How I adjusted the default Genesis 8 Female shaders to produce an East Asian skin tone.

2021 September 09

Compared to skin resources for characters of "white", "black" and "olive"-skinned ethnicities, there are few resources for East Asian skin. I decided to modify the parameters and input colours for the default Genesis 8 Female to approximate the look of East Asian skin. I tested my modified skin shader under different HDRI 360 lighting environments using the Daz Studio iRay rendering system.

The morph is a 3rd-party shape. The eye parts are using 3rd-party shaders. There is no makeup; I think using L.I.E. makeup would be a solution, if makeup were needed. (HDRIs are 3rd-party)

My solution for the tweaks

Please see all four images showing the adjustments I made.

I made a refined version of my hand-hacked PBR shader

2021 September 12

First, I confess I did try a commercial version of a PBR management system. Unfortunately, the result included darkened skin on the lower torso, legs and lower arms. I am pretty sure I followed the instructions for using the product, but I couldn't figure out why those darker areas showed up. I decided to abandon the commercial solution and hand-hack my own PBR version of base default material shaders.

So, I used the base default DazPBR skin for the Genesis 8 Female figure. The PBR shader contains the default base images for the G8F figure; I therefore adjusted the settings to produce a PBR version of East Asian Skin. I have several PBR East Asian skins produced in this way, but I will show just one as an example of how I modified the settings in Surface Tab to turn the "white" skin shader set into an East Asian shader set.

Some qualifications:

1) As I have already mentioned, my hacked solution includes the original default textures, so I cannot distribute my solution. You may follow what I did to create your own East Asian skin, but if you distribute it - free or commercially - you will have to be prepared for Daz3D to come after you, not me.

2) I created the Normal, Displacement, AO and Spec maps using CPetry's Normal Map Online app. It is found here: https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ My input image was the default Diffuse input texture.

3) I have two sets of surfaces for which I hacked the PBR shader: One set is for the Arms, Legs, and Torso; the other set is for the Ears, Face and Lips. The difference is the BUMP settings. Of course I used the respective Displacement, Normal and Bump maps for each part.

4) A side note: for some 3rd-party character texture sets, the eye shaders look terribly darkened compared to the rest of the PBR skin. My fix is to increase the value of the Metallic Flakes parameter of the Sclera surface until you get a brighter look. If you think it helps your render, you could also increase the value of the Emission parameter for the Irises.

OK. It is time to show my hand-hacked PBR shader for the specific surfaces of the G8F figure. It is a bit hard to see, so right click and open the images in a new tab of your computer web browser. If viewing using a mobile device browser, pinch apart.

Update: There is a quirk in the leg material zone. I am addressing the issue

I have made some changes to the Bump and Displacement values for the Leg surface and the Ear / Face / Lips surfaces:

Summing Up:

Now that I have completed my East Asian PBR modifications for the G8F figure, I simply need to do this:

1) load G8F figure into workspace;

2) apply 3rd-party East Asian character shaping morphs;

3) load the Shader Preset I have made. No need to go and load the DazPBR shader preset anymore (Will lose access to the eye shaders if you do that)

More renders to prove the performance of my PBR East Asian skin shader:

I made 8 variations of the PBR East Asian skin shader. Here I apply 3rd-party L.I.E. makeup layers to test its performance -

Added 2021 September 13

Here I show how I used 3 different sets of LIE makeup as overlays on the PBR skin I modified for the Genesis 8 Female figure.

As I have mentioned in my earlier posts on PBR (Physically-Nased rendering) shaders, I hand-hacked the Daz3D PBR shader for G8F to produce an east Asian skin collection. The three different LIE makeup sets I used are: GA All That Flitters Tattoos; LIE Pirate Face and Body Makeup; and, FSL Ultra Layered Makeups.

The East Asian shape morph is by LeoLee. The hair and clothing are 3rd-party assets.

Trying to make my own morphs for L'Homme figure

2022 March 10

K-Pop Boy style faces

Yes, I do have many 3rd-party morphs for the Poser L'Homme figure. No, I do not findthem useful if I want to create East Asian K-Pop style characters. With much elbow grease and some testing, I think I have made two morphs with Poser Morph Brush which may work for my needs. I also have some expression settings using dialled posing chips on the figure, but which cannot be saved out as an INJection Morph.

Here are my test renders with my own L'Homme K-Pop Boy morphs, with 3rd-party character materials and hair.

An African-style face morph I made for L'Homme

I am using third-party hair and shaders/textures (I adjuste d the hair settings to use a Physical Root Surface shader tree). The soul patch beard is my own creation. The face morph is my own creation using morph brush and creating an INJection Morph.

I made 360 HDRI EXRs in Blender3D

for use in Daz Studio Pro and Poser 12

I created the EXRs in Blender3D. I used them in the background node to illuminate my 3D scenes (in this case, I use Poser 12 software). Some EXRs are intentionally for low-light situations, like dawn or dusk. I used the procedural sky models available in Blender3D's Shader room (available through the nodes). I used teh Cycles model for rendering. In Poser's Material Room, I used intermediate nodes (either HSV or Gamma) to adjust the quality of the illumination in the 3D scene. No other lights are in the scene in these sample renders. (I would use emissive geometries in scenes with lower EXR intensity). My renders include EXRs which have high intensity, and they really do illuminate the scene like there's extremely bright sunshine.

Making Hair Transparencies Using Clip Studio without painting

2022 May 21

How I created transparency texture for mesh for strip (card) hair geometry without actually painting the strands, by using Clip Studio Paint Ex's spline-based tools.

I did this before I discovered the ready-made equivalents in Clip Studio Assets. In any case, I can't use the ready-made items if I distribute my 3D assets; I would have to make my own. Clip Studio Paint provides their own image material of various parallel lines, but these too need work to make them appear less rigid and more natural.

I found a procedure in Clip Studio Paint which will generate a transparency by using splines: Go to the Figure drawer, Select Speed Lines tab, choose Gloom, and adjust the parameters until the splines generate a nice transparency edge for card (strip) hair mesh. I neede to click in a few random positions along the canvas to get the final spline, then press Enter, and the software completes the image.

Using a new Layer, still in the Figure drawer's Speed lines tab, I select Dark Speed Lines and adjust the parameters until I get hair strand lines for the transparency image. I also combine the image layer of third-party speed line assets with my speed lines to randomise the look. This type of derivative creation is permitted in some licenses under Celsys, the owners of Clip Studio. For this, I like to use the 723 Flow Line Tool (also a spline tool) to add more lines without having to worry about unsteady hand. This asset may be found at the Clip Studio Asset marketplace online (it is free at this time of writing).

For a smooth gradient fade on the transparency, I have to use the assets from Clip Studio Assets, namely, "Monoclograde", and "10% increments monochrome gradient set". I could also set up my own gradient.

So that's my summary of another way I found to use the tools and assets in Clip Studio Asset, to make transparencies for strip or card hair.