Preview Lights Not Working with Skin Textures

tdcdesigns9999

Hello,

I'm brand new to using this software, but I have read and googled on this topic as much as I can and must now ask for help. I have turned the camera headlight off, and ensured that my render settings match those of tutorials on how to use Iray. I've turned everything else off, even the grid on the ground, and tried toggling the viewport between UV and back again, and restarting the program. I'm not sure what is going on. As the topic title indicates, a skin texture applied besides the default (these screenshots happen to be taken with a Victoria 7 skin) seems to partly ignore the fact that preview lights is on. Other objects, such as hair, clothes, and even other parts of the body such as teeth, are behaving as expected by only being illuniated correctly by the spotlight, but the high resolution skin texture only dims a bit when preview is on, rather than only taking light from the single spotlight which is the only real light source in the scene.

Please see the attached images and let me know if someone can help.

Richard Haseltine

I'm not quite sure what you are saying, but skin shaders in aprticular tend to be complex and the preview modes do not fully support them.

tdcdesigns9999

Are you saying that when working interactively in the program, it is not possible to see the effect of lights on surfaces with skin textures? Everyone is working "in the dark" (or in the glow in the dark, rather) and has to do a render every time to see a minor change in lighting? I'm not talking about preview mode being perfect, to look as good as a final render, but the images I attached should tell the story here.

In each image, there are no camera headlights, the backdrop is pure black, the render settings are set to Dome and Scene (I also tried just Scene with no change), and there is a single spotlight behind the figure. There is no other illumination in the scene.

The image on the far left entitled "no_preview_all_skinned.jpg" shows all surfaces that should normally have skin textures using the "Summer All Mat" preset purchased with the Victoria 7 Pro Bundle, with preview lights set to off. This appears as expected due to preview lights being off. 

The image in the middle entitled "preview_all_skinned" has all the same settings and texture presets as the first image, but preview lights are on. This does NOT look as expected. Note that the hair and clothes are being illuminated by the spotlight, while the surfaces with the skin texture are glowing in the dark, and then also being illuminated in addition by the spotlight.

To fully illustrate the problem, the third image shows the skin on the body using the default material preset after placing a Victoria 7 figure, while the face still has a preset for makeup textures. Note that the body skin is showing correctly, taking illumination from the only light source in the scene, while the face is glowing in the dark.

Are you telling me that this is the expected behavior and how everyone works in this software?

Richard Haseltine

Is this Texture Shaded mode or nVIdia Iray preview mode (set from the sphere icon to the left of the camera/view picker)? I'm guessing it's the basic OpenGL Texture Sahded view. The OpenGL preview shader tends to treat SSS settings as a form of ambient colour, that's why the skin appears to be glowing.

tdcdesigns9999

Thank you, I saw notes in other posts when googling about texture shaded vs Iray preview, but for the life of me I could not find it. The images in the help documents for DAZ are all broken for me, and some of the instructions are hard or impossible to follow without the missing image (I'm assuming, as the image is... missing). In any case, somehow seeing what you wrote, I was finally able to find the spot to change the preview mode. I am just not sure why it doesn't set your preview to Iray when you set your environment up to use Iray by default... is it because of the heavy performance pull?

Anyway, it works now. There are some grainy textures with such low light (obviously this is just for my own learning, this image wouldn't be much to look at for real), but that's a totally different issue and if its solvable its like this still because I'm a total noob. I'll try to figure that one out on my own before asking more about it. Thank you again!