There’s no SSS on it… I tried, but failed to get a good result with the tools in lightwave. (G2)
I think the high spec on certain areas is due to lighting… not sure…
I UV’s this in parts that overlap… ie. made a map for just the eyes, which overlaps another for the nose etc… it helped prevent any stretching and doing it in bits helped keep my concentration up.
This is my wip 
Still heavily wip, still have to add some more ‘spots’ and color variation
Mentalray SSS skin fast shader 
I am quite disappointed the SSS of G2. At least, I have not seen any impressive skin test with G2 SSS.
The problem with it is that it goes screwey with area lights. it treats the light as though it is coming from one spot rather than a whole area…
I have been told that if you make a fine array of points instead of a spot then it will work better, but haven’t tried it yet… I’m hoping Worley will fix it in the next update.
Great thread… really appreciated seeing the artwork and absorbing the advice here.
HyMz, that’s superb work with what looks like a great shader. Maybe turn the translucency down a wee bit? The skin seems to radiate a slight almost imperceptible ‘glow’ (just nitpicking :-).
Tocpe, that skin texture is extremely realistic, amongst the best I’ve ever seen. What software are you using? Any tips on how you achieved it?
Pooby, that is awesome work, beautifully lit with superb bump mapping. Saw the model on the Newtek forum a while back - hope you get to finish it.
J3st3r, another well crafted piece of work, with an extremely convincing texture and a fine model. Agree with your views… the spec channel, certainly in Lightwave can contribute to a plastic look if it isn’t handled carefully or abandoned completely.
I haven’t dared go for total realism as yet, but for a contribution to the thread, here’s a WIP in Lightwave at the moment - I’ve tried to keep it clean and stylised somewhere between reality and toon. No spec or glossy channels - just relied on bump maps and reflectivity via an hdri environment. Still not sure I’ve got away from the ‘plasticy’ look.
Cheers,
Bob
I’m using Maya 6.0.1 and the Mi_SSS skin shader from this thread
As for tips: lots and lots of patience and tweaking like a muthafunker.
I don’t think so. One of the requirements for the shader is mr 3.3. You’d have to as Master Zap to find out for sure though.
This is a great thread. I’ve learnt a huge amount by just reading through it. Tocpe’s shader looks superb.
I’ve been having problems with my skin shader looking too rubbery and think the problem’s with the specularity. Have just been reading Leigh’s tips and think it might be worth using reflections instead. Here’s how my skin shader’s looking at the moment:
She makes me think of celine Dion,which is good I guess except for the eye make-up,it’s a bit abusive imo.
Good work
Hi this is my first reall attempt to skinshading. just a simple temporary pore texture layered over a skin shader i did in lightwave . no sss here just a few gradients controllong color, diffuse, specularity, glossiness and reflectivity. reflections are raytraced and blurred. no ska, fakeskin ore other shader applied. straight basic shading. only sg-ambientocclusion shader applied. still not perfect but i feel i´m getting somewhere. once the shading is good i´ll start to build up with textures. (yes i read your book leigh and loved it)
PS. the eyes are temporary and therefor should not be criticised, as i know they suck.
Hi guys n girls,
Got my hands on the sss fast skin shader a few days ago. Great stuff. But during experimenting with it i got some questions on texture painting. As u know, is the color of the surface mainly a result of the unscattered diffuse color, the epidermal layer scatter color and the subdermal layer scatter color. While painting a face texture i figured out that its not enough to make only a diffuse color, but instead i got the best result painting the epidermal and subdermal maps and leave the diffuse as it is. But this way i found it very hard to control the colors cause the painted colors in PS differ very much from the rendered ones.
So my question is: Is it right to ignore the diffuse channel ? Which ones do u use? How do u guys do it?
Very nice MrWyatt.
Roberto, What skin shader plugin did you use? Ska or Tbskin…it sounds like Ska.
I use Max7 with with new SSS fast skin shader for MR, which is also available for Maya6. But i dont know whats tbskin or ska.
i am having a problem myself, im about to test skin shading again.
but…
from what i have read.
there are some good and bad things.
reflection is better than using specular etc.
But… there are lots of people starting of from the wrong foot.
So i thought why dont we setup the good skin shaders.
There are ac ouple of them in this thread.
We should put the settings of them all together, compare them,
best skin shading with mental ray- brazil etc… what ever we have.
going on like this and just showing you pic, and say yea, ive used that and for the rest not saying that much, isnt going to help a lot.
We have spoken ,and showed results over lots and lots of pages.
But still havent created a good base, of what to have in wich shading/shader… with aplication and renderer.
So if you think you have a good result… or think your shader has something that looks very realistic… like good natural sss effect… show how its done, than we can setup a page with all the how to’s.
than we can go on from there, and make it better and better… its a pitty and waste… still going throught the same *** every time. We should have a good basis by now. to start from.
i will be joining in with some shaders soon, hope people share my opinion, and also want to do something about it.
because this is going nowhere, or jsut one way, we cant wait for one person to show there settings and just duplicate that 999 times, there are many other goood skin shaders made in here… but never knowing how its done.
This is what i’ve come up with so far. The texturing is in an early stage and I’m not quite satisfied with the overall waxy look but what do you think?
Hey, why does this pic embedment not work???
