Hi! - Thought i would post my try, i was just fixing my old head model and painted new texture for it…and was testing how to make skin shading better without any special shaders…
Here you can see a turntable animation…
Hi S-S, great results for a painted texture, looks very convincing in the images, the turntable video shows up a bit more… but hey, no SSS there!! A great job. Did you paint the texture, or built it from photos?
Ike.
ikephoto:
Well, as you said in the first sentence, it is painted, and it means that - only photo based element is eyebrow. (which i then modified and shaped and so on…) 
Just find out the components you need for the skin, then start from the bottom in photoshop or any other image manipulation tool, start with basic color, then overlay all the patterns in right places, then make separate layers for spots, imperfetions veins and wrinkles and so on… this way it should be easy to convert the map into bumpmap too
And no SSS as 3dsmax scanline renderer doesn’t support it. Faking it with gradients (be it gradient or falloff…) works in some cases, but i didn’t do that.
What is missing from 3dsmax is a map which can measure thickness of object (would be really cool!) - anybody know if there is such plugin shader? - I wouldn’t like to use Mental Ray, as it is not suitable for other stuff i need currently.
Hi. I lost touch with this thread for a while…so thought I’d post a recent render using some of the fake sss techniques I’ve developed for Poser5. There is about 5 lights in the scene, and no postwork. Rendertime was around 20-25mins. It’s got a bunch of maps to control spec, sss, freckles and displacement.
This image has a tiny glitch on her right iris - a result of some scaling issues with the FireFly renderer. Her eyelashes need work too. And her teeth are a touch “glowie”. But I think her skin looks ok. And the “peach-fuzz” effect on her cheek came out well.
ow man,this is realy good,the textures and the shadings are awesome :applause: :applause: 
although i think the lips must be more WET and SHINY
That’s really excellent work with Poser.
Don’t worry too much about the eye, your image shows off what can be done with human skin in Poser excellently.
Will you share your fake SSS techniques in Poser with us?
The fake sss is a technique I discussed her a few months back, based on the “Incidence Effect” (ie. the angle of incidence from the main light to the skin) - sort of an extension to Stahlberb’s pre-real sss work. I provided a Maya node setup at http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=145071&page=13&pp=15. I also put together a Poser tutorial for it at http://www.users.on.net/~pkinnane/RealSkinShaderTutorial.html. The tut is a few months old, and now the setup includes maps for spec, spots, sss and displacement. It doesn’t give as good an sss effect as a real sss shader (like misss, or Diffuse) - but P5 doesn’t have a true sss shader - so for my renders, this is the next best thing.
Another render…although I upped the additional spots too (to age the skin) much and had to back off the fake sss, so it’s not as clear in this render. I also upped the bump too much, which negatively impacted the specular. Eyes need work.
Hi kaynine, I just realized you’re face_off at R’osity You’re doing an amazing job with those shaders. You’re right about the specular on this one, but it still looks very real… I find it a bit too saturated, perhaps a tad lighter skintone would look nicer… And cleaning the bump on some areas too, though it looks good in some others.
I, instead of texturing and rendering in Poser, transfer my V3s to max7, and then use real sss shaders… I’m slowly having success on skin shading, but I’ve started to realize that my V3 characters are not realistic enough, so I’m desperately seeking good morphs for her :sad:… seems like I’m not too good at building my characters! Any tips? Keep up the good work man!
I’ll soon be posting a few renders, might post my settings too (depending how happyI am with the results…) Bye bye!!
Ike.
Ike - yes - I think you are right, slightly lighter skintones might have been better. And yes, you can have the best skin shader in the world, but it will be lost if the geometry isn’t realistic - and with Poser - definitely the joints are the biggest problem. I used ZBrush to model the guy’s head above (based on the M3 model), and I’ve been using it to smooth out joints for a while now. One day I’ll get my money’s worth and actually learn the model in ZBrush. Look forward to seeing your 3ds skin renders.
Hi again, I’ve been doing more and more tests with the MR Fast sss shader. Not totally happy with the results yet, but i’m just getting there (slowly…). I had to tear my model to pieces to get the shader working, so don’t worry about the break on her neck (left side of the image), as the body is still not properly shaded. Finally developed a fairly good bump map, and it makes quite a difference with previous results, even if this time its too high. I’m still not 100% happy with highlights, specially on the right side (visible ear side), hope I’ll get them working soon. Any tips to to improve the eyes please? Crits and comments are welcome. Thx everyone.
Ike.
Oh, and just two area lights, one at 45 degrees to the right, and the other one is just opposite. Can’t get MR skylight to work too well… wish it’d be as easy as Brazil…
Nice one Ike. Looks like the shader is a little heavy on specular, and a bit light on diffuse. Lovely face. Are oyu using an sss map to control depth? The sss effect looks a little too consistent.
Ok, i take note… “heavy specular, light diffuse, and make depth map”… mmm, no, no depth map yet, thought of it some time ago, but I was quite unsure about what to put in it. Ears are obvious, and maybe nose and cheeks too, what about eye area and lips? Those too?
Thx kaynine. Ike.
Hi all, still working on the shader. Here’s another render. According to the stuff kaynine pointed, i lowered the specular, raised a bit the diffuse, and played around with the specular options… still no depth map, any tips?
Thanks, Ike.
I heard many a times that its better to use just reflections instead of specular. Of course this makes only sense if ur using a hdri for lighting.
Yes Roberto, that totally makes sense. But I’m not using hdri yet, cause i can’t get MR to render with them properly. For now, just 2 lights, 1 area light in front, and a spot in the back. What do you think of the shader?
MR + Hdri works very well over here. From ur posts i assume ur using max7 . So i think all u’ve godda do is put a skylight in ur scene then put another light in the scene and switch it off. this is just to deactivate the standard lighting cause its not automatically disabled by a skylight. put a hdri-bitmap in the map slot of the skylight activate FG in indirect illum rollout. voila
But ur model is coming out very well. i especially like the region under the eyes. the mouth looks a bit plastic though.
btw how did u do the eyelashes? are these rendered splines or opacitymapped planes?
Hi Roberto, thanks for the crits. I’ve tried HDRI in MR several times, just like you pointed, but every single render comes out really dirty with spots all over and the transparencies are totally crooked… I’ve tried different FG values and different HDRIs but the result never looked too good. So i kinda dumped the idea for now… but i’ll give it a try sometime soon.
The lips are still untextured, well, i just use the same map for the whole head (excepting eyes, lashes, etc…) so lips still need some extra specular. Will texture them separately soon. The eyelashes are opacity mapped planes, but i didn’t model them… this model is Victoria3 from Daz3d, a Poser character. I only take care of texturing and lighting
Thanks, Ike.
