It's a screen cap program by Techsnith. Awesome with lots of markup goodies in it.

I'm sure folks will think this looks off but I watched a video on how to set up for Skin in Cycles (Blender) and there was a sub map that was very red so I just copy and pasted the HSV and tweaked it with the Saturation and Hue to achieve that and plugged that in.  Then used the BUMP map as the Roughness map as that was smoother than the Spec map so all that crazy shininess was toned way down and then lowered the Bump strength by about half.  

@RAMWORKS did you see my post about the pupils?

hborre ... ah you have to be using Snagit. I can't live without it LOL

I think it and Poser are the only two programs I can claim using since release 1.

cooked up a L'Homme shader for RAMWorks today. Translucent fingernails on this one.

Show me, show me!

It only works if there is skin geometry under the nails. I tried it on the toenails but there is just open holes under the toenails on L'Homie. If the skin under the nail mesh pokes through then you'll have darker blobs there.

Thanks for sharing that information.

Would you like to see a complicated setup for Vic4's finger nails? lol
Inspired from the setup Caisson proposed here for the leaves

If someone is able to  remove one or two nodes without weird effects, I would be pleased... 
But the result is how I like it;

And from outside the compound node:

That looks pretty good.  It may solve the toenail issue on L'Homme that ghostship2 discovered.  I see that the Bright/Contrast node has been omitted from this setup contrary to Caisson's original presentation.  I don't see any practical need where the nails are concerned.  The shader looks functional, I can't see anywhere for any node reduction or better improvement.  Since each channel on the PrincipledBsdf node is a multiplier, it is best to work with the nodes as a setup and combine everything at the end.  Nice work.

Edit: One suggestion, rename the Color connector to 'Plug Diffuse Map Here' or something more descriptive to avoid any misunderstanding.

hborre posted at 5:53 PM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462203

Edit: One suggestion, rename the Color connector to 'Plug Diffuse Map Here' or something more descriptive to avoid any misunderstanding.

What's that 'PrincipledBsdf values' node doing there? It is not connected. Does it serve as a sort of notebook?

FVerbaas posted at 7:48 AM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462234

What's that 'PrincipledBsdf values' node doing there? It is not connected. Does it serve as a sort of notebook?

Thanks again Ghostship.  I'm still tweaking.  

Sorry for the late reply folks.  Had to go to the doc yesterday for a XRay and consultation .... my left rotator cuff is messed up so not been sleeping at all.  Yesterday was the worst of it.  Almost lost my balance in the grocery store I was so dizzy from lack of sleep so I just took it easy and worked on LH using the new shader set up that Ghostship shared with me and then just watch Hulu and napped.  I did mostly work on LH's sclera since my home grown maps were much lighter than what's supplied for the default maps that ship with LH.  I also improved my lash transparency as it was looking a little wonky!  I think GS approved of my tweaks so that's posted below.

I didn't sleep much better last night but enough to where I feel slightly more rested today.   I have a friend coming over for a cut and highlight and visit at 11.  Hopefully I don't cut her ear off!  LOL 

So coming along with the tweaks to Ghostship's shader but I need to get that eyebrow area masked off so it's not getting all that glare.  See the image below, well that "Gloss/Spec Convert" is nowhere to be found so need the real name for it as I've looked over ALL of the nodes and brought them into the material panel to see where those same connector names are but to no avail.  HELP! 

How does Ghostship's shader have the lashes connected? It might be best to start from there.

I think I left the default lash shader from LHomme

Doodling with my own primitiv approach, i use mm as base length.

Also, the shader I made for RAMWorks is not the same as my P13 shader here. He had a requirement of it working in P12 and P13 so I made a new shader that would do that.

V4

Don't really need all the SSS goodies for lashes. This is about as basic as you can get. Actually, you don't even need the PoserSurface node, as the Physical Surface Node will render both in FF and SF. Just assign Physical Surface to both.

@bobbesch, looking really nice. Only thing that I can see is you don't have a value entered for Bump, so it's not doing anything. Other than that looks great!

Thank you and thank you also for pointing out the bump value.

Now with bump engaged,

Now with bump engaged,

Thank you for your advice, I will give it a try.

That looks awesome Bob.  V4 still is a pretty figure for sure.  

Client/friend left without a highlight, just a cut.  One of those things about aging.  Her hair is slowly getting more fine and frazzled so had to bring it up about 2 inches and complete recut the interior of the hair to make it look good.  The right side is thinning out so I had to work some magic to make both sides look the same thickness wise.  Worked and now she can go on her vacation with her nice cut.  Since she's a friend I didn't charge her for the cut so she gave me a nice left shoulder massage and it feels pretty good, hopefully I get more rest tonight, Goddess willing.  

The lashes on LH are set up as I've always done, they look fine to me, don't want them to look too lush as it's a dude, even though some men have thick luscious lashes.  

RAMWorks posted at 12:22 PM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462251

So coming along with the tweaks to Ghostship's shader but I need to get that eyebrow area masked off so it's not getting all that glare.  See the image below, well that "Gloss/Spec Convert" is nowhere to be found so need the real name for it as I've looked over ALL of the nodes and brought them into the material panel to see where those same connector names are but to no avail.  HELP! 

That said, all it does is multiply the specular map by 12.5, and the roughness value is just a fixed 1 minus the glossiness you enter. When I tried it, it just made things a lot brighter and overall worse. Might be appropriate for some specific set of specular maps, definitely not all.

@bobbesch Great lighting and camera settings! I would smooth out the bump a bit and watch for those sharp transitions  (lips-face, iris-eye white-pupil). I have a freebe eye texture set here in the free stuff section that can help.

this is one of the freebe eye textures I have here at rendo

@RAMWorks: Thank you, i have tons of stuff for V4.

@ghostship2 : Thanks for the praise, your shaders were the reason to get me involved with this. But I start simple and only do things I think I understand. Your blur masks would improve things a lot, I hope I'm not too stupid to use them too.

@bobbesch there should be mat files in that freebee that applie all  the textures and shaders to the eyes

I applied ghostship2s maps to sclera, pupil and lips and toned down the bump map on the skin.

Here is the main shader. Skin maps sometimes need adjustment in tone. HSV node controls skin tone and saturation, Roughness and Clearcoat Roughness control the glossiness  of the skin and bump is controlled by the distance on the Bump2Normal node.

II think I got it. Guess it is a Cycles 'Bump' node in disguise. 

YUP.  Some of the nodes are a little sneaky with how they are named. 

Ghostship mentioned to me  from my inquiry on the other page about the "Gloss/Spec Convert" node.  It's actually a combo of the two and collapsed into a compound node.  So that mystery is solved!  LOL 

Got these shaders working on Roxie. Just the nails thing did not work. I guess there is nothing under the nail geometry. 

Needs some work still but it renders fast. Need to look at those eyes. They're a tad red and the eyesockets are 'dry'. 

The girl misses good bumpmaps. Currently they are desaturated color maps so the nipples, where most bumpy detail is expected, are dark, so little bump. LOL!

I didn't use that nice extra that Ghostship supplied.  I like the mapped nails since there is the root (half moon at the base of the nailbed).  Roxie looks like she's got some Moxie!  LOL

@FVerbaas bump maps SHOULD be derived from the skin texture maps. Otherwise you just have that fake concrete look to the bumps. I never could stand the look of procedural bump maps for skin.

ghostship2 posted at 5:05 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462383

@FVerbaas bump maps SHOULD be derived from the skin texture maps. Otherwise you just have that fake concrete look to the bumps. I never could stand the look of procedural bump maps for skin.

Better solution is to get some really good skin detail alphas and detail the skin in ZBrush.Time consuming, but results are so much better, and you have ultimate control of the result.

Load the base OBJ, subdivide the mesh 6 times (that seems to be the max), sculpt the skin detail on the subdivided mesh, and then use Multi Map Exporter to generate displacement and normal maps. 

While these aren't exactly the maps I use (I probably wouldn't be able to link to those), it is a good overview of how it's done. Wish there were similar tutorials for the entire body.

Skin Detail

The other way besides using the HD Geometry like he uses in that tutorial is to just subdivide the mesh 6 times, and use ZBrush Layers to sculpt different areas. Then you can blend the layers by varying the strength (similar to using morphs in Poser) to get the final detail maps.

I do not have ZBrush or other fancy tools or bump sets so for my Roxie dooldes I will have to live with what's there for Roxie, Poser and PaintShopPro.

To avoid local skin color(lightness) affecting bump I was thinking of using the current plain desaturated map and get the difference with a blurred version of same, with blur radius on the order twice the size of skin detail. The blurred area should have the average skin lightness and the difference be representative for the bumps relative to average skin level. 

FVerbaas posted at 3:24 AM Mon, 17 April 2023 - #4462442

I do not have ZBrush or other fancy tools or bump sets so for my Roxie dooldes I will have to live with what's there for Roxie, Poser and PaintShopPro.

To avoid local skin color(lightness) affecting bump I was thinking of using the current plain desaturated map and get the difference with a blurred version of same, with blur radius on the order twice the size of skin detail. The blurred area should have the average skin lightness and the difference be representative for the bumps relative to average skin level. 

Yes I would love to use a frequency (or rather wave length) analysis method to filter out and eliminate the long wavelength components of the image. Pretty sure there's Python tools to do this but for now subtracting local averages (blurr) will have to do. 

And this is why it's such a pain to get decent renders if you are just an end user and rely on vendor maps. Your average Poser user doesn't have ZBrush or Maya or any other tool like that. They got Poser and expect a semi-decent render. 
Please understand I'm not bashing those who very generously share their knowledge here (it is incredible generosity); I'm just trying to come to this, for years and years now, as someone who purposefully and for the lack of time and finances, have no tools other than Poser and whatever freeware one can scrounge up.

There is a backup solution, for the times when there is no good bump map and you don't know how to make a decent one (just like me, too...): use indeed a procedural bump, one such example is in use with EZSkin3

Rhia474 posted at 7:08 AM Mon, 17 April 2023 - #4462452

And this is why it's such a pain to get decent renders if you are just an end user and rely on vendor maps. Your average Poser user doesn't have ZBrush or Maya or any other tool like that. They got Poser and expect a semi-decent render. 
Please understand I'm not bashing those who very generously share their knowledge here (it is incredible generosity); I'm just trying to come to this, for years and years now, as someone who purposefully and for the lack of time and finances, have no tools other than Poser and whatever freeware one can scrounge up.

Modern resources use cross-polarization to minimize highlights and shadows from the photographs, so the result is a more evenly toned skin. The best examples of modern skin resources can be found at texturing.xyz, in their VFace product line. There, all of the skin detail like pores and wrinkles is found in the displacement map, not in the base texture. Problem is, the cost for a commercial license to use them in a for sale product is entirely prohibitive for our little niche market. A commercial license for ONE of those VFace packages costs more than Poser itself. And that is only for a head texture. 8-)

@FVerbass

>>> The girl misses good bumpmaps. Currently they are desaturated color maps so the nipples, where most bumpy detail is expected, are dark, so little bump. LOL!

Yeah the nipples are "innies" instead of "outies" LOL

One thing you can try. Open the torso map up in Photoshop. Make a copy of the texture on a second layer.

Create a selection around the nipples and feather the selection so that the edges are softened. 

Then use the selection to create a mask so that only the nipples show.

Now switch so that you have the texture selected on that nipple layer, and not the mask

Invert the color.

Then you can adjust the lightness or darnkess, and blend the mask so that the "outie" nipples match the rest of the base texture.

What I do for nipples is select them in PS using the marquee tool, feather the selection by a couple of pixels and then invert them so they stand out lighter, I then use the Contrast and Brightness tool to blend a bit more if need be.  Same for outstanding moles you want to see with detail and any other dark areas that should be protruding not concave.  

What I do for nipples when creating a bump map is select them in PS using the marquee tool, feather the selection by a couple of pixels and then invert them so they stand out lighter, I then use the Contrast and Brightness tool to blend a bit more if need be.  Same for outstanding moles you want to see with detail and any other dark areas that should be protruding not concave.  Wish I could do that for Normal map creation but I've not found a way to that so I just use the created Bump map to make the Normal map.  That works pretty good!