Breathing new life into old skins...

[Hydra]

I'm curious if anyone else has run across a few old skins (V4/M4) that just didn't make the translation from 3delight to Octane. Actually this is an issue for any non-native render, like Reality.

Are there any tried and true techniques you've used to get the skins looking better? One person I know recommended using a different spec map for a render... (Callad created a script to apply Charlile\Neve spec maps to any V4.) I did this, loved the results, and a bit later realized... the spec map had a different placement for the eyebrows.
http://fluffybush.deviantart.com/art/Ba ... -418578355

Does anyone other there have some advice? I'm not against hauling out GIMP, and creating alternate spec maps that may be more appropriate, but I don't really know what the final map should look like.

[Sorel]

Well, you shouldn't need a spec map to begin with. Human specular is white. Most, if not all the maps that daz characters come with are wrong, and not really made with pbr in mind. Now a days I just try to use the bump maps as displacement to try and get the details I need, and to break of the glossyness of skin.

[mlru]

Well, you shouldn't need a spec map to begin with. Human specular is white.

Not quite true. Dry human sky has areas that are more reflective than others (tip of the nose, ears, nails, tooth...), A specular map is a gray-scale texture, that describes these areas. It has nothing to do with the specular color.
Having said that, it's true that most of the provided spec maps (those that look like darkened bumpmaps) are just nonsense. Eyebrows, for example, don't belong on them. All you need is a very rough grayscale image at a relatively low resolution like 512x512 or 1024x1024 pixels. You can use that texture for all figures with the same UV maps, since these areas don't change too much from person to person.

Same goes for the eyes. Once you have found a good texture set without baked highlights, you can use them on all your characters.

[Hydra]

Actually capturing reflectance in real life is.. 'hard' to say the least.
http://www.pauldebevec.com/Research/LS/ ... 0-high.pdf

It can have value, but tend to agree with Sorel that bump should do the job.

The skin I was playing with was really bad...
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/dtg ... -v4/102561

Its low resolution, and tweaking what there is of bump or applying it to displacement shows all kinds of errors. The skin itself is also pale pale white with freckles, so its kinda a pain to try and extract anything from.

[Sorel]

I think what we would actually need is roughness/gloss maps not specular.