Shader Tests including (but not limited to) SSS

As there isn’t much more work I can do on this set of shaders that I’ve built, I am going to upload them to Gumroad.com. I am not expecting to make a profit from these, I am merely putting them there so that anyone who wishes to show their gratitude has a way to do so.

Every one of these shaders is capable of being used independently, and are relatively fast due to the optimisations I have made, but I want to add the disclaimer here that the Unified Shader, being the massive ubershader it is, is slow by nature.

Thanks for all your support guys! If you need anything regarding these shaders, or have questions, PM me.

  • Microno

EDIT : (28/08/2016) I have removed the original post in its entirety as it is no longer relevant to the actual end product that has been achieved over the course of this thread. The original post has been replaced with the above which indicates the current status of everything in this thread.

EDIT: (18/06/2016) Fixed broken link.

EDIT: (20/03/2016) I’ve update the shader for Blender 2.77 so now it no longer requires the emulated SSS shader that I had built. This has also optimised the shader as there is a reduction in overhead. It also works more efficiently in certain cases (almost on par with using the bare glass, transparent, glossy, etc. shaders) when the additional dispersion effects are disabled.

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Grapes! Or they’re supposed to be but I am terrible at choosing colours for this so here is my test (after a while) of the same node setup but with something different. I should have made it glossier… I’ll put that up too when I do!


Here is an animation of jade-like marbles using the particle system simulating a fluid.

This is my attempt using the same material to makes candles. Again the entire thing was rendered in Cycles.


It looks like you achieved a nice start on the candles.

The falloff looks a little too smooth however (judging from my experience looking at candles). You will need to perform some alterations on the ray-length value to get the somewhat harsh falloff that is more common with wax.

I see… Well I’ll work on that. Meanwhile here is my current node setup:


Candles! Again!


I modified the shader to improve it’s usability and added some more control to how it works. I’ve changed the materials in the original file of the Suzanne line-up I made with the new material and this is the result:


Lee Perry Smith Head from Blendswap with my SSS shader for cycles.
Front:


Side:


Back:


Jiminy Cricket! That’s kinda wild. Here’s hoping for a dedicated SSS shader soon, so we won’t have to be mathematicians to make an SSS shader ourselves :slight_smile:

Can you post a .blend, perhaps?

I actually cleaned it up a bit, honestly it’s not as wild as it looks. I just wanted it to be flexible so a lot of mix nodes. Here’s a blend file. Currently it’s set up to work as a skin shader. Trust me, this was more trial and error than mathematics. :smiley:

SSS_Base_Material.blend (610 KB)

Oh and here’s the current node setup just in case the .blend doesn’t work or you don’t want to download it. :smiley:


Hi Microno, Thank you for your SSS node.
Here my first test, I keep the node very simple.
This piglet is one of my old models which I made it in Blender 2.48b!
I think a piglet could be one of the best objects for showing your node performance.




I’ve used no textures no compositing effects, nothing for decorations actually!
Just lighting and your SSS node and the power of CYCLES!

More Screen-Shots and Rendering coming soon!

Looking forward to it! I hope it’s been helpful! :smiley: Great work!

Final-Rendering-Test1:
2K samples, GPU Rendering, GTX 460 SE(EVGA), and very narrow depth of field(Lens 35 mm).

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That is some pretty funky stuff, thanks :slight_smile:

I’ve been working on fake skin SSS too, just to play around with the ray length (extremely late to the party). No where near as well thought through as yours though.

Microno,
thanks so much for the SSS shader…the node map is mind-boggling. =O
But will try to make sense of it. I love the look of SSS, but didn’t know how.

Also, beautiful little piggy, Partin…great use of Microno’s shader.

I can imagine how beautiful Persian writing would be as well in 3D with SSS.

Peace. :slight_smile:

@Microno
Thanks.
@michalis
Thanks.
@megacal
Thank you for your great offer, I’ve tested it and you can see the results.
I’ve used this SVG file importing into Blender, for more info about Persian-Calligraphy visit these sites:
http://www.yadollahkaboli.com/englishartwork.html
http://persiancalligraphy.org/persian-calligraphy-gallery.html



Partin,
yes, very beautiful script…especially with Microno’s SSS shader.

How did you model it? Do you have a way to create the font in Blender?

What does it say?

First I must thank you for your really nice Portal into Blender! and thank you very much for your comment,
I didn’t actually model it! as I’ve written I downloaded the curve from wikipedia.org as a SVG file format, Importing to Blender! But I actually have done all Calligraphy at my website in Corel-Draw and Inkscape by curve tools.
about this script, it’s Shekaste Nasta’ligh and it’s so wild to be tamed into a standard font file format I think! but for more info you could call dear Mr. Payman Hamed at his website(Professional Calligrapher and Teacher).

The poem by:
Omar Khayyám


One Moment in Annihilation’s Waste,
One moment, of the Well of Life to taste—
The Stars are setting, and the Caravan
Starts for the dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste!

The part which is italic is almost the part written in Persian, which I used.