Daz3d Shadow Models

[kR1pt0n1t3]

I'm been trying to find models for Daz3D that are just black without any textures.

I don't know if there's a term for such a thing, but I need a male model which has an outline but the whole body is black.

Something like the picture below but it needs to be a 3d model which I can move around.
Is the correct term skin? Is there such a thing, if not, is it hard to make it?

I just started playing around with Daz so I'm still a total nub. Any help would be appriciated.

 

[VNON]

are you looking something like this? i believe it wasn't this
you can change the color in surface tab

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[kR1pt0n1t3]

Thanks for replying.

It needs to be black.

What I'm looking for is to make a model for let's say a middle-aged man and then using the same model for different character sprites when I want to show a CG inside a game. So, while playing the game, the player will differentiate characters by their name and sprites but in CG mode they'll be the same model. I hope this makes more sense.

So what I'm looking for is for someone maybe tell me how I can make an existing model black like it is in top picture or point to maybe an existing resource for what I'm looking for.

 

[JKnight]

To get just a black image remove anything that can reflect light. Set diffuse and specular to 0, make sure reflection reflect is off and it's not emissive.

That image is not completely black though. It has a form of something called rim shading.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

The outline should be visible so you can see a hand, finger, and other body parts clearly.
It's kinda late now so I'll try what you said tomorrow and see how it looks

Thanks for the reply.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

I just did a little test and it doesn't look that bad.
Is there any specific setting I can use to just change the outline to a little different shade of black? It looks decent on the white background but I think there will be problems on a different background if I don't change the outline.

 

[tooldev]

I just did a little test and it doesn't look that bad.
Is there any specific setting I can use to just change the outline to a little different shade of black? It looks decent on the white background but I think there will be problems on a different background if I don't change the outline.

You could add a so-called 'Geometry shell'. Thats like a copy layered on top of the model you create it on. Then you can choose a different texture graduation to be only on the edges on that ie

Another option would be to actually make the black one emit very faint light which will create a similar effect

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

I've tried using Geometry Shell but can't get it to work.

When I add geometry shell it covers the whole black body with a new layer. I can't find a way to only add a layer for the outline of the body shape.

 

[tooldev]

The problem inside DAZ is that your black figure is still considered a 3d figure. So technically there isnt really an outline as you see it. The renderer knows there is 'stuff' where you just see black. You could try to use a toon-shader on that figure. AFAIK that would actually create an outline.

But I still believe that adding a very weak emitting light to the black figure would create just what you want. Very low lumen value would just emmit enough light to seperate the figure from its surrounding. Otherwise you would be forced to do afterwork in something like photoshop etc

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

Still haven't been able to find a solution for the shadow outline but on the other side, I finally did render two pictures of what's supposed to be the main character of my soon to be in production RPG game.

This morphing business is giving me a headache. For example, I downloaded some facial expressions pack for V7 model and I morphed a bit few different heads of other V7 based female characters and the facial expressions don't fit quite good anymore. The other thing that fucked me up was that whenever you morph facial expressions from different resources it doesn't "undo" last facial expression it just adds the modification for the new one. Took me a while to figure out that you need to go inside the resource and click on reset facial expression. There's a very long learning curve to this. It's the same with poses and a lot of clothes don't fit and some of them don't even have an option to adjust.

So, I'd like to hear opinions?

The goal was to make the character look as natural as possible. I don't know if I accomplished that... I tried to make boobs look natural without being too saggy. She's supposed to be a very pretty village girl who gets tangled in a messy business.

 

[tooldev]

Looking great. I am not a 'Big Boobs' fan but beside that the hanging looks pretty ok to me. With the clothes and the boobs you run into the normal 'bridging' problem. Meaning the boobs get pressed against each other but the clothes dont bridge properly (Iam talking about the middle section of the boob covering part of the dress). Sickel Yield has a universal morph for that so clothes stretch properly when the figure has huge assets.

I looked into another possibility for your black figure. I have to check which package that was from but i played around with a 'cut-out' shader and maybe thats what you actually need.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

Thx, I'll look into that morph you said.

I was troubled by that problem. The actual clothes I wanted to use were some other clothes but it looked terrible on her.
So as I test, I used these clothes and adjusted them a bit.

Do you have any maybe tips for rendering?

Generally, what's best to use for rending? I've googled a bit about it and set all rendering to be done by GPU but there's a lot of other settings you can set.

 

[SpikeGames]

Thx, I'll look into that morph you said.

I was troubled by that problem. The actual clothes I wanted to use were some other clothes but it looked terrible on her.
So as I test, I used these clothes and adjusted them a bit.

Do you have any maybe tips for rendering?

Generally, what's best to use for rending? I've googled a bit about it and set all rendering to be done by GPU but there's a lot of other settings you can set.

Hi,
do you have performance issues or just wanna make models like combin_ation for example?

 

[tooldev]

Thx, I'll look into that morph you said.

I was troubled by that problem. The actual clothes I wanted to use were some other clothes but it looked terrible on her.
So as I test, I used these clothes and adjusted them a bit.

Do you have any maybe tips for rendering?

Generally, what's best to use for rending? I've googled a bit about it and set all rendering to be done by GPU but there's a lot of other settings you can set.

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is the one i meant for G8F but she also has the same thing for G3. She also has a 'de-crackifier' for the butt-problem. She is generally pretty good providing all kinds of morphs that deal with clothing issues. P.S:

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Tips for rendering: Light, light and again light
No seriously: Light is your next big step, then using focus and playing with shaders for different parts. Like your clothing ie. Your figure looks really good but your clothing 'sticks' out right now as it looks too artificial/clean ...hm... no better words for it. Which is one of my constant critics (mostly silent though) when i see peoples renders. They get a great figure with all kind of HD stuff but the props or clothes often look too clean or wrap wrong. That eliminates all the good of the great figure imho. You can get better clothing effects by playing with the material shaders. Besides light shaders are probably going to be your best friend.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

@SpikeGames
With some things, I do have issues with performance in terms of lags if that's what you meant. But that only happens if I add a lot of resources and display them at the same time. Although, I noticed that when I just add

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, I have instant lags, dunno why. The way I want to render my stuff is to make multiple pictures.

Does it even matter how you render? If you change setting will your output be different? Like better quality, etc... I assume it will that's why I asked if there are maybe some like things you should always turn on or turn off and things like that.

As for CA, I don't plan to do it like he did it. I plan to render a lot of different pictures with just body types, poses, facial expression, clothes, and then later inside the game make events and combine different pictures to get what I want at that point. It's more like a clothing/pose system that Sarah of the Rotation Cut game has.

@tooldev
Thx.

I'll go google daz3d shaders and read up on it.
Is there any way to turn off shadows? I've looked everywhere but can find it. Tried googling but it's vague as hell.

I just rendered this but changed render from Photoreal to Interactive since I read that if I do that, it will turn shadows off.
The result is like totally different than on the picture above. I kinda like more this lighter skin + there are no shadows. I guess it's a win-win but it's really how one setting can change the outcome so drastically. Are there any other settings like that that I should be aware of?

 

[tooldev]

Oh well - time for a speed brush-up then

The output of your render can be roughly divided into 2 parts. One half is done by the model and its textures (same goes for props and clothing of course). The other half is light and its effects on everything - it will determine how 'realistic' everything seems to be as in the real world there is always some kind of light (even when its dark).

The more detail your base figure has and the finer your textures are the better the base version even with a default setting on everything. Thats why there are so many providing users with ready to go stuff in various shops. Buuut - if you dont want to spend your hard earned pension on millions of assets you have to start to be creative with render settings, materials, shaders and the like.

Rnder settings would be your first start to get different results without fiddling too much with your figures etc. There is a setting in 'general' for the headlamp - you want that to be set to 'when no scene lights'.
If you are concerned about shadows you can select your figure and then chose the 'Surface' tab for it. You should be able to find an option called 'Accept shadows' - this is by default on 'on'. Set it to off and check if that is more to your liking.


P.S. In case i dont make much sense i recommend a quick read of this

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of the DAZ help - it should help to understand the differences between the things i mentioned.

 

[lcp]

Im not sure what light sources you are using (consider environment light which is active or not in render settings, having a hdri image as light source from around or not) but..for my opinion, the lower lighning model which is used when you swiched to 'interactive' seems to look better because the lighing in your first attempt is so unbalanced. There is a concept called '3-point-lightning'. You seem to have 2 light sources there, definitly no back light. That jumps in my eyes at first. The other later render does still show LOTS of shadows (which is good, without any shadow the model would look like 2 dimensional flat), but they are much "softer" than before. You would reach the same goal by one more light from the back of the model, AND change your spotlights to be a wider area, rectangle or whatever, instead of using point like light sources. The Height and Width of the light is important, 10 is default, higher provides much softer light and shadows.

 

[kR1pt0n1t3]

I didn't use any lights for those pictures above.
I just checked under lights tab in Daz3D and there are no lights there.
I'm guessing there's a default light if you don't use any yourself.

I'll use some right now and leave it to render overnight and then I'll see

Thanks for having the patience to explain these things to a newbie like me.

 

[tooldev]

I didn't use any lights for those pictures above.
I just checked under lights tab in Daz3D and there are no lights there.
I'm guessing there's a default light if you don't use any yourself.

I'll use some right now and leave it to render overnight and then I'll see

Thanks for having the patience to explain these things to a newbie like me.

Thats probably the headlamp i mentioned earlier. Each camera has one by default and the default setting is 'on'

P.S: The safest and most rewarding way to learn this stuff quick and painless is to chose:
- 1 single figure
- 1 single clothing setup
- place those and save the scene as is - call it 'scene without extra light'
- now think about your camera. where is it supposed to be and fiddle around until you have that single shot you want - save again this time as 'scene with camera'
- now render with default setting and save that render
- begin adding light. 1 at a time and i actually suggest not to aim for a 3 point lightning right away
- the first light is your main light and should be roughly at a 45 degree angle sideways of your camera pointing towards your figure
- now experiment with the different settings for that single light (lumen values, colour, intensity and so on ) and make renders once in a while

 

[lcp]

ah, its hard to understand at the beginning where the light is coming from at all. So you used the default light which is 1.: headlamp by the camera 2.: environment light from the default hdri - controlled by the render setting-environment tab. I suggest a good tutorial about that: