Doubts about skin configuration

ShadowMinion

Hello, very recently I started in the 3D world with Daz, I have learned a bit by watching tutorials or reading in Daz forums, of course I have seen the work of artists to try to replicate some aspects and in this way practice and improve my quality, recently I found an artist on twitter (he seems to be an NSFW artist) that caught my attention the skin configuration he uses on the characters, so I'm pretty sure he uses a skin tone modifier, but I don't know how manages to make the skin of the characters look "soft", I get the impression that if I could touch the skin of the characters it would be incredibly smooth, I don't know if it uses any morph, shader or plays with the surface parameters of the characters to make them look that way, so this is where I ask, does anyone know or have a slight idea what this artist does to make the characters look that way?  (Here are 3 of his most possible SFW works) . Thanks and Stay Safe

Chezjuan

There are so many ways to make skin look soft that it's really impossible to tell just from pictures. It could be everything you mention above, it could also be be scene lighting, postwork in Photoshop or similar, or combination of everything.

All that said, when I was just starting out I found a tutorial that helped me understand many aspects of working with character skins. It explains a lot of the settings you may want to look at.

https://thinkdrawart.com/daz-studio-iray-skin-tutorial

Sickleyield also has a tutorial on 3-point lighting, which can really help with how characters look in scenes, especially when using a HDRI that is not necessarily flattering to the character's skin.

https://www.deviantart.com/sickleyield/journal/Tutorial-Three-Point-Lighting-In-Iray-598282717

But getting the skin to look "just right" for you is going to be quite a journey. After 7 years I am still finding tweaks, shaders, tricks, and settings that improve on looks I thought were great in the past.

Good luck!

 

Edited for typos.

Hylas

Yeah, there's no "trick" here, it's skill and experience.

Here's two free lighting products that I recommend:
https://www.sharecg.com/v/97092/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/ITF-Studio-HDRI-Pack-01
https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/76735/sc-hdri-lights-for-daz-studio

"Bloom" - whether added in the render settings or in post - will also make your image look softer.

 

As for skin settings, I feel the main thing you're looking for here might be the exact right amount of gloss.

Glossy weight and glossy roughness are probably the two parameters you want to be looking at the most.

High weight and/or low roughness make the skin look wet or oily. Low weight and/or high roughness make the skin look dry like plaster.

Your examples fall somewhere in between...

Also, most skins come with specular maps that control the glossiness.

I find that in some cases the skin looks better if you just remove the specular maps.

Just experiment. Good luck!

alaltacc

@Hylas, I'll kind of hijack the thread (not really, it's related): I see lots of interesting things inside Sharecg, but to download you need to log in, and registration of new accounts is disabled. This one above would be helpful to me (as a newbie I struggle with lighting a lot), but I can't download it.

Any options? Thanks!

Hylas

Strange, I didn't know about ShareCG and new accounts...

Same product: https://www.renderhub.com/intheflesh/itf-studio-hdri-pack-01

alaltacc

Thanks, downloaded!