Human Skin WIPs and Tips (Everyone feel free to post your own skin WIPS here too)

#1061

OUCH!! Silly me!!! Sorry sorry sorry Leigh!:sad: (I feel terribly embarrased btw…)

Anyway, I’m happy to see that I was not pointing in the wrong direction. It’s not your fault to be busy! Don’t feel bad for it, you started it, and clearly stated in the beggining what it was for… Might not have worked as we all wanted, but look…! It’s the longest thread ever!! The information is there, but investigative skills are needed to see it sometimes… It’s a great thread, so come on, let’s make it even better!

Oh, the idea of condensing all the info sounds like it’s going to take ages… we can all browse through with our loupe in one hand and a pipe of tobacco in the other… :slight_smile:

I’m still working on my shader, but expect it to be posted in a few days… (I’m busy too!)

Ike.

#1062

I pop in to this thread once and a while hoping that someone may have come up with a really nice method for creating a skin texture in 3ds max. Most of the info here seems pretty biased toward Maya and, while it’s interesting, it means very little to me since I don’t know what I’m looking at when I see a Mayan interface. A screen shot of some nodes tells me very little.

So I guess I will just come right out and ask. Does anyone know of a resource for learning to create skin shaders in max?

  • Dustin
#1063

There are some max users here too, (myself!) and well, some of the tips are quite general… I’m personally using max 7, and tried the SSS shaders (little success…) and now I’m onto Brazil R/S experimenting with its SSS shaders and lots of other things… I don’t know about any resource better than this one… What kind of info are you looking for?..

#1064

In many cases creating a good skin shader is more of a observation task. Therfore it`s totally software independent.

If you can separate theoretically the skin`s visual components, than you have to recreate it with your software of choice.

Currently, the most obvious visual displays of a skin are:

  1. Color variations
  2. Reflections
  3. Bumps
  4. SSS

The most difficult part is the proper reflection and the proper SSS setting. I intentionally left out specular, because specular is the reflection of the light sources, or intensively bright surfaces. Reflections are slower, but much more realistic.

#1065

I like this new idea if I understand it fully, so i want to be first to show it all and not just put up a plastic looking deformed model(without being accompanied by settings ). I know I have to hand make all my maps soon but I havent finished the rest of the model yet and I wanted to play with the SSS_skin_fast =) (3dsmax7)


BTW!
Does it look more yellowish/green/correct or pinkish/too red? I have a dual screen and I dont know which one is right =(

#1066

Mmm… this is a tricky one, you chose SSS Fast Skin, a shader I never got to terms with… I don’t see much translucency (regarding reddish colors) but the effect in shadows seems to be there. Then I don’t know whether it’s the HDRI casting soft shadows, or the noise in the bump map… The ear seems to be quite “solid” there’s no coloration, and the general color variation is barely visible.

The highlights though look quite good to me. As I said, i never got good results with SSS fast skin, so I don’t know which way to point you… I’d suggest to play with epidermal and subdermal weight values and colours a bit, to increase color variation. Anyway, let’s see what others say.

BTW brave attempt at posting the image with all the setup! Good work!!

Ike.

#1067

4 lights+hdri+final gather…(the lightmap calculate indirect lightning…)

1 light for the eyes+hdri+final gather…

Specular is “bizarre” on the lips, but it should be tweaked…

I had to test this shader with another map… There are only one colour map a bump map and a specular map…

look at the graph network…

#1068

Grrrr… my last reply didn’t get to the server… let’s try again.

gpepper: Your shader looks great. Skin on the first pic is really good, perhaps a bit contrasty, and too bright on the highlights, but color variation is spot on. Maya users, you’re lucky to use such a good system, grrrr… (however, i know you still haven’t got the magical auto-realistic-skin button…). Again, good work gpepper, but i can’t help since i’ve never used Maya.

And finally, as promised, here is mine.

I did some hair work using the Ornatrix plugin. A fantastic and free hair plugin for 3dsmax. There’s still a lot of work to do, but that’s what i acomplished after one days work (just for the hair). About my skin, still can’t get my reflections right, tried a few things but have something still missing. I’ve used the Wax shader in Brazil R/s for 3dsmax7, that IMO is much easier to work with than the default SSS fast skin shader for mental ray. Lighting: Ufizzi HDRI + fill light + accent light for hair highlights.

And this is my setup:

Comments: After trying the SSS fast skin for sometime, I never got good results, seems easy at first, but it’s hard to get the translucency working. So I switched to Brazil, and got to grips quite easily, it’s pretty straightforward as you can see… My only problem are the highlights/reflections/sheen… it’s going to take me sometime. If anybody can help, I’d be pleased!! Thx in advance.

Ike.

**Oh, and I’ve used the Poser V3 Hi-res textures and bump map too. And last, the HDRI lighting is quite poor on this one,gotta play with it too.

#1069

Dude I was gonna say clean up your bumpmap, but that seems outta line. Maybe you should make your own. And why aren’t you using the skin shader? If you put in the effort, using all the channels I mean, it could be very realistic!

#1070

Oh yeah, sure. Forgot to say the bump rendered totally wrong… Left the PC rendering for a while (took 60 mins cos the HDRI always left black spots, and had to upper the image sampling a lot) and when i came back saw this bump mess… i was too lazy to render again (sorry for that). I’m more concerned in color and highlights for now…

IMO the Wax shader in Brazil, does quite the same as the SSS Fast Skin (though, i might be totally wrong…??), and is easier to use. Again, never got good results with that one (see previous posts…).

Thx.

#1071

gpepper: Pretty nice results, Maybe tone down the reflect/spec just a tad.

ikephoto: Its really hard to tell whats going on with such major noise on it. Also maybe render w/o hair so we can see the skin a little better. Spec looks okay but again its kinda hard to tell. If you want to test the reflection, make like a bright neon green enviroment so you can easily see its effects. For SSS fast skin shader, the most important thing is scale, that was most likely your problem.

Here is a new render of mine with just a spotlight and raytrace shadows so its easier to see. It still seems waxy to me, maybe too high spec. same settings as previous page except I turned the scale down about .7(sorry for grain, SSS fast skin isnt so fast anymore) The lower chest is only visible because I have a large noise map on him for reflection.

#1072

Here I go again, I’ve corrected the bump map and removed the hair. BTW thanks Zgame for the “neon green enviroment” tip, helped me a lot to set the reflections correctly. Still can’t get a clean HDRI light, see the blotch on her right temple…?? I’ve upped the image sampling for the HDRI, upped the photon count, blurred massively the HDRI, but still can’t get it. Sorry if it’s too noisy. Well, here it is,

Zgame: Yes, still looks waxy, but (maybe cause the change in lights) I see a bit of redness in some areas, maybe make it a bit redder? And highlights…mmm… don’t know how to fix them… (btw, when I worked with the SSS fast, i had my model on real scale, and scale factor in 1.0… don’t know what went wrong)

#1073

Yes it’s a “fast skinshader”, But it has added controls adn a realistic setup for SSS combined quasi Monte Carlo sampling I believe. Which is also used with the skylight I believe. Also the subdermal layer allows for added realism, light bouncing around in the skin and coming sorta blurred. But maybe I’ll setup a simple scene at home to test it and at the same time prove it.
Good luck with your shader
btw, the rayserver doesn’t allow for exact calculations at some settings, so if you have a plain white background it will smudge because some poly’s receive the same values etc. as their neighbours being in the same voxel. In the Brazil manual they explain a little bit about that I think. It has to do with the accelerator.

#1074

Ok, Jm… seems like you convinced me. At first sight the wax shader seemed so easy to use, and having read some articles about it’s great sss capabilities I thought I’d give it a try first, results were quite good actually i think (see above). So, I’ll move on forward on my ever experimentative quest, and try the actual “skin” mode on the same shader. :slight_smile: I’ll post results as soon as I have something… (that’ll give you a hint on easeness of use…). Thx again!

Ike.

#1075

Im finding it easiest to tweak SSS just using simple spotlights focused on small parts of the face rather than doing full GI tests just simply for speed reasons. Also make sure your HDRI lights a primitive like a teapot properly before using it with your full model. I played a bit with mapping the SSS layers and its getting good results, ill ask what you guys think soon. Good improvements though. seems kinda oversatured now.

#1076

i did some test with the misss please guy tell me what do you think about the skin aspect, to much scattering or not?

For the info i plug a occlusion shader in the ambient slot of the misss shader i use a very poor lighting (i point light and a hdr image )

#1077

Well done Popol, looks very nice. Tres bien!! The first one on the left looks the best, scattering is a bit high, but it doesn’t bother me… Would like to see your settings… :slight_smile:

Ike.

#1078

here is my work…i’ve posted it in mr. Stahlberg’s thread too…comments?popol your shader is very photorealistic!!

#1079

Hiya,

Learner88, I liked you’re last version better. Check out the pics right above yours here, you were going exactly that way with your shader! Why did you change it?
And IkePhoto, hrmm, duh yeah. As a sign of good faith I will join you in the fray. I will set up some test geometry and start fiiling all the texture slots. Maybe I’ll use the same model…or a simple arm and head thing. Here’s a tip, use an untextured skinmaterial with all the sss effects and tweak it until you think you have the right color for the skin. Then base you’re skintexture on that color or bring it to that color in a paint program. It will be easier to get nice results that way. And I think the subdermals are to be used at low values, or they’ll jump out too much, it’s supposed to be a subtle effect I think.

'n C ya.

#1080

i didn’t change it,i just used a different lighting,in the 1st pic with green eyes there was an incandescent sphere around the model and just a light on top,now there are two lights on the left and on the right,the shader is just the same…