3D-Blender Blender Art - Show Us Your Blender Skill

[heldorian]

Anything special going on in your Materials or Lighting? Renderer? HDRI?

I can't put my finger on it, but this is just plain better "sunlight hitting skin" than I thought was possible in Blender. Show us your nodes, please!

I never save my .blend files, but for this image the sunlight is from the world properties Nishita background. Rendered in cycles.
The only change to the skin i have made is to increase the wet-node in the shader. Playing around with the Camera focal length and depth of field can do wonders to make a picture look more "real".
The wildeer lara model is freely available, and is by far the best looking model i know of with regards to skin and so on.

 

[UndercoverLover]

Anything special going on in your Materials or Lighting? Renderer? HDRI?

I can't put my finger on it, but this is just plain better "sunlight hitting skin" than I thought was possible in Blender. Show us your nodes, please!

The secret sauce imo is the angle vs model vs sun hitting the model and very low roughness value and a spec map.
hdri maybe a tat overexposed might help too.

So basicly you hit the model from down up and in a somewhat 180 degree angle vs the sun or so that the sunlight can actually bounce direct from model into the cam.
The rest is playing around until it looks nice.

thats eevee




thats with cycles



edit: and as one can see the node setup is super simple.
just diffuse a spec map and a normal map.
The key is to put in the right values for sss and roughness and bump.

Values might change for models and or effect wanted.
But for this one.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

How is Eevee with Diffeomorphic? Every time I use workbench rendering, the models are so orange they look like they're slathered in fake suntan. Though I never put much effort into learning how it works, since I prefer Cycles.

Diffeomorphic has

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. You can configure which one to use. The BSDF method painstakingly implements a custom shader using nodes that tries to get as close to Daz's "ground truth" as possible, but only really works in Cycles. Principled, on the other hand, just routes all the textures and colors into a Principled BDSF node, which is less true to Daz Studio's results, but returns nearly identical results in Eevee or Cycles.

If you'd like to learn Eevee, I highly recommend importing with the Principled materials and making your own adjustments in Blender, based on other Eevee-friendly models with good materials you've seen online, including the ones in this thread.

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is... not something I've experimented with. I've heard that with enough effort, one can fake somewhat decent results with Workbench, and I understand that Blender can be configured to use Workbench as the engine for rendering. Any madlads out there who get halfway decent results in Workbench are probably faking lighting data by painting it by hand into Vertex Colors or something equally insane, and even then the quality tops out at looking like an early N64 game with much higher mesh density.

If your computer can run Eevee, it can probably run it reasonably fast, so you should start experimenting with it right away unless the reason you're using Workbench is due to hardware limitations.

If you've been specializing in Cycles all this time, you'll probably

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reasonably well. Principled BSDF is probably the best gateway workflow, since it generates roughly the same output in both engines.

Your first few projects while learning Eevee should probably be just a

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, no environment geometry. Once you get that looking halfway decent, you'll understand the basics and can begin to refine your own style. Indoor lighting is one of those areas in which Eevee

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in order to look halfway decent, so don't load a full daz scene with a house and some people and expect good results in Eevee. Everything will be dark and grey with no bounced lighting. Get confident with characters first, then start learning Eevee-specific advanced lighting.

But if you're primarily a Workbench user, I don't really know what to tell you. Workbench is intended for generating Preview images when you're looking at your model in Wireframe or Smooth-Shaded mode. It Looks Bad because it was designed to Run Fast, not to Look Good. It's for mocking up your scene in Wireframe mode at a halfway respectable frame rate when you've got a scene with 500 characters in it or other situations that would slow things to a crawl in Eevee mode. It's a fallback, not a way of life.

 

[MidnightArrow]

Like the first image I posted, this one is heavily color graded. Not a raw render.

I don't like the way her chest tattoo warps, but that also happens in Daz Studio. A flaw in the weight painting or JCMs I guess.

I do like the way it's so easy to tilt a figure's body with Rigify torso controls. I tried posing in Daz Studio again recently, just for laughs. As soon as I remembered I can't rotate multiple bones around their individual origins I wanted to vomit. That experiment didn't last very long.

But if you're primarily a Workbench user, I don't really know what to tell you. Workbench is intended for generating Preview images when you're looking at your model in Wireframe or Smooth-Shaded mode. It Looks Bad because it was designed to Run Fast, not to Look Good. It's for mocking up your scene in Wireframe mode at a halfway respectable frame rate when you've got a scene with 500 characters in it or other situations that would slow things to a crawl in Eevee mode. It's a fallback, not a way of life.

I feel bad about saying this after you typed all that out, but I meant to say viewport rendering, not workbench rendering. My computer can run Eevee fine, I just don't get good results. Although it seems to depend on how the creator set up their SSS.

I'm not that interested in learning how to use Eevee, just in seeing if other people managed to make anything good with Daz models.

But if I see something that piques my interest, I'll make sure and take a look at those links, thanks.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

Ah, I gotcha. That makes more sense, yes.

The main advantage of Eevee isn't as a realtime preview, it's rendering an image in a couple of seconds instead of a couple of hours.

As for that tattoo, I can't tell from here if the model is subsurfed or not. But try adding or tweaking the options in the Subdivision Surface Modifier on the mesh. You might be able to tweak how Subsurf deforms the texture, or at leastsubdivide it more so any UV-stretching is distributed a little more evenly. You also might be able to do something with a Corrective Smooth Modifier, but I've only tinkered with it a little bit and can't advise you on the specifics.

 

[MidnightArrow]

The model is subsurfed, yes. But it also happens in Daz without SubD. It's due to the vertices being moved, and UV smoothing can't do a thing about that.

I use corrective smooth on clothing, but it doesn't work well on Daz figures. It only looks at the original mesh, so all the shape keys made from Daz JCMs get smoothed out too.

 

[UndercoverLover]

The model is subsurfed, yes. But it also happens in Daz without SubD. It's due to the vertices being moved, and UV smoothing can't do a thing about that.

I use corrective smooth on clothing, but it doesn't work well on Daz figures. It only looks at the original mesh, so all the shape keys made from Daz JCMs get smoothed out too.

I would export the model without the tattoos.

Then rip the tattoo textures from runtime folder and import those as planes via drag and drop into blender and then put a subsurf modifier on thoses planes and place that via shrinkwrap onto the model.

Thats how decals work in Blender.

That also gives you the ability to quickly disable or resize or reposition them vs having to reimport the whole model everytime.

 

[MidnightArrow]

I would export the model without the tattoos.

Then rip the tattoo textures from runtime folder and import those as planes via drag and drop into blender and then put a subsurf modifier on thoses planes and place that via shrinkwrap onto the model.

Thats how decals work in Blender.

That also gives you the ability to quickly disable or resize or reposition them vs having to reimport the whole model everytime.

That wouldn't work. Tattoos are part of the skin, they have to be calculated with the SSS and bump mapping or else they just look like stickers and band-aids.

Although you can't really see the bump mapping and SSS in my image, with all the postwork I did.

But I use this character in multiple scenes, and not all of them are color graded to look as dingy and unflattering as possible.

 

[UndercoverLover]

well i made a test and i was at least partly wrong as it is not possible to just imprt it as plane as you cant use an image that is imported via images as planes addon with shaders and modifiers. So that part was completly wrong.

So i did it the normal way.

In the lower left corner you can see what i worked with which was not great to begin with so im actually ok with the result.

Also the plane has to be projected when using shrinkwrap otherwise it deforms quite a lot when moving over the body and its still kinda fiddly.

The bump is from the character so that works perfect and makes not diffrence and sss is for using just some color picked ok too. The tattoo is from an daz tattoo set and is actually pretty bad in the first place so i think the result looks as good as it can be if not using photoshop and give the decal itself more of an tatoo like stitch look.

Problems i do see tho are that its probably impossible to animate the character like this so the texture needs to be baked before that. And that the original problem of distortion still is an issue due to the projection on certain bodyparts.

But those parts would also be a pain to paint in ps or any other tool.

 

[MidnightArrow]

I can live with it the way it is. I'd need to either edit the JCMs or edit the weight painting, and I'm not masochistic enough to do either of those.

 

[UndercoverLover]

I can live with it the way it is. I'd need to either edit the JCMs or edit the weight painting, and I'm not masochistic enough to do either of those.

Yes definetly.
I also think that your model looks fine for what it is as 3d models and especially daz models are not perfect picture copies of humans anyway.

The way i shown here has just one great advantage over going the pure daz road is that one can place one or two tattoos or scars or blood quick and adjustable on the fly vs having todo an ex and import for any change one may want to make.
It would take me about a 2 seconds to place that rose on the other cheek

 

[Synx]

I can live with it the way it is. I'd need to either edit the JCMs or edit the weight painting, and I'm not masochistic enough to do either of those.

You could create a second UV layout (most likely UV from view) and use that for just the tattoo. It allows you to change the UV around when you get a warping tattoo. You could even make a third UV layout when you experience a warped tattoo, to save the settings of the second UV.

 

[MidnightArrow]

The tattoos are all Daz LIE textures though. The images were created to fit over a Genesis 8 texture map.

 

[Synx]

Thats even better. You can just create a copy from the normal UV, and morph that one around when you get the warped tattoo. Its much easier/faster then trying to change the weight painting to fix it.

 

[MidnightArrow]

Thats even better. You can just create a copy from the normal UV, and morph that one around when you get the warped tattoo. Its much easier/faster then trying to change the weight painting to fix it.

Won't work. UV maps don't have shape keys, so there's no way to control the shape with drivers or anything like that. And you can't edit the UVs on a linked figure anyway.

It might be possible when UV maps become generic attributes and geometry nodes supports animations, but I think that's still a ways in the future yet.

 

[Synx]

Thats not what i mean

You export the figure without the tattoo. Then on that figure you add a second UV (Object data, UVmap). This new UV will automatically copy the base UV, which is perfect for this.

In the skins texture for the chest you set-up the material like this:

Spoiler: Skin diffuse set-up

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In the UV node you can chose what UV is used for the tattoo. If the basic one works fine for a pose, you select the first one. If not, you select the second one, go in UV Editor, select the second UV (in the bar at the top far right), and move the UV nodes around a bit till it looks fine.

If needed you can just add more and more UV's if you run into different warping problems as semi shape-keys, if you want to save the adjustments you made previously. (just make sure you got the base UV selected when you click the plus, to start with a clean set-up).

I think you can even get this to work for antimation using the AnimAll addon (comes with Blender by default its just disabled), but not entirely sure about this. Never tried animating UV's.

 

[MidnightArrow]

I know how to use UV maps in shaders. But linked figures are write-protected, so you can't edit their UV maps in the same file you pose them in. Also UV maps are limited to 16 per object.

 

[Synx]

Fair enough didn't realised you were using linked figures.

Last option I guess is going to the main figure, add a second UV and slightly increase it so the tattoo is a bit smaller overall. Then hope it avoids the warping of it

 

[MidnightArrow]

I spent a long time trying to get this image right. Balancing the shadows and the highlights but making sure her face wasn't so bright it ruined the brooding mood. I really liked how the light in her eye looked like a tear, so I didn't want to move it, but the light was also making the bedsheet glow bright pink and distracting from her face.

In the end I tried slapping a vignette filter on in my photo editor and it worked like a charm. Sometimes the simplest solutions work best.

Fair enough didn't realised you were using linked figures.

I always use linked figures. Otherwise every scene file would be 500 megabytes.

 

[PashafromRussia]

What do you guys use for texturing of skin? Substence Painter or do you use texture paint in a blender?
I like the texture paint, but in Substence Paint has more flexible skin texture settings.