skin shader

[acid]

Who can help me for a SSS human skin shader in vray ?

[josiah]

I was hoping that chaos had one was in the works for 1.5, since most all of the other major renderers now provide a skin shader.

I think using a greyscale map in the refraction slot will control the amount of SSS. Make the map lighter on the places where the skin is thinner such as the ears to produce more effect.

However, the deep SSS you only see with a very bright light. The SSS that makes skin look like skin IMO, is a very shallow scattering. Almost like very thin wax. without this, the skin looks flat. But this "shallow" scattering is very hard to achieve (for me anyhow) with Vray.

[josiah]

This got me thinking of the components of a good skin shader.

COLORMAP: Since skin is different color everywhere on the body, color must be controlled via texture map.

BUMPMAP: Same with the pores and wrinkles and creases, these have to be done with a bump map.

SPECULAR: Reflectivity and specular are higher in places where bone is closer to the skin surface such as the forehead, nose, chin, elbow etc. Therefore these must be controled by maps also.

All that leaves for a shader to do, is create anistrophic highlights, and the SSS, (and maybe some color shifting done via falloff maps in the light/shadow direction).

I know max standard can do skinlike anistrophic highlights, but dont have a clue if it could be done in VRay. As I said in the previous post, the thin SSS is tough to produce with VRay (Someone please prove me wrong)!

Here are some extremely fantastic human skin results using VRay;

http://www.xmg.ro/mihai/pages/work.html

[Da_elf]

holy crap those look awsome

[travistlo]

Wow, those skin shaders for the first 2 ladies are great!

[Da_elf]

http://www.xmg.ro/mihai/images/img_/...ana_raduta.jpg to me looks awsome

[josiah]

Proof that VRay can create just as good skin or even better than MR fast SSS shader or Brazils skin shader!

Here is a link to his character "Sandra" as a WIP at CGTalk. Page 4 explains the skin shader. But I have had no luck in reproducing his results (Anyone want to help?)

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=86783

It would be great if members here could combine to create a "VRay skin shader" as a forum project. Or maybe even a shader contest?

[plastic_]

it would be very easy to script some kind of skin shader based on a complex vray material but i don't think it makes sense.
as with glass, or even worse, there are no perfect settings you can apply everywhere. it's all about the interaction between environment, maps, etc. and a lot of tweaking.

[josiah]

I agree Plastic_, but all skin does have some common surface properties (like the anistrophic highlights and at least some controllable thin translucency).

I have seen how an user can easily create a great looking base skin with just very little tweaking by using either Brazil's or MR's skin shader. Applying maps afterwards that define / control the areas of difference only make it better.

it would be very easy to script some kind of skin shader based on a complex vray material

I know you are good with this kind of thing, perhaps you could be persuaded to take a crack at it? I know that I and others that do human characters with Vray would be willing to pay a reasonable price for such a thing.

[plastic_]

yeah i could do a script, but the thing is, i'm pretty clueless about character modelling and shading. i model buildings and environments, not humans.
if you can come up with a good skin shader based on the vray mat and probably cascaded sub maps i can easily turn it into a nice simple interface.

[jojo7077]

some skin shaders...

Here's a couple works-in-progress where I've tried my hand at skin shaders. These two are being developed as a test so that we can eventually populate our 3D scenes with believable scale figures...clothed of course!

Now...realistic hair is something I've never attempted before, so I've been avoiding it altogether.

Comments and criticisms are welcomed.

[percydaman]

looks very good. the shadows might need to be a touch more red though. How many instances are you creating? I absolutely hate using RPC and have been looking for GOOD alternatives, but creating people and alot of them from scratch is alot of work...

[val2]

this may help for making people. there is a thing called makehuman,
http://www.dedalo-3d.com/
costs nothing and it generates humans to your specifications. It works pretty well. if you import the mesh into 3ds max you can then use character studio to rig it. I just started to play with character studio and it's really easy to set up.

[Gijs]

how about this shader?

[percydaman]

looks cool. would love to see it with some hdri lighting and reflections.