Advice on how to improve Skin

[richertmx]

Hey all,

now I´ve been experimenting with Octane for a bit and I slowly understand the basics of it. Thing is I haven´t really figured out how to improve the Skin of my Models...

I have no trouble replacing the DAZ Materials for Objects etc. and it looks totally great, however I don´t really know how I can do a similar thing for the skins of the characters I create. I´d be grateful if you could share some insights, tutorials, links and general advice...

thanks and best

[SiliconAya]

An easy way to start is to try some of the skin materials in the LiveDB, play around with them, change their settings and see how they work, if two do things quite differently try combining them and see how they work. Once you have an idea on how the skin materials work in general, try taking the bits/ideas you like from them and make your own. Start simple and work up to the more complicated ones like tonysculptor's (thread about it in the WIP forum here), which is one of the most complicated (and thus slow rendering) skin materials around.

Important settings (there are no hard and fast settings, every character skin/texture map requires tweaking of these settings):
Diffuse texture map Power:
With simple skin materials you'll need to lower this as they'll be a lot brighter in Octane than in 3Delight, 220,220,220 or 192,192,192 are good starting points. Even lower might be required for parts of the eyes like the Sclera. With specular based materials like tonysculptors you'll need to set it as high as you can and then find other ways of making it brighter.

Roughness, Specular Power, Index and Bump Power:
These all affect each other and how shiny your skin will look and there's generally a careful balancing act between each of these settings.

Roughness/Index:
Generally a roughness of 0.2-0.3 for skin, with an index between 1.43 and 1.45, however an index of 2.0 or more and a roughness of 0.4+ can also look good.

Bump power:
I find is very dependent on the bump map, I've used settings between 0.05 and 0.3, with the lips and the face set a bit stronger than the body (though not the same). Set it too high and your skin will look matte, but set it too low and your skin will look like shiny smooth plastic.

Sepcular Power:
(Set specular to Invert - ON for it to behave the same way as it does in DS/3Delight).
Will generally need to be set lower than it is in DS, often by quite a lot.


Other than that, poke around the LiveDB and ask questions here on the forums, there are quite a few people here who are good at skin. Feel free to PM me here or on DeviantArt if you'd like.

[richertmx]

Thanks for your help, lots of information I need to wrap my head around =).

Is there an easy way to apply skin materials to the whole body? In the Materials Panel Of the Octane Plugin (I´m using it with DAZ Studio) there´s different parts of the genesis figure like lips, torso etc. Do I need to apply the skin material to every single part of genesis? Do I need to leave certain parts like lips and eyes out?

I know it´s basic and probably pretty easy, but I´m still not getting it 100%....

Thanks for your input!

[SiliconAya]

It's has to be done in several different materials and it's based on which "parts/surfaces" of the body share the same texture maps.

For Genesis 2 Female: (Other figures are similar)
Material/group 1: Ears, Head, Hips, Neck, Nipples, Torso.

Material/group 2: Feet, Forearms, Hands, Legs, Shoulders, (Fingernails*, Toenails*).

Material/group 3: Face, Nostrils, (Lips*).

Group 4: Gums, InnerMouth, Teeth, Tongue. (Generally only needed if you have the figures mouth open. Teeth are normally a separate material and most often all you need to worry about).

Group 5: Irises, Lacrimals, Pupils, Sclera. (While these 4 all share the same texture map, they require different bump and specular settings from each other, you would normally want some spec for the Irises for example, but not so for the pupils).

Cornea and EyeReflection: can either share the same material or you can hide the Cornea.

Eyelashes: has it's own material and Tear I'd recommend just hiding.

* These materials are often done separately due to makeup/lipstick, which require different settings.

Most of the time the DS plugin will auto create materials along these lines, but the names will often be different each time.




To apply a material to multiple surfaces in the Matterials Planel in the DS Plugin, just drag and drop. You can do material to surface(s), surface to material or material to material (in this case it'll replace the material you drop it onto and take over it's surface links).

Click on a material on the left to see which surface(s) it's linked to on the right, clicking a surface will also show which material it's linked to (orange dots show up next to the surface/mat names). If this stops working, it's a bug in the plugin and you'll need to save your scene and restart DazStudio and load your scene again.

[t_3]

Most of the time the DS plugin will auto create materials along these lines, but the names will often be different each time.

on a particular note: when grouping the plugin takes the name of the first daz shader matching similiar properties as name. as studio is creating materials in a pure random order, the name is not always the same...