Ghosts, Boooooo!
wildbillnash
Posts: 754
I was wondering if there was some way I can turn my figures into ghosts? Mostly see through.
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That can be tricky - if you want a translucent figure the simplest option is to render the figure alone, then layer it on top of the main render at a reduce opacity. Trying to reduce it in the scene tends to look odd due to seeing the internal parts too.
Something like this one ?
Yeah, need something like that. I'm using either G8 or G9 for the figures. I see where you chose the skin bit, but I don't see what you did with it.
Scene file is attached as below, pls check and tweak surface settings as you wish.
Crosswind, what is that file? If I need to add that to Daz to be able to see it, where do I put it? (And don't you dare say what you are thinking!)
Well, I could've dared... hoho ~ That is just a Scene file in which only a G8F is in there, with the Shader setting on her skin surfaces that make her ghosty. You just download it then drag it to DS Viewport, and save the Scene file to wherever you like in your Daz Library.
Then select G8F, go to Surfaces pane, select a surface... let's say Arm or Body, then save a Shader Preset, then apply it to your character's skin surfaces. Or, if your character is G8F, save a Hierachical Material Preset, then apply it to your char.
Thanks, Crosswind, I've never done that before and am not sure how to do it. I've read your instructions but I will need to read it a few more times before this old brain understands it. Thanks again.
Okay, I know I'm doing something wrong. First, you said to download the file. But I don't see a way to download it. So I saved it to my D drive.
I opened Daz Studio and tried to drag the file into the center window (at least I think that's what you meant by DS Viewport). I get an error message saying there is no importer available.
So, I got something wrong.
Yes, saving it to a local drive was right ! But if you cannot open it by dragging, just Ctrl + O in DS, then locate the scene file on your D drive, to open it. See if it works ?
I've found the best way to do ghosts is to render your character in canvas via beauty diffuse and select the character and all nodes and check the alpha checkbox. Render that out seperate from the scene. Render the scene a second time normally without the figure. Then use photoshop to layer it back in with transparency and you change the contrast to make it whitish. You can use the ghost shaders availble or just setting transparncey in the daz render, but you will get both sides and probably too many details through features around the fingers and face that make it kind of garbled.
Hi, Crosswind. I "Save Image" to my D drive. I ended up with two icons. Ones a zip file and the other is just "File". When I tried to unzip the zip file I get a message saying file not found. So, I opened up Daz to get open the "File" file and it doesn't show up at all. Any ideas what's going how herfe?
Thank you for the info, Crosswind. I'll do that.
And thank you Charles, even though I have no idea what you said.
Okay, Crosswind, my bad. It turned out it will download when I just click on it. So I tried to open it in Daz and I get this message. "
/C:/Program Files/DAZ 3D/DAZStudio4 Public Build/shaders/iray/resources/DTHDR-RuinsB-500.hdr/Runtime/textures/vyktohria/IrayGhostShaders/Colors000a.jpg"
I click Okay in the error box and it preceeded to load something. I get another Miissing File notice but I end up with a Gen 8.1 figure with a camera and a key light. I don't know what's missing here. I just checked it in Iray and the image has a green background. Is that supposed to happen? Meanwhile, I'm going to play around with it.
Okay, I discovered something. With a Gen 8 figure, I can use the option "Cutout Opacity" to make it ghostly. The same with the clothes. Granted, the mouth area is more visible, but photoshop will take care of it. If only I can make the eyes glow red. Oh, well, it's another job for Photoshop.
In your Daz Render settings, you will find a tab at the top named "Advanced". First if you haven't gone there to crank up your Medium and High Texture compression thresholds, you should unless you got really low end GPU. Directly under that section is another set of tabs, one of them is labeled "Canvases"
You select the checkbox for Canvases and then you will see a + / -. Click the + and it will create a default Beauty canvas. Switch back to scene and select the root node for your character. Switch back to Render settings. And in the Canvas section check the Alpha box. Under that where it says Node: None. Click on none, and then "Create from Selection" . It'll default name it NL1, you can change that or just hit Accept.
Now render. You will get a render of just the character (probably naked because I didn't tell you to also click on all the clothing, hair and other nodes too.) A render of the character fully isolated on an alpha background (if your using .png for output)
It wil still utizlie whatever lighting is in the scene.
You can ignore any message... that effect doesn't need any image / map files. Cutout Opacity brings different effect but if you accept it, that'll also do.
You're right about the different effects. It seems there's nothing I can do about the eyes and teeth. I was able to make the gums disappear, but not the teeth. My plan was to use Photoshop to correct them, but when I loaded a scene I had planned to use, the lighting washed out the face. It looks great.
Out of curiosity, is there a way to change the eyes? I thought of making them glow red, but I couldn't find anything that controlled full eye colors.
Thank you to all who gave feedback, I really appreciate it.
You can give Emission setting on any eye related surface that you want them to glow, Cornea, Eye Sockets, Irises, Pupils, etc.
Dude, I've been down that road and know, that's why I tried to explain my approach for making ghosts.In the end you get a much cleaner realistic result...umm realistic fo ghosts. :b