This is part 2 of the Making Skin Pop with the Daz Studio Iray Uber Shader tutorial. Here, we address tweaking a chromatic skin. Part 1 provides an introduction to Daz Studio Iray skin shaders as well as how to convert monochromatic to chromatic skin. Visit Part 1 here.

Tweaking a Chromatic Skin

1. Open up a figure of your choice (I’m using Babina 8 for my example) in Daz Studio.
2. Open up the Surfaces tab.
3. You’ll notice that the SSS map slotted into the Translucency Color looks different this time – it would normally either be an exact copy of the Base Color map, or a lightened version of the Base Color map. (It is important to note that some skins might have a more in-depth SSS map that incorporates things like veins and vessels, but the vast majority are simple lightened versions of the Base Color map.) In the case of Babina 8, you will see the latter, a lightened version of the Base Color map.
4. (Optional) If the skin you are working with uses a copy of the Base Color map slotted into the Translucency Color, I would recommend lightening it slightly in Photoshop. For a generalized process, start with the color map and add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer with the following settings – Hue -5, Saturation -15, Lightness +20. This might need to be tweaked depending on the skin. Once you have a lightened version of the color map, load this new SSS map into the Translucency Color slot and move to the next step.
5. Change the Translucency Weight to .90 (you might need to play with this depending on the character).
6. Change the Base Color Effect to Scatter & Transmit Intensity.
7. Change the SSS Reflectance Tint to 0.79, 1.00, 1.00. (you might need to play with this depending on the character, but I like this color almost all the time).
8. Scroll down on the Surfaces pane.
9. Change the Transmitted Measurement Distance to .15 (you might need to play with this depending on the character).
10. Change the Transmitted Color to 0.95, 0.20, 0.10 (you can definitely play with this depending on the character and skin tone you’re going for).
11. Change the Scattering Measurement Distance to .015 (you can play with this setting too).
12. Change the SSS Color to 0.95, 0.45, 0.55 (you can play with this setting too. In fact, you will have to depending on the character and look you’re going for).
13. Change the SSS Direction to -.25 (I typically don’t mess with this and leave it set to 0, but using small negative values, such as -.1 to -.25, can be helpful if there is too much scattering effect. This can vary greatly on lighting).
14. Repeat these steps for the Lips and Ears (I often do them at the same time as the Face since they use the same maps).
15. Repeat these steps for the rest of the skin surfaces – Arms, Body, Legs, Fingernails, Toenails, EyeSocket, etc.

Again, play around with the settings! That’s how you’ll learn what you like and dislike and what different colors and numbers do. This is where you might think about tweaking the settings for Bump, Top Coat, and/or Gloss/Specularity. They all add up to the skin’s final results! And if you’re comfortable with Photoshop, you can even build upon the SSS map for more detail (blending tattoos into this layer can help immensely in making them look more realistic and less stickerific). Also note that I do not adjust eyes…you can easily slot in eyes from another character.

It looks like a lot of steps, but it’s really not when you get in the groove. It also really helps to save your go-to colors to the quick select in Daz. Please see the below comparison for Babina 8.

Middle face skin was made following the steps above. Far right face skin has changes to Transmitted Color and SSS Color to create a lighter skin tone.

And just like with above, these steps work with darker skin tones, as shown below with Millawa 8, who has gorgeous skin out the box to begin with. My first tweaks are very subtle, but upon close inspection you can see that changing the Base Color Effect to Scatter & Transmit Intensity enhances the toning of the skin (in this case I used a color of 0.37, 0.99, 1.00 which seems really bright but it’s subtle with Millawa’s skin maps).

Comparison of out-of-the-box Millawa 8 skin with multiple tweaked Millawa 8 skins.

And lastly, we have Celani 8, another character with gorgeous skin out of the box. I changed the Base Color Effect and altered the Transmitted Color and SSS Color slightly, and the effect is very subtle. I also included a shot with her under different lighting so you can see how lighting itself has a huge effect on the same skin and settings.

Comparison of out-of-the-box Celani 8 skin with tweaked Celani 8 skin in normal and altered lighting.

In conclusion, the best advice I can give is to not rely on using things out of the box. Don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and dig around in the surfaces panel. Play around with stuff to see what it does. What’s the worst that could happen if you end up with something you don’t like…just undo or reload! I hope this guide and these steps help get you started on achieving the results you want when it comes to the way skin looks, whether you’re a beginner or a grizzled veteran trying to get used to Iray for the first time. In time my goal is to write more tutorials in the future that take these steps even further and build upon them. Happy Rendering!

Have you ever been frustrated with skin that looks flat in Daz Studio? Dull and lifeless? Rubbery with a distinct likeness to that of Gumby? (Google it if you’re too young to remember Gumby.) Or maybe it just needs a little bit of pop? Most of the time, any of these issues can be attributed to SSS, or subsurface scattering, and there are a couple easy tweaks that can be made to drastically improve the look of skin in Daz.

[Visit Part 2 of the tutorial which deals with Tweaking a Chromatic Skin.]

PBR Skin Shader vs Iray User Shader

Before we get started, I wanted to make a quick note regarding the new skin shader that was introduced with Genesis 8.1, the PBR Skin Shader (it can also be used on Genesis 8). ‘PBR’ is actually a technical term.

Physically Based Rendering, according to Wikipedia, is ‘a computer graphics approach that seeks to render images in a way that models the flow of light in the real world.’

Okay, well that was kinda vague. Both the PBR Skin Shader and the Uber Shader do this, so they are both technically PBR shaders. They use almost all of the same maps. So please don’t let Daz’s play at words lead you to believe that the Uber Shader is somehow lesser. It’s just different. While the PBR Shader has added a couple neat new tricks, it is also missing some neat tricks that will be made use of in this guide. Essentially, the PBR Skin Shader is a trade-off, and it’s up to the user to decide which they prefer. Please see the below comparison with Victoria 8.1.

Victoria 8.1 comparison of Daz Studio’s PBR Iray Skin Shader and the Iray Uber Shader.

It is so very much personal preference. Personally, I stick with the Uber Shader because it allows me to better control SSS. Now, if Daz were to update the PBR Shader to bring back the SSS capabilities that the Uber Shader gave us, then it would be the best of both worlds. But for the sake of this article, I will be sticking with the Uber Shader. (Another article may come at a later date that works specifically with the new Iray PBR Skin Shader.)

Spectral Rendering

One other item of note is Spectral Rendering. A lot of folks don’t know what it is and a lot of folks don’t use it. Personally, I do, and I don’t. It depends on the scene and the skin I’m working with. It is supposed to be more actuate in terms of how it bounces light around the objects in the scene, some scenes more than others. The downside is that it has a particular tendency to make skin out of the box look like muddy, green, flat…blech. The tweaks I will be going over won’t work with Spectral Rendering. Well, they will…but they require different SSS settings to not look like muddy, green, flat…blech. It also can add exponentially to your render times, even with the same exact lighting.

Is it really worth it? That’s up to you to decide. Like I said, I’ve noticed that Spectral rendering works better with some skins than others. For the purposes of this article, due to length, I will be sticking with basic rendering. If folks enjoy this article, I will do a write-up of my tweaks translated to Spectral Rendering at a later date. For comparison, here is an example with Vicky 8.1 with my Iray Uber settings.

Comparison of Iray Uber Shader with and without spectral rendering.

Okay! Ready to get started? Oh! I forgot to mention that if you want to follow along in Daz, I’m using this HDRI and no other lighting and default tone mapping.

My lighting setup – Just HDRI and no other lighting or default tone mapping.

Monochromatic vs Chromatic Iray Uber Skin

The first step is understanding what type of skin you are starting with, and that really boils down to SSS (subsurface scattering). To put it simply, think of subsurface scattering as the way light shines through the skin. Skin is translucent, so it’s only natural that we’d see things like veins and, well, meat beneath it. Older Iray Uber skins, such as those found on G3 and a very small amount of G2 characters, use a type of SSS called Monochromatic. Newer Iray Uber skins, such as those found on G8 (and G8.1) characters, use a type of SSS called Chromatic.

Now, what is the difference between the two? Well, I honestly couldn’t tell you, other than the fact that they behave completely differently, and that Chromatic SSS, when set up correctly, appears to behave more naturally in terms of light reflection than Monochromatic SSS. So how do you tell which is which? It’s really easy, but you’ll need to roll up your sleeves a bit and open up the surfaces tab (If you’re never looked at the surfaces tab, or are unfamiliar with it, you’ll be digging into it here!):

Monochromatic

You will see a greyscale map slotted into the translucency color. You’ll also see a rather tomato-inspired red set for the color itself (in most cases). And if you scroll down on the surfaces panel, you’ll see the word ‘Mono’ listed under SSS Mode.

Monochromatic skin typically uses a lower translucency weight (.3 to .5) and the general rule of thumb is that it can be lightened or darkened by adjusting that slider (lower for lighter, higher for darker, etc). Monochromatic skin can be converted to Chromatic skin with some work, and that work does involve Photoshop (or another photo editing program that can use layers, such as Gimp). I will be showing you how to convert a Monochromatic skin, such as Vicky 7, over to Chromatic SSS and apply my tweaks. (I’ll try to stick with the super popular base figures that pretty much everybody has so you can follow along exactly.)

Chromatic

You will likely see either an exact duplicate of the base color map slotted into the translucency color, or a slightly lightened version of the base color map. The translucency color itself should (in most cases) be white (this isn’t always the case for spectral rendering, but again, this article will only cover basic rendering). And if you scroll down on the surfaces panel, you’ll see the word ‘Chromatic’ listed under SSS Mode.

Chromatic skin typically uses a much higher translucency weight (.75 or higher) and it is harder to lighten or darken simply by adjusting. This can be tweaked slightly, but if you need to lighten or darken a skin drastically, I would recommend finding a different skin that starts out where you want it in terms of tone, or go the direct route of editing the maps manually in Photoshop (advanced users). The reason for this is that Chromatic skin relies on the translucency color map, or the ‘meat map’ as I call it, to shine through from beneath the outer base color layer. If you try to lighten the skin by dropping the translucency weight, you’ll lose that ‘meat’ and the skin will end up looking flat. Chromatic skins out of the box are the easiest to tweak because they already have the necessary SSS map (though advanced users can go even further and build a new SSS map or tweak the existing one for even more detail, something I will cover in another tutorial).

Converting Monochromatic SSS to Chromatic SSS

(Beginner Level in Photoshop Required)

1. Open up a figure of your choice (I’m using Victoria 7 for my example) in Daz Studio.
2. Open up the Surfaces tab.
3. Starting with the Face, open up the translucency map in Photoshop (or photo editing program of your choice that supports layers). In the case of Vicky 7, this map is here on my system – DAZ 3D\My 3D Library\Runtime\Textures\DAZ\Characters\Genesis3\Victoria7\V7FaceMapSSS_1001.jpg. There are other SSS maps for Vicky 7 that are dependent upon any makeup you choose, but for our purposes, we’re only concerned with the base skin that loads with the character. You can always convert the makeup skins if you’d like later (I usually just use third-party makeup anyways).
4. Once you have the Face SSS map open in Photoshop (it should be greyscale with blue squigglies), take a look at the vein detail. It’s great! I really wish Daz kept these details on their newer figures but c’est la vie. Now open up the base color map, in this case V7FaceMapD_1001.jpg. We’re going to need both to create a proper Chromatic SSS map.
5. Next take the SSS map and copy/paste it onto a new layer over the base color map. You should now have two layers…one with the SSS map, and one with the base color map. The SSS map should be on top, currently blocking the color map from showing.
6. Change the opacity of the SSS map to 25%.
7. Now create a new solid color adjustment layer and pick a nice fleshy pink tone (205,165,165).
8. Change the opacity of the solid color adjustment layer to 20%. The pink layer will bring back some nice color to the map we’re building.
9. Go ahead and save this working file as a .psd if you want to come back to it later and play around (I would highly advise playing around…that’s how I learned!). Flatten the image or stamp visible if that’s you’re thing and save this new SSS map as a .jpg (the highest quality setting). You can save it in Vicky 7’s folder, or anywhere you’d like to save it if you want to set aside a special folder for your custom maps. I’ve saved mine as V7FaceMpaD_1001 – CUSTOM SSS.jpg.
10. Back in Daz, change the Translucency Color map to the one you just created. You do this by clicking on the map in the Surfaces tap and then going to Browse when the menu pops up.
11. Change the Translucency Color to white (you can absolutely play with this if you’re going for fantasy skin colors)
12. Change the Translucency Weight to .85 (you might need to play with this depending on the character).
13. Change the Base Color Effect to Scatter & Transmit Intensity (Vicky 7 is already set up that way, but if the character you’re working on doesn’t have it, go ahead and change it).
14. Change the SSS Reflectance Tint to 0.56, 0.98, 1.00. (you might need to play with this depending on the character, I usually start with 0.79, 1.00, 1.00 and adjust from there).
15. Scroll down on the Surfaces pane.
16. Change the SSS Mode to Chromatic.
17. Change the Transmitted Measurement Distance to .15 (you might need to play with this depending on the character).
18. Change the Transmitted Color to 0.95, 0.20, 0.10 (you can definitely play with this depending on the character and skin tone you’re going for…unlike with Monochromatic SSS, this is where you can go to fine tune the ultimate lightness/darkness and tone…to an extent).
19. Change the Scattering Measurement Distance to .015 (you can play with this setting too).
20. Change the SSS Color to 0.95, 0.45, 0.55 (you can play with this setting too…in fact, you will have to depending on the character and look you’re going for).
21. Change the SSS Direction to -.15 (I typically don’t mess with this and leave it set to 0, but using small negative values, such as -.1 to -.25, can be helpful if there is too much scattering effect…this can vary greatly on lighting).
22. Repeat these steps for the Lips and Ears (I often do them at the same time as the Face since they use the same maps).
23. Repeat these steps for the rest of the skin surfaces…Arms, Body, Legs, Fingernails, Toenails, EyeSocket, etc. All of these maps are located in the same folder where we found the Face map (in example, the body would be V7TorsoMapD_1002.jpg for Victoria 7).

Again, play around with the settings! That’s how you’ll learn what you like and dislike and what different colors and numbers do. This is where you might think about tweaking the settings for Bump, Top Coat, and/or Gloss/Specularity. They all add up to the skin’s final results! And if you’re comfortable with Photoshop, you can even build upon the SSS map we created above for more detail (blending tattoos into this layer can help immensely in making them look more realistic and less stickerific). Also note that I do not adjust eyes…you can easily slot in eyes from another character.

I know it looks like a lot of steps but it’s really not so bad, and it goes quickly once you get the hang of it!

Please see the below comparison.

Comparison of out-of-the-box Victoria 7 skin with tweaked Victoria 7 skin.

The above steps can also be followed with darker monochromatic skin tones, as seen below with Monique 7 …the only thing I did different was bump the Translucency Strength up to .90 and change the SSS Reflectance Tint a smidge to give a more golden undertone rather than blue.

Comparison of out-of-the-box Monique 7 skin with tweaked Monique 7 skin.

Visit Part 2 of the tutorial which deals with Tweaking a Chromatic Skin.

Physically based renderers, such as Iray, tries to approximate the physics of reality. For each point on the screen, it shoots out a ray from the camera to that point, then tries to determine its color/value. However, it is simply not possible to calculate the value of a point with real-world accuracy, because we would need to sample light coming in from an infinite number of directions.

Therefore, our Iray renderer must guess what the value of a point is by sampling light from a set of different but finite angles. The more samples we collect or iterations we run, the more time it takes, but the better our guess will be. As we collect more and more samples, we will ultimately converge on a likely answer.

Noise arises when we guess incorrectly, so the value of a particular point widely differs from what it should be. As you may have noticed though, some scenes take longer to converge than others, and some scenes are more noisy than others. What then determines the amount of noise in an Iray scene?

Why Is There Noise in My Daz Studio Iray Render and How to Remove It

What Determines the Amount of Noise in an Iray Scene?

Based on my own Daz Studio experiences, Iray scene noise seems most pronounced when there are small, extremely bright areas in the scene. For example, when most of the scene light is coming from small and bright light sources, specular indirect lighting, or doorways and windows.

In the Fantasy Girl with Horns scene above, there are many bright but small areas of light in the environment map because the sun is peeking through the trees. These small areas of light create noise on the water, which gets compounded as it bounces off that surface and hits others objects in the scene (indirect lighting).

For a more simple case of noise and small, very bright areas, I placed a point light between a fantasy woman’s hands. A point light has a small surface area. When it is the main source of light in a scene, there will likely be a lot of noise.

In some cases, our collected samples may miss the small light altogether, creating a dark spot. In other cases, we may randomly sample in the direction of the light, creating a higher value than reality. Depending on the strength of the light, this value may be very high, thereby significantly skewing our average guess.

Below, we have a zoomed in image with just the point light turned on (all other lights are off). Notice that there is quite a lot of noise when a small bright light is producing most of the illumination in the scene.

Zoomed in image with just the point light turned on. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray for about 10 minutes.

If we increase the strength of the point light, then the picture noise increases (see below).

Point light strength increased by a factor of 10. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray for about 10 minutes.

If we render the point light in a volumetric space, there is even more noise. This is because we are sampling for the entire volume (including the points in-between the hands), which increases the frequency of errors.

If we render the point light in a volumetric space, there is also more noise. This is because we are sampling for the entire volume as opposed to just the object surfaces.

Another noise problem area is when there are caustics. Water, for example, bends light (refraction) and focuses it, essentially making the lighted areas smaller and brighter. This creates interesting light patterns on the water floor. However, because of this light bending property, the direction of our pixel samples become even more important and more susceptible to light misses or accidental hits.

The general take-away here is that –

Small bright areas with high values create more noise than wide bright areas.

Specular, reflective, or refractive surfaces can further increase scene noise. Specular and reflective surfaces increase the number of small and bright areas, each of which serves as an indirect light source. By understanding the source of noise in our Daz Studio Iray renders, we can better control it in our images.

How Do We Reduce Noise in Our Iray Render?

I use four key methods to reduce noise in my Daz Studio Iray images.

1. Adjust Iray Render Settings.
2. Increase the amount of light in the scene.
3. Render at a higher resolution (larger image), then resize down to average out the noise.
4. Remove some of the noise in post-work by using despeckle or blur operations in Photoshop.

1. Adjust Iray Render Settings to Reduce Noise

One of the easiest ways to reduce noise in our Iray renders is to increase the number of samples we collect. The more samples we collect, the better our guess will be (i.e. the closer our guess converges to the actual value). We can do this by going to the Render Settings tab, and then selecting Progressive Rendering.

My Render Settings > Progressive Rendering settings.

Many of these parameters control when rendering stops, and may override each other.

• Max Samples – Controls the number of samples collected per-pixel. The more samples we collect, the better our guess will be.
• Max Time – Controls the maximum amount of time before rendering stops. Note that the render will stop when either Max Samples or Max Time is reached. If we have a slower graphics card, we may want to increase Max Time.
• Rendering Quality – Based on Tobor’s experience, this controls when the Iray renderer considers a pixel to be converged. I.e. a higher quality value will take longer to reach a given level of convergence. Of course speed of convergence also depends on our hardware and scene.

  In more practical terms, Sickleyield defines this parameter as a multiplier for Max Samples and Max Time. I.e., it is a quick way to increase or reduce the time at which rendering stops. For example, when doing test renders we may reduce Rendering Quality and then push it up again for our final image.

• Rendering Converged Ratio – As I understand it convergence is a measure of how close our pixel value guess is to its real value. As such, we will never reach 100% convergence, because that is when our guess is 100% accurate, which can only happen when we have the ability to collect an infinite number of samples. As we have seen above, this measure is also partly determined by the Rendering Quality parameter.

I usually render each of my lights separately, so I end my renders manually based on the light layer. There are three more Render Settings parameters that pertain to noise.

• Firefly Filter Enable – Go to Render Settings > Filtering and make sure that Firefly Filter Enable is on. This will get the Iray renderer to filter out some of the noise in our image.
• Caustic Sampler – Go to Render Settings > Optimization. Turn on Caustic Sample *if* we have caustics in our scene. Note that this enables some additional tests in the renderer thereby increasing sampling time, so only turn it on as necessary.
• Architectural Sampler – Go to Render Settings > Optimization. Turn on Architectural Sampler if we have an internal scene with a lot of indirect lighting and light only coming from portals such windows or doors.

This post by Dave Smith has more detail on these Render Setting parameters. Increasing the number of samples collected is probably the most accurate way to reduce noise. However, it can also take a long time to converge.

2. Increase the Amount of Light

Earlier, we saw that scenes with more noise have light primarily coming directly or indirectly from small bright areas. For example, internal scenes where light is only coming from windows or doors.

One way to reduce noise is to increase the amount of light in our scene, for example by adding large mesh lights in an indoor scene or removing unnecessary walls and ceilings. Larger light sources will reduce the amount of noise in our picture. In addition, if we are getting light from many different directions, then the probability of totally missing a light source or getting overly skewed light values will be significantly reduced.

However, a problem with this approach is that we may flood our scene with too much light, thereby losing shadows, shape definition, and scene depth. The image below is an older image of mine where I used a lot of ambient light in 3Delight.

This is an older image of mine where I used a lot of ambient light in 3Delight. Because there is too much light I lose shadows and shape definition.

3. Render at a Higher Resolution

Another simple way to reduce Iray noise is to render our images at a higher resolution (larger size). When we shrink our image down in size, some of the noise will get averaged away. This is a better method than just using blurring techniques to average away the noise because it will retain picture sharpness and detail.

For example, the top image below is rendered at 1024 by 1331 pixels, at 300 iterations, and then cropped in height. The bottom image is rendered at 3000 by 3900 pixels, at 300 iterations, and then reduced in size to 1024 by 1331 pixels (similarly cropped in height). There is a lot less noise in the bottom image without a loss of sharpness or detail.

There is a lot less noise in the higher resolution image (bottom) without a loss of sharpness or detail.

4. Remove Scene Noise in Post-work

We can also remove some of the render noise in post-work using blurring or de-speckling operations. In Photoshop, I use Filter > Noise > Despeckle for less noisy renders and Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur for noisy renders. The left image below is the original noisy render and the right image has been blurred with Gaussian Blur radius 3 pixels.

Remove Scene Noise with Blur or Despeckle operations.

The problem with Despeckle or Gaussian Blur is that we lose a lot of detail and sharpness, especially in our primary fantasy girl figure. One way to fix this is to create another render with just the girl. By removing the water, we remove a key source of noise in our scene. With a simpler scene, we can also render more iterations for a given time. Then, we use this low-noise image to sharpen the figure in our blurred image. To do this, I select the figure-sharpen layer and set the blending mode to Overlay. Then, I do Filter > Other > High Pass with a radius of 5 pixels.

Left – Gaussian Blurred image with much less noise but loss of detail. Right – Same image but with the girl figure sharpened using the technique described above.

Conclusion

I reduce noise in my Daz Studio Iray renders by using all four of the techniques above. However, I make sure to properly balance them out so that I do not weaken scene lighting, lose scene detail, or spend too much time rendering.

There are other methods for controlling noise in a path tracer like Iray. For example, seeding the renderer differently, clamping maximum light values, and more. However, as far as I know, such render settings are not currently available in Daz Studio. In any case, they each come with their own weakness.

With just the techniques described here though, I am able to get results that I am happy with. The completed Fantasy Girl with Horns image is shown below. We have added all our lights, removed noise, and applied our post-work process.

Final Fantasy Girl with Horns image. We combined all lights, removed noise, and warmed up the image in post.

Currently, there are two options that I know of for transforming previous skins into Base Female (G3F/G8F) UV maps.

1. Blacksmith3D’s Texture Transformer together with their add-on packs.
2. Various Legacy UV products by Cayman Studios.

I use Blacksmith3D’s Texture Transformer because it transforms the actual texture maps, allowing me to combine textures from different generation characters. In contrast, Legacy UVs work by adding new geograft areas. Note though that while I have had good success with BTT, it does not work on all textures.

Here, I highlight some of my favorite skins from Victoria 4 until now.

Best Fantasy Women Skins, 3D-Art

1. FWSA Dayanara HD

Dayanara has two main skin options – natural and snake skin. Both are fantastic, especially the snake skin version which has great detail, scales, and is very distinctive. Below are both the natural and snake versions of the skin, side by side. Natural-skin is on the left and snake-skin is on the right.

FWSA Dayanara has two main skin options – natural and snake skin.

This very impressive character by Fred Winkler Art and Sabby is one of my all time favorites. I still use her skin textures today and my most popular image on the Daz gallery features Dayanara.

This very impressive character by Fred Winkler Art and Sabby is one of my all time favorites.

2. MDD Shimmer for V4.2

Another fantasy skin that I use very frequently is Shimmer by Maddelirium. She is a Victoria 4 character but I transferred the texture over to Base Female UV (G3F/G8F) and have been using it with various G3F and G8F morphs. It consistently produces results that I am very happy with. For example, the image below uses Shimmer texture with TW Ktarya G8F morph.

Dragon lady portrait
with MDD Shimmer texture and G8F morph.

The cool tattoo designs, displacement maps, and striking colors make this skin unique and arresting, whether in a portrait close-up or a more zoomed out pin-up. Next, we have Victoria 8 with Shimmer skin in a classic pin-up image, and wearing the superb Bootleggers 2 high boots.

Victoria 8 wearing the Shimmer skin in a classic pin-up image and wearing the superb Bootleggers 2 high boots.

With the G3F UV Swap or G8F UV Swap products by SloshWerks, I am also able to use this transformed texture on G3M and G8M. The following image features a G3M character wearing MDD’s Shimmer skin with the adorable Daz Squirrel on his shoulder.

With the G3F UV Swap or G8F UV Swap products by SloshWerks, I am also able to use this transformed V4 texture on G3M and G8M.

Maddelirium’s Fire and Water as well as Earth and Air elemental skins are also fantastic. In fact, if you like fantasy skins as I do, definitely take a look at her store at Renderosity.

MDD Fire skin on G3F character. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

3. Tigerlily

Tigerlily has always caught my eye, but before I was able to get her, Genesis 3 and Iray were released. That got me very busy for a long while, and I never got around to getting this very striking cat girl. It wasn’t until this last PA sale that I finally saw her, got her, and I am very happy that I did!

In the image below, I have G8F wearing the Tigerlily skin with the LY Moxie Sparks morph. Her hair is Ktarya Hair for G8F.

Adorable fantasy cat girl pin-up . G8F with Tigerlily skin rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

I am a big fan of cat girls, so will definitely be doing many more renders with this amazing skin texture.

4. Aunrae the Dark Elf

Of course, no fantasy character-list is complete without a dark elf. My current favorite is Aunrae by Hinky Punk. She has wonderful skin detail and a great variety of colors and face tattoo options. Our fierce dark elf girl (below) is also wearing awesome claws from the Eagle-Guard Armor as well as the NightQueen Hair.

G3F character using Aunrae’s dark elf skin texture. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

I also like the results on G8F. Definitely a skin that I keep coming back to again and again. Works well as both a bad-ass dark elf (above), or a more smiley, happy dark elf (below).

G8F character using Aunrae’s dark elf skin texture. Fantasy art rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

5. FWSA La Llorona and Muneca HD Bundle

Last but not least, we have the zombie girl. This bundle by Fred Winkler Art and Sabby has a large variety of skin options. My favorite is probably the face with stitches and different skin patches from the La Llorona creepy options. It is highly distinctive and while it can be scary/creepy, it can also be sexy/dangerous or sad/vulnerable.

Sexy and dangerous zombie girl using the stitches and patches skin from the La Llorona creepy options. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

A more sad and vulnerable zombie girl with her teddy bear. Rendered using Daz Studio-3Delight.

The more minimalist skin with dark tear-streaks around the eyes and stitches on the lips is another excellent option. It is not as striking as the previous skin, but works well in a larger variety of contexts.

Lonely zombie girl sitting with cats. Here we use the more minimalist skin with dark tear-streaks around the eyes and stitches on the lips. Rendered in Daz Studio – 3Delight.

What Are Your Favorite Fantasy Skins?

Are any of the skins above in your favorite’s list too? What is your list of best fantasy women skins? What are those character skins that you end up using again and again? Hope you will share some of your choices with us in the comments section below! 😀

1. Pd Iray Shader Kit 1

The Pd Iray Shader Kit 1 by parrotdolphin is one of my favorite products of 2015. It allows me to not only make previous 3Delight materials look good in Iray, but also effectively use many made-for-Poser cloth materials, with just a few clicks.

There is also the ability to add a metallic sheen to my cloth surfaces, or to add cool metallic patterns. In the example image below, I added the gold metallic sheen to the trim of the Fantasy Wrap dress, as well as the gold metallic patterns to the cloth she is holding.

Most clothing sets that I use have a combination of mostly cloth, metal, and leather parts. Therefore, combined with basic Iray metal shaders and Khory’s Iray leather shaders (described later), I can make most clothing sets render well in Iray without too much effort.

I applied shaders from Pd Iray Shader Kit 1 to all cloth surfaces in this image.

2. AtmoCam for Iray

I use AtmoCam for Iray by Marshian in almost every one of my Iray images. AtmoCam allows me to render light-rays, create atmosphere, fog effects, underwater effects, and more.

In the mermaid image below, I used AtmoCam to create my underwater effect. To do this, I rendered a light layer using the AtmoCam AzureSea setting and the AtmoCam HDR Env Render Setting.

I used AtmoCam for Iray to give my mermaid image a nice underwater atmosphere.

AtmoCam also works great for creating spell effects or providing atmosphere around emissive light surfaces. In the wolf pack image below, I rendered a volumetric light layer for a green point light on her right hand. This casts a nice green glow behind and to the side of my figure. The wolf pack is created using Wolf 2.0 by AM.

Green spell effect on our evil wizard’s right hand created with AtmoCam for Iray.

3. UHT Hair Shaders for Iray

Just as the Pd Iray Shader Kit allows me to make cloth materials look good in Iray, UHT Hair Shaders allow me to make 3Delight and Poser hair look good in Iray with just a few clicks. I especially like all the extra controls for adding displacement maps, back-scatter, shine, transparency, and more.

Used UHT Hair Shaders for Iray on StoryBrook Hair by Propschick and RPublishing.

I have tried other hair shader products, but so far, I like the render results I get from this one best. Note however, that these shaders work best on hair surfaces that are mapped to straight hair pieces. I usually continue to use the original hair textures for scalp surfaces and surfaces that have special (non-straight) hair patterns. Nevertheless, even there, I can still apply displacement, shine, and other hair options, to the original textures.

Another important thing to note is that the transparency options may not work on all hair surfaces. In these cases, we will have to edit the original transparency image maps, and strengthen it in an image processing program such as Photoshop. More details on hair transparency here.

In the image below, we apply UHT Hair Shaders to Tatiana Hair by 3Dream and Mairy.

In this image, we applied UHT Hair Shaders for Iray to Tatiana Hair by 3Dream and Mairy.

4. Iray Fashion Leathers

Another very common outfit shader are leather shaders. This is where Khory’s Iray Fashion Leathers comes in handy. In the Catwoman image below, I applied a black shader from the set to 3D-Age’s Cats outfit. The only additional thing I did, was to adjust UV tiling for the surfaces of the outfit so that I get the leather texture that I want, and so that the texture pattern is consistent throughout the outfit.

Used Iray Fashion Leathers on 3D-Age’s Cats outfit.

5. Iray Skin Shader

The truth is, I am still searching for a good Iray skin shader solution for older generation figures, especially Gen4. Currently, I am using JM HumanShader for Iray. However, the skin settings are a bit too glossy/shiny for my taste. I usually reduce the Top Coat Layer and Glossy Layered Weight values. Still though, the figure skins tend to have an air-brush quality to it.

Using JM HumanShader for Iray on a Victoria 4 character (Tempesta’s Yumi).

The Iray Converter for Genesis and Generation 4 Bundle by V3Digitimes looks like it could be an interesting and flexible solution. However, I am still waiting for a good sale before I can try it out.

Using Iray Uber Shader on a Victoria 4 character (Danae’s London).

However, one of the key weaknesses of Daz Studio Iray is the difficulty of finding information on how to use it effectively, and how its’ new features can help to enhance my art. There is a lot of good stuff in the Daz3D forums, however one usually has to wade through pages and pages of images and posts, before getting to anything that helps.

Here, I want to list some of the useful Iray tips and tricks that I learned from the Daz forums, from talking to other Dazaholics, and from my own experiments with Daz Studio Iray. If you know of any additional Iray techniques, please let us know in the comments section below.

Daz Studio Iray Tips ad Tricks

1. Mesh Lights

Mesh lights are extremely useful for lighting an Iray scene because it provides soft and more realistic shadows. One of the best ways to get a mesh light in Iray, is to convert a spotlight into a mesh light. We can easily do this by –

1. Select our spotlight and click on the parameters tab.
2. Click on Light > Area.
3. Set the Light Geometry drop-down menu to Rectangle, and set the height and width parameters according to the mesh light size that you want. A larger mesh light will product softer shadows, and a smaller mesh light will produce harder shadows.

How to change a spotlight into a mesh-light.

And that is it! Our spotlight has now become a mesh light, and the really cool advantage is that we can still change our camera to the spotlight view, and see exactly what it lights. Similarly, we can change a point light into a sphere, so that it produces softer shadows.

I usually use an IBL to provide ambient light in my scene, and multiple mesh-lights to further accent my figure(s). In the scene below, I only used two mesh-lights.

Soft shadow pin-up scene of woman in heels. Only used two mesh-lights in this scene.

2. Fuller Hair

Example of thin, wispy hair in Daz Studio Iray.

A common problem that I faced in Iray is that certain hair props or figures may appear very wispy or thin. As I understand it, this is a problem with the hair transparency map not being strong enough, i.e. not white enough.

Hair is thicker and fuller now with the Cutout Opacity parameter set to 2.

One very easy way to fix this problem is to –

1. Select our hair object and click on the Surfaces tab.
2. Select all the relevant hair surfaces, and look for the Cutout Opacity parameter.
3. Remove the limits on the Cutout Opacity parameter. To do this, click on the gear icon to the right and select Parameter Settings (see below). Then, un-check the Use Limits box and click Accept in the pop-up box.
4. Set the Cutout Opacity parameter to a value greater than 1 depending on how much we want to strengthen the visibility of our hair strands. Setting a value that is too high may make things too strong, and lose the wispy look of our outer hair strands.

How to remove the max limit on our hair Cutout Opacity parameter.

Un-check the Use Limits box and click Accept

One very important thing to note is that removing the limits on the Cutout Opacity parameter, also changes the transparency map of all selected surfaces to the same image. Therefore, if we are changing several surface layers at once, we need to make sure that all their transparency maps match. Otherwise, the wrong transparency map will be used.

Instead of using Cutout Opacity, we may also lighten our transparency map in a separate image editing software. This method gives us more control over which parts of the hair we want to strengthen, and which parts we want to leave wispy.

What I do in Photoshop –

1. Load my hair transparency map.
2. Duplicate the transparency map into an additional layer.
3. Set the layer blending option of my duplicate layer to Screen.
4. I can change the opacity of this layer to control how much additional volume I want to add to my hair. I can also use masks to control which area I want to strengthen.
5. Once I am happy with the results, I merge both layers and save the transparency image to a new file.
6. I replace the transparency map, in the Cutout Opacity parameter, with this new Photoshop-ed image.

I got this tip from Fred Winkler Art. Many thanks Fred! 😀

Using UHT Hair Shaders for Iray by Slosh.

Instead of mucking with transparency maps and fiddling with hair surface parameters, we can also use UHT Hair Shaders for Iray by Slosh. So far, I am very happy with this product.

• It is easy to use,
• I like the extra displacement and shine options it provides, and
• It produces good results in most of my renders.

Lady with red hair, using UHT Hair Shaders for Iray by Slosh.

3. Shiny Eyes

Eyes appear shiny when the surface of our eye reflect the strong light sources in the environment. Therefore, to get lively, shiny eyes, there has to be one or more properly placed light sources to reflect off of.

For example, in the hair examples above, her eyes are shiny because they are reflecting some of the strong light areas in my IBL (image based light). Rotating my image map differently, will result in different eye reflections.

Sometimes, our light source may be properly placed, but the area of the eye that it affects (i.e. the area of reflection) may be too small to be discernible in my rendered image. In this case, we may increase the area of reflection by increasing the amount of cornea bulge in our figure.

Left – Cornea Bulge set to maximum, larger reflection. Right – Cornea Bulge set to minimum, smaller reflection.

To achieve this –

1. Select our figure and click on the Shaping tab.
2. Open up our figure and click on the Eyes section.
3. Enter cornea into the search box at the top to filter the shaping parameters that are shown.
4. Set the Eyes Cornea Bulge parameter to maximum.

How to change the area of eye-reflection on our figures.

Victoria 7 swimsuit pin-up with shiny eyes and cornea bulge set to maximum.

4. Metal Shader Textures

(A) Knight in armor after applying Iray Uber shaders.

One of the early problems I encountered with Iray is how to have my original armor textures show, after I apply an Iray metal shader. For example, I am creating a knight in armor image (A) using Luthbel’s Paladin armor for G2M.

First of all, I just apply the Iray Uber shader to all the objects in my scene.

Next, I want to further refine my armor surfaces. In particular, I want to apply metal surfaces to appropriate parts of my knight’s armor. I also change the cloth surfaces to Iray velvet, and the leather surfaces to Iray leather.

(B) Knight in armor after applying Iray Steel-Galvanized shader.

In the next image (B), I Ctrl-clicked on the Iray Steel-Galvanized metal shader, so that my original textures are preserved, but still, the armor appears a flat shade of silver. All my original texture colors are not showing. Why?!

This is because my armor texture only appears in the Base Color parameter. However, for some metal shaders, there is a much stronger, additional, Metallic Flakes layer.

How to have my original armor textures show after applying an Iray metal shader.

If I want my original armor textures to show, I will need to load those textures into the Metallic Flakes Color parameter.

1. I go into the surfaces tab.
2. I select all the metal surfaces on my armor object.
3. I note which image map is used in the Base Color parameter, and apply the same image to the Metallic Flakes Color parameter.

After I apply the Base Color image maps to the Metallic Flakes Color parameter, I get a more metallic looking armor with my original textures (C) – Success!!

(C) Knight in armor after setting the Metallic Flakes Color image map, to my original armor textures.

Next, I can enhance the glossiness of my metal surfaces by –

1. Setting Glossy Weight to 1,
2. Removing the image map from Glossy Color,
3. Setting the Glossy Color to an appropriate color. In this way I can tint my armor to whatever I want. For example, in this composition I want my armor to appear somewhat golden, so I play around with the Glossy Color until I find something that I am happy with. Once I find it, I drag and drop that color into my Custom colors panel so that I can easily apply it to other metal surfaces.

How to increase the glossiness of our armor and tint it appropriately.

Now that I have all the materials set up properly, I add in some lights to highlight my figure, and then finish with some post-work in Photoshop.

I am still learning the ins and outs of Iray, so if you have more Iray tips, please post them in the comments section below. Many thanks!

Final Golden Knight image with post-work in Photoshop.