Saving Iray skin shaders with no maps

Wonderland

If I come up with an Iray concoction that I like for skin but want to use it on multiple characters and don't want to include the skin maps or have the shader remove all the maps of another character, how do I do this? I probably missed an easy solution, but my head is swimming from all the new information!

mjc1016

I'm in the middle of a render so I can't check, but I'm sure if you save as a Shader preset (you only need to select a single surface) you can save it 'mapless'.  There should be a series of check boxes that you can uncheck to save without the maps.

barbult

You can save as a Material preset and use the context menu in that save dialog to select only values. It is also a good idea to deselect UV Maps, but to do that you have to expand each surface and uncheck UV Maps one at a time, I believe.

Wonderland

OK, great, thanks! Oh, but just realized if I save as a material that way it would only work on the same figure type/UV, I think I need to save it as a shader so I can use it on any generation character (including V4!) right?

mjc1016

Right...a material preset will only work on items with same surfaces...so, in general, a material preset made for V4 won't work on Genesis 3, but should work on M4/K4, etc.  UVs can be unchecked too, so it will apply without changing the current one.   Shader preset being a general preset for a surface will need to be applied to each surface (all at once is an option...just make sure you have selected them in the Surface tab), but it isn't tied to any specific surface.

barbult

I don't think a single shader for a character is the way to go. I don't want the same shader on face, cornea, and teeth. You might get by with a single shader for all skin.

Wonderland

Yes, that's what I meant, a shader for skin on all characters, a nail shader, eyes, etc... That will work on any character by selecting that body part. With the material route, nails, arms, etc... are in different places on the UV maps for G3 and previous generations so I was wondering if that would work. Thanks.

mjc1016

Wonderland said:

Yes, that's what I meant, a shader for skin on all characters, a nail shader, eyes, etc... That will work on any character by selecting that body part. With the material route, nails, arms, etc... are in different places on the UV maps for G3 and previous generations so I was wondering if that would work. Thanks.

A preset that is not tied to a particular UV layout and is 'mapless' would apply to any figure that has the same names (internal names, not the visible labels) for the surfaces.   So it wouldn't really matter about the UV layout.  Now when you include maps, then you need to start keeping track of and setting UVs.

Wonderland

OK thanks, now for something more complicated though... I just purchased a product at Rendo (but haven't tried it yet) that lets you use V4 textures on Genesis 3 through geographs. So would I be able to click on the surface of these geogrpahs and apply the skin shaders? I would rather be able to create a shader like the uber shader that you can apply over anything and it wouldn't matter what the name was. I guess I want to create my own Iray uber shader specifically for skin. I've used the uber shader and played with it to get a skin shading I like, but then want to save it without maps and I forgot how I tried, but I couldn't get it to work... (This is why I'm still in the New Users section LOL). I already have one product that does that but it's supposedly just for G3 and too glossy for my taste and makes the character's skin too dark. I guess I will try your first suggestion and try saving it as a shader, uncheck maps and see if that works! I hope it is that easy! And then I have to figure out what shader baking means!