I'd like a more vibrant and procedural mats for lipstick textures for V4, (PP2014)  Suggestions.

References:

you could use a mask for the defuse and one for the reflect on the face mat. That would separate the shiny parts from the skin tones. I do that sort of thing all the time for decals and such.

like this

that looks nice.

blurred reflection-ish

Hmmm.  That looks great ... trying to figure the soft edge for the lip ... Let me see what I can do.  Thanks, this is wonderful.

@Boni
You just need to blur the edge of the mask.

Thanks!!

Ok, it's only fair that you see how this turned out.  Here you go. :)

Thank you my friends!  this is great!

Boni

Here is a little more complex way of doing it. I don't do the math stuff so I leave that to EZSkin2. The shader you see here is just a texture and bump ran through EZSkin. I have marked in red the new nodes for the reflective stuff and the yellow dashed line is where EZSkin normally hooks everything up. Also, I don't use Poser lights all that much and this image uses none. All lighting is coming from BB's EnviroSphere. Somebody else might be able to figure out how to incorporate glossy speculars  when using the Poser lights. Also, also, shifting the blender blend control nearer to 0 makes it look more like lip gloss than reflective paint.

Also, If you need other colors you can slip a simple color node between the blender and reflect nodes and choose the color you want.

I found some problems with that last shader I made. The darker the color the less reflective it became. Here is a better version of that. Play with the blending setting to make more of a lip gloss look, change the color in the simple color node and also change the reflect softness if you want it more mirror like.

Ghostship2: your mask is perfect, where/how do I get/make such a perfect mask? I have been struggling with it for over a week.

it's kinda sloppy but here it is. I hope this helps.

Thank you so much!

I feel foolish for asking this, but I can't seem to use or adjust a lip mask so it's up to the the edge of the lip zone but still soft edged enough to blend seamlessly with the adjoining face map. Surely this is possible. Help please.

You have my sympathy, just another reason I can't stand multi-map designs - they're a pain in the arse to work with.

I could be wrong but I think you need to use something that allows you to paint across seams directly on the model.  Alternatively, and I don't know if it would work for V4, but Vilters discovered quite a biggie in getting rid of zones and merging them into one.  Maybe visit the thread and ask Tony if it will be possible for V4 because that trick he found is pretty damn neat for getting rid of multiple maps - it'll make your life a lot easier if it works.

Click Here for the thread, but I recommend you ask before you try it, just to be sure.

As I commented in the other thread, overlays and displacement/bumps created in nodes would be disproportionate on a single map ... The head is not in proportion with the body etc. ... but a very interesting approach. Also since my ultimate goal is to make characters for the marketplace this would be counter-productive.  Let me emphasize though that for personal projects this is a wonderful idea!  I don't want to devalue this idea.  The other challenge I have concerning multi-map designs is since they are dis-proportionate to each other I've been seeking a ratio setting of the proportions to establish changes in the size of referenced overlay nodes so that it all comes together in the final render ... all in a form that in the end will work with a marketable character.  But that is another issue.  Right now the mask for the lips is my concern, and I would need that no matter that mapping design it was since I need to alter the texture of the lip separate from the body.  Lots of things to think about.

Boni 

Sorry Boni, never thought about that aspect of it.

NP, I've been overthinking this for a couple years now as I prepare to become a vendor.  I just wanted to try some new approaches to give users a fresh character base.

I'm confused. In the renders that I did I used the same mask and shaders on both the lips AND the face. the mask runs past the lip boundary. I had no problems at all with how the mask worked. Also, these are for V4. If you are using another figure then you would need a different mask.

I feel foolish for asking this, but I can't seem to use or adjust a lip mask so it's up to the the edge of the lip zone but still soft edged enough to blend seamlessly with the adjoining face map. Surely this is possible. Help please.

I don't think it is. I've tried to do the same thing and always get that razor-sharp edge....your lip textures have to either be larger than the lips or smaller than the lips and have surrounding mouth flesh as part of the lip texture. You will also note that when you buy a character pack with multiple lip colors the vendors leave part of the mouth skin/texture to blend with the lips. It's just not practical to try to get right to the edge. Same reason I use iris textures  that are larger than the iris so I don't get that razor-sharp-robot-eys look on my figure.

Well, after about 10 more hours working on it ... I think I've got it as close as I can.  Slight edging, but at a normal resolution and distance I think it will be ok.

The primary reason I'm doing this is so that I can mask more effects for the lips.  blending with the surrounding mouth works very well for standard lipsticks, but once you have effects like gold, silver ... glitter, what have you ... the rules change slightly therefore the mask.  But this can be applied to standard lips too so the process done once can be applied again and again and individual lip blends may not be necessary. 

What do you all think?

Boni

Hey Boni

the border around the lip looks unnatural. this is mine with the same shader that I posted up earlier. Again...no lights, BB's Envirosphere and EZSkin2. Are you using poser lights in your render?

Ok, here are my lip samples for your consideration.  Marketable?

Maybe you could post up your shader and lighting setup. Or just PM me and I can take a look at it.

Will, do, but I will be busy today and may have to wait until tomorrow.  Thank you. :)

one might use BB's basic metal shader for this.  e.g. no diffuse, add refl/blinn nodes via colour math, attach math node to fresnel, which then goes to alt diff chan.  uncheck refl_lite_mult, use IDL et al.

Hey Miss Nancy,

BB certainly knows his stuff but sometimes those complicated Fresnel reflect nodes just get out of hand. There are instances when I can't tell the difference between a simple reflect node plugged into the reflect channel and one of his hundred+ shader trees.

I think my simple masked reflect shader should be all you need. (take a look at the pictures above.)

Agree with ghostship2 about the effectiveness of the more simple shader... I spent a couple of agonizong days trying to create a glossy eyelid shader with masks and was dealing with trying to blend three or more different specular effects on basically the same map. ended up using a blinn on the overall face, a two blinn blend on the lips (I find using a mix of 2 blinn settings yields a better looking gloss than just a straight glossy node for lips), and a soft reflect on the lids. 

When I first started the shader I was using some things BB was doing with vss and quickly found myself lost within a tangle of math spaghetti, ended up reverse engineering a couple of more simple vendor shaders and using some of BB's base specular settings in the mix. I think that much of the quality is derived from the time spent creating the masks (you might consider a combination of blur and noise at the masks edges to give a different effect), time spent experimenting with the actual settings of the specular nodes themselves, and the effectiveness of your bump maps and their settings (can't overstate this one enough).

Anyway... thanks for the screencaps ghostship2. Filed.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. Not sure if this has been brought up already but, you'll get better results with a lip mask if you derive your selection from the unique diffuse texture boundries of that particular character texture rather than trying to fudge it with a generic mask or one derived from a template/seam guide.

Thant makes sense. If the lips on your character are differently shaped than the one I made the mask from you are going to have problems.

 BB's basic metal shader has only 4 nodes (see below).  youse may be thinking of BBglossy, which is more complex.

Ok ... here are my settings:

Lip setting for the Lavender lips

Sky setting using RDNA's skydome. (It's simpler than the envirosphere for scenes like this)

My Render settings are: 

Now I do have another light in the scene, an infinate light, but it's diffuse and specular are turned to black so that it is used to light the preview window only. Now does it matter than in preview mode the lips show up as black? like the inverted mask? 

I think that is all the settings. 

I did notice on some of the renders by ghostship2 that the lips are extra bright, saturated ... while mine have more contrast.  Could the contrast be the cause of the shadows around the lips?

Look forward to more responses.

Boni

P.S., gholstship2, please feel free to PM me with information you feel sensitive for any reason. :)

ok ... I think I found my boo-boo.  I've been doing this in the lip zone all along, NOT in the face zone.  How do I do this wiithout messing up the nodes I've already run through EZskin2?  Where do I connect the masks AND what do I do with the lip zone?

Hey Boni

take a step back to the first page of this thread and I have pointed out were you need to hook everything up....BTW you need to use the same ezskin setup for the lips as the face (there is a check box for this i think) so you don't get a line on the border. 

Miss Nancy,

I checked out that shader and it's simple enough for what Boni is doing and it adds speculars. Thank you and here is the settup and results.

Boni, let me look over you stuff for a bit. And yes, my figures lips look like yours in the preview as well.

my render settings for hi rez output. This is set up to be efficient on my slow i5 but also give good clean results.

Just discovered the discrepancy and am working on that now.  And thanks for the heads up on duplicating the settings for both face and lips, the simplicity of that answer makes me feel like a V8 moment (i.e. I want to slap my forehead). :)

Boni,

Id say a big problem is your render settings. Your min shading rate is lower than the setting I use for drafts. Pixel samples can be lowered if you are making large renders and that will help speed up your render time. If your scene is lit well you can lower IC and IDLQ like I have in my settings. I never have a problem with IDL splochies an such. Use tone mapping if you want to brighten the scene even more without adjusting lights.

Also you might want to use BB's Sphere all the time instead of the one you are using. It really helps light up the whole scene. let me find a render on my HD

Ok, Here is an example using BB's Enviroshere for lighting. I do have one poser light set up but it is behind the girl and pointed toward the camera a little. The background picture is a 360 degree photo.

ghostship2: I'm a little confused as to how the nodes are connected ... I have a visual impairment and those pale lavender/pink "cables" are confusing me. 

Ghostship2: that is beautiful!  Now to get it hooked up properly and re-make my metals to hook up properly as well. Thank yo sooooo much for your help.

Maybe this will help

FANTASTIC!  These old eyes thank you!  Let me set something up and I'll show you the results!

Unfortunately my new best friend ... it's the other connections I can't see. Not sure what is hooked where.

Hey Boni

This one is blown up a bit and I made the links easier to see. The dotted green line is the default link that ezskin will have when you start.

I'm doing something dreadfully wrong.  Here is a screenshot.  I've lost all my great metalics and now I'm getting neon.  sigh  Back with you tomorrow.

LOOKS like we cross posted ... I'll look at this tomorrow. thank you so very much.

check the numbers in your nodes. They are not the same. I just copied the nodes that Miss. Nancy had posted up. You have the nodes hooked up right but the numbers are all wrong. Also, I'm not sure about the "inner color" in your fresnal blend. In Miss Nancy's post the inner color is black and you have some version of orange.

When I had it as black the lips turned black and wouldn't change to the desired color ... Since my numbers are all wrong I will re-adjust and try again tomorrow when I am back on my work computer.

MissNancy's metal.  BUT in all fairness I did not make the main diffuse deep rust, as that would have made an edge to the lip again.  There most be a key in the inverted mask as I had in the beginning, but still trying to get rid of the edge.  I would really like the actual textures of the lips (minus edge) to be like I had them before.  Any suggestions?

I've been tweaking settings within the new "branch" of nodes and came up with the "new gold", here is a comparison with the old gold that had the "bad" edges. I would have changed the settings as suggested, but I wanted to do a direct comparison and needed consistency for that.