This update brings built-in transparency in DeepSkin. With transparency in DeepSkin's shader, it allowed me to build an experimental system for hiding skin under clothing to minimize clipping.
(Many people have requested compatibility with @mopedlampe 's newest 2B model, which is now fully compatible.)
NEW: TRANSPARENCY
Bikini is Micro Bikini by modkkola
- Built-in transparency, found in the new "Fade" tab. Unlike transparency plugins that swap the skin to a stock transparency shader and lose the shading, transparency now happens inside DeepSkin's own skin shader: SSS, transmission, wetness and shadows all fade down together with the skin.
- Global Transparency, six Group Masters (Face, Torso, Limbs, Hands, Feet, Eyes) and per-part sliders. Every slider is a plugin storable, so Timeline can animate them.
- Alpha Masks (Face, Torso, Limbs, Genitals) allow you to load custom alpha textures just like other transparency plugins.
- Fade Shadows: gradually fades the shadows as the skin is fading. Shadow Hold keeps the shadows stronger deeper into the fade, Keep Shadows Below sets the cut point when Fade Shadows is off.
- Dissolve Style: a special effect for the skin fading. A continuous noise pattern across the body with glowing edges. (as seen in the GIF above)
- Render Queue slider
- 'Show Fade Masks (debug)' makes transparent skin red for checking masks and coverage.
NEW: HIDE SKIN UNDER CLOTHING [experimental]
Found in the "Clothing Tab":
- When toggled on, skin under a clothing gets hidden, which helps prevent clipping of skin through clothing.
- Toggle per clothing item: "Hide Skin Under Item". DeepSkin automatically maps the skin covered by the clothing item and 'paints' it hidden.
- Clothing Depth Guard: a per-pixel test that only shows skin sitting in front of the fabric on screen. Guard Bias sets how far skin may show in front of the clothing before it shows; Soft Body Guard Bias is a higher value and applies over the breasts and glutes, since those areas tend to clip the most.
- Auto Reveal When Cloth Moves: a system where hidden skin shows again wherever its fabric is no longer covering it, so a towel or robe being dropped will dynamically un-hide the skin. For clothing items that cover most of the skin and aren't supposed to come off (like bodysuits, t-shirts), I recommend turning off auto-reveal so the skin will always stay hidden.
- Paint Hidden Skin for manual refinement: paint the skin that should be hidden, or erase to keep those areas always visible. Paint saves per item and reloads next time you equip the clothing item.
- Known limitations:
- The depth guard makes auto-reveal possible, but extreme movement can still show brief clipping at grazing angles.
- Clothing that have see-through parts will not show skin below it (because it's hidden).
- Mirrors use the proximity field only, so clipping will still show on mirrors.
- The automatic bake is taken at the pose you enable it in. Toggle the item off and on to bake again.
FIXES:
Clothing
- The per-item settings on the Clothing tab (Include In SSS Blur, Hide Skin Under Item, shadow fade opt-outs) now save with the scene, not just in presets.
Mouth
- Fixed the mouth shadow lagging behind head movement and darkening the teeth mid-motion.
- Lip shadows are now per jaw: the lower lip no longer darkens the upper teeth in smiles and lip bites, and vice versa.
Skin
- Fixed the Skin Gloss slider doing nothing under exclusively VaM global lighting.
NEW: Catchlight Editing
Catchlights are the way VaM's point & spotlights look in the eye reflection. This update lets you customize those.
Catchlight Editing preview:
- Catchlight styles: Soft, Sharp Disc, Sharp Rectangle, Sharp Ring, Sharp Octagon and Sharp Window.
- Eye Reflection Sharpness now also controls the sharpness of the edges of the sharp catchlights.
- Catchlight Aspect and Rotation lets you stretch and rotate the catchlight shapes.
- The default global catchlights keep a fixed apparent size by default, the way default VaM and eye clothing items worked. Catchlight Distance Scaling makes the catchlights scale with distance, so a light close to a face will read larger than a light across the room.
- Per-light catchlights: pick any scene light and give it its own catchlight style, size, aspect, rotation and brightness, or None to hide it in the eye reflection. The selected light/atom flashes yellow to know which light you've selected. Saves with the scene.
- Any atom can be a catchlight source, so not only VaM lights.
NEW: Scene Reflection
See an accurate reflection of the scene in the eyes.
Scene Reflection preview:
- Capture Scene For Eye Reflection: takes a one-click snapshot from the character's own eyes and sets that as a cubemap reflection, so the eye reflects the actual scene. Each character captures from their own position. When toggled on, a capture is automatically done on scene-load and upon loading DeepSkin. A capture can also be triggered.
- Captured Highlights Boost lifts flat emissive surfaces (unlit ceiling panels, screens) toward the brightness a real light would have in the capture.
- Sclera Reflection Amount and Sclera Catchlight Amount control how much the sclera reflects.
- Sclera Reflection Bumpiness: the sclera is not a perfectly smooth surface like the cornea is. The sclera now has a more realistic bumpy surface.
- Reflection Curvature: increases the corneal reflection curvature, so catchlights appear closer together in the reflection. This was added to make the reflections look closer to what you might be used to from eye clothing items.
- First Environment is Laundromat by @Fishy007
- Second Environment is E-Girl Bedroom by @AXnop.732
Cornea
- Iris Caustic: real corneas refract and focus incoming light onto the side of the iris opposite the light, which makes the bottom of the iris appear brighter if a light source is up high.
- Iris Caustic Shadow: how dark the shadowed area looks compared to the lit area.
Wetness additions
- Load wet textures: load your own custom gloss and specular maps for the wetness. These will show on the wet area on top of your character's current textures. I highly recommend WeebUVR's Sweat Gloss maps
Performance
- Eye rendering performance improvements: the reflection layer draws in half the render passes it used to, and redundant per-pixel work was removed.
- Skin renders slightly cheaper when the wetness system is off.
Fixes
Defaults and Upgrading
- Fixed most of the iris material's own sliders doing nothing on the refracted iris. Gloss, Specular Intensity, Specular Texture Offset, Specular Bumpiness, the offsets and the Global Illumination Filter all work now.
- The iris material's texture no longer touch the pupil. Iris textures that had a white center would show a white pupil. This no longer happens.
- Fixed the white of the eye glowing per light in point-lit scenes. New Edge Blend Brightness default has been set to 0.8.
- Fixed pixelated sclera bumpiness in close-ups.
- Animating the camera FOV no longer causes per-frame rebuild work.
- V5 ships new tuned eye defaults. Everything added since V4 already loads tuned, and settings you saved in V4 keep your values, which is usually what you want.
- Load V5 Eye Values (Recommended) applies my tuned V5 defaults onto the character being edited, leaving skin, mouth and region settings untouched. Save your default preset afterwards to keep it.
NEW: Wetness
Place a water volume collider in the scene and skin gets wet when it touches and leaves the water.
NEW: Glow Edge Softness (Transmission tab)
- Place a water volume (box or cylinder, attached to any atom) in your scene. Skin entering it gets wet exactly up to the waterline, and slowly dries after leaving. Works on every Person in the scene.
- Underwater skin is its own look: the shine disappears while submerged (skin underwater looks diffused) and comes back the moment skin surfaces. Optional underwater brightening.
- Two-phase drying: fresh out of the water the extreme wet look fades off fast, while the remaining out-of-water wetness dries slowly. Both speeds adjustable, 0 = stays wet forever.
- The wet look can be set with the same sliders you know from Skin Materials 2: Wet Gloss and Wet Gloss Texture Offset. Fully wet skin renders as if you had raised those sliders.
- Soak Whole Body and Dry Instantly buttons, both triggerable, so for scene creation you can trigger these.
- 'Show Water Volume' preview for easy setup.
The backlit glow used to end in a hard line wherever an arm, the jaw or hair blocked the light. It now fades out softly instead. On by default at 2mm, including for existing presets. Set it to 0 if you want the old hard cutoff back.
Improvements
- Fade Shadows With Alpha is now ON by default for every clothing item. Scalp pieces stay off by default (faded scalps put a red glow on the hairline). Per-item toggle can still be used to include/exclude clothing items.
- New Load Plugin Defaults button: if you want to return to the plugin's defaults. Button needs to be pressed twice to confirm.
- Default Blur Amount for new installs lowered to 0.10. Existing presets won't be affected.
(next up in DeepSkin V3 will be realistic mouth and teeth rendering)