Skin Deep (BTS #20) (Patreon)

Have you ever had one of those days where you seem to be in a loop of trying to fix a problem over and over again? I had one of those days earlier this month.

I've redone Kiersten's skin twice since Ménage à Moi's Alpha Test 1 was released, and it was all due to makeup. I, unfortunately, don't have the original render, but here is one with the second skin I tried that exhibits the same issue:

Ignoring the weirdly reflective right cheek, the main issue was this odd shadow around the lips. Come to find out, it's not a shadow. G8 character models are separated into surface areas (arms, leg, torso, etc.) which are supposed to seamlessly be stitched together into a complete skin. Like so:

It took me hours of testing and scratching my head before I figured out what was wrong. In Daz, the lips surface also includes a thin strip of skin surrounding the lips as well. So if you change a surface property (say glossiness) it affects the entire surface. Bad news for me, I wanted lipstick with a level of gloss that was too dissimilar from the rest of the face.

Makeup in Daz can be applied using several different methods and all except one are dependent on the surface properties. Suffice to say, geoshells (basically a surface that floats above another) came to the rescue. While not perfect, at least I can make changes to it without changing the skin itself. So in the end, I didn't need to change Kiersten's skin at all, but I'm glad I did as this finalized render shows her more realistic skin:

-

Sorry if this post isn't easy to follow. To fully understand everything requires some Daz knowledge so I'm just giving a brief overview of the rabbit hole I went down to find a solution. In the end, know that these kinds of issues are what slow down us devs. Seemingly inconsequential changes can have an enormous impact and it takes time to sort out what the problem is and how to fix it.