Head: skin shading test, and tut

[shrimp_chip]

This is a great tutorial! Thank you for creating it!

Your approach seems like a very practical way of faking subsurface effects of human bodies. I wonder if a few low-res "fat layer" texture maps might be helpful, too?

[Stahlberg]

Thanks! Hm, I don't know, anything that is transparentyly visible through the base shader might just as well be incorporated into the base color texture, right? :)

[AWAKE]

WHOa.



Next level man. That is next level. Fantastic tutorial.

[shrimp_chip]

Well, I ment using the fat layer to modulate some of the light-direction-dependent subsurface scattering effects.

For example, it seems to me that the forehead or the top of the skull, which has only a thin layer of translucent material under it (before you hit opaque bone) would probably not have as much of a red terminator highlight as the front of the face, because the red terminator highlight is sort of simulating the effect of light entering the body, getting colored red by the blood, and then being re-emitted. With a thinner skin there would be less volume for the light to travel through.

I remember shining a flashlight through my hands when I was a kid, and being surprised that I couldn't see any bones -- my hand was a uniform red-orange. So I guess that skin doesn't have to be very thick before it scatters light pretty well.

Anyway, don't mind me. I'll go do some observations to see if the effect I'm thinking about actually happens or not.

[Stahlberg]

Aha, now I understand. Yes, you're quite right, I've thougt about something like that too... Mabye a 2d b&w texture in the ColorGain of the ramp node..? Tried something like it once but couldn't get it working, maybe I should get back to it.

Emmanuel Campin has a cool SSS script for Maya v4 that can give you the variability you mention, unfortunately I never was able to get it working for me.

[raden]

Hi Stahlberg

Thanks for this:beer:
I'll go try it soon as I can:bounce:

Oh yea great job there on his head:applause:
More!

:beer:

[wgreenlee1]

Awesome tutorial!

[KiboOst]

Yeah really good stuff indeed !!!!

Kib :bounce:

[ThirdEye]

I'm starting hating you :surprised :thumbsup: :buttrock: :airguitar :applause:

[ThirdEye]

A question mr. Stahlberg: what method do u prefer to create the eyebrows of your digital characters? Maybe Maya fur? :shrug:

[aurora]

I love the way you created this tut. Its different then what I expected but also got more from it then what I expected. As also Great Job and thanks!!!

[Jenner]

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: Im sure the tutorial is great, but im
not experienced with anything but small free modelling programs :shrug: But I jsut love that head, it looks very reaL!!!!!
:surprised

[dutch]

at the end:

brasil is spelt brazil

[leigh]

Wow, thanks so much for sharing, Stahlberg :thumbsup: Your work has alwasy been fantastic ;)

[Jeffo]

Excellent tutorial stahlberg! thanks for sharing it with us! :applause:

any more tricks you can share? :)

[AAbel]

Thanks for the great info steve. I have always enjoyed your rendering style, it's really pushed me to better my knowledge of maya's renderer and as a result 3d rendering and painting concepts in general.

My personal skin shaders were headed in the right direction but I wasn't doing the highlights quite right (the negative values on the shadow side is great too!) anyway this info is a huge help.

[AJ]

I tried my hand at making 'a skin shader' (ppphhhff!) in Max a little while ago but gave up due to not knowing how to go beyond 'light dark' falloffs to make it 'clever' - therefore, it looking crap (a lot of the time).

Two quick questions:

1. How does the shader hold up in a stark lighting steup (i.e: a singular bright light source from behind/to the side)? Does the model become mostly red?

2. On the opposite side - how does it look under an ambient/skylight setup? Does it retain the 'translucency'... or does it not display (due to lack of hard contrasting areas)?

Thanks in advance!

:D

[dmeyer]

go Stahlberg, go Stahlberg....go, go, go Stahlberg

:buttrock:

[urgaffel]

There's a plugin for max called MultiLayer by blur which will allow you to blend materials (standard, shellac, you name it) using additive, subtractive, opacity and masks etc. Very handy for this kind of layering.

Steven, great job. Although I'm a little lost since I don't use Maya, I get the general idea. A few screenshots of the sample spheres might help to replicate the effect in other programs...

[AJ]

Originally posted by urgaffel
There's a plugin for max called MultiLayer by blur which will allow you to blend materials (standard, shellac, you name it) using additive, subtractive, opacity and masks etc. Very handy for this kind of layering.


Hooray! Thanks Urgaffel :D

[The Magic Pen]

you rock :buttrock:

[Stahlberg]

Thanks guys. I've had a night to think about this now, and I came up with a workaround to get the amount of translucency to vary along the surface. This is a bit more Maya specific, but again I would think the basic theory could be translated to other softwares.

First let me point out that you can just as well put that cartoon-shader (I also call it the 'translucency fake') in the incandescency channel of the base Lambert, doesn't have to be on a layered shader... I just do it that way to have a bit of 'modularity' - I can use the same layer in many other layered shaders, and when I tweak one of them they all get tweaked.

So, back to the work-around: do what I mentioned above, put it not in a layer but in the base Lambert itself.

Then copy that Lambert and layer that on top - except move the translucency fake out of the incandescence to the ambient channel - this will make sure none of the effect is seen in the transparent areas (but you have to increase the intensity of it).
Then tweak it so it seems right for a 'bonier' part of the head, like the skull/forehead.
Then simply make this second Lambert transparent over the 'fleshier' bits, using a grayscale texture map.

I think I'll put that in the tut also.

AJ_23, this shader usually has to be tweaked small amounts for radically different lighting situations. For instance, in real life there will be a gradual loss of saturation as light-intensity drops, until at the limit of vision 'all cats are grey', even the ones painted fire-engine-red. This effect simply doesn't exist in cg, so I'll have to manually take the color out of such a low-key setup. Also, the stronger the light striking the surface, the more noticeable is its translucency, so you'll have to crank it down for moonlight and up for sunlight.

Both these effects can possibly be automated by some inspired shader-networking, I think Emmanuel Campin has a way to deal with the saturation problem on his site.

edit: Third_Eye_01, for eyebrows I texture a piece of geometry, IMO Fur doesn't work as well in closeups, and anyway it renders VERY slowly with Subd's.

[facial]

:D Cool stuff here. :thumbsup:

[wmaher2]

Thanks stalberg... I wondered into your notes on your site a while back but the skin shading stuff was a little out dated, but still a very worthy read., Alias seriously have to work on there translucency...... Thanxs for your new post I have never thought of using a cartoon style network.. Very intuative...

[stickyblue]

its great !! thanks alot :thumbsup:

:wavey:

[boston]

really goooood!
I'll go try it soon as I can:beer:
thanx.:bounce:

[stillvapour]

I'm so sad that you don't use max Stahlberg:annoyed:
I use max but always find I can learn a lot from you posts and tuts.Thanks for sharing,you are really great!:thumbsup:

[Is-boset]

hey Steve thanks, you kikck the dog again:D with you tut

[marc]

so whats the best 3d app to use then? cuz i don't have a clue. i have 3d studio max 5 on my comp now. but my comp is way too outdated to even bother learning it anyway.

[HapZungLam]

I am a complete stupid guy on setting up shader. After i read your tutorial and i tried on set it up on XSI. It just make me frustrated with those stupid nodes of XSI.

Can anyone please show me the setups on XSI base on Steven's tutorial?

[Ultimatebadass]

Wow. This is just plain great :) Awesome tutorial!!!

[beyondMyth]

thanks for the tutorial!! :) very educational! :buttrock: :thumbsup:

[smfjersey]

Trying to apply this to LW. It's a toughy. If any LW users have thoughts. Hmm, I'll keep trying though.

[Fenrir]

Trying to apply this to LW...

Well BESM would be the cartoon shader. If you're using only one light source you could use some gradients (light incidence angle), but that's not really it. I'm gonna go into that once I have some more time, would be glad to know if anyone finds out more...



btw. I don't have to mention that this char/tut rock :applause:

[AAbel]

What you would have to do is hook other shading models, like a lambert into the BESM shader. If Lightwave has a rendering fuction that lets you specify what shaders are used under different levels of illumination you can probably do this.

[smfjersey]

Ya, I've been trying BESM all day. It shure is a fickle beast.

[AAbel]

Any luck getting this to work in LW?

[Ilya]

urgaffel, could you please post a link to this MultiLayer plugin for max you was talking about? searched on yahoo, on maxplugins.de, on this forum - and just can't find it.

also, the approach this tutorial is presenting is so awsome that i really hope someone will "translate" it a bit for max- and other non-maya-speaking people. ;)

Stahlberg, your works (both art and tutorials) are great, can't wait for more. :)

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