I’ve been remembering “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” and I think the characters had pores, dimples, etc. I’m guessing they modelled those (if so, cool; if not, still cool). But I’m wondering how you can TEXTURE these. (Modelling them would take too much time.) Is there some kind of plugin that makes pores, and another that makes dimples and stuff like that?
PS: I remember from the Blender Book:
What is this plug-in, and where is it?
Dimples you would probably have to model…they are a relatively big part of the face. Pores, animal skin, checkerboards, leather, etc. are just done with procedural textures (aka plugins). I picked up a fairly basic book called Practical Algorithms for 3D Computer Graphics; it’s pretty helpful in learning about Perlin noise and the other stuff that goes into making those.
A procedural texture for pores would probably modify the surface normal (bump mapping), the specularity, and a little bit of color. It’s probably pretty easy to make the basic texture, but getting it to show up right on different parts of the face would be really hard. I wish I could tell you where one was…especially one made for Blender, but that draws a blank. I hope this helps some, though.
Matt
Pretty sure they used something called displacement mapping. It’s like bump mapping, but it creates verts on the fly. Blender doesn’t support this 
You’ll have to model the dimples, but the pores can be done with a simple bump map. I created the scales on my salmon this way:
Not to mention that we’re never going to get really good looking skin until someone can implement subsurface light scattering (translucency) into the renderer. I settle for someone just coming up with a good fake. I’ve tried a few times, but not been happy with the results.
That was rather helpful. However, what about that plugin that
?
I did not read the book but I guess this is ment as an example. like. “with a little imagination, you could make anything from dinosaur skin to metal surfaces in python”
so its not an existing script… y dont you just code one? 
j/k
Woah man, stop scaring me, for a minute I thought cubefan was back.
Everybody go home, this thread is a year old.
Same here weirdhat.
Well…I think its about tim to bring this thread back to life as well…
I have had subsurface scattering on the mind lately…and it really bothers me when Blender is lacking something that lesser programs boast…so…its time to step up to the challenge.
First, I totally agree with harkyman…a “fake” is completely acceptable and should be considered before anything else. Who cares how the hell it gets done, as long as it looks good…as bad as that may sound in any other situation, art is the one exception! Beofre we begin we must remeber not to get too wrapped up in how it actually works…we DO have to undrstand this before we make this journey, but we cant let it get in our way while developing it. I am certain that we may just be able to get the answer out of a simple shader…and yes that is possible…we are just going for the look…not the actual science behind the damn thing. So, have at it…does anyone have anything on this so far?
I’ve been thinking about this too lately. As I understand it (maybe simplifying it abit) but SSS is the bouncing of light through the skin, translucency. But looking at skin (my own and others) it seems to me that what a lot of people are calling SSS is actually a combination of skin texture, (pores, wrinkles ect) and the oil on the outside of skin. This being the case it should be possible to come up with a fake with a combination of materal and texture maps and perhaps some translucency from the new ray tracing.
Just an idea.
Paradox
Sounds good! I think your definately on to something! Through the use of the tools currently available in Blender (radiosity for color bleeding…raytracing for refraction) and carefully crafted textures, I believe that ANY material can be achieved including the idea of SSS. Hmmmm…I will see what I can come up with in the next couple of days. Hopefully I will prove myself wrong…nevertheless we will all learn from my failure. Feel free to fail before me .
Landis
Looks like we have a new project going - the search for Sub-surface scattering or maybe the search for the perfect skin material, texture. This might be good to put in WIP to get more people involved. I know people have explored this in the past including Manuel with the Make Human project and some earlier attempts at subsurface scattering shaders. Also looking on CG talk texture forum I see that alot of people in all 3D areas are trying to find workable solutions.
My avator is from an On the Haunt entry, (a bigger version is on my stie)
and it had 7 texture channels. I’ll try and come up with something too in the next few days, between trying to finish up an old project. But who am I to complain about time when you have Airman, beast and ect going.
Someone said once - If you want something done give it too a busy person. The implication being that the busy person was both organised and efficent. I’m not that organised but do manage to get things done sometimes. Here’s to The Amazing Blender skin.
Paradox (Sorry I ramble sometimes)
Here is a good starting point tutorial by Steven Stahlberg
http://www.optidigit.com/stevens/shadetut.html
Paradox
What does SSS stand for?
[edit]Sub Surface Scattering…[/edit]
I’m going to start counting all the times that chimera brings back old old threads, and then when he gets to 100 (which shouldnt take long) I’m going to kill him with an OLD metal POST and some OLD metal THREAD!
I joke about the killing, of course
dante
Well…I took a little longer than I suspected. But the good news is that I was able to start th entire project I had in mind regarding SSS (or faking it atleast. I hope you all like it:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=173358#173358
Take care, and as always…blend on.
Cheers,
Landis
Okay, after looking at Landis’s awesome WIP skin baby test, I had to try a skin test myself =)
http://65.26.113.38/www/smerity/skintestlandised.jpg <- Img link
Okay, the way I did this way that I wanted to have complete control over the skin, and to do this I created a few multiple texture channels…
Bottom Channel --> Vein layer, left on full opacity
Next Channel --> Bump map for general skin
Next Channel --> General skin colouring, opacity on about .8
Top Channel --> All the small details like the moles etc etc, opacity on full
On top of that all I had some Emit, Reflection on full and Translucency on =)
This let me play around with opacity levels, contrast levels, etc etc, with the different components of the skin, and I think I achieved a pretty good effect =)
And finally, almost all of the texturing is mine, apart from stealing a bit of bumpiness from my arm (the very fine fingerprint like bumps) and using Clone Tool in Photoshop
Hope this helps you out! =)
PS. Landis, are you going to create a thread for skin colouring, creation etc etc? Cuz it would really help out some people if we did, and it’d be a fun community like project anyway =) Thanx so much for Airman and Beast!
Sounds like a good idea bud! Awesome job by the way! If you want we can either do it here or just start a new one. We can maybe have a repository for shaders and or just textures themselves. I think it would be great…I would really like to have an area where textures and shaders could be accessed through the site here at elysiun…maybe like a resource section. Models, shaders, textures, tutorials, etc. Just replace the “tiutorials” section of the page with “resources”. Not sure who to contact on this though. Anyways, let me know and we will come up with something.
Later man,
Landis
Looks like the raytracing euforia is over and people are screaming for SSS.
I don’t think that Final Fantasy: the flop within used SSS. Even Princess Fiona from shrek was done without SSS. Take a look at some of the poser models. All done with layers of textures, for example: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=22150&ViewImage=2#Image
That’s nothing that Blender can’t do.
This link is very interresting (and well known I presume):
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/fast_bssrdf/
The past few weeks I had some time off and I was busy programming SSS into the Blender source with the suggestions made in the PDF on the site about SSS. But now that I have to go to work again, I won’t be able to finish this work to submit it in the tohuupu tree in the near feature. But I have this to say, it looks promissing though! But even then, I like the toon shading more right now. It’s the new coolness. Remember, unless you’re prepared to render 1 frame in 27 hours, the quest is not fotorealism, it’s what’s pleasing for the eye to see. And that means composition, lightning and modeling. I can make a glass ball look very realistic, but is boring to look at.
I never heard of any sub surface scattering being used on Final Fantasy. I know there was a renderman shader trick used to get the blood feeling in the ears when lit from behind. Everything else was one talented guy spending a lot of time tweaking texture maps and shader settings.