A set of gloss texture maps to give a more even skin gloss/shine for your figures while also enhancing the lips and genital glossiness and reducing gloss on the hands, feet, and a couple other areas.
If you have any thoughts or comments, don't hesitate to leave a comment. Reviews are always welcome as well.
Why:
I was always sort of confused and dissatisfied with the randomness with which different texture sets had varying qualities of gloss and specularity maps. I was also never really satisfied with the overall look of them on the figure, nor did I understand exactly what they were doing. So I decided to take a stab at really understanding what the specularity and gloss maps do. Through this process, I found that, in my opinion, we've been putting far too much emphasis on the specularity maps (which really just affect the color of the gloss), when the gloss maps really change how the skin looks. I then decided to create some standard gloss maps to use on my figures and have been really enjoying how they look, especially in VR. Below is a description of what the difference is between Spec and Gloss maps.
Specular - These map slots and settings basically affect just the overall color of the highlights.
Gloss - These are the maps which define how glossy or flat that part of the object is. It's in here that the real power lies as far as being able to create a nice skin finish.
What:
- This package contains 5 textures. 1 for torso, 1 for limbs, 1 for genitals, and 2 for the head. The head has two different ones in case you don't want the lips quite as glossy
- This package also contains 4 skin presets that you can access through the skin presets tab and then navigating to the .var package. I did this because the setup to use these textures requires some tweaking of other settings to get to work optimally. Start with one of these presets and then swap out the diffuse textures to use other texture sets. For those that want the full explanation of settings, I'll put those at the bottom. Note, two presets use the gloss maps ALSO in the specular slots. I've found that, depending on the skin textures, this can make a nice combo. Sometimes it's too much, so then I use the ones leaving the specular maps blank. You can also use the specific Specular maps that come with the texture sets.
How:
Either simply load one of the presets included (uses the Kayla textures) and swap out diffuse and normal maps or read below on full explanation of use. To tweak the overall gloss, use the "Gloss Texture Offset" slider (found under the "Skin Materials 2" tab) to increase or decrease overall gloss. This pushes the black or white information that's creating the varying gloss sections (lips, genitals, etc)
More In-Depth How:
1 - Load desired diffuse/normal/decal textures.
2 - Load the Universal Gloss Textures from this package into the gloss slots.
3 - Go to the "Skin Materials 2" tab and set the sliders as follows. Note - You then use the Gloss Texture offset to either enhance or reduce the gloss map effect. Pushing it to .2 or so can often give a nice semi-sweaty look without being too fake.
4 - Go to the "Skin Materials 1" tab and set the colors as follows. NOTE - Skin color will give the skin an overall tone color. I tend to like more Tan, so if you want a more pale look, move it more to a lighter/white color. Or move it darker for a darker skin look. Specular should stay white, or sometimes a slight yellow or warm tone, but keep it pretty bright. Subsurface never looks right, in my opinion and I set this to white, which minimizes it's impact. I've never been fond of the look when subsurface is set to anything else. It messes up shadowing and highlights often.
