Dealing with Not Quite L.I.E. Shaders

[Hydra]

I've seen a few daz products with shaders that aren't actually using the L.I.E. to merge textures into a final texture. They are doing it on the fly in iRay.

Makeup for Lori isn't visible in the daz view, but its visible in an iRay render;
https://www.daz3d.com/lori-for-genesis-8-female

Somehow the texture is being overlayed on the base skin texture. So... Is there an easy way to do this on the fly in Octane? Should I just use GIMP and merge the textures by hand?

[face_off]

I don't have that product - but you can probably mix the two textures using an Octane texture Add node.

Paul

[SiliconAya]

All the gen 8 Daz characters do this with their make up so far (V8, O8, etc.), the image with the make up is a PNG with a alpha channel, so you can use the RGBA image node to get the alpha to use as a mask for a Mix Texture node. I've attached examples of how to set it up in the NGE.

Node layout example.

Node layout with textures applied.

As an added bonus, you can mix and match the make up textures you put in the RGBA node and the RGB node, not all combinations work, but a lot of the time an alpha channel of one make up image will work with the colour channels of another make up image, just try them out and you can get a few extra styles.

For me this works much better than an Add Texture node, as it doesn't mix the 2 images together in a uniform way. There's probably a better way of doing it, but it's the best way I've worked out so far that works.

In theory this method can be used instead of the L.I.E. and you can even layer it up to a certain extent, so I generally do this now rather than using L.I.E., as it's faster and you don't have the problem of using L.I.E. temp files and them changing when you reload a scene (I'm sure there's some more complicated uses of the L.I.E. where this wont work or would just be to much of a pain to set up).

Multilayer example.

[TRRazor]

The only characters really doing that are the base figures developed by DAZ3D.
There is only a handful of PAs out there, that layer make-up over the standard face-texture of a character.

There is absoltuely NO reason to do it like this from a technical point of view...

There is also currently no way of targeting these layered make-ups with the templating system, which is why we haven't been able to implement it into RedSpec as of now.

[valzheimer]

Some of the characters use diffuse overlay node in Iray surfaces in Daz 4.9+, which is just an alpha texture with color overlay. I suggest blending them together as LIE yourself inside Daz studio to get a temporary texture:
Open Face/or Lips in LIE, use overlay strenght alpha map as mask and overlay color as Layer diffuse. Image will be generated and saved into Daz temp folder, you can copy it from there and save elsewhere for long term use.

Integrating alphas just to make a black eyeliner is too much of unnecessary hog for Octane shader mixed nodes, you want to use mixed shader smartly to make your skin look good with different level blends and make SSS, rather than making makeup layers.

Just my 2 cents.

[SparkieShock]

Hi there .. trying to figure out how to use the LIE stuff with Octane and I saw this thread but there's lacking an explanation for what texture nodes are for what.

In the diagram .. you have an alpha channel for the makeup. I guess if you have the makeup (or tattoo or whatever you're layering) in alpha then this goes here.
But the next two are what exactly?
One will clearly be the face texture .. and the other ??? .. makeup texture again? Why would you need that if you have the alpha channel to overlay.
I know the alpha is set to amount (although I don't really comprehend what this is doing because this is magnitudes of processes beyond what my brain can handle .. but I guess it's controlling how much of one texture there is? . .. How exactly .. and which one is it controlling?

I want to layer bruises and tattoos .. and so far I hadn't found any way to incorporate the LIE stuff .. I had just figured it wasn't possible with Octane .. but then I saw this and it seems it is. A bit convoluted in how it happens (like .. what happens if my tattoo is underneathe the skin layer? .. Which one sits on top of which .. it's not very clear.

Anyways .. if someone could explain the diagram a bit more thoroughly I'd be much obliged as this clearly is a useful topic .. but lacks coherence for users like myself who are still fairly new to the node editing thing.

Thanks