Applying shader presets to raw OBJ

gopalinski_2781b8e9e9

Hey everyone, I've looked everywhere and can't seem to find the answer.
I make sculpts in Sculptris, the export them as OBJs. I import them to DAZ and I'd love to find a way to make the sculpt look more professional by applying a nice stone surface to it (I assume that's what shaders are for). I think I'm decent with lighting, I use the UberEnvironment base, a key light, a strong back light and a few soft fill lights. But there's still something that seems to be missing when looking at some of the seasoned pro's work in terms of surface quality. I figured it could be the shaders/materials that give it that extra shine. I'm not really looking to coloring the sculpts, having it all one color would be fine. It's just that cheap plastic-like shine that bothers me.
Thanks for the help!! :)

Lissa_xyz

If you posted a render or two of what you're getting we may be able to help easier. All of that lighting may be washing the details out too. You don't generally need tons of lights with UE as it provides even lighting all the way around.

Decent bump/displacement/etc maps help too.

For example, this is pure UE:

Jaderail

Mesh size comes into to play with some shaders. The denser the mesh the better the shader will apply. Try a tileable shader to increase the detail on the prop. And also know that specular, gloss, and reflect in the surface settings can all be adjusted to fix that plastic look.

mjc1016

Jaderail said:

Mesh size comes into to play with some shaders. The denser the mesh the better the shader will apply. Try a tileable shader to increase the detail on the prop. And also know that specular, gloss, and reflect in the surface settings can all be adjusted to fix that plastic look.

Don't forget the importance of UV mapping...tileable shaders won't tile properly unless the item is UV mapped. For a seamless tile, the UV mapping doesn't have to be 'pretty' just there...for something that isn't seamless, the UV mapping does need to be 'exact'.

Herald of Fire

Just to add that UV's do more than just help you put an image on an object. Any shader which uses a noise map, for example, relies on UV's to know where to put the noise and thus add flavor to the object. That means that procedurally generated shaders will not look so great on objects lacking a proper UV map.

Lissa_xyz

mjc1016 said:

Don't forget the importance of UV mapping...tileable shaders won't tile properly unless the item is UV mapped. For a seamless tile, the UV mapping doesn't have to be 'pretty' just there...for something that isn't seamless, the UV mapping does need to be 'exact'.

Good to know. I was planning on giving floating islands a go in Blender and didn't know this. I thought UVs were only necessary for object-specific mats.

mjc1016

Tiling depends on knowing where to start the repeat. Without a UV map, the whole surface is generally considered to be '1 unit'...in other words, any texture (mapped or procedural that uses map or repeatable math functions) will be fit to the entire surface. Of course, if the item is fairly simple and has a straight layout, you can make a map that looks good...but often the maps would have to be insanely large.

Herald of Fire

mjc1016 said:

Tiling depends on knowing where to start the repeat. Without a UV map, the whole surface is generally considered to be '1 unit'...

Actually, if there's no UV map then it assumes 0,0 in most programs, and thus will be the same UV on every vertex. This means you're left with a flat-shaded object as it can only fit 1 pixels worth of information stretched out across the entire model. After all, the software doesn't know whether you're dealing with a square plane, a spheroid or an armored mech and therefore can't make judgments on what UV's to use.

mjc1016

HeraldOfFire said:

mjc1016 said:

Tiling depends on knowing where to start the repeat. Without a UV map, the whole surface is generally considered to be '1 unit'...

Actually, if there's no UV map then it assumes 0,0 in most programs, and thus will be the same UV on every vertex. This means you're left with a flat-shaded object as it can only fit 1 pixels worth of information stretched out across the entire model. After all, the software doesn't know whether you're dealing with a square plane, a spheroid or an armored mech and therefore can't make judgments on what UV's to use.

Yeah...that's actually right. And if you do apply a displacement, depending on the geometry, it can 'explode'..separate at the edges (a simple cube will separate the displacement value...max/min.)

The DS primitives do have some sort UV mapping...but it is some sort of fairly simple projection.

That's probably where I was messing up...here's a render showing an unmapped cube, a mapped cube and a cube primitive. All 3 have the same noise map and tiling applied.

gopalinski_2781b8e9e9

:D Thanks for the replies guys. Very helpful.
The main problem was that DAZ wasn't applying the shader when I chose it from the Surfaces>Presets window. But if I chose the preset from the Content Library instead it would apply correctly. Also my OBJs weren't UV mapped before which was causing problems as well. And I did some research on normal maps, which I wasn't aware of before, which allows me to give some nice texture to the model. Thanks everyone!