Help! Very Confused Setting Up SSS Skin Materials in 2.x

[blackwater_hollow]

Hi!

I just purchased the new 2.x plugin for Daz, and am really confused on how to properly implement material from Live DB.

I am specifically trying to use "icelaglace's SSS skin 1.0" with a Victoria 6 HD model.

When I copy in the material in, I am met with these options (see screenshot 01), after hitting the small button next to the 'nodegraph editor' I am met with more options (see screenshot 02).

After playing around with it a little, I am still confused which properties from screenshot 2 do I change, and have them linked as either a floatimage, RGB image, or whatever it is called now to the proper color, bump, and specular maps.

These are some of the results that I get with the settings:

Any help, pointers, or steps would be VERY appreciated. I am fairly new to Octane, and very new to this plugin.

Thanks!

[SiliconAya]

Looking at the material in standalone, most of the stuff you want to replace is in the 'Second Material / Glossy Material', put a skin texture in a RGB color map in diffuse and the spec and bump maps in grey maps in specular and bump (you'll also need to change the power setting of both the spec and bump depending on how they turn out, but as a guess I'd set spec power between to 0.7-1.0 and bump between 0.05-0.075).

In the 'First Materials' I'd change Scale under 'Medium / Scattering' from 10 to at least a 100 (this will probably need to be further tweaked), other than that I'd leave the rest as they are for the moment.

This is all very basic to get you up and running with a result that should at least look OK, though I've never used this material so I'm unsure what can be done with it. Once you've done this much change around some of the settings and see/learn what they do, with roughness in the 2nd material being another important one to look at, as it controls how glossy/wet the skin will look if you wish the change that.

[Veneris]

I hopefully someone can create a video tutorial about it and share it.

[sikotik13]

It would be neat to have a video in theory, but since the materials themselves vary highly in their construction, it would still come down to getting into the materials and playing around with thing to figure out which you prefer for what and why. Aya's recommendation is probably your best bet, with the addition that if you are a visual learner, the NGE (Nodegraph Editor) itself is likely to be helpful in seeing how things connect together. It's more like assembling a material in the standalone, from what I remember, and changed how I alter materials entirely. I honestly only use the quick edit to alter RGB values and maybe bump strength, everything more complex, I just open the NGE.

Playing around on a silly project is often the best way to learn how things work, and you'll figure out how it works best in a way you are sure to remember if you're having fun.

[Hydra]

I'm struggling to move past basic materials as well.

While it is fun to play with textures\shaders, the issue I have is that the instructions are implicit that I understand the science behind what I'm doing. I don't. So playing with numbers isn't tremendously valuable. (Fun though!)

Even if I do tweak parameters with some of the shaders I don't know what to look for or how. In addition, some of the SSS shaders have different purposes and uses.

Right now the result, "didn't do anything meaningful I can see with my set up and skin" is where I'm bumbling about.


Lastly and most important as others have said, there is no magic formula and getting this stuff to work, and it is more about your needs and what was provided with the skin you're using.

There is this post on SSS, and apparently the shader is in the plugin.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41584&hilit=victoria+skin

[sikotik13]

That is an extremely good reference for introduction. Also proof that it doesn't necessarily have to be overly complex to look good (my own makes my head spin sometimes, but it's a look I have made synonymous in my head with "right" for me, so it's unlikely I'll change anytime soon). For the science behind what settings you should be altering to what, the list is either as long or as short as you want it to be, really. If you are going for as physically accurate as possible, your resources would be things like photography and light science (you'll note googling any of the parameters you don't understand in the Octane user manual by just the name of the function is likely to lead to a mass of sites in the photography realm). If you are going for stylistic results... it's more of a grey experimentation thing based on at least some familiarity with those same concepts. Thee actual method to achieve those results is hit and miss, some follow photography logic, others some weird logic that probably makes sense from a programmer's perspective, but the theory behind it all would tell you which you are dealing with. You can take it as far as you desire and stop when you're happy with it.

Linvanchene has a bunch of information in threads scattered all throughout this sub-forum that cover a decent basic intro to quite a few of the more important concepts, but your best information will be best applicable if you learn why light does what it does, and how the eye perceives it, and most of the best info for that will come from photography. Light being the medium that makes anything we see possible at all, it is really the most important aspect, everything else is how you interact with the light to make something look a certain way (increasing roughness, for example, alters how much light is refracted from a given viewpoint, leading to a scattered, softer or "rougher" look). Given that my style is more artistic than accurate, I got what I was going for from reading a few more introductory photography things until the basic idea made sense to me, then just played around from start points that seemed right until I got something that I liked. Making that into a video would be quite... different, I suppose, lol. But videos on photography to achieve lighting effects and such may be a good idea. Those guys love some lighting, and often have concrete numbers for different effects, though they may need adjusted to the interface we use (as noted, Octane may or may not call it the same thing, and it may or may not work in a way intuitive to you until you become familiar with how it operates).

[Hydra]

There is this link;
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGem ... _ch14.html

[Hydra]

Using the Daz plugin, I ran the same scene with three different skin shaders. The original skin is Teen Josie 6, which has a fair amount of pink added to its diffuse light. I added a the same tint only much less saturated.
http://www.daz3d.com/teen-josie-6

Still I can't figure out why Ordiales' shader was so brown looking. Even as I built up the shader, the results looked very similar to Ordiales example. However, the final 40% mix looks strikingly different. I guess I fear that if I reduce the non-diffuse component, I'll get less specular, which I think is correct with Ordiales' shader.

[sikotik13]

Taking a wild stab based on the thread instructions, I would guess the brownness is from your specular reflection/scattering rgb values. The intention and effect of those exact settings in the thread was to add more of a brown undertone, you may want to adjust them if you are going for a brighter or alternate undertone. I don't think the scaling referenced later on would have an effect, since I think that's mostly due to the way TonySculptor's skin is set up, not the OP's. Undertones are highly scene/light/creator(you) and texture dependent, hence the no magic answer thing. I personally think it looks the least washed out, but should be perhaps lightened a little (undertone wise), and perhaps the green scattering value reduced a little, but that's just guessing and oriented to my tastes.

[Hydra]

I'm still confused as to how well I'm doing.. Near as I can tell, it doesn't matter what I set the colors to. I get various very dark shades of black/brown.

I set the scattering direction to -.8 which is mostly back at ya. This seemed to give lighting dependent variance which is less dark.