear to be the weakpoint in the image, and her faceshape and make-up are probably not right.

Ajax, have you actually successfully done a displacement map for V3 in ZBrush. I spent about a week running through all this (used the method you described above), and found some shop-stopper issues. My 'flexing Don' gallery image was the best I could do (still has some artifacts), and I could only get it to work by importing the full mesh back from Zbrush back into P5 (ie. NOT using the MT technique). Doing a displacement map from a MT just didn't work....

lululee, apologies for the delay - been away. I posted a link to a FAQ (in this forum) which addresses your issue lululee. It's probably to do with a non-standard Runtime - maybe your runtime is not under your exe's? Or for some reason you Pose directory is read-only? Anyway, the simple solution is to change the 3 lines in the script refering to "RuntimelibrariesposeSkinShaderTemp.pz2" (including the ":" one) to "SkinShaderTemp.pz2" (ie. remove the full path name). Someone found another way around it - run the script from the Runtime directory - but I have not tried that. Let me know how you go. Singular3D, ah yes, the German version. The incidence effect needs the coords of the figure - and takes those from the hip - and the hip is not called 'hip' in the german version. You can edit the script and replace the term 'hip' with whatever hip is in the German version (should only occur once in the script), or wait until I get this fully sorted (should be in the next 24hrs).

Open V3 up in wings, and delete all her body and head materials except the eye polys. That shows you what does what.

Ummmm, well P5 /can/ do refraction. You just need to plug the cornea's Index of Refraction into the refraction node and render with ray-tracing. You can also modify both the iris concavity and the cornea bulge thru morphs.