MY Techniques for Gen 9 Glossy Lips- Text Block Edition
kirbawirba
Posts: 144
I'm a child of the 80's, and as such, I grew up with the hottest women on TV and movies applying lip gloss with a paint roller. It stuck with me, and I love the look to this day.
Gen 9 lacks a "Lips" surface area, so I decided to see what I could do to make lips glossier, as PA things on the store are great, but don't quite get me where I want to be.
There are a few methods. Some have been discussed already in other threads, but I thought we could talk about some other options.
First is the easiest way, and depending on what you've already purchased for Gen 9, you could do now in about 1 min.
Second is a little more time consuming, (and by that I mean if you have experience in the Geometry Editor Tool, 2 mins) but yields great results, albeit with a few drawbacks.
As always, there are PA's out there who have infinitely more skill and knowledge, and take much more time and care preparing these products than I could. With method 1 in particular, the products I have purchased are top notch, and do much more than simply slapping something together. They provide an extra level of detail that I just can't. If you can afford it, try the store first. Your results will probably be better.
First method is if you have already bought a general makeup set for Gen 9 that comes with lipstick colors, you most likely have what you need already. That being a "mask" for the lips. A mask is nothing more that .jpg that has the lips filled in with white, and the rest of the image is black. That way, the only thing affected by this method will be the lips. ***MAKE SURE YOU DON'T REPLACE ANY ORIGINAL IMAGES WITH THE NEW ONE YOU CREATED*** You can make a mask like this by navigating to where the model's texture folder is kept (or any Gen 9 model for that matter!), finding the base color image of the head of your model, copying it, opening it in your favorite image editor and tracing over the lips portion of the image in white, and filling everything outside of that with black. Then you can save this new image anywhere you want and keep it for future use. The best part is that this only has to be done ONE TIME, and you can use it on any GEN 9 model you have. ***MAKE SURE YOU DON'T REPLACE ANY ORIGINAL IMAGES WITH THE NEW ONE YOU CREATED***
The next part of the first method is applying this mask. Go to your GEN 9 model, and in the SURFACES tab under the SURFACES portion of the model, select the HEAD. Scroll down to the "MAKEUP ENABLE" option, and turn it ON. Your model's lips will turn white, don't panic! When you enable makeup, more options will appear. One of these is MAKEUP WEIGHT. Hit the button on the left hand side of the box and you will get a dropdown of all the textures in your scene. Hit the BROWSE option at the top of that dropdown and navigate to wherever you saved that new mask, and select it. Next go to the MAKEUP BASE COLOR box and do the same thing, only this time you are going to plug in the DIFFUSE color map for your model's head (The name of the .jpg can be seen if you hover over the image in the BASE COLOR box of your model's head, which will be near the top of the list of options within the SURFACE of the head. It will be listed as one of the many options among the dropdown provided, usually with a suffix of D on many models, and you can click on it to insert it into the image box). Your model's lips may still look way too light, but you can click on the color box in the same MAKEUP BASE COLOR box and dial it down from pure white to something darker that matches your model's natural skin color. For gloss, you'll go right under the BASE COLOR option, to the MAKEUP ROUGHNESS MULT option and dial that down to something below 1. That will add shine to your model's lips right away! To add color, just change the MAKEUP BASE COLOR to whatever you want. That's it!
Again, PA's have way more skill than I do in making these masks, and if you don't want a razor's edge appearing around your model's mouth, it will take an artist's touch to blend the edges and make it look far more natural, and they know how to use many more techniques to make it look even more natural. I don't.
The biggest drawback to this method is that those are the only things you can do to the lips alone, afaik. Changing the BUMP or NORMAL settings will alter the entire HEAD. Changing any color other than the MAKEUP BASE COLOR will alter the entire HEAD, etc. etc.
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The second option is a little more involved, and can only be done on a case-by-case basis, PER MODEL. It is creating a new surface for the lips entirely, using the Geometry editor. You can do this just for your scene, and if you do it for that model, any model loaded in after that will have the new surface applied to them as well, JUST IN THAT SCENE, and provided you didn't save the scene and close DAZ. If you like what you have done for that model, or any other models, you can save them as a CHARACTER PRESET, and they will have that new surface. You can just merge them into the scene, or load them like a new character after that. One of the biggest drawbacks to this method is that the model will have a razor sharp outline of their lips that can't be blended like a mask can. I actually like that (for the most part), but lots of people like a much more subtle and natural look to their models... so...
The first step of method 2 is to load in your model, open their mouth (it will make the next steps easier, trust me) and with the model selected, go to TOOLS, and select GEOMETRY EDITOR. Default settings of the GEOMETRY EDITOR should be set to SURFACE SELECTION, and DRAG as the method of selection. If not, you can open up the TOOL SETTINGS tab and change it to surface selection, and RIGHT CLICK anywhere in your scene to bring up a floating menu. Hover over SELECTION MODE, then click on DRAG. Next, you want to change your DRAW STYLE to WIRE TEXTURE SHADED. This will show you the polygons of your model, while also showing you their textures, including the lips. You'll know you've selected DRAG when you put the cursor over the model and a little red circle appears and follows your mouse around. Now you want to take your little red circle and start tracing over the area of the lips. Trace over the entire area, and make sure you get under them, and even a little bit into the mouth behind them so you don't have a straight line of lip surface, right in the middle of your model's mouth. Don't worry if you stop in the middle of filling this section in! If you stopped and want to continue, JUST HOLD DOWN CTRL WHILE YOU FILL IN THE REST! It will fill in the other stuff and leave what you have already done. If you goof up and select something you didn't want to, JUST HOLD DOWN ALT WHILE YOU TRACE OVER YOUR MISTAKE! It will leave what you wanted to do alone. Just make sure you hold down CTRL afterwards while filling in the rest.
Once you have what you want to be shiny filled in, RIGHT CLICK again and select GEOMETRY ASSIGNMENT. Click **CREATE SURFACE FROM SELECTED***. Name it "Lips". This will create an entirely new surface in your model's SURFACEs. ***EDIT: IMPORTANT*** Forgot to mention that if your model is using PBR materials, you will need to apply the default PBR SKIN material before you can copy the HEAD Surface, and paste it on the lips! Select your new LIPS surface, then click on PRESETS. Go to the IRAY category, and open it up. Go down to the SKIN category and select DAZ IRAY PBR SKIN, and apply it to the LIPS. Alternately, you may have to apply the basic IRAY shader to the new lips surface on some models who use UBER for their texture before you can copy the HEAD material to the new LIPS surface. You'll know you need to do this step if you copy the HEAD surface, apply it to the LIPS, and nothing happens, OR when you try to view your model in the IRAY draw mode and their lips look completely different than the rest of their body. If this happens, simply go to the other skin or surface material, and apply them, THEN copy the HEAD surface over to the LIPS.***END OF EDIT*** RIGHT CLICK the HEAD surface tab and COPY SELECTED SURFACE. Then, RIGHT CLICK your new LIPS surface and select PASTE TO SELECTED SURFACE. This will give your model a surface that matches the rest of their body... for the most part... I'll explain in the drawbacks to this method. After you have created the new surface, and have your HEAD material pasted on, you can go ahead and fiddle with the settings of your new LIPS surface how you want. If your model has PBR shaders available, you can even do method 1 on top of method 2, if you want! The added benefit to creating a new surface is that now you can also dial in the other parameters like normal and detail maps to give a smoother, shinier appearance just like Linda Carter or Erin Grey from the old 70's and 80's TV shows! PANCAKE THAT GLOSS ON!
Also, if your model's lips still seem a little too light, you can just use the BASE COLOR's color selection box to move the base color from white to something darker within pure white and dead black.
I want to point out some potentially serious drawbacks to this method, especially if you are a nitpicker. The first drawback is the one I already pointed out. The outline around your model's mouth will have a razor's edge. If you want to keep the natural color of your model's lips, it isn't that serious. Meaning the blend of the surfaces that came with the model will somewhat help cover that up, especially if you don't go too extreme with the glossy look. The second you add color to the lips, it can seem pretty unnatural. I happen to like this look at times, so its not that important to me, for the most part, but I know lots of people don't care for it.
Speaking of hard lines, the second drawback will be another set of hard lines INSIDE the mouth, too. Its as bad as GEN 8 makeup on its LIPS surface, if you have ever experienced makeup with GEN 8. Its very noticeable on closeups when your model has an open mouth and direct lighting. I've kind of gotten used to it by now after years of working with the older models, but some combinations can make the hard lines pretty obvious, and that doesn't look great, even to me.
The third drawback is that if you want to change your new LIPS surface to a color that the PA provides as part of the models texture options, you can apply the LAYERED surface to the model as usual, but you will have to re-copy the HEAD surface and apply it to the new LIPS surface. It literally takes seconds to do, but, some people may not want to do that all the time, cause you have to readjust the new surface all over again. I also haven't tried this with MATERIAL surface options yet, so I don't know how that works, but the LAYERED makeup will work just fine, because it alters the entire HEAD surface by drawing directly, within the program and for this scene, onto the image used for the HEAD surface with a LIE image. Thus, copying the HEAD surface again and applying it to the new LIPS surface will color in the new LIPS surface too!
And the last and largest of the drawbacks to this method is it has to be done to every model, individually. Again, you can save your altered model by saving it as a CHARACTER PRESET and use it later, but if you don't, you'll have to do this all over again the next time you use that model in a different scene!
That's it, I think... I THINK... If anyone has anything to add or share that would make this easier, or has a better way of doing it, please add it here. I'll add pics of the surface area I converted with the GEOMETRY EDITOR, and some examples of what it looks like. I used 3 models; original Gen 9 female, Victoria 9, and Alba (gen 9) from the ridiculously talented Mousso, using the UBER shaded textures for contrast. Alba was set to render at SubD 3 by default, so that's what I kept it as. OG 9 and Vic 9 are rendered at SubD 4. All the renders were done with RENDER QUALITY set to 10, and PIXEL FILTER set to 1.1. Lighting is default 512 for the stock HDRI and convergence set for 99.9. Nothing else was changed from default, other than making sure I set the sampling high enough to give a clear picture.
Please keep in mind that these posts may have some errors I don't know about. If anyone DOES read this and finds them, correct me immediately. If I've posted something that goes against TOS, correct me immediately.
1st 2 images are the area I selected for method 2. I also attached the results of both methods, and the color alteration for the LAYERED lipstick for Alba (the redder lips on her).
The "Makeup Option" is not showing up anywhere when I select G9's Head under the Surfaces tab. I've scrolled through that list over and over just to make sure my tired eyes aen't missing it, but it's not there.
I'm also using the Alba texture on my figure, so I have those default textures on her. Could some other setting be keeping that option from showing up?
Makeup option is a feature only in PBRSkin shader, not in iray Uber . Alba is with iray Uber shader, so...
Ah! No wonder. Thanks for the heads up!
Yeah sorry, I guess that pretty important detail should've been mentioned. If your model only has UBER shaders, you'll have to do method #2.