Water People Opacity
rustaj
Posts: 37
Hey folks! I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, so apologies if it isn't...
I'm currently trying to make a person who is made out of water. My current trick has been to render a blue person, render their clothes, and render the scene separately, then in photoshop merge the person back in but with their opacity cut to give it a translucent feel. Even typing it out makes my head hurt, so there must be a more efficient way to do it (or possibly there's a product that I've just missed?).
Any suggestions?
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The "Technical Help" forum might have been a better place. If you click the little cog to the far right of the thread title and choose "edit", you can move the thread there.
Are you doing this water person render in Iray or 3Delight?
Either way, you could stick with your current approach in-render by selecting the person and reducing their surfaces' opacity in the Surface tab. But I think they'll look more like a blue ghost than someone made of water.
If you're using Iray, you could select all their surfaces and apply an iray water shader to them. You might need to add some bubbles, drips and splashes in post so they look more like a water person than a glass one.
Actually I'd say Art Studio was fine, snce it's about achieving a look. The main issue, especially in Iray, with doing it in render is getting rid of the bits that are usually hidden inside - eyeballs and so on - especially as the internal anatomy is not complete, so it would be very obvious that it was unnatural. You could use Daz Scrpt to blend two renders, using the something like http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/rendering/render_post_process/start , or you could probably automate it n soem way in your image editor.
I'm not sure of the exact look that is trying to be achieved, but isn't it possible to apply a water shader to the surfaces and use cutout opacity maps to hide the portions that you don't want to be showing in order to yield a watershell outline of the figure? Most of the work would probably be put into making the cutout opacity maps and you would have to know which areas should be showing. Like you don't want the inside of the mouth showing through the face texture when the mouth is closed, but you definitely want to see it if the character has the mouth open & facing the camera. However, the easier thing to do would be post-render editing.
This set includes an ice character https://www.daz3d.com/frosty-and-the-matchstick-man-hd-for-genesis-8-males
he looks made of water and the texture could be used on any figure
Mihrelle has a shader for G3/G8 that you can use for reference:
https://www.daz3d.com/mrl-mutations-aliens-angels-and-others-for-genesis-3-and-8-female-s
And Vyktoria has Ghost shaders:
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-ghost-shaders
Both you could use as reference starting points in addition to the one suggested above.
Hi rustaj,
Do you want their clothes and hair to also look water-ish? Or only the figures themselves?
Thank you all for the help! I'll give the surface trick and try, I wasn't familiar with that (not terribly well versed with Daz). The description of the eyeballs sounds terrifying, can't wait! And thank you Serene Night and c567591a for the suggested content.
@CrissieB, I am going for just the figure--not clothes/hair.
This is the Iray Ghost Shader tweeking the emissive colors.
Hi rustaj,
If you want only the person water-ish -- with regular textures on hair and clothing -- I don't know of any easy, one-render way to do it.
There is a (fairly) easy, four-render-and-post workflow, though:
1) Render the scene without the character. You'll need this for the see-through watery areas.
2) Render the scene with the character. This ensures that you get your character's shadows in the scene.
3) Render the character without any scene elements. If you have an HDRI, go to Render Settings>Environment and set Draw Dome to 'Off'. This will render only your character, on a transparent background.
4) Create a new 'Plain Color' Material Preset with a Base Color that does not appear elsewhere on your character. Set Roughness and Reflectivity to 0. Save a new copy of your scene, select your character only -- not his/her hair or clothes -- Go to Surfaces, and apply your 'Plain Color' preset to all of your character's surfaces.
5) Render the character (including hair and clothes) with this 'Plain Color' texture. You'll use this render for masking in postwork.
Note: I'll give postwork instructions for Photoshop:
6) Open your character-with-Plain-Color render in Photoshop, and rename that layer 'Masking'.
7) Add your scene-without-character render in a layer above that, and rename that layer 'Scene Only'.
8) Add your scene-with-character render in a layer above that, and rename that layer 'Scene + Shadows.
9) Add your character-without-scene render in a layer above that, and rename that layer 'Hair & Clothes Only'.
10) Copy your character-without-scene layer in a fourth layer and rename it 'Water Skin Only'.
Note: At this point, your top 4 layers will be Smart Layers by default. Keep that!
11) Click your 'Hair & Clothes Only' layer. Choose the Quick Selection tool and select the entire character.
12) Click your 'Scene + Shadows' layer. Go to Select>Inverse (or Shift-Cntl-I) to invert your selection, and click the Mask icon beneath the layer stack. This will mask out the character in this layer. Then go to Select>Deselect (or Cntl-D) to null your selection.
13) Click your Masking layer. Choose the Magic Wand tool and uncheck the 'Contiguous' box at the top. Click in your Plain Color area to select all of the skin-eyes-etc areas.
14) Click your 'Hair & Clothes Only' layer. Go to Select>Inverse (or Shift-Cntl-I), then click the Mask icon beneath the layer stack. This will mask out the skin-eyes-etc in that layer.
15) Click your 'Water Skin Only' layer. Go to Select>Inverse (or Shift-Cntl-I) again, then click the Mask icon. This will mask out everything except the exposed skin-eyes-etc.
16) Hide the 'Masking' layer.
17) Click the 'Water Skin Only' layer and go to Image>Adjustments>Hue-Saturation and reset Saturation to 0. This will make your skin-eyes-etc a grayscale image.
18) With the 'Water Skin Only' layer still active, go to Image>Adjustments>Color Balance and move the top slider halfway toward Cyan (-50) and the bottom slider a quarter of the way toward Blue (+25), or whatever color combination looks like water for you.
17) Finally, water is shiny so go to Image>Adjusts>Brightness-Contrast and adjust those to make the highlights 'pop' more.
19) With the 'Water Skin Only' layer still active, set the Layer Mode to 'Screen' and decrease its Opacity as needed.
You now have your character in the scene, with shadows, and with a translucent, watery look to the skin-eyes-etc.
And because your visible layers are all Smart Layers, you can re-adjust as needed.
Crissie
Note: Edited to add a Scene Only layer for see-through areas.
Hi rustaj,
Not sure if this is anything like the effect you wanted, but here's Water Woman using the workflow I described above. The first is a regular Iray render put through that process, plus the Oso Toon Shaders to create a lineart layer for clarity on her face. The second used the Photoshop Posterize filter (Edge Thickness 10, Edge Intensity 0, Posterization 4) to make it look more hand-painted.
Crissie
Edit: I added an all-water image for Water Woman....
Wow! Thank you so much for the advice and workflow, this is amazing, and I will definitely be trying it out soon!