Best method for simple plant material?

#1

Ok so I am working on a very old project, but I am giving it some much needed TLC. So now that I am a little more comfortable in Mental Ray, I want to make him nice looking.

So ignore how smooth and plain he is, I am working with a nice displacement in Zbrush this weekend, and I feel that a lot of my shaders detail will come from that. But none the less, I want a basic material built so I can be ready.

My gut told me to use a SSS shader, and I picked the Miss_Fast_Simple_maya…I think I can see some scatter, but I keep getting some odd issues. The main one is the washed out grey look. I would rather stop now and ask CGS than try and mess with unknown settings…WHAT DID I DO WRONG???

So I set that aside and started to do some research…I remembered some amazing PFX work a few years back and found the old thread.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=87&t=802677&page=2&pp=15

So I have yet to paint my reflectivity map, so I just lowered the settings for now b/c it looked like green chrome…even more so than this image below.

So guys, point me in the right direction. What baseline shader should I use to give that semi translucent plant look?

#2

So I got home and kicked it into overdrive. Here is an update…This is the Mia_Mat_X setup…

I messed with my suns multiplier, and then set the framebuffer and lens shader for a more linear setup.

But what I think caused me to slam my head into my keyboard was that I wasn’t facing the camera in the right direction. :surprised

So I flipped it so the sun was coming through the opposite side of the plant, and it dramatically changed the render.

Would love some CC and pointers none the less. :slight_smile:

#3

The answer to your first grey looking render, if you didnt find it yet, is to turn off “Screen composite” in your sss material.

#4

THANKS PAP!

That fixed the issue, sorry for the slow response. My week has been absolute hell due to the fires here in Texas.

I am gonna get a good looking render up this weekend I hope.

#5

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