How to tweak glossy setting for lips

[alaman64]

Hi,

I've imported v3 in octane and are generally very happy with the auto conversion. The only problem I am having is the lips, I'd like to make them more glossy, but can't seam to figure it out. I tried converting the material from diffuse to glossy, buy still don't see anything that could change the glossy value for the lips.

If someone could point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.

Nick

[Sorel]

If there is a specular map plugged in somewhere take it out. then adjust the specular and roughness to your liking.

[alaman64]

It worked,

thanks for the help!

[bpzen]

why don't spec maps work ?

[Sorel]

why don't spec maps work ?

It depends on how it's made really. A lot of character spec maps are way too dark, you wouldn't get any shine from them.

[bpzen]

ahh thanks!

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
just a guess, but if they are too dark, why not invert the output or even better use a color correction node to get the desire look?
ciao beppe

[garand3d]

I've imported v3 in octane and are generally very happy with the auto conversion. The only problem I am having is the lips, I'd like to make them more glossy, but can't seam to figure it out. I tried converting the material from diffuse to glossy, buy still don't see anything that could change the glossy value for the lips.

By 'glossy' do you mean make it shinier? If yes, try playing with the 'Index of Refraction' value of the lips as well. The default is usually at 1.3 or 1.45, raising this value will make the surface appear more shiny.
For wet or glossy lips I find a value above 2 usually works well. Keep in mind that very high values can make the shininess look unnatural, plus lighting in the scene will determine how the shininess looks as well.
This actually works even better if you have (good) maps driving your specular and/or roughness.

[DrHemulen]

But what is a good specularity map in an unbiased renderer? I always thought that detailed specmaps were a way for a biased renderer to cheat. On skin, shouldn't the result be determined by the overall wetness and roughnes values (not maps) for an area + the fine structure of the skin (bump/normal/disp maps)?

[sikotik13]

A good specularity map will define those same things, Doc. The wetness/roughness for any given area can be just as dynamic as the other bits mentioned. Consider your lips, which can each be different wetness(es) (like the variance if you lick the right half of your bottom lip). A rare case in rendering from what I've seen, but realistic, and common. So if one wanted to capture that effect for realism, one would need a map to show the variance, since the UV maps themselves are not anywhere near complex enough (nor could they be, realistically) to cover each of those types of possibilities. This also goes to things like washing dishes, so only up to a certain point on your wrists is "wetter," being in the process of drying off with a towel, skin wounds/abrasions, and a million other everyday things that are physically possible, particularly if one is actually trying to achieve realism.

Granted, I can't recall ever seeing anyone actually use specular maps this way, which is kind of sad, and they are generally done around the goal you described, but that's not a fault of the maps themselves, just poor implementation for our chosen rendering method thus far.

A better question would be why any rendering engine would need all three of the depth variance nodes (bump, normal, + disp) at the same time. I think most of the people pushing these products don't actually realize bump and normal do the inverse if the same thing, with approximately the same fidelity, so doubling up on them is essentially pointless and they could be easily combined. It would just be trickier, like not applying a simple b/w filter to an image to create a "specular" map.