Vlado : Skin shader!?!?!

[R_Cyph]

Hey all!
VLADO : I was just wondering if there are any plans to make a fastsss skin shader ( similar to the one for mentalray ). The fastsss vray mat doesn't seem to giving me as good results.

Does anyone have any good skin material tuts for vray? or any suggestions.

Right now I have my my painted diffuse color map in the first layer of the shader. and I have left the back scatter color pretty much default. but it still looks kinda lifeless and waxy.

[vlado]

Well, there is more to skin than SSS itself; the VRayFastSSS material simply blurs the lighting across the object surface, but this is not enough to make a believable skin shader (in fact, the SSS effects themselves play only a small part in the appearance of skin).

There was a scene with a V-Ray skin shader posted over at CGTalk:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthre...22#post4174297

There are also a number of skin materials at www.vray-materials.de:
http://www.vray-materials.de/all_mat...&Submit=Search

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Sorry, forgot the most important question: there are plans for a user-friendly skin shader, yes. I don't know when it will be coming though.

Best regards,
Vlado

[percydaman]

vlado what do you think of that max skin shader? With all the different dermis slots and such? I haven't used it at all, but it looks cool on the surface (no pun intended)

[vlado]

Here is a modified version of the CGTalk scene, the model is by Marc Mordelet (aka visionmaster2 on CGTalk) from this thread: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthre...22#post4174297

I just played with the skin material a bit:

vlado what do you think of that max skin shader? With all the different dermis slots and such? I haven't used it at all, but it looks cool on the surface (no pun intended)

It's looks too complicated to me as UI and it cheats a lot as far as physical correctness is concerned, but it does indeed look nice. Hopefully V-Ray will get an easier to set up skin material some time soon as well.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JeffG2]

Any news on this front?

[vlado]

V-Ray already has everything needed for making good skin, one just has to set it up properly. I'm writing a small tutorial for this, but the model that I have is not particularly good...

Best regards,
Vlado

[percydaman]

I think the problem though vlado, is that it's not very user friendly, hence my earlier comment about the max material. It at least seems to make sense in a way. The vray method seems awfully esoteric. A tutorial will be most helpful.

[^Lele^]

One thing that CAN be done, either from Chaos' side or from a user's side (with some scripting knowledge) is to create a material encapsulation.
Basically it is a scripted material (similar to what egz did) with a set of parameters which will intelligently (or not, it's all down to the creator and the user) set whatever else is needed to make it work.
I had a custom material half prepared for 1.47.xx, but it was broken in 1.5.
If there's enough interest, I may try and look into this, it shouldn't be overly complex a task.

[JeffG2]

Please mark me down as "extremely interested".

[rajdarge]

OOH skin

Out me down as a "extremely interested with bells on"
Thanks Lele, for this and all your fantastic scripts. I don't think I would attempt to use Vray sun without it.
Raj

[^Lele^]

Ok, a first attempt at a simpler SSS material is done.
It has more limits than features at the moment, but it does work straight away.
Put the .mse file into your maxroot\stdplugs folder.
Run max, switch to vray, and open the material editor.
You'll find a new material type called VRayQuickSSS (quick only in setup, of course. name is temporary as everything else).
It's setup with the hybrid method (new to 1.5), so if you get errors with versions previous to the RCs, upgrade.
It's NOT the fastSSS, rather the standard vray material setup so it exhibits SSS characteristics. You can texture both the SSS color and the SSS "softness" (which is the refraction glossiness, in any case).

As i said, it's a first attempt: please comment on it.

you can find it here: http://www.scriptspot.com/Lele/VrayQuickSSS_1.0.mse

[JeffG2]

Wow Lele! Thanks! Can't wait to check it out.

[Da_elf]

ive got a problem with your steps. you said "Run max, switch to vray, and open the material editor." what do you mean by switch to.... im confused, is there something max is supposed to be set to other than vray? you mean to tell me there are other renderers out there? hehe cool material

[^Lele^]

lol only the scanline, only the scanline...