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SSS Plants and Trees
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:27 pm
by Bubbaloo
Here are some experiments I've been doing with SSS plants. Feel free to make suggestions or even post your own creations. I'd like to know if anyone thinks the improvement is enough to warrant more polygons for giving the leaves/blades thickness.
The plants are from Ready2Render (I got permission from the creator to modify and post renders).
Tell me what you think!
I will be posting more as I get them rendered.
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:41 pm
by Fernando Tella
Cool tests!
What happens if you use the sss material without thickness?
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:43 pm
by Hervé
can I ask you what is the crossing noisy line in the last render...?

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:49 pm
by Bubbaloo
Fernando Tella wrote:Cool tests!
What happens if you use the sss material without thickness?
You get weird results. Some leaves come out too transparent while others are completely opaque.
Herve, I think it was a merging problem with coop render. It does that 1 out of every 100 coop renders.

I have a hunch it happens when I push stop right when one of the render nodes is in the process of saving it's default mxi.
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:51 pm
by Hervé
well this is strange mind you.. anyway... very nice plants and renders... cool SSS.. power of Maxwell...
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 3:26 pm
by KurtS
Fernando Tella wrote:Cool tests!
What happens if you use the sss material without thickness?
I also wonder what happens if you just use some diffuse translucency, no thickness and no SSS?
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 3:52 pm
by Bubbaloo
I was never able to get transluscency to work/look good on plants.
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:47 pm
by Bubbaloo
Some more examples:

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 10:53 pm
by -Adrian
Very good!
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:07 pm
by Asmithey
Brian the SSS plant renders look great. I have not used SSS much, ok not at all yet. Did you use any of the SSS preset settings to achieve the end results. Or did you do it manually?
Thanks,
Aaron
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:10 pm
by Bubbaloo
I did it manually. All the presets are for thick objects. I had to do some major adjustments to get SSS at 1/128" which is the thickness of the leaves. I will post some settings when I am satisfied with the results.
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:28 am
by rusteberg
cool tests brian!!! i'm totally diggin' the backlit ones!!

keep going man!!!
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:41 am
by numerobis
nice tests! the sss is looking good.
...but an easy to configure single sheet sss solution would be better

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:59 am
by Bubbaloo
Thanks Rusteburg and numerobis!!
Well... I don't want to take this thread in the wrong direction, but...
What is single sheet subsurface scattering? It's an interpolation of a physical property. It's interpolating what "should" be happening beneath the surface of a solid object. It doesn't exist in the physical world. In our real 3d world, even the thinnest objects have thickness. Wouldn't using S5 make Maxwell Render non-physically correct? That's what I like the most about Maxwell Render. The more accurate your model, the more accurately the materials can react to the lighting in your scene. Plus, with better hardware and low memory prices, keeping a low poly count is becoming less important. Just my thoughts on it...
Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:25 am
by Bubbaloo
A small render for a leaf SSS texture. I think it's getting closer. In some of my earlier renders, they were too transparent.
