I love multicolored mehndi and made 3 separate masks to mix that with the skin. My plan is that it has natural-color mehndi, plus one of those shiny colored ones in any color, really (I thought something blue?), plus silver.

The image I attached is it as it is now.

For silver, I tried one of BB's shaders posted at RDNA, one for hard metals; but it looks odd in such thin lines, too dark even with an envoironment sphere to reflect things. I got rid of it, and in that render it's just a seamless metal texture and a simple reflection (that I don't see working even with my raytrace on with 2 bounces...)

This is way too far from the level of detail I wanted. Mehndi is slightly raised, with lumps from being painted; it's a thick paint, I've used it in real life. That paint is usually peeled and stains the skin for a brown color, but I prefer the look of it freshly painted, dark green and bumpy...

I tried to use a displacement, but it seems to have shifted the entire surface of the skin. Is zero displacement equal to 50% gray? I've always tought it to be black... Besides, I need the colored mehndi to be slightly shiny, and the silver to look like silver. And my skin is using VSS's skin shader v3, and I'm MIGHTY CONFUSED with all those nodes sigh

Examples of what I want with this:

http://www.poojamadhu.org/mehndi-designs/mehndi-design-with-color1.jpg natural and color mehndi

http://www.poojamadhu.org/mehndi-designs/mehndi-design-with-colour2.jpg natural with silver mehndi.

Help please? :3

Quote - Is zero displacement equal to 50% gray? I've always tought it to be black...

You're right, Black is zero displacement.

Quote - > Quote - Is zero displacement equal to 50% gray? I've always tought it to be black...

You're right, Black is zero displacement.

Then I have no idea why it's displacing the entire face to the point I can see a gash where the face material touches the lips material... (not in the render I showed, I had gotten rid of the displacement when I did that)

Displacement will alter the mesh, and if your displacement value is too high, it will grossly deform the model.  Considering that Mehndi is more a skin deep tattoo, you will  have relatively no height on the surface.  A bump map would bring out some detail and would be the preferred method.  There is a tattoo tute somewhere in the forum which does contain BB's input and comments.  But it is several years old and I don't have a reference link ATM.

The VSS skin shader may be far too complicated to insert so much into.

Sounds like you want to use multiple masks, and have these do various things, essentially producing multiple materials in one shader. Metals - paint - and skin, plus deal with displacements.

The differences between metal and skin are:

• Metals have no diffuse reflection to speak of - so tiny it might as well be zero. Skin has very high diffuse reflectivity. We'd need to plug in (to multiply) the PM:Diffuse Reflectivity with the negative of the metal mask, so that where there is metal, the negative has 0 and diffuse would get shut off. Negative of the metal mask is just a Math:Subtract node doing 1 - metal_mask.

• Metal specular reflections of lights are colored, not white. Skin specular reflections are white. We'd need to find the Blinn node, and insert something (probably a Blender) to choose between white and the metal color. (I'm assuming you have a metal color mask.) If the metal is strictly silver, we can skip this. If the metal is actually metallic paint, we'd want to make this sparkly as I do in my car paint shader.

• You want a reflection where the metal is which means adding a masked Reflect node if it's real metal, not metallic paint.

That's a lot of work. I could do it, though, pretty easily, but altering my script.

Do you have a metal mask?

Then for paint, you just need to mix in the color, and probably have a paint mask that you plug into Shine to add more shine where there is paint.

Finally, you'd take the paint mask and drive displacement with it.

Do you want me to try setting up such a shader for VSS?

I can really do without the displacement, it was just a first idea. Perhaps a bump, or if that would make things to odd, nothing at all... Even though it would be nicer if there was some relief going on, like freshly-painted mehndi.

Looking at the images I'm using as reference, the colored mehndi seems to have a slightly metallic sheen to it, not enough to actually reflect. On the other hand, I'd like the silver parts to be actually silver, with the reflection - but I'm betting most of my costumers won't think to place things around the character to be reflected, so it'd be good if it were a light grey where there's no reflection happening, if possible.

I do have a metal mask, it's Image_Map_5 in the screenshot I posted. Natural mehndi map is Image_Map_4 and the color mehndi is Image_Map_6.

I did try putting a Reflect node masked with Image_Map_5, but looking at my own screenshot now, I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking when I left the reflection color black sigh. Was I right though to plug my metal mask to Reflection Value?

I feel kinda bad to ask you to set this up for me, but come to think of it, it would probably be so much more work to you if I had you explain stuff to me LOL! Would you be willing to set it up? I could send all the maps to you, and later just modify it so it would work with the Torso and Limbs materials. I would love to give you the final character later, as a small thank you, if you wish...

(It's funny, every time I try something complicated and confusing in the material room, I always get frustraded because I made a mistake in something very very simple and couldn't notice it. Damn you, Reflection Color)

I'd enjoy making this work if you want to share some WIP files with me. Yes me doing then telling will be easier than you doing.

Do you have DropBox or similar for transferring files? I have Drop Box, Files Anywhere, Pogo Plug, and a couple others. I like Drop Box best even though it doesn't encrypt. It's just so easy to use.

I have a Mediafire account, if that's ok with you... I'd then send you the download link via site mail.

Also, THANK YOU! <3

Please do!

Sent. Sorry I didn't do it yesterday, was finishing some stuff up.

Thanks. Will look soon as I have time.

How does this look? (Click it)

Thanks :D

I like it. I can actually see the bump in the silvery parts - looks very nice!

Do you think bumping up the dark and pink paint would make it look bad? Perhaps only the pink?

Just finished this edge view with those values. I'll try increasing the paint.

You're great. That looks very lovely. I think maybe the pink would be good with the same bump than the silver, and the brown as it is right now.

Did the regular skin bump amount change at all? I guess that's the part that involves the math that I wouldn't be able to calculate. Cause if it changed, I'd have to change all the skin materials, not just the ones with the painting; and I'd like to allow my buyers to load the face, torso, legs and arms painting separately...

Here's the silver and pink both .03, and the brown .021.

Oooh that, that! I like that!

To make it perfect, I think it's only lacking a specular that looks a bit more metallic or latex-y in the pink, and this will be perfect!

BTW, what color does that silver get when there's nothing around it to be reflected?

I'll set up a reflection map so there's is always something to reflect.

The metallic or latex look is actually reflections at work. So we want the whole thing to be reflective. For the latexy look, must add Fresnel effect.

Will do.

Won't it be a bit too much? I'm looking for a glossy paint effect, not actual pink metal. (But wait, those blurry reflections you make would be good, I think?)

Pink metallic or pink glossy - either way it's reflections. Pink metallic we make the reflections strong and pink. Glossy we make them weak and white. You pick.

Hm, I guess strong and pink will have a nice effect (this is a fantasy option for the character anyway).

Mr. boyfriend arrived so we will go out - just letting you know that it will take me some hours to answer your next message.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaa*&¨@*&%$¨$W. This is so beautiful!

Ok, I'm ready; you said doing then telling, then please go ahead and give me the brain knots LOL!

Bumping this to make sure you didn't forget it LOL

Hi. So the changes I made do not include shader GC - I did it assuming PP2010 with render GC, which makes shaders much simpler. Do you need shader GC built in? If so, I have to update some more. It won't look the same except in limited lighting and viewing angles without GC.

I thought you had made it over my own shader? Well...

The mehndi will be just one of many options in my character set, so I guess the skin should look just like the other shaders I have for it, with the addition of the painting. In any case, I think I can figure out what you added to it and make it work in mine...

Or if you made it over VSS V3, I can simply switch its GC control node back to 2.2, no?

Or you mean only the painting has no GC? If so, did you set the GC control node to 1 in your renders? Here, if I use VSS with GC set to 2.2 AND PP2010 with render GC, things look mighty green LOL... If that's what you mean, I can use the nodes in a GC macro I have here and plug them to the color of the painting.

I built up from your shader. The parts you and I added do not attempt to deal with gamma. The rest of it (the skin) does. I can turn the gamma node back to 2.2 but it doesn't magically alter the new additions just because I want it to. I have to anti-GC the metal color and the two paint colors, anti-GC the reflection, combine them all upstream of the final gamma correction. You had made the insertions after the final gamma and so that was where I picked up. For the time being, I turned off the shader GC and enabled render GC, thus all that was automatic. But to finish the job, one would expect the shader GC to work on the finished 4-material shader, not just the skin part.

Part of the reason your metal didn't look right was lack of GC. Mine is looking right because of GC - nothing else about it is different. 

Yes, that makes sense, I had just forgotten about it. I wouldn't have dared to try and find in the VSS shader where I could plug those things to be affected by the gamma control node (it was already brain-knotting to even think of how to blend these things at all).

I'm already feeling like I'm abusing you, so I wouldn't dare to ask you to make them work that way. But really, for this character I'm not expecting my customers to have PP2010 (I myself only got it a little while ago), that's why I keep VSS's material-side GC on...

Sorry to bump this, but mind sending me what you had made of this, BB? I want to get this character done not long after PP2012 is out, and I still have to convert things to VSS4 to work both with and without render-side GC.

Thanks! :D

I'm coming back to it tomorrow. Don't worry I did not forget.

You know you're going to want to do the whole thing over with scatter, right?

Yes, I do intend to make it two versions, one with VSS4 for pre-P9/PP2012 users and one with scatter. I'm hoping I can at least superficially understand how you made the henna, so I can apply it to those (the shader I sent you for that skin is VSS3, so no render GC detection)....