[Greg]

Hey everybody, I'm getting nowhere with this material. It's similar to a band aid...small scale (probably .5mm thick), but I cannot get that cool translucent sss look (which I know is a lighting issue as much as a material one). If anybody has any suggestions I will take them. I can get a decent look in modo, but just have a noisy mess in Maxwell...I think Maxwell has the ability to pull off the better image if I could give it the right parameters.

Here's some photos of what I'm trying to achieve. (the 'mesh' is going to have to be bump, normal or displacement map...the CAD file didn't have that geometry)

-Greg

[dariolanza]

Hi Greg,

A look like this depends on both, lighting and material.

For the material, have you tried with a Single Sided SSS? It was created to mimic this kind of thin surfaces with translucent properties.

In fact, you simply have to mode one side (one surface, not the thickness) and the thickness is set numerically in the material settings.

Take a look here for more information:

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/ma ... cs/ThinSSS

I hope it helps.

Cheers!

Dario Lanza

[bograt]

Its kind of hard to make suggestions without seeing what you have achieved so far, lighting and camera wise, and it would help to see what your model looks like... Is it a solid closed mesh? or single sheet?
You may want to try one of the wizard sss materials to begin with and then to consider a singles sided sss as Dario mentioned

[simmsimaging]

It shouldn't be too hard to get that effect with SSS (or the thin method, although the lack of thickness may show, so you would probably want to have the sides of the shape in place, and just remove the 'bottom' geometry).

If it is just for print you could also add that edge SSS in post and probably save yourself some hours messing with materials because SSS does not preview with great accuracy in Fire, so you have to do a lot of actual renders to get it right (in my experience anyway.)

[Greg]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. The model has thickness (it's a re-topologized CAD model...Pixar SubD's are frozen for Maxwell import) and it's real world scale....quite small. I ended up doing it in modo since deadlines took over and it needs to be animated. I want to circle back to this in Maxwell though because I need to understand the SSS parameters better, and I think Maxwell could do a great job with this.
Simmsimaging - you're correct about Fire...it's a huge improvement over say 'no Fire'..but it's still pretty slow and coarse (and feature incomplete) compared to something like modo's Preview.

This is what I came up with in modo....I figured the client would hate it but they liked it....so case closed for now.

-G