I'm sorry to say that she still looks like Caucasian V4 with a wider nose and a larger mouth.  Thanks anyway for trying and for taking an interest in my wishing well idea.

Thank you BluEcho.  I hope you'll give it a shot.  As an additional reference, above are a few images of actress Brenda Song.  Her facial features combine the best of Hmong and Thai features.

Would sure like to see Vulcan style hair in the Renderosity Market Place.

Quote - I use Miki2 for an asian character. I like her face more than the morphed V4.  I got her free though with Poser 7.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I too like Miki2's face a lot, despite the fact that Miki2 has very few built-in morphs.  I even purchased ultra morphs for Miki2 from RDNA but these morphs are nowhere near the huge amount of morphs available in the V4 Morphs++.  For example, just last month I bought Manihoni's beautiful Suzu for Miki2.  Her features are perfect, except that I prefer to see her lips a little fuller.  To my chagrin, there is neither a "Lip Top Center Height" nor a "Lip Bottom Edge Height" parameter for me to increase her lips's fullness.  These parameters are readily available in V4's Morphs++.  I believe V4's popularity very much results from the fact that her morphs provide incredible flexibility for character creation and experimentation.

Quote - Ive been working on localizing the Shade character Hanako into English (soon to appear on the Mirye.net website). I too have been frustrated with Asians in Poser. We just aren't built that way :-)

I second Infinity10.  That IS excellent news.  Thanks for taking an interest in my request.  Will Hanako still be a Shade character or can we render her in Poser too?  Pardon me for my ignorance.  I do not have Shade so I really don't know if a character made for Shade can be used in Poser.

Quote - Thanks for the references! She is indeed gorgeous (by the way, Google seems to think her name is Charo Ronquillo ).

Oops.  I really did misspell her name, didn't I?  Thanks for the correction.  I sure hope you will consider creating Southeast Asian facial morphs into Antonia one day.  Antonia is a very unique and pretty character.  Thanks again for your interest.

Odf, Thank you very much for taking an interest in my "wishing well" idea.  I really appreciate you taking the time to morph Antonia into a more Asian looking character.  She's awesome.  I particularly like her eyebrows and the shape of her nostrils.  If we define Asia to include India and Pakistan, then I think her features are more Indian and Pakistani than Southeast Asian.  I must confess that my interests are more in the Southeast Asian features, e.g., people who come from countries such as Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.  Compared with the Asian character in your image, I think the Southeast Asian cheekbones are not as high, their mid face depth more shallow, their faces less chiseled, and their eyelid folds more arched.  I have attached a few images of the gorgeous model Charo Conquillo from the Philippines.  These images are of poor quality but I hope they will help demonstrate what I mean.  Again thanks for your interest in this matter.

> Quote - > The Specular_Map node in the shader has what to use as a backup in the "Background" property. Find whatever that is, and connect it directly to everything the Specular_Map goes to now.

Thank you so much for the very helpful tips BB.  Following your instructions, I disconnected the Comp node from the Specular Map node.  Then I plugged the Comp node directly into the Blinn node, as shown in attached before and after images above.  After I resynchronized VSS, all the relevant material zones in the Sakura textures are now using the color map to produce specularity.  Whoo hoo !!!

Your VSS skin shaders truly are a breakthrough in Poser texture technology.  Smith Micro should pay you generously for keeping the Poser user community happy by providing us with such an invaluable tool.

Hborre, Anthanasius:  Thank you very much for your advice.  Yes, I do want VSS to use the color map to simulate specular effects.  In fact, I do very much like the way VSS simulates specularity via the color map.  I'm very sorry I explained myself badly in the previous post.    I misspoke when I said the the original Sakura textures came with "specular maps".  These so called "specular maps" are actually just the bump maps that get plugged into the Alternate Specular node.  There are NO specular maps in the Sakura textures.

VSS did exactly what it was designed to do.  It used the maps that were connected to the Alternate Specular node to produce specularity.  Unfortunately these maps are just bump maps where the eyebrows and the moles are almost totally white.  As a result, too much reflection was produced in these areas, and the eyebrows and moles ended up looking silvery grey.

To "fix" above problem on the face, I manually disconnected the bump map from the Alternate Specular node in the SkinFace material zone of the original Sakura textures, thus forcing VSS to simulate specularity via the color map.  This works really really well for the face.

To do the same for the rest of her body, I will have to manually disconnect the bump maps from the Alternate Specular node in the remaining material zones, specifically SkinHead, SkinNeck, SkinTorso, SkinHip, SkinArm, and so on.  This process can get very tedious and time consuming, not to mention the fact that the repetitive stress against the hand and fingers is absolutely ergonomically unfriendly.  I'm just wondering if there's a way to tell VSS to just simply ignore the bump maps that are plugged into the Alternate Specular node and to simulate specularity via the color map instead.

Perhaps I should remove the bump maps from the Alternate Specular node by directly editing the pz2 file itself?

Any advice you can give me will be much appreciated.

> Quote - Looks like your back lights don't have shadows enabled. The glow is troubling because your brain tells you that isn't possible, given the hair and collar should be blocking the light.

Bagginsbill, thank you so much for the advice.  It turned out that the back lights did have Cast Shadows turned on.  I think I know what happened though.  Immediately behind Kytana was a transparent wall with "Shadow Catch Only" turned on.  Perhaps the back lights went right through the transparent wall and got refracted somehow.  Just a conjecture. Moving on to another topic, above are 3 images: before VSS, VSS with specular map, and VSS without specular map.  The character is Ming Zhu by Art Collaborations.  The skin textures used are Sakura's textures by Morris.  The original Sakura textures came with specular maps, which by the way were exactly the same as her bump maps.  After I applied VSS PR3 AO to the Sakura textures, I noticed that her eyebrows turned silver grey, as shown in the center image.  I then removed her specular map from the "SkinFace" material zone and reapplied VSS PR3 AO.  Her eyebrows's color is black again without the specular map, as shown in the third image on the far right.  So far I have only managed to manually disconnect her facial specular map from "SkinFace".  I would like to disconnect the remaining specular maps from the rest of her body parts.  How do I tell VSS to ignore all the specular maps that came with the original textures?

On page 14 of this thread you mentioned a transmap for eyebrows.  Unfortunately Sakura does not have such a transmap, and I do not know how to create a transmap for her eyebrows.  Disconnecting the specular map seems to be the only way for me to prevent her eyebrows from becoming silvery grey.

> Quote - > > In the PR3 skin template, all the nodes you would normally want to change for tweaking are on the left and are called PM:something for numbers, and PMC:something for colors.

Thank you Bagginsbill for your advice.  Attached are a couple of before and after images.  Left image is "before" (no VSS).  Right image is "after" (rendered with your VSS skin shader).  In the "after" image, I changed the PMC:Tint and PMC:SSS colors to give Kytana a light golden tan.  I also gamma-corrected Kytana's hair and outfit by following your instructions posted in this Poser forum thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2738989 

In the "after" image, the back lights look really good on her cheeks, but her neck seems to "glow" a bit too much.  What can I do to reduce the reflection of the back lights on her neck?  Should I change anything in the VSS skin shader?  Or is this something that must be done elsewhere?

 

I got the 500K users info from the Smith Micro web site.  Here's the link:

http://www.smithmicro.com/about/news-press-detail.aspx?newsid=414

The fourth paragraph contains this sentence "The Poser’s 3D figure design and animation program has a strong following of more than 500,000 users and is growing."

Quote - I'm not working on VSS because my regular software consulting business is booming. Included in that is work for SM.

Unless you guys can assure me that making 3D content will produce hundreds of thousands per year, I'm not focusing on it.

Bagginsbill, if I'm not mistaken, there are approximately 500,000 Poser users in the US.  Even if you charge only $30 for VSS and only a fifth of the total Poser users buy your products, you'll still be a millionaire.  Your VSS invention is truly a breakthrough in Poser technology.  I have no doubt VSS will sell like hot cakes.

Thank you very much for the advice.  I will experiment with the various options you mentioned.  Will post the results soon.  I'm having a lot of fun playing with the VSS skin shader.

...and after (with VSS PR3 AO).  The bump value was left at the default 0.03.  Her skin looks so much better in this image.  Thank you Bagginsbill.

I would like to give Kytana's pale skin a light golden tan and perhaps add more color to her lips.  However, I'm a bit intimidated by the large amount of math nodes in the skin template that comes with VSS PR3 AO. Should I simply change the diffuse color of the Diffuse node?  Or is there a more proper way to add color to her skin and lips?  Which node(s) should I change/add/delete if I need to make her skin look even paler?  Any advice you can give me will be much appreciated.