I used the St Peter’s probe HDRI map, but I think you could use any HDRI map and still get the same quality of “warmth” illumination. If I went with a sky, I would add a slight blue on the occulsion pass or create an ambient pass with a slight blue and multiple it with the occulsion pass. For the beach HDRI I would use it in my indirect illumination pass. If you know of a good beach HDRI map, I would like to try it out with this series of test.
Cheers,
Here is what I got from the beach hdri. It was abit overcast, so I raised the brightness a little bit.
Cheers,
I thought I’d keep things tidy by posting my skin studies here with Tony’s. And it’s also a way of bumping up his very informative thread. Julian posted a Maya SSS shader here which prompted me to investigate the subject matter using Taron’s Basic Shader. This is the Butch character with a little more sweat applied, this is a straight render, no post work:
From what I have been able to play with the Basic Shader is better than the Maya plugin and is very robust for all kinds of SSS skin creations. You can also mix SSS effects by applying more than one Basic Shader to a Final Radiance node to get some very interesting skin effects like the creature Gary posted on the other post. For example one SSS can be used for the inner sub-dermal skin with Extend-Shade or whatever and another SSS is blended in for the outer dermal skin with Extend Color. You could also use weight spots to define areas like the ear with a SSS to get the redish-vein shading, freckling and so on. Doing SSS skin shading with messiah I have found compare to others, C4D, XSI and Maya far simplier, better and faster.
Cheers,
One thing that the Basic shader doesn’t do, that the built-in native translucency does, is show light falloff within the object. The whole object is lit uniformly whether the light has fall off or not. I’ve brought that up to Taron’s attention. But, it can be faked to a certain degree using meta-effectors. See Julian’s tutorial. It would be great if messiah had weight maps to define areas of translucency as well.
Gary,
Faking can be accomplished in post, but have you tried blending a translucency standard material with a Basic Shader+SSS custom shader material to see what would happen?
Cheers,
I dunno about that girl, she was with this guy ;). Just testing out variations of the above shader - this being the less fit, more sun-starved version of Butch.
Nice pic Gary but i find Messiah lacking in the lighting bouncing inside look that it kinda need.
Its really hard to get that look, The translucency effect is powerful but it doesn’t play nice wih basic shader.
No problem but my main focus is figuring out how to get the light to bounce inside the body accurately
Didn’t Taron mention he was out to hook up the translucency channel?
Here’s hoping…
At any rate, Chikega - that looks like a neat claymation style already. Me likes!
And I get that stuck-in-the-corner feel when you guys talk of getting together. Your last session bore the subsurface candle scene, right?
Last question: chikega, what render times do you have there with GI and I assume a decent AA level?
You’re always welcome to Atlanta, home of the '96 Olympics, David! 
Actually, I’d love to visit Germany one day.
Render time for the above pic at 640 X 480 took about 5min 35sec. Specs: Adaptive SS AA X 3, Monte Carlo GI Samples 3, GI Depth 1, GI Noise Reduction (default). One Spot light.
On the object itself, there’s the basic shader, with two layers of AoN shaders (fractal and turbulence), displacement is on but it’s very subtle.
The red clay of Georgia! I travelled through Atlanta once, selling posters at the university.
Great city!
As to your model, that’s some serious cellulite there…
I find the times good, but not great. I suspect better looking fakes will be possible once the translucency channel is pluggable. Look forward to seeing what you guys come up with!
