Using Zbrush maps with SSS Skin in Maya.

[JesseGraffam]

No one has an answer. Hmm.... I see people using SSS Skin on this forum, someone has to know.

[ienrdna]

I think dirt goes into "unscattered diffuse" or whatever its called in max/maya.

Check this out http://www.lamrug.org/resources/skintips.html

[SanjayChand]

Hi there.

the first thing I usually do is increase the algorithm control (the higher you increase it, the deeper the shadows).

I then light the scene as the SSS shader's look can change drastically dependent on how many lights you have.

I then plug in my diffuse maps into the epidermal and diffuse channels. If you want the crevices to show up, generate a cavity map in Zbrush and then multiply it over the diffuse map in Photoshop, OR you can create a seperate pass by assigning a surface shader to the model with the cavity map plugged into the color channel, and then you can multiply the render over the beauty pass

I also usually paint a back scatter map to determine where the back scatter shows up and where it doesnt.

The displacement map goes into the shading group displacement channel.

Gnomonology.com has a nice 3 part tutorial on SSS.

[JesseGraffam]

thanks aryaFX. I got it to look the way I want now.

Does anyone know how to batch render SSS Skin? I'm trying to do a character turntable. I tried saving the .mb file, and then just doing a render through the DOS window. However, it renders very fast and all the.tif files are blank.

[SanjayChand]

what version of Maya are you using?

If I remember correctly, the batch render problem has to do with the lightmap write, which in Maya 7.0 gave me a few problems.

I believe in 8.5 and higher, you can simply right click on the model > assign new material > miss fast skin shader.

This will automatically set up the network including the lightmap write with a mel script that gives the right size for the light map.

Otherwise, create a blank TIF file in photoshop with the appropriate size and convert it to a .map file and use that as your light map write.

Also make sure that all objects in the scene are using the same lightmap if you have more than one object with the miss shader.

Finally, make sure you are rendering with mental ray (lol yeah I know its obvious).

[JesseGraffam]

I have it set up to render mental ray in the render settings. What command line do I need to type in DOS window. I'm using Maya 8.5. Basically I can render stills fine, but when I try to batch it, It doesn't render anything, just black images all the way from 1 to 300. Lights and light maps are set ok, otherwise I wouldn't see the render in the render window.

[SanjayChand]

you should type this in dos:
render -r mr "scenfile.mb"

also check your normals on the mesh.

[pap87]

I tried rendering with dos once and all that did was use the software renderer, which gave me fast render times too but completely wrong rendering. that would also explain why your renders are blank because sss is not supported in software renderer.

Just use the batch render option in the render menu. Always works for me.

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