Mixed matched skin tones

AJ2112

I purchased some skin textures in the past, can't remember which one's to be exact, but noticed some textures differ on body parts, so I never used.  Example, face is darker then rest of body, or arms are brighter then rest of body, or skin is all balanced, till I add make up, then face is darker then rest of body. 

Any tips on how to correct these problems ? I tweak in surface tab, which works sometimes, but very time consuming.  I try to compensate using various clothing. 

Sven Dullah

I've run into that a couple of times too. It's very hard to correct it by tinting the diffuse color or similar. I start by checking if the same shader is being used on all textures, if yes, I start checking SSS settings, gamma values and so on to see if there are some different settings hidden somewhere. If everything seems to be ok, I just return the product, shouldn't have to do that much work with a paid for product IMHO.

nonesuch00

I've had that problem and even wrote a ticket to DAZ support about it and for me eventually I discovered that the problem happens when I have the surfaces for the skin set to chromatic, probably because the light model for the skin surfaces couldn't possibly be correct. I don't even know if chromatic is appropriate for skin surfaces but the PA used them. Changing those skin surfaces for that model to mono got rid of the problem or hid it.

I've only seen one model using chromatic skin surfaces though so it's probably not what is causing your problem; however having too high a translucency on the skin surfaces with any overly bright HDRI will expose a similar problem.

nicstt

Skin does vary; although errors do creep in, completely uniform skin tone is not really representative of real-life.

Speculating, well it's guessing, without any images to base our guesses off, is not that helpful.

AJ2112

Thanks for feedback everyone @nicstt yeah, can't remember which V4 character it was, not from Daz store.  Ok, I found a picture, no names mentioned, do not desire to discredit vendor, but notice how face skin is different then neck, torso.  When I applied skin, all was balanced, then I apply make up, skin tones change.  I tried to fix using photoshop, but could never get a match.  I ran into this problem with a few V4 characters.  Rest of em are fine, regardless make up added, etc....  Haven't had any issues with G3 yet.  I love using V4, but always had skin tone imbalance.

     

 

nonesuch00

It's probably the transparency areas on the makeup masks not being handled properly by DAZ Studio & not the PA's fault. 

nicstt

She appears to be wearing makeup, so different tones would be expected; it could be as nonesuch00 says, and the only way to be sure would be see if the makeup fades or forms a sharp line; it should fade.

nicstt

You could try altering the SSS map - presuming you're using Iray; if 3Delight I've no clue.

If it fades, and blends in well between the two, then it could easily (and is suggestive of) be deliberate.

Griffin Avid

Long as we're here, anyone know about this in regard to the shoulder joints?

There's apparently a seam that connects the shoulder to the head and neck area and I sometimes get a visible change in colort/tone.

What causes/fixes that?

nonesuch00

Griffin Avid said:

Long as we're here, anyone know about this in regard to the shoulder joints?

There's apparently a seam that connects the shoulder to the head and neck area and I sometimes get a visible change in colort/tone.

What causes/fixes that?

It can have multiple causes:

1) UVs selected for the character surfaces does no match the UVs used to create the textures set.

2) Too much extremely bright light combined with too much transparency

3) Using Chromatic (which seems to increase transparency)

4) Using thin-walled with bright light

5) possible bug(s) in the iRay SDK or DAZ Studio

 

nicstt

Sometimes things get messed up.

First thing to check (i usually see it at the leg seam) is the surfaces tab; anything with an image, click on it and select Image Editor - Image Gamma should be the same for all of the same surface; in this example it's a diffuse so will be in Base Color - all those should be the same.

Make sure all chanels of the same type have an image in them - Base Color to use as an example should have all diffuse set in them - (only seen that error once).

The other thing to check is the normal maps; select Skin Lips and Nails, find normal maps (if there are any) and remove them, then try a render; if it renders ok without the normal maps, then you have located the problem, or at least part of the problem.

(If it isn't the normal maps - Ctrl Z will put all the normal maps back the way they were.)

AllenArt

In my experiene it's almost always been mismatched gamma value in the image maps as nicstt stated.

Laurie

dylan_borg_d673e29d8d

I have been struggling with the skin and hair colour problem since I switched to Iray engine.

My solution:  Load Figure, then in Surfaces, select all the skin and hair sections, then change Diffuse and Specular to a value you like.  I am using a Dark skinned V4.2 ->  Diffuse colour: 119 78 58, specular 51 72 77. I set hair to 0 0 0

Then change skin sections to Iray.  Change Iray Base Mixing to WEIGHTED. 

Change "Base Colour effect", "Glossy Colour Effect", "Metallic Flakes Colour Effect" and "Top Coat Colour Effect" to: SCATTER TRANSMIT.

Change "Top Coat Layering Mode" to Fresnel. Now render.

 

I found this somewhere recently: 

Render Settings/Tone Mapping allow the camera to be set up as a real life camera. the default Film ISO (100) is meant for VERY bright scenes, 400 (for interiors), or 200 (for studio setups) are much more relevant for usual scenes.

Render Settings/Filtering, you can add some post-render improvements. Bloom adds a glow around bright surfaces: the lower the "Threshold", the more of the picture will glow, while "Radius" and "Scale" determine the size and opacity of the effect. Bloom is dependent of Film ISO, so if you have to set the Threshold very high, your Film ISO is probably too low. I also lower Pixel Filter Radius to 0.5, to avoid blurring the picture. If you are rendering in a new window, you can click the left border of this window to bring up the Filtering setting, and tweak them without resetting the render.

Just like a real picture, a render needs some editing to look professional. I mention it here because it means making a darker and less contrasted render than needed, so that it won't saturate, and be easier to edit. In addition to usual contrast/saturation/brightness adjusting, I always do a level correction, then weak sharpening.

grinch2901

I've had characters that arms looked way different than their faces - when dressed. But remove the clothes and it's like "wait, they don't really look different. Somehow the clothing emphasizes whatever tonal shift may be there, makes it more obvious. Or it's an optical illiusion (probably more likely) caused by the contrast in cloth to skin plus lighting.  Could your issues be similar?

Serene Night

I have one character whose arms look different in certain lights. It’s clearly not a shadow but something to do with the maps. They are subtlety different.

plaid_fashion

I had a very annying seam between neck and face on Genesis 8 Female, tried everything, but the thing that seemed to work the best and reduce the seam by like 80 percent is DIFFUSE OVERLAY ROUGHNESS, goood thanks.