EliteHumanSurfaceShader included with reby Sky bundle
Serene Night
Posts: 17,640
I bought the Reby sky for Victoria 4, bundle, and it came with an elite human surface shader. Unfortunately, there are no instructions on how to use this product. The file Includes a REadme, just lists the filenames installed, but not where it is located, or anything useful to figuring out how to use it.
This is the store link to the item: http://www.daz3d.com/shop/elite-human-surface-shader/
Can anyone tell me how to use this item?
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You should find it under Daz Content>Shaders or maybe Daz Content>Shader Presets
You need to have the surfaces tab open and have all your skin surfaces selected. Then apply the preset. I haven't used it yet but my guess is that is how it works, just like ubersurface or human surface except it will have more settings you can tweak.
Of course I could be wrong since I'm not at my pc right now. Will see in about 15 mins though.
I think you have to hold control so it doesn't override your current textures, but again I'm not at my work machine. If you just apply the shader the character may come out white.
yet another edit. under shaders or shader presets it may be listed under omnifreaker so you may want to look there too.
I found a tutorial on how to use the EHSS: How to use the Elite Human Surface Shaders in Daz Studio 2 and 3 by Kraig Hausmann November 07, 2011. Daz Studio 4.x comes with the elite human surface shader.. The instructions for Daz Studio 4 are similar. You will find the shader under the content library tab. Go to: Daz Studio formats -> My Library -> Shader Presets -> Omnifreaker -> Human surface. You'll see the !HumanSurface shader .
For some odd reason, I have two HumanSurface shaders in my Omnifreaker folder in Daz Studio 3. I double click the second one while holding down the control key while the proper surfaces are selected.
Oh so human surface is the same as Elite human surface shader. sadness
Oh so human surface is the same as Elite human surface shader. sadness
Thanks for this. I'm going to test this out when I get home!
I believe you are overthinking this whole thing.
When you look at the MAT files, you will see a small "S" symbol in the upper left corner. This means that the MAT is optimized for DS. Just click the MAT you want to apply and the shader will automatically load the Human Surface Shader presets.
You can verify this by looking in the surface tab and seeing that the shader for any of the surfaces has been changed to omHumanSurface from DAZ Studio Default.
Good point I wasn't even thinking about the Reby Sky preset, just the core shader.
Good point I wasn't even thinking about the Reby Sky preset, just the core shader.
Yeah, I thought that might be what you were thinking.
The neat thing about that method is that it lets you turn any shader into an ubersurface - provided you're willing to do the necessary tweaking to take advantage of it.
Yeah, I thought that might be what you were thinking.
The neat thing about that method is that it lets you turn any shader into an ubersurface - provided you're willing to do the necessary tweaking to take advantage of it.
yep yep I do that sometimes when you have a sorta weak skin that could use a bit of help. Also helps when you do have a preset that looks good normally and it doesnt work out for you in a certain scene. Like if you use some excessive lighting in your scene its good to know how to turn down the specular level etc etc.
I got as far as ctrl/double click on HSS, and the texture does apply, but the eyes show white, and render like that. I reapplied the original eye texture, and still there was a white area along the upper edge of the lower eyelid, to the tear duct.
I couldn't find any way to "select" those surfaces, to apply HSS to them as well, and don't know why they weren't automatically selected along with the rest of the figure.
Dead-in-the-water on HSS, so far.
Just a bit of info, HSS and EHSS are both outdated and have been replaced with the Uber Surface Shader which has more options and will read all the HSS and EHSS files and apply them. Old Texture sets still come with HSS or EHSS because in the past we did not get Uber Surface free with the DS software. I suggest using Uber Surface Shader only for this one reason. It has been updated with DS and now works better with the new version of the 3Delight render engine which was not even built at the time HSS or EHSS was released.
I hope this info is useful.
Confusing.
I was told, and find, that HSS comes standard with Studio 4 & 4.5. It's not an included-with-content software, like EHSS is.
When I look at the shader menu in 4.5, it shows HSS as one of four options, built in.
So, I don't understand how it is superceded by the, also on the list, Uber shader.
Yep, definitely confusing.
Omnifreaker is the one who said Uber Surface Shader was the more advanced and preferred version. It was discussed at length on the old forums. Human Surface and Simple Surface are part of the install for people who feel that they do all that is needed in their images. To get better results with Uber Surface you do need to learn how to tweak the settings that have been added. USS does read all the settings for the other shaders, talks to 3Delight better and provides more settings to get your surfaces to look even better.
I has just suggesting this, why bother with HSS (EHSS but not Elite any longer) when the newer USS does the same job and more. If I'm going to take the time to learn something I'm going to learn the newest and best if I have access to it. I did not mean to confuse anyone.
The problem is that the eye surface and tear materials are set to be transparent but to catch specular highlights. When you apply HSS the opacity reverts to 100%. Ideally you would exclude those materials, since they are already doing their job and don't need the SSS or other features that HSS brings. If you go to the Surfaces pane and expand the list of surfaces unbder the figure you can ctrl-click (cmd-click for a Mac0 to deselect the eye surface and tear areas.
The history is interesting, especially the part about none of that information being intuitable.
Along the lines of SereneNight's originating question; the products are offered for sale now. We buy them. That they contain dated, or at least contigent functionality is a simple and understandable reality.
That said, it's not unreasonable to expect a heads-up from the seller. I went through it with Elite Marie. A couple of months later, I'm starting to understand, but still can't get a proper shader render. It misses the eyes.
Worked on it extensively this weekend, and lost fours hours of setup, careful lighting tweaks, and a lot of renders, because, in 114, the program will go through the motions to save the image, but if the destination folder doesn't exist, it will send your image to limbo. Acts like it saves, but there's no save.
That was a lot work to lose. I had renamed my last-used destination folder, and in the intensity of the process, forgot to change it in the image save window.
Just kept hitting that save button, and never got an error msg saying there was no such destination folder. Didn't think to check till I was done, about 15 images... down some data-toilet; no idea where they went. The "why" is intuitable in that case.
That was confusing, too.
The problem is that the eye surface and tear materials are set to be transparent but to catch specular highlights. When you apply HSS the opacity reverts to 100%. Ideally you would exclude those materials, since they are already doing their job and don't need the SSS or other features that HSS brings. If you go to the Surfaces pane and expand the list of surfaces unbder the figure you can ctrl-click (cmd-click for a Mac0 to deselect the eye surface and tear areas.
Thanks, Richard,
I had some trouble finding the surfaces list to exclude from. I'll go for it again, being careful, this time, (per my last post).
There was an involved threat about this where it was shown that UberSurface and UberSurface2 do *not* do the same job and more as EHSS. I had posted a picture of Tamesis that used HSS and was unable to get the same results using US2, neither was anyone involved in the discussion and it was a pretty sophisticated crowd where we got pretty deep in the details of the different shader settings. Their are fundamental differences. US2 has more 'options' but those do not just 'stack' on the HSS ones as one might think.
After much playing, *no one* was able to get back some of the detail that got lost in US2 from the EHSS version (rendered in UE2.)
That is not to say that US2 doesn't have some very nice advanced features beyond what is available in EHSS, nor that someone might not be able to get the results desired in US2. However, *it is not as simple as ctl+click on the texture* as some might think. Far from it.
If one reads what Omnifreaker said, he did as someone pointed out to me in the thread, mention that he totally rewrote certain aspects of the shader from HSS/EHSS to UberSurface and therefore the settings do not directly translate.
There was an involved threat about this where it was shown that UberSurface and UberSurface2 do *not* do the same job and more as EHSS. I had posted a picture of Tamesis that used HSS and was unable to get the same results using US2, neither was anyone involved in the discussion and it was a pretty sophisticated crowd where we got pretty deep in the details of the different shader settings. Their are fundamental differences. US2 has more 'options' but those do not just 'stack' on the HSS ones as one might think.
After much playing, *no one* was able to get back some of the detail that got lost in US2 from the EHSS version (rendered in UE2.)
That is not to say that US2 doesn't have some very nice advanced features beyond what is available in EHSS, nor that someone might not be able to get the results desired in US2. However, *it is not as simple as ctl+click on the texture* as some might think. Far from it.
If one reads what Omnifreaker said, he did as someone pointed out to me in the thread, mention that he totally rewrote certain aspects of the shader from HSS/EHSS to UberSurface and therefore the settings do not directly translate.Thank you for the correction Gedd. I got lost when things got deep and I was still a Semi New User at the time. I was more than bit lost at the time and am still not good enough to get good results from any of the shaders. I'm sorry I spread my wrong understanding. I now have better info and will provide it to other users in the future. You have helped me and I thank you for that.
Once again I'm sorry I posted info I was not sure about. I was trying to be helpful, now I have better info and will do better in the future.
Nothing to be sorry about, I'm sure I could have put it better. I was frustrated at the misunderstanding that confused me at the time and simply wanted to save anyone else from going through the involved process to discover this. They are all good products and have their place. You help a lot of people Jaderail, don't ever feel bad for that. I have learned a lot from your posts. One thing I continually work on is trying to not let my frustration to a situation come across as frustration with a person, or even a particular thing being said (rather then the larger 'context.') :)
I second Gedd, on that. Thanks to all the contributors that help move the learning forward.
Meanwhile, I’ve been exploring the settings on the surfaces tab, for Elite Marie in HSS, USS, and DS Default.
The setting changes I used were recommended as starting points in Kraig Hausman’s article on EHSS, and, thanks to everyone's how-to help, the results are fruitful and interesting.
Not having made note of the original settings before making the changes, though, I’m wondering if there is way to restore the Surfaces tab settings to their “default” condition. I can't seem to get back to my original "wrong" settings, to document the findings from square one.
I should point out, one can 'upgrade' an HSS/EHSS texture to UberSurface/UberSurface2 and it might give much better results. It all depends on the particular texture. In a nutshell, what I found with the Tamisis texture is that moving to US blurred out some of the detail and I couldn't get it back even with much playing (Someone might, just none of us could.) Other textures this might not be the case. It's one of those "you're mileage may vary" types of things. Ubersurface does offer some features not available in HSS/EHSS as Jadrail pointed out, so it's worth playing with if one wants to get the most out of a particular character they're working with. All of this goes out the window I believe if one steps outside 3Dlight renderer to something like Cycles or Octane (or that L one ;p.)