misss tests

[FrizzleFry0]

I’m assuming you hooked up the skin the same way as the simple. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be casting shadows on itself. The biggest difference I noticed between the simple and skin shaders is that the diffuse weight had to be changed quite a bit. I believe when I had the simple shader running, I had a diffuse weight of 2 and now that I’ve switched to the skin, I’ve had to drop it down to 0.5. All the other attributes stayed the same, spec was dropped down to black, reflect shininess to 0, reflect weight to .03, and edge weight to .05.

[Fathom]

Hey Dynamic duotone,
Thanks man! You can get in touch anytime.
Yeah the xray is just the facing ratio into ramp into transparency Method.
Here is the network:
The js_surface luminance node calculating transparency based on light info is a very cool shader developed by Jan Sandstrom. Check here: www.pixero.com
A very cool mr shader that lets you select which lights contribute to the calculation.

[albrecht]

OK. I risk revealing my pervasive novice-hood by asking this, but…

Sitting here. fiddling around with the miss_fast_simple shader. Everything APPEARS to be set up correctly in my hypershade and elsewhere. However, the object the shader is applied to will not render. It simply does not appear no matter what I try :banghead: . Is there a setting I missed somewhere dealing with Mental Ray? Something I have to turn on or set to get MR shaders to render? Do I have to give it a surface shader such as a blinn?
This is actually the first time I’ve really sat down and messed with the MR shaders, and I’m quite unfamiliar with them.

Any and all help would be appreciated! thx.

[albrecht]

ok, I risk exposing my awkward noviceness by asking this, but…

When trying to use the miss_fast_simple shader, the object I apply it to will not render- it simply doesn’t appear. Is there something I missed when it comes to using the Mental Ray shaders? An obscure setting buried somewhere deep within Maya? I’ve never actually sat down and messed with MR before, so I’m a bit…uneducated. What might one have to do to get Maya to render the MR shaders? I’m 99.9% sure I’ve got the shader set up correctly, so it’s not that.

Any help would be muchly appreciated! Thankee kindly.

[Marlboro-Man]

For those of you who are getting black for the MISSS renders, double check the connections and make sure you’ve got the right nodes goign int he right places. Also when you render, open up the OUTPUT window and watch the progress reports, I’m betting that you don’t have any lightmap generations reported in the Output window.

If you do see an output for the lightmap generation then you’ve connected everything right…if not you’ve plugged things wrong.

Might wanna check a couple of things like the lightmap write open, make sure it’s checked and set to 32bits, make sure you’ve specified a correct file name/location for your lightmap as well, it’s prob just a human error.

You don’t need other shaders such as blinn. it should work as a direct assignment of the misss fast skin to your object. Check your object’s shading group node to make sure that the lightmap shader has been assigned to the light map slot.

Marlboro-Man

[OLD-BOY]

Hi

As said before in this thread, i also found that turning specularity very low has better results. I want to now add a reflection map to the image but where do i map it to?. Is it the overall reflection, the edge reflect or is it to be put in one of the spec channels.?

Ive attached the face to show what i have so far with only a spec map with low specular weight.

steve

[ranbby]

Hi guys where can you get sss mentralray custom shaders??? thx

[wabash]

hello
Curious, what is the best method to get rid of unwanted scattering? Is it to paint black into one of your image maps? If so, which map would it be plugged into, (back scatter, all of them)?
For example, unwanted scattering in open mouths.

[FrizzleFry0]

Kinda curious, but trying to match the real-world, what would you say the 3 scatter colors on the fast_skin shader represent? Let’s say you have a non-human like an orc or ogre with green skin. Would you still use reds and warm colors for all the scatter colors? Or would you use a similar green version for the epidermal?

[GatorNic]

hello
Curious, what is the best method to get rid of unwanted scattering? Is it to paint black into one of your image maps? If so, which map would it be plugged into, (back scatter, all of them)?
For example, unwanted scattering in open mouths.

Might want to check and see if all your lights are set to ray traced shadows. Looking at your pic, that seems to be what your getting. Not having them set to ray traced will usually light the insides of mouths, eyes etc.

[eddgarpv]

Hi all, I’ve been doing some test with misss fast skin and displacement.
I’m using a sss node connected to mix8layer connected to a bumpCombiner node. The first portion of the image shows the head i’m rendering and the dis placement looks correct (as well as the sss effects) but this is rendering locally. The second part of the image, shows the head using satellite rendering. I got this error :

 RCLM 2.1  progr: lightmap vertex run, shader 0x583:  on instance 23:1
 PHEN 4.1  progr: misss_lightmap_write_init: Got instance init 12514688
 PHEN 4.1  error: misss_lightmap_create: Lightmapping attempted on slave, not supported. Aborting lightmap.
 

I disconnect the displacement node and the third portion of the image appears (correct sss effects but no displacement of course).
I tried with the Export Shading Engine option but I get:

 API  0.0  error  301038: while defining material "bumpCombiner6SG": "bumpCombiner" returns a struct, use "bumpCombinerSKIN.member"
  API  0.0  warn   302018: while defining material "bumpCombiner6SG": type conflict: "surfaceShader" is type color, "bumpCombiner" returns type struct
 

Same thing happens with clean scene and no mix8layer. Any ideas?

[MasterZap]

Kinda curious, but trying to match the real-world, what would you say the 3 scatter colors on the fast_skin shader represent? Let’s say you have a non-human like an orc or ogre with green skin. Would you still use reds and warm colors for all the scatter colors? Or would you use a similar green version for the epidermal?

Epidermal scattering generall basically has the color of what it scatters within, i.e. green skin would have a greenish epidermal.

However, the subdermal stuff tends to be reddish anyway, since it’s a wavelength thing… shoter wavelenghts (blues) decay faster than longer (reds) when going through some medium, so the subdermal should tend towards the red and the back be reddish.

Even Yoda’s ears were reddishly translucent. Don’t know which sss shaders were used on Yoda, I wish it was misss

/Z

[wabash]

Might want to check and see if all your lights are set to ray traced shadows. Looking at your pic, that seems to be what your getting. Not having them set to ray traced will usually light the insides of mouths, eyes etc.

Yes, I was wondering the same thing.  I went ahead and used a...

grey       overall color
green     diffuse color
green     epidermal color
orange    subdermal color

After what Master Zap had to say about typically using red as a subdermal color in this type of instance I tested this resulting in an overall darker skin render. However darker, the skin tone matched my specified epidermal color much closer.

Nix - Thanks for the ray traced shadows comment I was using depth map. Though is it possible to get good results using depth map? Have people already discussed this in this here?

The first render is with a orange subdermal
The second render is with a red  subdermal

[Ash-Man]

This might be old news, but I just thought I’d mention that your model’s normal hardness can greatly affect the SSS look. Especially with low poly models. Today I was helping someone to create like a plastic lamp shade, and here’s what I got with totally hard normals:

and now with totally soft normals:

Just thought I’d mention it!

I was trying to test your theory, and I got stuck making the light inside the cube to illuminate the SSS shader

I’m using only one point light and its in the middle of the cube

if its behind it, it will work, but not inside

any ideas

[Powell]

I was trying to test your theory, and I got stuck making the light inside the cube to illuminate the SSS shader

I’m using only one point light and its in the middle of the cube

if its behind it, it will work, but not inside

any ideas

Try flipping your Normals.

[OLD-BOY]

Im getting a problem when rendering with misss with displacement. Scene doesnt seem to render. the model rendered fast without misss as soon as i applyed the shader it seems to freeze when rendering. Ive applyed the displacemet the same way as with a normal shader. Is this the correct way.

please help.

[Ash-Man]

Try flipping your Normals.

Oh ya now I see the point
intresting enough SSS will scatter when the light is facing the normals
hummmm … Iwounder why

[goldenarm]

Great shader! Thanks Master Zap Here is my test scene using just the misss fast skin with no extra layers.

[smaddl]

great work goldenarm could you share how do you get the soft shadow? i’m playing with the shader, scaling, tweaking and don’t know how to get it. i’m using spot light with ray trace shadow. thank you.

[goldenarm]

great work goldenarm could you share how do you get the soft shadow? i’m playing with the shader, scaling, tweaking and don’t know how to get it. i’m using spot light with ray trace shadow. thank you.

Thanks Smaddl! 75% of that soft shadow is from turning up the light angle and shadow rays in the light. The subdermal scatter will help soften the light to dark transition on the model, try turning that up some? Be wary, this has tends to make the overall model too red. You can try upping the values in the diffuse and epidermal to counter this as some have previously mentioned. I used a ramp in the overall color value to help counter this as well, adding red to the transition and shadow area.