Great tips.
Yes, brightening the "nipple sub color" was necessary for my Hanmen skin characters. Otherwise they had very dark nips, lawl.
I used to use what was simply called "eye shader", which I think Hanmen also made, but have recently switched to DeepDive. I admit, DeepDive is much better, since you can get actual specular reflection of the environment (even with the default reflection probes) and you don't have to rely on Directional Lights to get the appropriate brightness of the eyes. Should have switched much earlier.
Here's another small thing: If you use Volumetric Light types in your scene, you can adjust the density of each individual light by clicking on the Item button down on the left (which is a mod by Hooh). You can also actually turn off the light and retain the volumetric effect alone, even though that doesn't really make sense, but hey, in some scenes it looks good. For example, I wanted underwater pool lights: I used Volumetric Point Lights with heavy volumetric density, but turned off the actual light, and it looked pretty realistic from above, since it seemed like the light scattered in the water.
Speaking of lights, if you have 15 minutes and don't mind clicking your mouse ca. 400 times, you can create a custom volumetric light beam. There is a Scene Setting option called "Sunshine" or something, which can be nice, but it is directional, not volumetric, and cannot be placed wherever you want. I wanted sun beams to be visible from the side, inside the room, so I did this. The method is kinda tedious, but can create a cool effect in some scenes:
First, find the place where you want your light beam (or "god ray") to occur. For example, you might want a beam of light to be visibly shining in from a window, down to the floor. Then, create a Shape: Cube that covers exactly where you want that light beam to go; e.g. covering the entire window and angled, in the direction of sunlight, so that it stretches diagonally down to the floor. Actually, it is best if the center of that cube is exactly on the middle of the window pane, meaning that it stretches equally out outside the window (hopefully you're not planning to look closely out the window, but I haven't had an issue with it).
Okay, now you have a cube that will be the outer limit of your volumetric light beam. Go into its Material Properties, change its shader to Hanmen Item Alpha (or some other Alpha shader). Set its alpha value to like 0.001, so that it is effectively transparent. But now, set its Emission Color to 1, 1, 1 (or whatever color light you want, but should be bright), and set its Emission to something like 10. Make sure that it is still just barely, if at all, visible. Why? Because you are going to copy this object 20+ times, and change its position and/or scale slightly each time. I recommend, if you placed the Cube with its center exactly on the windowpane, to lower its scale slightly (~10 cm in length) each time, so that each new one you create reaches a shorter and shorter distance into the room. You should "go through" the entire volume with this method, ending on a cube that has basically no scale. This makes the lightbeam "fade" as it enters the room. All the Cube objects will add together, creating a nice volumetric beam.
I recommend making a folder to parent all those cubes, to keep some organization. Even though you create lots of objects (you could create 100s if you want multiple beams, just by copying the folder you just created), they are just cubes, so I don't think they make that big of a system impact. You can do it with other shapes besides cubes, like if you're doing it for a circular hole getting sunlight through it or whatever.
Yes, brightening the "nipple sub color" was necessary for my Hanmen skin characters. Otherwise they had very dark nips, lawl.
I used to use what was simply called "eye shader", which I think Hanmen also made, but have recently switched to DeepDive. I admit, DeepDive is much better, since you can get actual specular reflection of the environment (even with the default reflection probes) and you don't have to rely on Directional Lights to get the appropriate brightness of the eyes. Should have switched much earlier.
Here's another small thing: If you use Volumetric Light types in your scene, you can adjust the density of each individual light by clicking on the Item button down on the left (which is a mod by Hooh). You can also actually turn off the light and retain the volumetric effect alone, even though that doesn't really make sense, but hey, in some scenes it looks good. For example, I wanted underwater pool lights: I used Volumetric Point Lights with heavy volumetric density, but turned off the actual light, and it looked pretty realistic from above, since it seemed like the light scattered in the water.
Speaking of lights, if you have 15 minutes and don't mind clicking your mouse ca. 400 times, you can create a custom volumetric light beam. There is a Scene Setting option called "Sunshine" or something, which can be nice, but it is directional, not volumetric, and cannot be placed wherever you want. I wanted sun beams to be visible from the side, inside the room, so I did this. The method is kinda tedious, but can create a cool effect in some scenes:
First, find the place where you want your light beam (or "god ray") to occur. For example, you might want a beam of light to be visibly shining in from a window, down to the floor. Then, create a Shape: Cube that covers exactly where you want that light beam to go; e.g. covering the entire window and angled, in the direction of sunlight, so that it stretches diagonally down to the floor. Actually, it is best if the center of that cube is exactly on the middle of the window pane, meaning that it stretches equally out outside the window (hopefully you're not planning to look closely out the window, but I haven't had an issue with it).
Okay, now you have a cube that will be the outer limit of your volumetric light beam. Go into its Material Properties, change its shader to Hanmen Item Alpha (or some other Alpha shader). Set its alpha value to like 0.001, so that it is effectively transparent. But now, set its Emission Color to 1, 1, 1 (or whatever color light you want, but should be bright), and set its Emission to something like 10. Make sure that it is still just barely, if at all, visible. Why? Because you are going to copy this object 20+ times, and change its position and/or scale slightly each time. I recommend, if you placed the Cube with its center exactly on the windowpane, to lower its scale slightly (~10 cm in length) each time, so that each new one you create reaches a shorter and shorter distance into the room. You should "go through" the entire volume with this method, ending on a cube that has basically no scale. This makes the lightbeam "fade" as it enters the room. All the Cube objects will add together, creating a nice volumetric beam.
I recommend making a folder to parent all those cubes, to keep some organization. Even though you create lots of objects (you could create 100s if you want multiple beams, just by copying the folder you just created), they are just cubes, so I don't think they make that big of a system impact. You can do it with other shapes besides cubes, like if you're doing it for a circular hole getting sunlight through it or whatever.
Last edited: