Holy cow, LL, that is fantastic.

I do see a bit too much inter-skin glow and redness, caused by the GC shader with GI. But this is easily fixed. I'll be publishing a new VSS control prop optimized for P8 GI + Tone Mapping.

I also see the extra occlusion caused by using the AO in shader along with GI. Another thing easily fixed (pretty much press the delete key on the AO node).

You make the new Prop, I'll use it! Got VSS in my Poser 8 python library, ready to go.

BB, you said before that I couldn't use both turbulence and a bump map... is that a limitation in Poser, or were you referring specifically to VSS? What I would like to do is depend on turbulence for general skin texture and a bump map for details such as wrinkles. It would be ideal if Poser could do a blend with bump like it can with diffuse.

You can combine them. You can add them, blend them, whatever. You can also create a map to control the procedural bump parameters so they vary across different parts of the figure.

However, any of that tricky work will require editing the skin shader - the default VSS shader doesn't have provisions for combinations. Poser does, just not the shader I supplied.

I can help with that if you like.

To be honest, I used your VSS system as the basis for this character, but she's long since detached from the prop... it never occurred to me to save my iterations of the prop until I was completely done working with her. Live and learn - with new characters from now on, I'm going to put everything into my own Believable3D runtime - morphs, maps, VSS prop etc. (I can do that, right? the prop can be in my own runtime, it's just the python script that has to be in the main program runtime?)

I don't suppose there's a way to reattach, huh?

At any rate, is the node setup tricky? If you gave me some guidance to get me going in the right direction, I'd sure appreciate it.

As for your other comments - duh, Blinn. Yes, I need to do that. I suppose that hair room hair would catch rim lights much better than transmapped. But I've never attempted the hair room... it looks pretty daunting (not to say tedious).

I was aware that the scene textures (curtains etc) weren't very good... I've used the scene before and it's fairly noticeable. It was probably a freebie, and it's a handy little setup for an everyday sort of setting. Someday I'll graduate to those sorts of issues, but I want to get character realism as good as it can be first. I suppose simply using higher quality products for final renders would be a good start though....

Thanks for clarifying on the finger creases. Now I understand why you were talking about the geometry. I have creases something like those myself, tho V4's are a bit exaggerated. Actually, I think the worst part about them is that they should have a bit of a "web" on the bottom (i.e. palm side); these just do something funny.

PJZ, thanks for the clarification on the hair re the vendor exempting it from raytracing. For some reason I had to read your note a second time in order to catch what you're saying. I'll have to check those settings; now that you mention it, that's probably the issue why it's not casting any shadows at all from that direction.

Quote - To be honest, I used your VSS system as the basis for this character, but she's long since detached from the prop... it never occurred to me to save my iterations of the prop until I was completely done working with her. Live and learn - with new characters from now on, I'm going to put everything into my own Believable3D runtime - morphs, maps, VSS prop etc. (I can do that, right? the prop can be in my own runtime, it's just the python script that has to be in the main program runtime?)

Yes you can save a VSS prop anywhere.

Also, VSS itself does not have to be in the main runtime. That is true of most Python programs, but I figured out a way to make VSS work from anywhere, even if it isn't IN a runtime at all. You could put the VSS folder on your desktop and it still would work.

Quote - I don't suppose there's a way to reattach, huh?

Any VSS prop will work on any figure, even one that has been set up by some other VSS prop. The issue is only whether you changed the settings from the defaults. If you load the default settings as I delivered them, it can't read back what changes you made to the shaders. However, if all you did was tweak the PM: or PMC: nodes, then you can get back to that state. Load the same kind of VSS control prop you used before. (there are several) Click on any skin material of the figure while in the material room. Examine the values in its copy of the material. Then select the VSS Control Prop's Template Skin and examine those values. If any were different on the figure, its because you changed them way back when, so just re-enter the same values back into the template. Once you get the template parameter nodes back to how you had them before it will produce the same again. If you made any changes to other templates, examine those materials, too. Iris, eyewhite (or sclera), etc. Make the shader in the control prop look the same as that on the figure. Then this prop will re-produce those same values. From there you can save the prop and use it anytime as a new starting point. If you make changes, save the modified prop. The prop is like a material collection or mat pose.

A customized VSS control prop can be used on any figure at any time. The important thing is to make sure you always have a copy saved of whatever instructions you put into it.

Quote - At any rate, is the node setup tricky? If you gave me some guidance to get me going in the right direction, I'd sure appreciate it.

Well if you just wanted to add them together, its pretty simple. The problem is only that the Template Skin shader is huge and made of twisted spaghetti. You have to tease a few things apart to find the pieces you need to rewire. But the wiring is simple. You need a new Math:Add node. Plug the Bump Map into Value_1. Plug anything else such as Turbulence into Value_2. Plug this Add node into the Bump channel. But, VSS handles bump a bit more complex than that. The Bump Map that's in there is connected to a Math:Sub node that offsets the bump map so that mid-gray means no bump. So what you really want is to connect that ... sigh this is complicated without a picture. Even then you could make a mistake.

Maybe I should just build it for you. I dont' build it by hand - I use matmatic to generate the shader. Hmmm - do I even have that script around with me? Not sure. It might be at home. I'm on the road during the week as I work in another state most of the time. I have an apartment and my laptop during the weekdays. That's why I'm online so much weekdays but not on the weekend. I don't do Poser like a madman when I'm home with the family. Anyway, my home desktop has all the good stuff on it so it may have to wait till the weekend.

Thanks, BB. Yeah, that's what I meant by saving the prop in the future - using it like a material collection until the character was absolutely finalized.

I think the reattach is probably a no-go. I did some pretty major changes. Probably some of it isn't even doing anything by now, who knows? :-p (Truthfully, most of it is still there, but after detaching and then having to copy settings from one material to another, the nice handy VSS names got lost, which is a PITA.) If you want, I could attach it as a .txt file (right?) and you could see what a mess I've made of your shader. :-p

Anyway, I'm gonna take the info you gave me here and go into the material room and have a look. Gonna have to do in Poser Pro, though, cause I'm doing my first Alyson render with P8. (The result won't be a pretty girl, but she's got character....)

There's another way to recover your modified Template Skin.

Pick a skin zone on the figure. Save it as a material file.

Go into the control prop Template Skin. Load the file you saved.

Now go through and on all the image maps, set the selected file to None.

This is not a perfect replica of the original template, because some decisions were made when it was applied, and some unused optional stuff got removed. But it would work for your specific character.

Ah, good idea. I'll try that.

Edit: I assume there's a step missing in your post. That would be copy from my material file and paste to template skin, right?

You could do that.

What I said was save and load. It amounts ot the same thing, with one crucial difference.

If you copy/paste then edit (badly) and then synchronize, you may find you screwed up, at which point all your copies are toast.

But if you save, load, edit, and synch, you can recover, because you SAVED.

You're still not thinking along the right lines. Save each step! Then you can back up.

Everything is already saved. I always save my changes as a new MC. But what I wasn't getting from your previous message was how I was getting the MC info into template skin. I guess I'm missing something.

My Alyson render is taking forever. I rebuilt the scene that was giving me grief the other day. I would have thought it was no more complex than the Sharon scene we've been looking at, probably less. And the size is smaller, and I think my quality settings are lower.... But right now it's like 10% of the way showing on "Precalculating Indirect Light," and the render started exactly two hours ago.

Have you tried rendering from two versions of Poser simultaneously? (I want to test my turbulence/bump map mix to see what I want for numbers.) In theory, it ought to work, since Poser Pro can do a queue render at the same time as a regular or background render... or maybe I can only render in queue? Hate to just try it and have my Alyson render crash, though I'm tempted to give up on it, as it's being rather ridiculous....

I didn't say anything about saving a material collection. I said select a single skin material - "a" material - and save it. Doesn't matter which, because the different skin zones have the same nodes, just different texture files.

Pick, for example, the face. Save that material. Now load that material into Template Skin.
Go from there.

The saved material collection is no help because you can't load a single material in that collection into the control prop. The names don't match, and there's no way to load just one.

Right, right. But I still wouldn't be losing information is what I'm saying about the MC.

What I didn't realize was that I could simply load a material file into template skin. Never done that before. That was the missing link in my mind. :)

I'm off to bed, ridiculously late. I never did get that to work the way I wanted - by loading my material file and then changing the image map info to none in Template Skin... that followed through when I synchronized... i.e. all my map info got deleted on the character. So oh well... I made the changes manually. I have to say I've never liked horizontal scrolling in the MAT room, and P8 seems worse than PP.

I'll post a render of my turbulence + bump map results, probably tomorrow. Thanks for your help.

I checked the settings on the EveryDay Hair I'm using in the scene I've been posting. Odd. It was checked to show visible in raytracing and to cast shadows. It almost feels like something's broken. I mean, it's obviously not working at all. (I'm rerendering at the moment, but I unwisely fired up the settings ridiculously high and it's taking forever....)

Well, I have promised a render of a starting point with a blend of bump map and turbulence, but I got caught in other stuff in the time I had today. (It was also my Mom's 83rd birthday, so that called for supper out.)

Here's a new render. I'm using IDL, but there's nothing else in the scene, not even the environment sphere. The hair is Ali's Hr-041 and I managed to get it, at least, to cast shadows. It also seems to render fast. (My settings were reasonably high here, and full render was less than 8 minutes.) Fabulous looking hair, and quite real from the front (though I probably have the Blinn a bit too exaggerated?), but when you look at the side, it obviously goes a bit flat.

You can see my problems with raytracing on the lip line clearly in evidence here again.

But I think the bump + turbulence combination looks pretty good (though obviously I still need to improve the map itself; haven't done anything with that). What do you think, BB?

please tell me you didnt use the default 3 lights? 

I can't really tell much about the bump at this size/magnification.

I think some of the issues are because your main light is coming from too low an angle.

It is shining into the nostrils, and the upper lip is not casting a shadow on the lower lip as we usually see. This may have some impact on the way the lip crevice appears to us.

As PJ noted, I see a hard line inside the nose from lit to black. With the light being low, it illuminates the bottom of the nostril, but the nostril material is painted dark, so we see a disturbing hard-edge at the boundary between face material and nostril material.

i htink the best way to show bump is with one light. you get  a good contrast of dark and bright.
plus more specular to see it.

Naw, this isn't a lighting issue. I can put the lights anywhere I want and get this. (See the image earlier in my other thread: two lights both squarely in front of her face.)

I'm actually beginning to wonder if these problems are triggered by my sculpt. These are just guesses: The issues at the lip line may be because I altered the mouth and triggered a bug. The issue in the nose is that somehow I managed do something radical in the geom when I did my sculpt. That's kinda hard to imagine, but I gotta test why this character is getting it and other folks don't seem to have my problems.

My next test will be to pose default V4 in exactly the same spot and hide Sharon and see what happens. That'll have to wait until after work.

But note that whatever I've done, it's only triggered by raytracing. Neither the nose nor lip issue shows up with DM shadows. Nor does it show up in DAZ Studio.

Thanks for the tip about checking bump, ice-boy. Will have to try remember incorporating that into my workflow.

i google images with dramatic lighting for skin. one spot light. so that the skin is also in shadow. then i see on the edges how much bump there is on skin.