Human Skin WIPs and Tips (Everyone feel free to post your own skin WIPS here too)

#1441

In my opinion, VRay is the worst solution in making realistic human skin.
Of course someone can get good result with VRay, but not me :slight_smile:
Here some renders with vray.
Girl rendered with VRay light. We can see very simple sss.
Orc rendered with HDR. I found some problems with skin (I mark this zone). When I rendered this model with MR fast sss there are no reflections in this area.

#1442

this is mr
As for me - much much better.
In this one Iā€™ve missed with radiuses in mat and get good result.

In this render I donā€™t use FG, GI or HDR to light a model (only 2 mr area spots with very large radiuses, for area shadows). Only one hdr in fast sss mat (environment reflection (very little ~0.1)).
When I messured head size and reduced radiuses (as in default proportions) render was awful. So I think, to get good skin you must increase both radiuses and weights from default setting (depending on your model size of course).

#1443

I have been researching for 6 months on how to achieve realistic skin using nothing more than the standard scanline renderer.

This is what Iā€™ve gotten so far:

The reasons that motivates me to use only the standard scanline renderer is because I just have this feeling that the human brain can be easily fooled if the right notes are hit and all those SSS hypes might be just a little too over the top.

Iā€™m still trying :smiley:

#1444

I think SSS is NOT overhyped. Itā€™s an important shader, and Iā€™m pretty sure (after spending more than one year with the same purpose), that skin cannot be reproduced without it. There were hundreds of cases, when I was happy with the render, and the reposition of the camera ruined the whole settingā€¦With SSS you can do it faster, nicer, more authentic.

BUT. Itā€™s obviuous that there are many users, without the proper knowledge of anatomy, modelling trying to use the SSS. It is true, that in many cases SSS is overweighted. It is sure, that many artist try to reproduce skin without texturing.
I used to spend hours studying photographs with similar lighting Iā€™d like to reproduce before I set up the shader, and I suggest to all artist to do the same. SSS is an imitation of a phenome that makes the skin special material, so itā€™s useful to KNOW what you want to achieve.

Back to your opinion, my best effort was to render the skin (standard shader no SSS) in separate pass, and in photoshop copy that layers two or three times, then blur them (expect the uppermost layer of skin render), and shift the hue of each layer respectively, and adjust the opacity. Specular could be rendered on different pass also. But spendig time on this imitation is solved by using the SSS shaders.

#1445

It must depend a lot on the ethnicity of the subject. I doubt if a very dark sudanese person would show as much SSS say around the ears as a light skinned europeanā€¦it must have a lot to do with the variations in skin pigmentation and their abilities to transmit light

#1446

Latest tests.

Have problems with ears. There must be much more sss, but I donā€™t see it. Anyone have an idea what is wrong?


Also, will be appreciative to hear your opinion about this skin

#1447

update

waiting your c&c (colors, textures, sss, light, reflections)

#1448

Here are some results I have gathered form Vrayā€™s fast SSS. The shader is a blend of a fastSSS and a vray Mtl. I am currently experimenting with different GI methods to draw relationships and dissimilarities between VRAYā€™s Hybrid methods, asses render times and level of detail or interpolation.

Any comments? Have you got any preferences for primary and secondary bounces in your GI rendering engine?

#1449

Sorry forgot the code for those linksā€¦

All renders done with exact same model, shader, textures, lights, global settings, system settings and HDRI. Some were rendered with QMC, others with Light Cache and others with Irradiance.

So although very close to each other, some small differences in detail and big difference in render time when comparing specific ones. Is the extra detail worth the time? Main differences I notice is the level of detail in the bump map. One could increase the bump and render a highly interpolated GI for less time. Why should one use unbiased/exact/brute-force methods???

Any comments??

 [[img]http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/789ae35166.jpg[/img]](http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)


 [[img]http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/81c26b7a6a.jpg[/img]](http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)


[[img]http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/e80b15a031.jpg[/img]](http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)
#1450

Hi. Can you post full pictures with face?

Anyway, so long rendering timeā€¦

Here is misss (3dsmax)
Rendering time about 9 min (hdr in local env, scatter gi in mat, fg, 3 spots with area shadows)

#1451

Nice Render VB! Looking good! Your ears have improved a lot since last model, Well done for that!

You see I was making a point about the render time and rendering algorithmsā€¦ the difference when using one over the other and not about the photorealism of the whole face. Anyhow, render time difference could be due to different renderer (Im using VRAY) CPU hardware (AMD dual core 4200+ 3gb RAM) and the amount of pixels and pixel values in the rendered frameā€¦

Would you care to do a questionnaire Iā€™m conducting on GI methods for human skin, if ofcourse you havenā€™t already?

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=4236806#post4236806

#1452

heres my first skin i have made, mental ray sss take a look at that. its without bumps
i need a bit advice about the lips and specularity

its without indirect illumination

#1453

hi everybody
who can help me? :wink:
I want to do a skin by vray sss
here is setting, I like this skin, but she is so clean :smiley:
where to apply the diffuse map? (tattoo, birthmarks etc.)

#1454

Hi all this is my skin wip, i used a similar setup to VB(cheers), quick question aswell though. Does sss come with an opacity setting. im trying to get rid of that line ontop by using a composite material to overlay skin ontop. heres a link to the original question thread i posted.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=46&t=506791

And does anyone know of any good tutorials for getting really nice wrinkles, i have experimented but still doesnt look quite good enough, i want to add a bit of age to him. Thanks

#1455

ohjin, hereā€™s links to nice tutors (itā€™s in russian, sorry. where is original - donā€™t know):
http://3dcenter.ru/tutors/read.php?sname=maya&articlealias=Head_Texturing
http://3dcenter.ru/tutors/read.php?sname=maya&articlealias=maya_SkinTexturing

wpanterka, I think you need to load map to Shallow texmap.
anyway, hope it helps you:
http://3dcenter.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=22754

#1456

You error is that you are confusing back scattering (scattering from the reverse side to the front) with subdermal scattering (reddish scattering deep in the front/facing surface).

Make your subdermal color redder.

/Z

#1457

Thanks vb, some usefull stuff there, there is an english version of that tutorial here,
http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/maya/texturing/
ill post up what results i get. Thanks again.

#1458

Here is a pic from the character Iā€™ve been working on all summer. Everytime I applied any type of bump map (cellular shown on the left side), I get this ā€œnasty brown graininessā€. Every tutorial Iā€™ve come across says to add a bump map for added realism and I sense maybe it looks not quite right without it myself. I canā€™t understand why I have this effect though no matter how low the amount of bump.

Secondly I wanted to ask for a crit on my eyebrows and how they might be improved if needed.

As a side note, I can use the 3ds Max 8 unwrap modifier for inorganic objects (which most tutorials on it are for), but I canā€™t get that spread out facial map (or donā€™t know how). Only the front of the face has my spec map.

#1459

Bump: make sure itā€™s at least 1k res or higher- 2000 better. Turn down the bump filter settings to around .1
Eyebrows: raise them and curve them along the Brow, extruded area above bridge of nose from inner edge of eye out toward outer edge.
I use Roadkill 1.0 for UV spread. use the color map for the bump and spec maps just adjust the levels (make one dark: spec with certain highlights on the nose tip, ears etc, one grayscale for bump or you can simply use the colormap)


Hereā€™s a quick render on a model I no longer mess with.

Using IBL

Using IBL and Spots

View of the Bump with pratically no tweaking.

With Maya Hair; however, it renders much too slow no so probably will be doing a low poly hair.

#1460

I managed to get the bump working. It turns out I just needed to delete the skylight (using Max 8) and simply replace it with a basic spotlight set up. What do you think?

I did also move the eyebrows away from the eyes a bit. My Brow was way too high from the eyes so I fixed that. At first I curved the eyebrows around it better, but then realized that I preferred a bit of a pointed look.

I confess Iā€™m not sure what you meant by the resolution. Do you mean the size of a bump map file? I just used a cellular procedural. Thanks alot Saltiva, interesting renders and good bump. Thanks for helping me realize the Brow issue I had as well.