I call this "Gate of Secrets," and it'll get more interesting when I tell you, that's Genesis 8 wearing Micahel 4's costume! Yep. That's either Dae wearing Michael 8's skinmap, or Michael 8 wearing the Dae skinmap, and I've forgotten which! But the loincloth is an eons-old wardrobe bit for M4; and whaddaya know? When you import it through the wardrobe wizard -- it fits! I put a new Iray shader onto it, and there you go. The second interesting thing about this is the prop sword ... and old, old prop with new shaders:
You might want to take a look at that, full-sized, because it's astonishing. If you recognize the pose, you're not wrong. This is a re-render of a Genesis/Iray scene I did just before I realized I was going to kill the computer. At the time, the moment I turned on Photometric lights, the old system had a hernia. At this point, I'm going back into good ideas that weren't really possible back in the day, and doing justice to them. Nice! Sooo...
Being on a roll, I decided to take a look at a Generation 4 figure, hunt down one of V4's old costumes, install it, and see what Iray makes of the ShadowStorm dress. Hmm.
Well, here's Victoria 4 wearing the Angel skinmap, the Gypsy hair, and a a face and body morph designed by me. The dress was far, far harder than the figure! Iray didn't like it at all, and it was a major challenge to get it looking good. But worth the work --
The good news is that Iray likes this skinmap; it renders up very nicely indeed. I'm not saying the Generation 4 figure (or its mesh!) looks like G8, but there was a time when this would have knocked your socks off --
Since I had some more time (not doing anything much today; should be doing housework, but I'm so sick and tired of housework, I just can't even look at tidying and cleaning), I hunted down the skinmap for the HZ Victor character. Iray isn't as happy with it as with the Angel skinmap --
It's not bad, but it doesn't have the realism one expects and demands these days. Yes, I applied the Uber Shader. And it's ... okay; but it's very flat and "off" somehow, and the closer you get to it, the more you can notice that it's "off" by comparison with the Genesis skinmaps we're accustomed to now:
...and we won't even talk abouy M4's notorious elbows, which never looked realistic, even ten years ago, and these days? Phhhttt. Okay ... next experiment (after Dave and I get back from our road trip to Millicent, Robe, Naracoorte, Mount Gambier, and with any luck at all, Halls Gap), I'll get the Iray Converter for Generation 4, and see if it livens up all these old skinmaps that, frankly, could be so much better. Look at the velvet and lustre on the G8 skin. Yeah, that.
