Uber or PBRSkin (CLOSED)

That's a good point. I personally keep all the micro-details in the bump and normal layers, rather than in the detail layers. It might be a little slower during pre-blending, but it shouldn't affect render pass performance.

I think the performance hit comes from the shader's own internal math and operations. Perhaps the detail layers trigger some very expensive calculations in the underlying native surface shader, whereas the uber shader might offload some of those to the vertex stage. (I might be mixing this up with old DirectX shader bottlenecks from my early days, but I believe the principles still apply.)

Thank you, Masterstroke. I am currently working on Amelia's Uber material, but I remember when I worked on Hanna's, things just looked naturally oily, and I thought, what is this sorcery?

I have noticed that most skins tend to look more alabaster in Uber than in PBRSkin. I love alabaster skin, and for me, when I use PBR, I put more effort into tweaking translucency for that reason otherwise it simply doesn't come out the way I want it. Whereas for tanned or chocolate skin, I really do not need to do as much.

Regarding the flatness, I am with you on that. I struggle with it. However, to me, the results improve a lot when I adjust Specular and Roughness.

This is a G8 Base. The only difference in her Uber Skin (values) is that I've added 0.10 weight to Gloss, turned shared inputs on, and used the same specular and roughness maps for both the reflectivity and roughness channels, while keeping the same dual lobe specular setup from PBRSkin.

I like her Uber more, though it is not complete yet. It already looks a little better, in my opinion.

As for performance, a quick test shows that both are performing the same: 2% at 19 seconds with identical environment and render settings. I'm not claiming this is a real test, hi, hi, hi.

I think the PBR looks much better.

Thank you ArtbyMel I do like it too.

Oh yes, I am very close to finishing her G8-8.1 version.

I actually made a few more corrective morphs for her 8 than I did for 9. But I plan to continue adding corrective morphs for all versions, especially for ballet poses, which tend to stretch the limits. And who doesn't love ballet? Please don't answer that last one. I'd rather live in my fantasy world.

Thank you so much, Ted. You are always very kind to me. I think it makes sense, and you all have corroborated what I suspected.

Another thought I was having is that perhaps, when there is more than one figure in the scene, Uber does speed up the render. I do want to run some tests on this, probably this month.

Perhaps I should make an Uber option for all my G9 models as well.

That looks really good!

That looks super realistic to me!

Very well done, the pores really pop up, love it.

As far as I understand IRAy Uber is already "PBR" material.
The PBR material we are talking about here, is a physical based material, that supposed to work better across plattform.

Good point from you both.

Perhaps the various settings and options in PBRSkin, compared to Uber, and the way both are generally set up or used for skins, are better reproducible in Unreal. Could that be the reason?

If the settings are the same, this clearly shows how Uber softens the tone by favoring lighter colors.

That is very, very fair, @SupreMoomega! Just a little lemon juice, a mint leaf, and rum, you have a tasty Daiquiri.

Hi Meli: Thank you so much, Pastil,

I'm still quite ill (hence my long absence... and probably also some feverish ideas): This could work with a special map for Topcoat. For example, use a bump map with increased contrast and reduced bright areas as a basis. Then work a little with the Topcoat parameters and, if necessary, even use an additional Topcoat bump map.

I'm sorry to hear you're ill, Pushe-Ri. I hope you get better soon!!

I'm playing around with Amelia's Uber Map where I duplicated her specular and specular roughness maps on to the glossy layer. And also with lighting and tone mapping. Will share here once it finishes rendering.

Dual Lobe Specular
Weight : 1
Reflectivity :1
Roughness Mult : 0.5
Ratio : 0.5
Try this one... I don't know what kind of moisture you want.

I also reduce the light intensity compared to my usual very bright lighting setup. I set crushed blacks and burned highlights to 0.3 each, and I apply a 2.4 gamma correction, which is the default in my Luxe's render environment settings.

Forgot to mention, this is 8.1, not nine