you are wrong, bump maps come from the color maps. I should know, I made them in Photoshop. Have a look.

Yes, was obviously wrong.

Here is a render I made in the meantime (Cycles):

I used the same method as ghostship2 for my previous characters (and one for LH that I'm still finishing up and will release in some time). It just -- doesn't feel very right to me, because to extract that information from simple color a lot of things go wrong, like the lighting used in the photographs, the resolution of the camera blurring things, the spots where different photos used were connected to wrap around the model, etc. But of course, we don't have the privilege of using super advanced scans of skin like the stuff from texturing.xyz, that's way too pricey.

I feel like this method of mixing procedural in Substance, with some painting, with some alphas extracted from photos of specific details of the skin.... I also saw a method for the diffuse maps, the person takes a diffuse made from photos and blurs that to remove the information of the pores (which is supposed to be made only in bump) and adds procedural details + painting - I'm trying to see how that goes over blurred textures of Mayu mixed with blurred textures of a merchant resource for La Femme. We'll see how it goes - the experimenting continues xD I think I'll look into purchasing some skin detail alphas.

Yes, I too used that method years ago. It's ok for shots from a distance.

Whoever owns Poser: They are setting the wrong prioritis. Textures are the key for figures, figures are the key for 3D-Software like Poser.

DAZ knows that. And delivers with the free software all required keys for creators/sellers. To make their marketplace a big business.

My last picture above is based on Genesis 3, by the way. Imported into Blender.

Same model, same textures, but a bit farther away and depth of field activ. As you can see, the bumpmap becomes less important with this distance already.

what are you doing in a Poser 12 forum? Daz and Blender ain't Poser.

adp001 posted at 1:01PM Wed, 27 January 2021 - #4411186

Same model, same textures, but a bit farther away and depth of field activ. As you can see, the bumpmap becomes less important with this distance already.

IMHO, the bump map is too strong. You shouldn't see such prominent pores at that distance. (Under her eye, the side of her nose, the edge of her forehead.)

Also has the same "too perfect" problem of the Poser characters, so... yeah. Comparing to that one, I don't see the point (though I did see the stuff about Genesis 8.1 and I find the expression controls very nice)

There are some more affordable skin displacement maps at surfacemimic dot com, patches as well as more specific scans. Also some cross-polarised colour photos.

caisson posted at 7:28AM Thu, 28 January 2021 - #4411220

There are some more affordable skin displacement maps at surfacemimic dot com, patches as well as more specific scans. Also some cross-polarised colour photos.

Eh I checked that - too limited, I think I'd be better off with alpha packs that we see everywhere.

Which I'm, right now, trying to see if I can make from all those nude photo reference resources I've gathered over the years, at least for the details (lips, finger wrinkles, etc)

Okay, I think I've reached a point where I need to make a more realistic morph to be able to see if there's anything else I can do for her textures.

I am still amazed how Poser makes us blind.

Look at the skin around these eyes (which is black and white and helps not be distracted by the diffuse color)

Now look at your render.

This and more great pictures of eyes can be found here

2,588 Female Pair Eyes Photos

There's almost always a fold on the upper eyelid, and the lower eyelid almost always has some creases.

There's none of this on LF

If you mean the highlights, I haven't worked on those yet xD

If you mean the shape, that's what I meant about needing to work on a more realistic morph.

Deecey's post shows the fold but not the creases

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 7:36AM Sat, 30 January 2021 - #4411430

If you mean the shape, that's what I meant about needing to work on a more realistic morph.

Yes - and you'll need creases in the bump map.

bagginsbill posted at 7:36AM Sat, 30 January 2021 - #4411429

There's almost always a fold on the upper eyelid, and the lower eyelid almost always has some creases.

There's none of this on LF

Ah, okay, you do mean shape.

LF is... clean. Smooth. She's a base, she's supposed to be morphed.

That's the part I'm gonna work on next for this project of mine.

We're crossposting into oblivion xD

bagginsbill posted at 7:37AM Sat, 30 January 2021 - #4411432

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 7:36AM Sat, 30 January 2021 - #4411430

If you mean the shape, that's what I meant about needing to work on a more realistic morph.

Yes - and you'll need creases in the bump map.

I handpainted creases in Substance - I think the program made them into normal maps instead of bump map, and I'm not using those. For some reason I get bad seams at every UV seam when using normal maps in Poser, never figured that out. I guess I'll have to figure out how to force Substance to turn all my height painting info into bump maps instead of normals.

Really need these in the bump map or it just looks not real.

Ok so turns out Substance puts most of the height info in the normal map, not the bump map. I found a tool to convert normals into bumps and well - much better.

No morph yet. But bb might notice I did mind the eye creases ;)

That's much better. Keep going.

And morphed. Alright - not done yet, but I'm pretty proud of this.

I'm gonna try and give this morph some HD details - gotta test that jerry rigged method for using Blender for HD morphs that I saw somewhere, never tried it before. Also, she's borrowing Mayu's brows and lashes transmap. I'm gonna bake some trans+diffuse maps for those using Blender particle hair and see how that goes.

I'm calling this girl Debora. :D

That's a huge improvement!

I'll say! She's gorgeous Ohki!

Please don't let us wait toooo long for her ;)

Thank you, everyone ❤️

Poser, Superfly, La Femme. Skin by 3Dream, not too smooth I think. But I'm not sure if that smooth look without any iregularities isn't the look that most people want - considering the huge variety of youthfull, smooth chars in the Marketplace.

Varnayrah posted at 10:31AM Mon, 08 February 2021 - #4412287

Poser, Superfly, La Femme. Skin by 3Dream, not too smooth I think. But I'm not sure if that smooth look without any iregularities isn't the look that most people want - considering the huge variety of youthfull, smooth chars in the Marketplace.

Amazing render. I have this skin pack too and really like it a lot. There are way to many smooth character out. We need more skins with "character" .

I love that skin pack and I hope there will be more like it.

Also, may I ask about the fur on the hat? Is that dynamic? And one more question: what is your lighting setup? I collect those...way too many harsh ones around and this is really nice on the highlights.

Thank you for sharing

One of the big things about most of the human types I see for Poser are the lack of veins. Even women have veins here and there. Subcutaneous blues and vein pops are necessary for a more realistic look. I like allot of what I see here but I'm still an old newbie when it comes to allot of this stuff. I still haven't ventured into making my own skin resource and probably won't for the foreseeable future although it does interest me!

RAMWolff posted at 2:37AM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412438

One of the big things about most of the human types I see for Poser are the lack of veins. Even women have veins here and there. Subcutaneous blues and vein pops are necessary for a more realistic look. I like allot of what I see here but I'm still an old newbie when it comes to allot of this stuff. I still haven't ventured into making my own skin resource and probably won't for the foreseeable future although it does interest me!

A vascularity pack exists for M4/V4, but I haven't tested it

Rhia474 posted at 3:33AM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412319

I love that skin pack and I hope there will be more like it.

Also, may I ask about the fur on the hat? Is that dynamic? And one more question: what is your lighting setup? I collect those...way too many harsh ones around and this is really nice on the highlights.

Thank you for sharing

I'm sorry - I didn't get notified about posts in this thread so I read that only now.

The fur on the cap is dynamic, yes. It's already built into the fur cap by GrayCloudDesign, but I tinkered with the settings to make it denser. The material is by boundless but modified: I used a texture tile in the hair.

The lightning is one of the ones in blackhearted Superfly Studio set.

@Varnayrah One suggestion: use hair maps that don't have burned in highlights and shadows. Biscuits and Out of Touch have such maps with most of their hair products and can be used with most hair models.

Y-Phil posted at 12:26PM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412440

RAMWolff posted at 2:37AM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412438

One of the big things about most of the human types I see for Poser is the lack of veins. Even women have veins here and there. Subcutaneous blues and vein pops are necessary for a more realistic look. I like a lot of what I see here but I'm still an old newbie when it comes to a lot of this stuff. I still haven't ventured into making my own skin resource and probably won't for the foreseeable future although it does interest me!

A vascularity pack exists for M4/V4, but I haven't tested it

I have used the vascularity pack for both M4 and V4, it works well on its own but you need to manually insert it if you are using EZSkin 3 and it will not in P12 because it relies on Python Script 2 for setting the intensity of the displacement.

ghostship2 posted at 2:37PM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412453

@Varnayrah One suggestion: use hair maps that don't have burned in highlights and shadows. Biscuits and Out of Touch have such maps with most of their hair products and can be used with most hair models.

Thank you, I'll keep that in mind. It seems hair maps without baked in highlights are rare bt I do have several of bisquits hair products so I can try those maps.

Hm, neither outoftouch nor biscuits maps are working with that hair model. outoftouch maps look just flat and biscuits too coarse. Reason maybe that the model is older and has rather broad strands. I'll just leave it as it is and move on.

Varnayrah posted at 8:21PM Thu, 11 February 2021 - #4412564

Hm, neither outoftouch nor biscuits maps are working with that hair model. outoftouch maps look just flat and biscuits too coarse.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks the textures Biscuits includes with her hair products look coarse. I have quite a few of her hair products for different characters, and I'm always looking for add-on textures for her hairs by other vendors.

Varnayrah posted at 10:38AM Fri, 12 February 2021 - #4412564

Hm, neither outoftouch nor biscuits maps are working with that hair model. outoftouch maps look just flat and biscuits too coarse. Reason maybe that the model is older and has rather broad strands. I'll just leave it as it is and move on.

what hair model is it? I may have it and can take a look.

hborre posted at 11:35AM Fri, 12 February 2021 - #4412461

Y-Phil posted at 12:26PM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412440

RAMWolff posted at 2:37AM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412438

One of the big things about most of the human types I see for Poser is the lack of veins. Even women have veins here and there. Subcutaneous blues and vein pops are necessary for a more realistic look. I like a lot of what I see here but I'm still an old newbie when it comes to a lot of this stuff. I still haven't ventured into making my own skin resource and probably won't for the foreseeable future although it does interest me!

A vascularity pack exists for M4/V4, but I haven't tested it

I have used the vascularity pack for both M4 and V4, it works well on its own but you need to manually insert it if you are using EZSkin 3 and it will not in P12 because it relies on Python Script 2 for setting the intensity of the displacement.

I got inspired by ghostship's explanation for the tattoos, and I got this. I still have a prob. with her teeth and lacrimals. Here the vascularity bitmap have been used at max value for the sake of demonstration.

that is a bit extreme.

ghostship2 posted at 1:02PM Fri, 12 February 2021 - #4412633

that is a bit extreme.

It was on purpose

Seems pretty interesting, the maps would still be useful without the python scripts. But the vascularity pack is not available anymore (at least not on RO).

ChromeStar posted at 3:51PM Fri, 12 February 2021 - #4412639

Seems pretty interesting, the maps would still be useful without the python scripts. But the vascularity pack is not available anymore (at least not on RO).

Oh... sorry about that It's true that I had since... 2013... and I used it once or twice, then I forgot it

I really don't see the point of using the blue vein texture map for the face unless you are using extreme morphs or aging and very close-up portraitures. But that's the way the set was developed; unfortunately, it is no longer available although it is still sitting in my purchase logs.

ghostship2 posted at 10:56AM Sat, 13 February 2021 - #4412625

Varnayrah posted at 10:38AM Fri, 12 February 2021 - #4412564

Hm, neither outoftouch nor biscuits maps are working with that hair model. outoftouch maps look just flat and biscuits too coarse. Reason maybe that the model is older and has rather broad strands. I'll just leave it as it is and move on.

what hair model is it? I may have it and can take a look.

Serenade hair by valea: https://www.daz3d.com/serenade-hair

Vascularity can be seen in younger people too depending on their skin - mine (in real life) isn't even very light and still I have a lot of veins very visible everywhere and I'm 35. Thin skin, I guess.

You can see a bunch of veins on the character I'm making too - look closely above.

But yeah, they tend to become more visible as you grow older.

@Varnayrah You can use a hair map that is straight up and down for all the maps except the skull cap. I made a custom map for the skull cap to bring the hair line down. This setup will give you real reflections/highlights from your HDRI or lights.

Y-Phil posted at 4:59PM Sat, 13 February 2021 - #4412630

hborre posted at 11:35AM Fri, 12 February 2021 - #4412461

Y-Phil posted at 12:26PM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412440

RAMWolff posted at 2:37AM Wed, 10 February 2021 - #4412438

One of the big things about most of the human types I see for Poser is the lack of veins. Even women have veins here and there. Subcutaneous blues and vein pops are necessary for a more realistic look. I like a lot of what I see here but I'm still an old newbie when it comes to a lot of this stuff. I still haven't ventured into making my own skin resource and probably won't for the foreseeable future although it does interest me!

A vascularity pack exists for M4/V4, but I haven't tested it

I have used the vascularity pack for both M4 and V4, it works well on its own but you need to manually insert it if you are using EZSkin 3 and it will not in P12 because it relies on Python Script 2 for setting the intensity of the displacement.

I got inspired by ghostship's explanation for the tattoos, and I got this. I still have a prob. with her teeth and lacrimals. Here the vascularity bitmap have been used at max value for the sake of demonstration.

Let me recommend using the Physical Surface node for your SuperFly, you have the option to use both Bump and Displacement maps, an option that you do not have readily available with PrincipledBSDF node.

With PrincipledBSDF, you would just connect your displacement to the root Cycles node instead (and your bump to the PrincipledBSDF node as shown). Still possible to use both if appropriate to do so.

The problem is the root node has no value control for displacement. Unlike Blender, Poser lacks a true displacement node, just a bump node.