misss tests

#961

Well to me it looked ok at 0,2, but maybe you’re rendering to higher standards than that. :slight_smile: How about rendering at a larger size and sampling down in Photoshop?

#962

i’ll give that a shot, my render size is 1400 x 1000 right now, I could render higher and downsample. It just seems whenever I turn that setting up it gets noisy, even at a low weight. were you using a map to control the weight? maybe my settings are off?

I had the reflected weight set to .08
reflected edge weight to .8
reflected shininess at 2.0
and there wasn’t a difference with reflect environment only on or off

i’ll keep playin with it

#963

I remember having issues with the reflections in the skin shader too. If nothing helps, you could layer another transparent phong over it and do the reflections with it. If your refelections are still noisy your hdri seems to be the reason.
I prefer it this way anyway, gives you more control.

#964

yeah, that does make sense, i’ll give the mix8 a shot tonight, i’ve not yet tried it

#965

Oh yes, sorry, that reminded me - it could of course also be your hdri. Some of them really benefit from setting the Filter to 2 or even 3.

#966

I took one of them in HDR shop and applied a gaussian blur and it helped a little bit. is there a filter setting in the IBL node? is that what filter you’re talking about?

#967

hey guys. ive been giving the mental ray skin shader a try and things are going ok, thanx to this thread! but i had been rendering with light linking set to 0 and i didnt place ne of my lights in the lights list. i was still getting some sort of scattering because i could cthe back scattering. but when i switched the linking mode to 2, my bump disapeared. in the forums it was said that light linking 2 would make mental ray attatch all the lights to the shader.

i did a test where i only have the the diffuse wiedht on, and i turned the other to 0. so the shader should only show the skin. if the light link mode is 0, the color map shows up without ne scattering, and the bump shows up. if its mode 2, then the face is black.

is ne one certain that light linking mode 2 does what i think it does?

#968

quick little update.

its seems that with light linking mode at 2. the diffuse color channel has no affect on the shader at all and neither does the diffuse weight. the overal color channel does though.

i just realized that there are two places to choose the light linking mode. the sss shader, and the light map.
before i was only adjusting the link setting in the sss shader.
if i set the mode to 2 on both. the skin is just black. if its 0 on the shader and 2 on the light map, then i only get direct light. if its 2 on the shader and 0 on the light map, i get a super overblown sss affect and the diffuse and bump dont work.
if i drag lights into the lights list then i get a very similar result to having light mode at 0 on everything, except the sss is slightly more visable.

does ne one know what exactly the light link mode is and what all the options are?

one other thing:
u guys talked earlier about the alpha map issue, but i didnt see ne one post a fix that got maya to actually render the alpha map correctly. any body figure this out?

#969

is there a filter setting in the IBL node? is that what filter you’re talking about?

It’s in the Global Render settings, under the FG tab.

#970

ah, gotcha, i’ve got that to 1 now, i’ll push it a little more, i thought there was a filter on the IBL that i just wasn’t seeing in the node.

#971

back with another update to the orc…what do ya all think? what needs more work??

#972

Love the face, the skin feeling, the navel, torso, hands, feet, lighting… really nice! I suspect maybe kneecaps and deltoids need more definition, you know just a tiny touch of sharper edges here and there, right now they’re a bit “sine-wavy” (if you plan to put armor or clothes there never mind)… the division between the pecs, is often cool if it’s kind of zigzaggy, asymmetrical… and I always had a thing about green skin, I can never stop thinking “chlorofyll” when I see it! Vegetable Man! :slight_smile: But the skin is extremely realistic now. It’s just the color, I don’t know, if I had to go with something non-human I’d go with gray or more of a gray-green perhaps…
LOL that face is so cool! :smiley:

#973

Well I learned fast that Green skin is really really difficult, hence my “dancing hulk animation” is done w. normal skin color.

/Z

#974

you’re right Zap, the green skin is definately a challenge, getting the value and saturation right is a challenge. I think i will desaturate and push it a little darker to make it slightly more realistic. the lighting has been a struggle too because i’m having to really push the intensity of my lights which i’m afraid will throw off my other shaders when i get to the armor.

stahlberg: thanks for the kind words, you’re right about the definition in those areas you mentioned, i’ll push the mesh a bit further to compensate for some of the softening from the shader.

right now i’ve got my normal color map plugged into the diffuse, a lighter less saturated version as the epidermal and a more saturated, but warmer tone for the subdermal. thanks for that tip many pages back about putting a warmer color as the subdermal, it really helped

although its not SSS related, thought you guys would like to see where this is headed…its very quick bind and pose test, the deformations are totally messed up right now so i’ll get to sculpting those soon

#975

Lovely stuff. He has a “great” personality.

Some little things to think about: His fingernails are atm just plain grey. Give them some color and grime. Roughen and split them up. He’s a mean fighting machine, no time for nail clipping.
I don’t know how thick his skin is supposed to be, but if it’s like human skin his veins should show through a little more. Especialy the big ones. Less red and more blue in the subdermal along the bigger veins.
And maybe some crude tatoos?

Anyway, just ideas. Keep us updated.

#976

Hey guyz…here’s my current render of my character (still WIP) using the SSS shader…please take a look at the rendered image…

  1. i don’t like the bumpiness at the bottom of the jaw as it appears to be at its strongest…i have created the bump map evenly.

  2. i have no idea why those weird shadow is showing at the bottom of the neck (those pointy ones) and top of the head (which appears like a bump).

  3. also those hard edge at the side of the face…something wrong with my modeling technique?

C&C and suggestion on improvement is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance…

http://www.geocities.com/lorely3000/test_SSS_render.jpg

/lorely3000

#977

thanks for the ideas! the nails right now are un-textured, just a blinn on them, they will be textured with cracks, dirt, grime etc…

you’re right about the vein color, i think when i darken his skin and desaturate him slightly the veins will show more. i’ll go back to my maps and definately enhance them some more. it is funny because i see these contrasting colors in my maps, but when rendered some of those details get lost.

#978

So glad to find this thread, lots of great information being shared.

Super new to this whole SSS thing, so i’ve got one question for anyone out there using HDRI and Spot lights… Do you have a dropoff/decay on the light or not, it seems that if i add a dropoff i lose all my sss, even if i crank up the intensity. Also, what does the samples on the lightmap section of the shader do?

Another Question for anyone… How do i drop my lights into the SSS shader? under the miss_fast_lmap node? or what?

Thanks!

#979

i don’t use decay on my lights, but i do use dropoff and penumbra angle and never had an issue. i’m assuming its because your light intensity is decaying too fast and it isn’t allowing light to get into the mesh to scatter properly. you also don’t need to link your lights into your shader, but you can if you want i guess. just drop them into the lights section of both the sss shader and the lightmap

#980

I seem to be having some grainy issues when rendering with this shader. This is what I am getting (cropped from the original):

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/2140/rendgrainuy4.png

Is there some option I need to adjust to help clear this grain or is it a hardware problem or something?

I have all the settings set correctly according to this tut: