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toadz — 'Gimmie Some Skin: Tutorial
Published: 2012-01-19 23:55:12 +0000 UTC; Views: 15256; Favourites: 138; Downloads: 2162
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Description
This image is is the final render of a tutorial that is located to the right as a download.It is a tutorial for DAZ Studio on using UberSurfaceShader with your characters skin. It's the first part of a series where we will be wrking on ALL the materials in the scene, not just the skin. It'also includes all the details of the lighting for the scene.
I've hit a document limit in Photoshop so I've had stop at this point of the tutorial and will be carrying on with the rest once I am done posting this. Part two will be up when it finished, or when I hit the limit again for the next part.
Save your scene once you have followed the tutorial though because you will need it for the next parts, then have a play with the settings in you might have learned about in a second save of the scene for experimenting with, such as changing a few colours, strengths etc to get a feel for it all, but you will need to save original for the rest of the tutorial.
This tutorial is aimed at people who are new to using UberSurfaceShader and want too see what some of it settings and options do.
Please feel free to drop any critique or comments on the tutorials as it is my first DAZ Studio tutorial.
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Comments: 122
Well if you do buy it we shall have to put our heads together and see if we can try to understand and help others by making a laymans plain english tut. I am still stuggling to understand why I can't inject Poppy properly.
I have got She Freak and Freak 4 morphs and Creature Morphs injected in to Genesis and saved as a preset for future use. WOW amp up the freak bodies and scale it up, man one HULK like figure...cool.
I have another Gen saved file that has Steph 4, another for V4 and another for M4 with both having Elite, Morphs ++, Aged etc injected. So I am not doing too bad.
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Here is a question for you about GenX.
If I were to save Tasha as a character for V5, can I still use all of V5 morphs in conjunction with the Tasha injection? The thought of such a thing has my head spinning with possibilities considering things like RDNA's ultra morphs etc being used with V4's SP and then V5's, not to mention it's Genesis and all the possibilities that includes.
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I can't see why not...I don't have V5 but the way GenX works should make this possible.
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OOh.. looks lovely! Seeing that I think I will be leaving poser for a while and jump into studio I will really use it.
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Hahaha, no worries! Sorry to pull you away from poser! I hope the tutorial is handy
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Oh sugar.. it's not you that drags me away.. it's not having money to upgrade for now .. waiting for some nice sale, but till then Can expand my knowledge of other packages
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Sweet info there Toadz. A nice starting reciepe I call it as no one set of settings will work for every skin texture set. I don't have DT's new product, opting to use my SSS maps from SkinVue.
Also The Group set to 6. The only reason this Group setting is there for is if you want to set different mats zone (parts) to have different SSS settings, leaving it on 1 will do the same job.
This should help a lot of folks get the best out of their skin sets. I personally use Uber Surface 2 and this has tuaght me a little more...like totaly thanks duuuuude.
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In all honesty dude, to answer your questions, I am not really sure why I use those settings. It just came from when I was first trying to learn it all and seeing what happened when I missed with a few things. I'll give your settings a whirl and include them in the tutorial as an example of other things for people to try while checking it out for myself. Thanks for the feedback on that
I've got USS2, but have not really tried it out all that much. I was a little confused with what to do with those extra colour options you get with SSS so I need to go back and play with it some more. Some of new extra channel you get though look like they could be fun to play with as well!
I'm glad you managed to learn a little something from the tut, the next part should be up later.
Thanks for stoping by
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Stopping by, I am always here..now.
I am in the middle of doing Poppy up nicely with US2 and I am being daring, with having one whole nip showing.....for me that is alot. LOL This image [link] was done with US2 when I was trying to learn about it.
Oh and I just remembered something about Bump maps v Spec maps. If anyone has Angel for V4 look at the Spec map for the face...looks like a bump map but with white parts where it should be brighter. Compare that to say Steph 4's spec map for the face...no comparasion IMHO.
What I do is collect the best maps and put them together for future use. For me this point is important, all the SSS wont make bad maps good. Your surfaces is the main part but what controls it is just as important. Good quality Bump, Displacement, Spec and SSS maps really do help. Then good lighting. For the Poppy render I am just using two Distant lights, Uber Enviroment using IDL (Indirect Lighting)yes long render times but for me worth the effrot I think. I could fake it with a couple more lights and save hours but I am sucker for punishment.
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Nipples! Ohhh my goodness, looks like my style of work with the girls is invading your brain! 
When it comes to bump's, alot of the time I tend to use Lana Elites, as I find them to be the best I have in my collection and I think wolfie has converted me to using no specs at all, instead just letting the bumps and displacement maps do all the work for me. Too me, it makes sense. We don't have something that tells our skin how to react in real life through the use of shades of grey so I am going to carry that over into my 3D now and I undrestand what wolfie means on how using spec maps is actualy placing a limitation on the effects of our highlights.
The Interjection SSS maps are OK, but they seem to be much more of a way of implying the thickness of the skin. I have long been trying to create a set that will do that, but also give the look of veins etc under the skin. One day I will finaly get it right after all of this trial and error!
As for using IDL. You are a braver man than. I am still too scared to try it until I can find a hair prop with a very limited amount of trans maps!
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air pump what you like roflol...
Hey I finding this to be a hard challenge. I have Amy Elite and yes a lot better that a lot of skins out there that have red area burned itno the texture so you get really red areas that can't be controlled with SSS, Diffuse or Transluceny. A real pain. I only found this out by doing this image. Most of the time my charatcers have clothes on so I never saw the red area. Notably on the hips area, shoulders etc.
What I have been taught and learnt is to chuck in the quality Bump or quality Spec maps in the Velvet colour channel and the SSS maps in to the Transluceny colour channel. That will give more variations in colour and strength.
Arr the trick with hair is Uber Hair is can turn of Occulsion of which helps render much quicker (I am not sure if Uber Surfaces 1 has an Occulsion Off button).
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Thanks for the tips. I've wondered what might happen with a map applied to the velvet channel. I tried it once before but didn't really notice much impact so maybe I wasn't using the right kind of map, or have my velvet set strong enough as I tend to try and keep it low tso I don't up with glowing edges on my characters.
I have UberHair and have to admit I actualy asked for a refund on it and don't use it anymore. I really did not like it's effects because I found it was giving me highlights where there shouldnt have been any. I use USS1 with my hair props and then use its Occlussion Overide function by setting the shading rate too 128. This way I can still keep the occlussion shadows it causes which I think are needed which you obviously loose when it's turned off.
Thanks for the tips too. I'll try them out in other parts of the tutorial as they are going along, full credit given ofcourse
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You hit that nail on the head..."couldn't notice much difference" Some of these effect are hard to see...when unsure remove all the surface textures and render with all the other layers and effect turned off with the one you are testing turned on. A bit of a pain but it does help to understand what is happening.
Also with that staement somes the fact that most of these effects are subtle and come together as a whole.
Many people out there say Occlusion isn't really needed if the hair is at distance away from the cameraa, it will still cast shadows. I am using is in this Poppy image so you can see the results, when I finsih the darn thing. LOL
Oh don't worry about credit..just say some wierdo passed on the info.
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I've been playing a little more with some of the things you have mentioned and been playing further with mats set to the velvet channel.
I've been using quite high value strength with velvet, but also with a very smooth fall off and I have started to notice it's effect much more without getting the halo/glowing edge look to my chahracter which has always been the reason why I tend to use the velvet channel set so low. Why couldn't omnifreaker just talk about things like this in his documentation for USS :S
I also grabbed my base mats and turned them into quite a shocking pink colour to use in the SSS and Transluceny channel and messed around with all kinds of colours, strengths etc and managed to come up with something much closer to what I want for my paler girls(which is most of them). It's quite interesting to see the colour of the mats interacting with the colour I set in my SSS and transluceny colours. I'll have a preview of a character I am working on uploaded later using all of the things I've been talking about.
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I got Elite Valarie free with 3D Artist mag Issue 38 yesterday (subscription early delivery) and it is interesting to see the SSS maps being coloured. Not having V5 I can't use it yet as the UV's don't work on Genesis alone...swines.
Yeah I look forward to seeing the result and details, you got my big ears peeked with interest.
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Magazines are a great way of getting a bit of free extra content. Make sure next time you are at the magazine stands, check out ImagineFX. It's aimed at digital illustration and painting, but it's awesome for inspiration and painting tutorials than can be crossed over into a post work situations. I've also scored a few DAZ Studio items that they include every now and then. In one edition of the magazine they had £79 worth of props and poses on their cover disk! Well worth a quick flick to the back page to see if there is anything waiting to be used, not to mention things like free textures, tyepfaces, brush packs, reference images etc.
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Yep got a few copies of ImageFX lying around, plus a few 3DWorld but I won a years subscrition to 3DArtist last March so one more issue and I will have to pay....
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Great render toadz & nice tutorial thanks for sharing
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Awesome tutorial but not to computer friendly. I hope you don't mind if I break this down into a pdf file. I can also compile the whole thing as a pdf file if you would like when your finished just let me know
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No worries hun, and no its not a very computer friendly tutorial but I want people to try and see what all the different things can do and choose their own way to apply it all with their work.
I would have done it as a PDF myself, but when ever I try have tried them before or try to view other PDF's on dA, very few of them seem to work for some reason. Strange
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oh bad DA and following the tutorial looks awesome I just have problems with long jpgs.
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Ig you right click and do 'Open With' and select a web browser of choice, it might make things a little easier to follow along with.
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Your right and I don't have a problem on my computer. I have a nook color and I like to put them on my nook so that I don't have to alt tab but I can do the same thing on the nook. I am just slightly spoiled lol or set in my ways. But I can make a pdf for myself to use lol
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thanks for the tutorial but who is she? she's not your own morph
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The Character is FR Imogen. Hope the tutorial hhelps
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if I want a tutorial, I'll think about yours.
thanks
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Wah, more to read!!!! And I'm only on page 250 or so of the 1,000 page Bryce manual!
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You mean there is a DAZ product with a manual! *eyes roll out of my head and onto the floor*
Sorry about that bro, you might have to make the Bryce manual lavatory reading if it's in hard back. You will have touble taking your machine into the toilet to read this on there!
I hope it's usefull!
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Thank you thank you thank you. Can't wait to play with this. Will holler back.. grins but you knew that right
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Hahaha, no worries hun! You know where I am.
Just show me some renders using anything you find usefull!
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You know I most certainly will and while I'm asking...LOl since I didn't finish reading but I did notice your comment on Elite Lana right away. How do you fix those dratted dry lips? It's the only thing that keeps me from using that skin all the time.
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If my memory servers right, there is a spec map to use that can give it a bit of a boost. Alternatively you can take it into an image editing software and increase the brightness of the spec map and save it as the map to use with the lips.
You said you didn't finish reading it, but once you get to the end and you see my 'experimental' step thanks to your certain PITA teacher wolfie, you might not need to do any of that. I need to try it on Lana myself and see how it goes.
Lana is bad ass!
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I agree in brightening up the spec map to make her lips brighter... keeping the settings of the surface, and if you take the spec map out, it's gonna be very bright. Their surface setting is set bright, and with the spec map there, it isn't so bright.
But what I fully recommend is instead of using any spec maps for the skin, I let the bump map do the trick, and set the brightness settings accordingly. Spec maps are nothing short of "cheaters" and it blocks the light from doing it's true effect in my opinion, (for example, a light from the side of her instead of directly in front of her, your specs aren't gonna show very much 'cause the spec maps, where it's darkened, is blocking). Not having one and letting the bump map and lights do it's work on speculars is the most natural way of doing things.
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I agree with you on the not using spec maps, and actualy converted during the process of writting the tutorial. Did you even read it all?
It makes sense to me after trying it myself, as we dont have something in real life telling our skin how to react with the use of shades of grey so it seems the same should be said in 3D after trying. I can still see where spec maps would be usefull for some special effects, like lip stick that has that kind of speckled effect, but for normal, natural skin I am definatly not going to be using spec mats anymore.
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Thanks, buddy. Yes, I read the whole thing, good study
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Oops, just realized I didn't finish reading what you said before responding haha
Hmm, I should do something about joining your lesson and experimentation... shall I join, friend?
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Yup, you big dope! Try reading it all before you before you jump in
I covered briefly in the tutorial not using spec maps and I really enjoyed the results. Now begins the process of dropping all the spec mats from all of my girls and adjusting their spec settings!
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haha
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Ok question just finished the first tutorial and my question is, hmm twofold. First why did you use Ubersurfacebase rather than one of the HumanSurfaceBase? Hope that question made sense. And two... would you have done all this on the Lana skin?
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I use USS because it is the bigger, better brother of the HSS. It does everything HSS does, and more, with better calculations for all of it's features. 'Why have cotton, when you can have silk?'
And yeah, I would have done all of this too Lana, and allready have(but without droping the spec mats which I will be doing from now on) which you can see here [link] and [link] Both images have similar settings to the tut using USS.
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So those were settings that you do to every skin? No matter how it starts? LOL forgive my constant questions but I really do want to learn. Wait wait wait, let me back up. First let me say, IMO, job well done on the Tutorial. I enjoyed reading it, and doing it, even went back a few times to reread some things. Would say, ducks her head, I got as much from this shading tutorial as I did from Teacher Pita's UE tutorial. 
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No, these are not the settings I use for every skin, but it is the process I use for every skin. There is no such thing as a one click solution for something like skin because it relies heavily on your mats, lighting and settings. Every character is going to be slightly different and might also need to change depending on lighting situations. It's just the nature of the game I am afraid! These tutorials are just intended to get you going with understanding different things, and give you a very rough basis of settings to use which will need to be tweaked to your character and scene when you are working outside of the tutorial file we are building.
If I did this tutorial with Lana, all of the settings would be a little different, and if I did it with a character by someone like SabbyVex, it would need to be another set of settings, colours etc. They would not be huge yawning gaps of difference but they still need a little tweaking to get what is right for the character and the look you want in your scene. Hope fully working through these tuts will give you a little understanding of where to start and familiarise you with the process of setting it all up. It gets much faster once you have tried it a few times.
Thank you for the compliment on the tutorial, thay put a huge smile on my face
As for skin tones, if you have not seen the link to it in my other reply, here it is again. It's a nudey so you have been warned
The base mats are the same except for make up difference etc, but they are using diffuse colours to the diffuse mats. Poppy has a light sky blue colour to her and Tasha's is just plain old white. They also have slightly differnt colours to their spec channel to best compliment their skin. Poppy's is a blue/white and Tasha's is a baby blue. Poppy also has slightly more Subsurface scattering. If you look at the side of the girls where the light is coming in and giving them highlights, you will not that Tasha seems to 'reflect' more of the orange light on her skin, where as Poppy seems to react less and take on less colour. That is because they have a different diffuse colour to each other, and Tasha's white is taking on more of the lights colour than Poppy's light blue diffuse colour. This again is something you just have to play about with, and is slightly different for each character, but I'll talk about and render it in the tutorial
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Then I will try and be patient as I want to know how to make Lana look a bit more tan colored. LOL and we both know a use a lot of Sabby skins. How does one know what needs to be tweaked. What major glaring flaws are you looking for that would need to be corrected? Or is this too being covered in the next tutorial
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You learn what needs to be tweaked with practice, and remembering what you did in similair situations before. After a while you will develop a more critical eye once you have played with it more. As I said, it's the nature of the game and there is no one click solution, only practice, experiment and just seeing what happens when you try things. 'What if' questions can only be answered by trying the question you are posing yourself. The best way to learn is by being pointed in the right direction and then talking a walk down that route on your own. It's good to ask questions and ask for help, but there is only so much you can be told before you need to learn from your own experience and playing about, just the same as it has been for people like myself and wolfie. Your own experimenting fills in the gaps on the smaller in's and out's. You are still new to it all, and you are making amazing progress allready and asking the right questions so just play about with what you are learning and keep listening to the feedback on your work. Just experiment and have fun!
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Ok, but I might have just a few more questions about why.. such and such is applied, or this color over that... etc... and thank you Toadz.
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lol, how did I know you will have more questions!
Thing's like colours can come down to a mix of personal taste, effect, style and colour theory. Take for example how in the tut we used a light blue for our specular colour, I do that because it's not quite as harsh as a white. But you could try using more of a pale skin colour and see how that looks. Again it can all depend on the lighting and the skin materials you are using so it's something you learn as you are going. Again, there is no one click solution, you just have to learn from experience. Just like with your singing, you have to control your notes and breathing which is something you develop over time until you get to the point where you can do it without thinkg about it. It's the practice on your technique that has got you there.
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Oh low blow bringing the singing in. LOL I've been doing that so many years you're right there is no thinking but... I do recall in the beginning having to work at things. I relooked at the twister tag team and notice that one is def closer to the tanner shade I was looking for Lana. I assume that's the one with the the white diffuse/baby blue spec? Tasha? I'm actually very fascinated with this stuff. Once I start to grasp why it does what it does... I get excited.
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