[RK_art]

Here is a completely overworked skin-shader-setup in 2 variations.
First one is real volume SSS and had a render-time of around 10 hrs.
Second is using single side SSS and had only 20 minutes rendertime.

Remark: The girl-mesh and the bump & albedo-texture is taken from Lee Perry Smith's 'Diver'-Model, provided on the aktual 3D-World-magazine-DVD. All other textures needed for this maxwell-shader are created by myself.

First the real Volume SSS, 10 hrs rendertime:

and Volume SSS only, no albedo:


And here the Single-side SSS, rendertime aroun 20 minutes:

Single side SSS only, no albedo:


And finally the single side SSS after only 40 minutes:

and different multilight-settings:





All pictures are straight out of the renderer, no postwork.

[RK_art]

Here is another setup, played again with the settings and maps:



It is real volume SSS, has ca. 10 hrs at SL 13.39 now, ah, and was gone through Neat-Image to remove the rest of the noise.

But I have to say, compared with what is currently possible with Mental Ray (look at the makings of the Benjamin-Button film ), this is only like toy-playing.
I am afraid that also in V2, it is still not possible to create a real life-looking human skin. Human skin behaves different compared to all other materials that can more or less easily simulated with apps like maxwell, Vray etc., that are primarily used to architectural purposes. Because skin has a non-uniform tissue-structure and has furthermore solid structures (Bones) underneath in reality, it is in my oppinion necessary to have a special programmed shader to calculate these special light-behaviors correctly within an even multilayered material applied on a simple polygon-figure-bubble (meaning that usually you don't really model all the structures, thicknesses, bones, well, except Max with the T-800 ).
So I would really like to beg the NL-Team for a special human-skin-shader to really use the enormous potential of Maxwell also for organical projects.
Please, Please.......

Just to explain what I mean with a special programmed skin shader:
Currently, I have 3 possibilitys to combine material-components in Maxwell V2:
1. I do all with weight-maps inside one layer,
2. I use the new V2-layer-concept and can
a) weighten 'normally' and b), weighten by 'add' - calculations.

None of these provides the right algorythms to calculate the different components for real looking skin (albedo, deep tissue SSS (red), epidermal-surface (desaturated, yellowish-green), gloss and specs) correctly together that the result look life-alike.
Also if you look at the rare background-infos of the former creator ('Zap') of the MR-Skin-shader, there is a lot more to calculate than simply blend or screen layers.
Simply try to combine the above listed maps (albedo, SSS-result, epidermal, Glow and specs) within the layer-system of photoshop, try every combination that photoshop can calculate, you will fail. None of these calculations leeds to the right result.
So, whatever we try currently, it's frustrating to know that Maxwell (and Vray) could do it principally, but we always fail because we don't have the right calculation-options.
So, an easy to use skin-shader-material would be urgently needed, where I can simply put in my maps in an albedo-layer, a deep SSS-layer, a surface-epidermal-layer, an overall-glow and finally an specular-layer, set simply the desired thickness of each tissue-layer and the shader does the correct calculations of each layer to produce a real looking skin.

[RK_art]

Overworked the skin-shader again totally.

This is a first test, 25 minutes at SL 11:



Need better bump-maps, as the original ones from Lee P.Smith are not so good, but this test is primarily to check the albedo - SSS balance. It has two single-side SSS-Layers.

Here with more SSS-weight and a little too much bump:

[RK_art]

Here the same shader, some more corrections and another self-made albedo-texture, taken from a previous model and only roughly adopted to this model:
Time: 1h 27 min at SL 14.03

[RK_art]

Here is a blend of the 2 different albedos:
(1,5 hrs at SL 14)

[tom]

Wow!

[Becco_UK]

Much better with Maxwell 2 but I think highly realistic looking skin with any renderer is some years away. The problem is likely to be how real skin is, made up with of complex layers. We ask a renderer to simulate that by using models made up of 1 layer infinite thin polygons.

Start modelling human skin realistic and Maxwell, or any other renderer, would not be able to render it highly realistic.

[RK_art]

Becco, what do you think of these ones ?

http://infinite.cgsociety.org/gallery/837787/
http://infinite.cgsociety.org/gallery/791173/
http://infinite.cgsociety.org/gallery/748892/

Obviously, Lightwave is already now able to produce some very high-realistic skin.
But they have a simple to setup special skin-shader that makes things a lot easier when you already got the right maps.

[JorisMX]

holy sh*t!