Rob Elite in Classic Deco

TinaEvil shared settings files with me so I could try to do as well with Rob as he did in


I made some changes, in part because I didn't have the same characters to use for certain textures. So, for a start, I made Rob a whole new set of specular maps, based on his old ones. They're the most blown-out, contrasty things you ever did see. (For GIMP users: brightness moved to 115, contrast to 127. Any other programs, you're outta luck; I got no idea how to get there from here.) I also pulled back on the translucency weight in Iray Uber shader, from .40 to .15, and I wound up using his own maps in the Translucency color channel because I kind of like him a bit darker. Increased bump slightly, added a bit of gray to the base color, and that's pretty much it. TinaEvil did all the heavy lifting to develop the settings; I just tinkered. (EDIT: changed "transparency" to "translucency"; for some reason, I always mix the words up.)

I saved off everything both as material settings and as mapless-UVless shaders. I then applied the material set to his dingus, but I couldn't use the file that TinaEvil gave me for that, because I've rebuilt his dingus as an M5/Genesis Genitals-compatible dingus, with the single texture for SkinHip/SkinGenitalia. So I applied the material which mapped (incorrectly) on SkinHip, copied and pasted to SkinGenitalia, then reapplied all the correct textures -- in the process needing to make him a new specular texture for his dingus, as well.

I also used Dimension Theory's Interjection SSS textures to map the translucency strength channels. (Had to build a dingus for THAT as well; turns out that unlike 3Delight in its subsurface/translucency channels, Iray is incredibly sensitive to mismatched textures in the translucency strength channels. The 3Delight version I made used Rob's reconstructed textures for diffuse, and other textures for bump and everything else. Mismatched textures for Bump doesn't seem to matter -- he's using bump for Tyrese M5 and not showing odd edges in the groinal region -- but everything else does.)

The shader settings actually work pretty well even for somewhat lighter characters -- I tried them on Ben Moby as a test -- although it's immediately obvious that the colors are off and need work. But the settings themselves are great; I can't thank TinaEvil enough for doing the work to get there.