[bograt]

The spec on the skin is not finished for either image because I could not be bothered to create maps for the mesostructure of the skin, as a result, the woman maybe looks a bit greasy and the man a bit rubbery...

[Mihai]

18 hours for that, are you kidding? Most of that "SSS" comes from the texture, I'm not sure what the SSS is contributing to. I don't mean to be so brutal but these SSS threads tend to go all over the place. Every one thinks skin should look a certain way, when it can look so different, depending on factors like race, age. Shadow coloring? I can show you many photos of people where that wouldn't show at all.

It's been said a lot of times but I guess not enough: Maxwells volumetric SSS is not really suited for creating multi layered skin. You can get a silicon skin look pretty easily, which is useful for many cartoony characters, but not something resembling human skin. It's not about the specular, it's not about colored shadows. It's not about some other little detail that's missing and otherwise it would be perfect.

What I'd like to ask is: If you had your perfect skin shader, what would you use it on exactly? What I mean is, you want to make animations of a credible human face? And you think the biggest hurdle you have is the shader? Really?

I think even for a still, it is extremely difficult and time consuming. A skin shader is just a part of the puzzle. It is still so incredibly difficult and time consuming that if you had a real job to use this perfect shader on, it would still be more efficient to just photograph somebody.

So then we are left with cartoony, somewhat realistic characters. And we need an easier way to handle the skin shading of those. Then I ask myself, how realistic would a skin shader need to be for those occasions?

All this doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see a nice skin shader in Maxwell....obsessions have no logic

[bograt]

Well put Mihai, I can't agree more.
By the way, the ridiculous time was down to extremely small attenuation distances... I gave up on it a long time ago.

[RobMitchell]

What I'd like to ask is: If you had your perfect skin shader, what would you use it on exactly? What I mean is, you want to make animations of a credible human face? And you think the biggest hurdle you have is the shader? Really?

I think for some people it's often the challenge of working something out and finding out how and why something works. Whether this particular shader is used for production purposes or never used again, it all goes towards learning and finding the limitations of the software. Nothing wrong with trying to get the best of something.

You're right overall though, obsessions have no logic whatsoever haha.

[Aniki]

To me its mostly the motivation: is it possible?
Same reason on that sss caustics thread. Where are the limitations, how can they be circumvented etc..

Just pushing to the "next limit";)

[eric nixon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHiC0mt4Ts

worth watching, kind of freaky.

[bitarafali]

new test in maxwell (WIP) :

[rusteberg]

it's a Snooki Baby

[bitarafali]

it's a Snooki Baby

Haa haaaa!!! Maybe.... It's a primitive and he could be ancestors of snooki

[jberger]

I come from Renderman for Maya and it has some very fast, fake but easy to use and tweak SSS. What I was doing mostly was cartoon characters with animation. The one (VERY BIG) thing I am missing in Maxwell is a decent SSS material, that is usable in production, which means rendertimes are bearable, like less than about 4 hours full HD with ONE character. It doesnt need to be highly accurate or totally real, I am into cartoony characters. Would be great as I love Maxwell, but reading posts like Mihai`s makes me think the understanding for a demand like this is not there on the Maxwell end. So, maybe Maxwell isnt the ideal tool for this kind of job.

This is done in Renderman, rendering time is about 10 min.


I havent been able to match the look of this type of skin anywhere near in Maxwell even with open end render times.

[eric nixon]

Well it is possible to make a fast sss material as long as the skin is very even toned (cartoony) and some diffuse bsdf is blended in.

This renders fast, cant remember exactly how long but around 15mins;



Your right that its not a very efficient render engine for a cartoony look, but it is possible if you know how to dial the settings in.

I would also welcome some biased shaders in maxwell, not just for skin but also something like 'bright sprites' would be really handy for 2D reflection billboards, where you want high-contrast reflections but dont need the emitted light. (I know reflections are actually emitted light - but there must be some way to fudge this)

I hope the devs can be a bit more practically minded, more compromising.. Maxwell animations look awesome but there are too many limitations at the moment.

[jberger]

Thanks for your reply, Eric. I have been able to create simple "sss" materials like you described. But they seem to work for me only in very diffuse lighting situations. As soon as there are more direct light setups, the illusion of skin/rubber/silicone is gone instantly and it looks like concrete again. I know the challenge is tough to be idealistic on one hand ( going unbiased ) and making it useful in a wide variety of production situations. Hopefully someone brilliant mind can understand the desire and come up with something that works well. I have spent quite some time with maxwell over the last year and this is the one of the two big hurdles I see in my way moving forward. The other one being hair in Maya and its support in Maxwell.

[eric nixon]

I found the file and let this render for 1hr30 to sl17. The material is overly bright but thats fixable. I know what you mean about the concrete look in sharp lighting, I think negative asymmetry is needed to avoid all that scatter close to the surface which gives it a concrete look. This render is using -.5 asymmetry.

It looks far from real and the benchmark slowdown is noticable, but for a figure which was fully clothed I would consider using it. I avoided rendering the head because the geo is bad, also the model only came with one diffuse map, so more maps for spec strength and roughness might help the look.

material uses 1 null layer as a base, then 3 additive layers; sss+spec, diffuse, and an R2 layer for the fine hairs.



1hr sl16 diffuse light; some noise coming from fingernails - bad geometry (no thickness)

[jberger]

Thanks for your tips, I will try that negative assymetry thing.

[Tok_Tok]

Oke well I'm jumping in deep waters here. I've never really done much research on skin shaders so I'm not mix in this a lot, but isn't this the perfect example;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0cZin2xDmQ

Probably already known by a lot of people here but I can consider this very realistic! And this is realtime so it makes you wonder why it would be difficult in Maxwell, at all.