Maxwell Render | Official public forum

I read V2 manual but still i have a few Q's to help me understand V2 sss:

1) I noticed that the Orange Juice/Honey material has Force Fresnel Checked-BUT JADE did NOT- Why? How does FrcFresnel help SSS materials? (esp since both these have ref0/90 colors as black- how does FFresnel force BLACK?)

2)Tom mentioned in another thread (user changing jade preset colors) to watch changing Value (in HSV) of Transmittence color...
so does this mean we need to follow same rule as ol ref 0 color not to exeed rgb230 (so V of .9) Also the attenuation distance shouldn't be too low- as a low value will keep energy of light from helping sss effect?

2b)It was also said to watch scattering color and not set it too high for noise reasons.. I can see maybe transmittence you may want totally white for clear glass..so should we abide by the Value .9 rule for scatter color? (as total v=1 will jsut shoot noisy white dots everywhere any rules hints on this?)

3)How does nD affect SSS? just how light gets refracted.. like honey and oj is 1.3 (LIKE WATER) but jade is 1.5 so its "thicker" than water and I guess this still affects how the ref90 or spec color plays into the look?

4)ref0 and ref90 colors in honey/oj/plastice red are all set to black in preset mxms.. but jade is set w/ ref90 V=.286 I read in maual that to best setup sss to turn ref0/90 to back and then turn up ref0/90 any HINTS on when we should have ref0/90 colors other than black

Thing to know:
It was said not to use small or distant emmiters (like sun is) and to use more uniform lighting(or bigger emmiters). Thats why in one of my test when i turned on env dome the sss looked way less noisy then w just a 5x1cm emmiter plane in the scene.

1) Force Fresnel has nothing to do special with SSS, it's only a matter of preference and an option for forcing the fresnel reflections or not. (see manual pages 57 and 65) Jade is using a coating for speculars and it has a rough SSS base. As the influence of fresnel decreases by roughness, Jade has custom greys in reflectances.

2) There's no straight rule in doing this. I'd suggest you to try the new wizard for building SSS materials.

2b) Maybe this is misunderstood, there's no such 0.9 rule. The thing that should be avoided is breaking the balance between attenuation and scattering. For a clear glass you can set anything you like and a little scattering.

3) Yes, Nd always affects both the fresnel on the surface and the refractions. If your materials are typical milky, waxy SSS stuff which don't show refraction, staying between 1.2 and 1.4 is suggested.

4) Go to answer 1.

huh... so with ForcFresnel even thoughthe Fresnel (ref90) color is balc you can Force black to produce "spec" highlighs/reflections (at low roughness values in material).. and im guessing that they would be white for white emmiter as its black there is no tint influence..

- avoid breaking balance between atenuation and scattering? as in the Value (HSV) balance? any rules to if Attenuation is X then scatter should be Y? i guess this balance is made by creating sss from wizard?