Realistic Detailed Skins

[3D Novelist]

Hi,

how do I create detailed and realistic skin like the skins in games like Milfy City?
I mean most base skins and hd models have some details but not like this.
There are ofc Sara's freckles but also the whole skin of Linda e.g.

Now I'm curious how this is done? Are these just some specific character assets or skin assets or something else?

 

[rainbowpunfz]

This might differ a bit per render engine/software and its capabilities, and i can't speak on the details regarding daz, as i don't use it.

Generally speaking the following things are of relevance when creating realistic looking skin:

• Good base texture that takes into account the variations, imperfections veins, etc. on the skin
• A separate texture for the intensity and colors of the sub surface scattering going on. Light doesn't simply reflect off of skin, some of it passes through the skin and bounces around a bunch before finally exiting out. This is most prevalent around soft tissue like the lower part of the nose or ears. That red glow you see when looking at those parts with the sun behind it? that's sub surface scattering. (technically veins are also exposed through sss, so they can be on the sss texture map as well)
• A texture map for the roughness, not all parts of the body are equally reflective (nails lips, those kind of things)
• And finally a decent bump map. Character meshes are not detailed enough to display all the little details, creases and bumps (nor would you want them to, takes too much compute power) So instead you use an addition texture to tell the render engine how exactly to scatter the light coming of the model, this creates the illusion of having geometry that isn't really there.

So That is 2 textures with color information, and 3 textures that dictate how light should interact with it. Depending on your budget or the capabilities of the render engine you might fake some of that by baking it into the base texture itself, but that is static with regards to the light sources and might look off under different lighting circumstances.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Exemple you provided is not really the best one, but good skins assets mostly.
Lot of Daz originals are good quality (not all but Victoria 8/8.1, Babina 8 come to mind).
There is more, but it's generally a good start.

Sadly you can't tell skin quality just by looking at the diffuse texture map alone. There have been many developments on how Daz skins are done as more layer were added to the shader (Specular/Glossiness to Metallic/Roughness model, Mono SSS to Chromatic, Glossy layer to Dual Lobe). If you're starting, maybe avoid really old skins.

Also lights and a bit of tone mapping play a huge role on how a skin can look, but it's more on the render part.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Also lights and a bit of tone mapping play a huge role on how a skin can look, but it's more on the render part.

That is probably the most important part to look at. When choosing, or tweaking, the skin you'll use, do not just define one render setting and use it to see it the result please you or not. Define many different ones, and see before everything else if the result is consistent.
There too many games where a character seem to not only change clothes but also skin, depending of the location (and so the lighting). And players will more easily pardon you for a skin that is just averagely realistic, than they'll do for a "what the fuck, she was tanned two minutes ago and now look like a dead corpse" skin.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Definitely, testing a bunch of HDRIs with very different contrasts before anything imo. Even if you can't really read the shader part and can't see what's wrong you will know where you at. Good skins should be consistent in most case.

There is few red flags before selecting a skin just looking at the surface tab (imho) :

-Skin is not using PBR Metallic/Roughness model
-Translucency weight is below ~.75
-Glossy Layered Weight is not set to 0
-Thin film is not set to 0
-Dual lobe and Top Coat is not used
-SSS Mode set to Mono
-Transmitted Measurement Distance is beyond ~.20

There is more and doesn't mean those skin are shit tho, but mostly a bit outdated (and gonna need some tweak).

 

[Alboe Interactive]

If you are looking to create characters with Daz then the questions you should ask are "What level of detail am I okay with?" and "What kind of skin blemishes would I accept?" A lot of skins for Daz characters emulate the look of flawless, porcelain-esque, and photoshopped models. Irregularities (the "details") look more like real people but, like Linda, most devs don't go beyond freckles.

If you want to experiment with more realistic/flawed skin then give Skin Builder 8 a try (I spent real money on it, worth every penny). With it, you can fine tune how much detail you want, do a test render, iterate, then a render in an actual environment to get a sense of what your PC can handle. Daz has incredible details if you crank up the Pixel Filter Radius. However, even with a monster PC, you will likely only get a couple renders a day. It is a balancing act you'll have to figure out for yourself.

I'll use 3 example renders of my own. Granted, not a realistic character, but should get my point across.

The original at 1.5 PFR:

I redid this scene with slightly better lighting and changed PFR to 1:

Now the same character at 0.5 PFR in portrait lighting (btw I forgot to setup the tongue wetness shell):

All 3 pics are showing the same skin, with the same HD details setting. PS was only used to adjust light levels and coloring. The HDRI is from Dreamlight, but there are more versatile ones out there.

It's far more than just the skin that sells the scene to the audience. The lighting (like eye reflections), hair, and expression are critical to making 3D CGI characters look somewhat believable. Having a good quality skin helps, but even skins not intended for 4K renders can be quite good.

You must be registered to see the links

has an entire video on subsurface scattering (which I'm still trying to learn and incorporate) that shows how it makes 3D models look more realistic and alive. It has nothing to do with the actual skin details on the texture, but how light passes through the skin itself.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Daz has incredible details if you crank up the Pixel Filter Radius. However, even with a monster PC, you will likely only get a couple renders a day. It is a balancing act you'll have to figure out for yourself.

IMO you should be able to bring incredible detail without cranking much AA pixel filter. It should also have marginal impact on rendering time. Trade off to lower pixel filters too much is bringing much more aliasing (fibermesh/hair/fur/eyelashes gonna be the worst offender especially on close up).

You must be registered to see the links

has an entire video on subsurface scattering (which I'm still trying to learn and incorporate)

Just watched the chromatic segment, not really sure it's a great tutorial to make credible skin SSS, imho.

 

[Alboe Interactive]

IMO you should be able to bring incredible detail without cranking much AA pixel filter. It should also have marginal impact on rendering time. Trade off to lower pixel filters too much is bringing much more aliasing (fibermesh/hair/fur/eyelashes gonna be the worst offender especially on close up).

View attachment 1073689

I guess I should have included a disclaimer. Yes, decreasing PFR increases details at the expense of potentially noticeable grain. While you can get away with a ridiculous setting of 0.5, it is really only feasible in an HDRI environment with a single character. It is simplest and easiest way in Daz to up quality without a whole lot of extra work, provided the PC can handle it. Oddly enough, mine renders PFR 1 faster than 1.5 in certain circumstances and I have no idea as to why. And I'll bet there are skins combined with other methods out there that will give you the details of my third example without having PFR be that low or super long render times.

Just watched the chromatic segment, not really sure it's a great tutorial to make credible skin SSS, imho.

The video is more showing what it does. Making the various maps and texture is a whole other set of skills. If you know of anyone else who does tutorials on it, please reply with a link as I would love to learn more.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I guess I should have included a disclaimer. Yes, decreasing PFR increases details at the expense of potentially noticeable grain. While you can get away with a ridiculous setting of 0.5, it is really only feasible in an HDRI environment with a single character. It is simplest and easiest way in Daz to up quality without a whole lot of extra work, provided the PC can handle it. Oddly enough, mine renders PFR 1 faster than 1.5 in certain circumstances and I have no idea as to why. And I'll bet there are skins combined with other methods out there that will give you the details of my third example without having PFR be that low or super long render times.

The video is more showing what it does. Making the various maps and texture is a whole other set of skills. If you know of anyone else who does tutorials on it, please reply with a link as I would love to learn more.

Yeah my comment was more making a foot note like "If you go too low, render will look sharp but will bring aliasing". So if a rookie read he can know what could go wrong.

Here an exemple of PFR set to default, I think it's Mitchell out of habit instead of Gaussian but that's about it. Looking at it, it's quite shit, but it was about where I could go with PBRSkin 1k micro tiles (went a bit overboard lmao).



For SSS I don't watch tutorial, I put faith in my eyes and look at what CG artists do lol. I can just write my take on it at that day.

For credible SSS imo, you will need high translucency, no escape from this. I think something around ~.80/~.90 being the sweet spot. Never ever adjust skin tone by adjusting translucency.

Slot the diffuse map into the translucency color layer. Yeah there is another school that put a slighty brighter version of the diffuse map, but result are subpar imo. Generally you want to stay at pure white (1/1/1) but you can change a slight bit undertone with reducing RGB value (ie .80/1/1 for a blueish/reduced red one) or pushing brightness (not recommended but remove limit, 1.5/1.5/1.5 will be 50% brighter).

Scatter only VS Scatter & transmit. Both will bring great result. I prefer scatter only generally but Scatter & transmit will bring one more layer to control SSS (reflectance tint) you can use it the same way as the translucency color layer for further adjustement and (slighty) pushing a tone.

You generally want to keep transmitted measurement distance quite low something like between ~.10 and ~.20. Same goes for scattering measurement distance, you generally want to keep in between ~.010 and ~.020. At least for humans.

Transmitted color should be in theory the main color of your skin. In practice I mostly use .90/.20/.10 and iterate from there. Whatever you do never go higher than 254 in value, you will broke the SSS. If you use Spectral rendering don't give it any color other than white or you will have seams.



For SSS color, saturation control the SSS density (should been somewhere between ~70 and ~110), hue change the tint, pink (345) give greenish, yellow (30) give pinkish. Value also control density, should be pretty high (somewhere near ~250, but never 255 or you will broke the SSS).

EDIT: I forgot about SSS direction. You want either that light don't scatter much (0) or bounce back (around ~ -0.75). Any positive value will send light into the volume (wrong).

As writing this, Monet with a bit less broken SSS that should work everywhere: