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

#1561

I’d rather say it looks …“baloonish”. If rays proceed too straight forward, this effect might appear.

#1562

Be sure to add properly painted weight maps and sss colour maps to break up that waxy feel, its a must. Your pretty much slapping on candle wax effect on your skin.

Also test with just your sss maps visible and do your tests with fg and indirect scattering on. Since it can greatly change your sss effects, usually making it more saturated.

You can also play with your lightmap gamma curve to give your sss effects some harder edge transitions between your layers.
Also a higher scatter bias of about .3 .23 will add some greens to your side glancing angles

Here is image of just my sss effect, I recommend using real world scale. It helps alot in understanding how much scattering is going through your model instead of generic units and you will usually find default values that come with sss shader are almost to your needs.

You should also plug in an AO with your diffuse map, Instead of adding at the last minute.
It’s very hard to judge final outcome your sss effects and lighting without this.

Also slightly green fresnell effect will help sell the edges of your models skin, aswell as quick lens distort + noise to your renders in photoshop will help un-cgi your work

#1563

I totally agree with kravit, I’m using maya 2008 and mental ray.I added ambient occlusion in the misss_fast_skin overall color. with distance set to about 5 cm.So AO helps to darken only the small wrinkles(like fingers-hand wrinkles) or the areas where two pieces of skin are in direct contact(for example the legs that touch and deform eachother).In my last picture ao is visible only under her breast and a bit between arms and torso or between legs.If AO distance was too high, i would lose the light bouncing effect of the Final gather between the legs,arms-torso ecc, wich is important in my opinion because gives more saturation and warm feel that i can see in real photos of skin (expecially with sun light).
Scatter radius too, should be about 5mm or 1 cm (maximum!!!) or the shader will look waxy!and,As Kravit said, also the sss layers MUST have a map,possybly the same or very similar(with veins added for the subdermal scatter layer,for example) to the diffuse but with different hue.

another thing I always do is never use specular light.I use only blurry reflection.( this is not a must in my opinion but i prefer it )

#1564

Instead of AO I’m adding a ZBrush-Cavity Mask via “soft light” on the Color-Map :wink:

#1565

This could be a solution,But it will be a baked texture, won’t it?

#1566

Yeah, and AO should only affect indirect light anyway. Direct light will always reach every part of the form that’s not in shadow already.

#1567

Here is a new test with a free 3d-scan-mesh from Lee Perry Smith’s ir-model-site with VrayforC4D 1.2:

As the color-texture is not ‘clean’, meaning that it contains gloss and spec like a normal photography, I controlled my result with another angle and a first Diffuse-only-render (no Specs, no gloss, no sss):

OK, the skin-effekt was not caused by a simple ‘photographic-texture-over-the-mesh’ thing.

Now again my full skin-shader (Diffuse, sss, specs, glow):

Although I only used the color-map in the different slots with the help of the filter-shader and without !! any photoshop-work to create epidermal-, subdermal- , bump- spec- and glow-maps (only used the settings within the filter-shader) , it rendered out very nice, I think.

And here is a test with James Busby’s ‘male’-model from his tutorial (James kindly allowed me to use it for my tests):

This one is already very close to the results with Lightwave.

Only one area-light with a HDRI.

#1568

looks good! Nice tests.The head scan is perfect!

Although I only used the color-map in the different slots with the help of the filter-shader and without !! any photoshop-work to create epidermal-, subdermal- , bump- spec- and glow-maps (only used the settings within the filter-shader) , it rendered out very nice, I think.

this is a method I prefer.In your case you had a photo texture, but it’s a good method even if you paint the texture,.I create colour map and use the same map for other layers just changing hue and saturation.If i want a more correct result I add the subdermal elements only on this layer, like veins.But it’s a small and almostu unnoticeable detail.

#1569

Another 3d-scan-mesh from the internet:

#1570

Are those reflections on the eyes and on the nose baked or there is a reflection/specular layer?

#1571

No, these ones are baked.

The color-texture of this 3d-scan is a simple photo with all reflections & specs baked in, not an albedo as we should normally use.

But it shows mainly the real life-like illusion of living skin that VrayforC4D can produce with a simple photo mapped on the mesh.

#1572

A new one.

This model and texture is by Lee.P.Smith, provided on the actual 3d-world-mag-cd.

It is the ‘Hair-model’, showing the capabilities of the HairFarm-plugin of 3d max.

The skin on the original max-render is more uuuhh than aahh and the color texture isn’t really great, but look what Vrayforc4d can do with it:

Now the shader is much more complex than before.

No baked photo-specs, all is really rendered.

Do you notice the distinct veins under the skin ?

#1573


character for my future short film
maya | MR

#1574

Hi,

I’m new in the SSS and I was wondering if you professionals or those with more experience could give me some guidance.

Let’s say I have a face reference image, so that would be my Color Map.
From there, how can I transform the Color Map into Back-Scattering Pass, Subdermal Pass and Epidermal Pass? Should I paint the three maps separately? Plus, Should I just paint the sections around the ears and nose where the SSS is visible? Again, I’m new with the SSS and I appreciate if anyone could give me some guidance.

Any other recommendation or resources is certainly most welcomed.

Thank you.

#1575

A new test with a WIP-Model:

#1576

I am impressed how did you do it?

#1577

Hi Carl,
countless hours of try and error and still a lot to fix and tweak.
In all Vray work you can currently see around, we all use the new SSS2 feature.
The rest is good modeling, maps and specs.

#1578

A little bit older W.I.P., rendered in fryrender:

#1579

Hi Everyone,

I am still working on my fastsss2 skinshader setup for Vray.

Here is a test I am currently working with.

Need to make it look a bit softer, probably etc.

Still much to do and learn :hmm:

A.

#1580

Reminds me of Scarlett Johansson. Maybe increase the thickness of the hairline, the AO contrast, the eye lids seem like they aren’t quite touching the eyes. Looking good man.